Meredith's Husband: 0:42

Hey, this is Meredith husband, I've got some SEO advice for you. But I'm gonna keep it really simple so that you can understand it. So make sense. And most importantly, so you can actually use do you do New Year's resolutions? No,

Meredith: 1:00

do not mean either. I hate them. I think they're stupid. Why?

Meredith's Husband: 1:06

They seem they seem. I don't want to say they're all stupid. But it seems like if you're gonna just make up your mind to do something, like every day for an entire year, it's not something you already do. But there's no way that you're gonna follow through that. That seems to

Meredith: 1:18

be the way you're gonna follow through is if you take it slowly and slowly create habits. There's this whole podcasts about, you know how to establish habits. And um, I think that's all great. Yes, but what what I don't like is the starting January 1, I'm going to work out so drawers on Gumroad, showing me five pounds on first week, I'm only gonna eat dendro sugar.

Meredith's Husband: 1:46

You know what I'm doing. But the people listening who just said that? Well, they made that resolution

Meredith: 1:52

good for them. And what usually happens is like for dates, they do it and it's just Oh, sure. So yourself. And then it's rainy, or feel well, or that whatever the case they have a meeting whatever it is, then they don't go that one day, guess what happens? Usually, that's it. The gyms

Meredith's Husband: 2:18

are always full in January through the day in February,

Meredith: 2:22

when I go when we say when I used to go to the gym, like five days a week. All those gym rats knew that. Stay away from the gym January through the second week of February, and then things will be back to quote normal.

Meredith's Husband: 2:38

Right? You know what I did do this year, though? What is i On New Year's? Or shortly after New Year's maybe? I thought back about last year? And what did I do last year look like? What did I learn last year that I think? Or what did I do or start to do that worked really well, that I can improve? And do more of this? Just kind of like you were saying, you know, a trend? Like building habits? What is a habit? What is a habit? Because I start I you know, played with habit building last year, and tracking habits and things like that. But I thought back So what's one that was really good that I want to continue doing meditating? No, that's not the one I thought of walk, you know, it was the one I meant for your wife? No, that wasn't the one either. It was the one about spending. So scheduling scheduling is something I I really kind of put an effort into last year. Yeah. And I feel like made a really big difference. And in particular, it was the whole notion. I know, I've mentioned this before love spending time like money. So yeah, if I if there's something I want to do, or something I want to achieve, or whatever, you know, often you think, Oh, well, how much money would I spend on that? I try to do the same thing with like, my hours during the day. Like for the stuff I want to achieve? I want to say well, I, I want to spend an hour on this a week or you know, and I and I dedicate it that way. Rather than saying to myself, I want to achieve this milestone, I wonder I want to finish this project. Because that just because you never know how long it's gonna take longer than you think.

Meredith: 4:16

And then you think, Oh, I'm almost there. And then you realize you're missing this one thing. And to get this one thing, oh, it happens to take for kazillion hours.

Meredith's Husband: 4:26

So anyway, along those lines, I thought maybe we should do something. Not not a not a resolution, but kind of put put together what I would do. If I were just starting SEO from scratch what I would do for a year, that's a great idea, because also the questions I've been getting are more like, you know, hey, what do I do for SEO? Like, period? Everything? Like what is it? Like? It's pretty comprehensive. It's not things like what should I how do I write title to it's not? It's not specific? Like I can give a simple, simple answer. It's more comprehensive, like, what do I do? What do I need? What do I need to like, is it how do I get started? What do I need to keep doing? Like, yeah, if I've done this, what do I need to keep doing? Because it is a process and like you said you want to build habits? And I think looking at it and saying oh here's what if I were starting from scratch and I were gonna plan out this year. What would I do? That's a great idea. So with that in mind, this is what I would do. I broke it down into into seasons because I figure months is probably a little too specific. Some of these are kind of malleable

Meredith: 5:31

gives people a reason And with lesser

Meredith's Husband: 5:35

songs. People have written songs

Meredith: 5:40

and have

Meredith's Husband: 5:42

freezin. So this this is I would say you could thrive. Yeah, thank you. Can I continue? Okay, should I

Meredith: 5:50

clean? Season? Okay, yes. Meaning to the season thing?

Meredith's Husband: 5:57

Should I go to the bathroom or like,

Meredith: 6:00

I just, I just needed that last, last.

Meredith's Husband: 6:02

So this, this doesn't this, like what I'm going to lay out, this doesn't need to be a year, you could certainly condense this into six months or three months, if I fact if I were to do or when I do coaching programs, this would be what I'm going to cover is would basically be a 12 week coaching program. But if you want a space, like if you're only going to spend an hour, a month on, you know, doing this stuff, then you certainly you could spread it out the goal, like you said, is to build a habit. You get into a rhythm. Yeah, because SEO is not like I've said many times, it doesn't happen overnight. Now, it's not something you sit down and do once and it's done tomorrow. It's probably no. So with that in mind, starting from scratch, what would I do with the remaining portion of winter? Yeah. Which I guess would be this January, February? Yeah. I would just make sure that I have my good my Google tools in place. So my Google Analytics, my Google Search Console, my Google business profile, this is where sem rush comes in? Nope, not yet. Okay, sem Rush is in the spring. Oh, that's nice. But I would make sure in particular, that I have my Google business profile in place, because one thing I would do throughout the year is I would try to get one review per month. So you know how people leave reviews on Google. And you get a star rating? Yeah. Try to build those sort of consistently, because a lot of people say, oh, I need reviews, and they go out and they try to build a whole bunch. Well, that looks spammy, that seems

Meredith: 7:28

suspicious. Everything is you know, the summit, how much March? How much

Meredith's Husband: 7:33

better if you were like shopping for a if you're looking for a photographer, and you found one on Google, and said he found two of them. And one, they both had five star reviews? Average. So really good, right? But one of them had all their reviews in January, and one of them had one every month. Yeah. Which one would look better? Yeah. Also, Google is kind of sometimes on the lookout, if you if you don't have any reviews, and then they suddenly spike that can sometimes backfire on you, they can think that they are spam and get rid of them. Oh, ouch. All that hard work. So the other thing I would do in the winter, before the winter is over is I would look at your GRE I would look at my competitors essentially, pretend like I am a potential client of my own. And I would go online looking. And I would be looking for websites that appear high in Google. Right. So regardless of what I'm search searching for,

Meredith: 8:27

it's just gonna save Are there specific search? Oh, like you

Meredith's Husband: 8:31

would search for children's photographer, family photographer, Brooklyn. And you will just look for this, do a few searches, there's no exact right way to do this, just pretend you're looking for one and do some searches. And the sites that come up at the top are going to be the competitors that you want to pay attention to. Okay, because we want to, you're going to want to look to see what they're doing to be on top of what they're doing, hey, let's wait until spring have a little patience.

Meredith: 8:56

I can find some somewhere hidden in the couch cushions.

Meredith's Husband: 9:01

So I would say find like a handful of competitors that are that are doing what you do, and also ranking well in Google and pay attention to two things one, look at their their blogs, see what they're blogging about no reason, in particular, just kind of be aware of SEO, check them out, see what see what they're doing. And we're going to use that a little bit later. Okay. And then pay attention to their CTAs their calls to action, their buttons, the buttons, right? And pay attention to your instinct, which ones make you want to click on them? Oh, this is a very subtle sort of primal. Yeah, a little bit. But what you want to do, thanks,

Meredith: 9:41

you tell I'm inspired by the animals today. Sorry.

Meredith's Husband: 9:46

But what. But what you want to do is you want to, because one of the first things that we're going to want to do with your site is we're going to probably want to improve your CTAs because what I see a lot of is people have they have eight different types of calls to action. You can book a zoom session with me we can schedule via calendar, you can do a call, you can send an email, you can fill out my contact form, you can do this thing, that thing, and I understand the impulse. You want to give people options. Yeah, but you really don't you just want to give them one option. I think that you will notice if you're looking at your competitors and you're trying to kind of identify the ones that you that look good to you the ones that you want to click the ones that make you feel like oh, I want to do that.

Meredith: 10:28

They'd like them to photograph my family. Yes, it's actually good for photographers to have other photographers photo Got the family?

Meredith's Husband: 10:34

Probably. Yeah,

Meredith: 10:36

I know we've been trying to do it and then COVID

Meredith's Husband: 10:40

Oh crate our dog died. Let's throw that into but we

Meredith: 10:43

have new ones that we rescued and they're wonderful.

Meredith's Husband: 10:46

Our dog had a fantastic life. He hadn't extort his

Meredith: 10:49

name was Chaplin, little oh two Chaplain Chaplain had a magnificent, extraordinary life where he could not have been more loved.

Meredith's Husband: 10:59

Yeah, I often joke that what is the Dalai Lama? Is that Buddhism? Yeah, well, whatever the Yeah. So you, you gain up karma in your during your life, you gain up gather up good karma, you come back, and you get a better life as a result. And you keep doing that over and over. And eventually you'll come back as the Dalai Lama once you've built up all this amazing karma. I joke that after that lifetime after you have built up so much good karma that you come back as the Dalai Lama. Next, you come back as Meritus. Dog. That's what a good life Nerdist dogs

Meredith: 11:36

trying give him a little beings.

Meredith's Husband: 11:39

Anyway, back to my Wow, 23 plan.

Meredith: 11:43

Let's go back on find the map. Oh, we found it. And we're back. Believe it or not, I'm not high

Meredith's Husband: 11:49

today, yet. So my bet that if you are looking at calls to action, the ones that are going to appeal are gonna they're gonna be they're gonna have one call to action, probably, throughout the site, it's gonna be like, do this. Now, they might also have a contact form on their contact page, which is, that's fine. That can be that can be your call to action? Yep. It doesn't have to be like, that's a pretty standard page to have on a on a website. But you want to figure out what your call to action it? What do you want your potential clients to do? How do you want them to contact you, that should be your your call to action. That's what the action you want to get them to take? The minute you start giving them eight different options is also the minute that they probably won't take any of them. I know why they don't know what to do.

Meredith: 12:35

That's supposed to give somebody one or three options or two. No, more than three?

Meredith's Husband: 12:42

Yeah, I'll just try to minimize that mean, there's, yeah, there's, it depends on exactly what you're offering and cetera, et cetera. But try it don't give people a bunch of choices.

Meredith: 12:52

Don't give them a bunch of choices. Is that what I said? Yeah, you said don't give people a bunch of choices? Was that choices and options? choices? Choice? Now, let me tell you people, don't give people a bunch of choices.

Meredith's Husband: 13:10

Okay, can we make our way back to our podcast,

Meredith: 13:15

you're gonna do a lot of editing to this one. Don't give them options.

Meredith's Husband: 13:20

So don't give them one option. Just don't give them a bunch of options thinking that you're making their life easier, because then they get to decide, right? They do have to deal with analysis, paralysis. Decisions are tough. Don't make people make decisions. Okay, so that's the winter. All right. Okay, your Google tools, make sure they're installed. Try to try to start with a habit of getting one review per month. Yeah. And then to Google. And then as we move into spring now is when we're going to want to do our SEMrush stuff. That's so this is our on Site Audit. You know, we've talked about audit all the all the topics I'm talking about here. We've done episodes on? Yes. So you do your sem rush audit, you get your site cleaned up. So you have a nice high score. Yes. And then also in the spring, you want to figure out what your keywords are? Yes. And so you put those on the site? Yes. And you put them in the appropriate places, like you did in our that what that three episode series

Meredith: 14:20

did on keyword research, right? I was doing it.

Meredith's Husband: 14:24

So that's the spring, get your site, basically optimized, that is optimizing your site, doing the audit, and then finding your keywords and placing your keywords. That's what people think of as optimizing their website. So then in the summer, I would move into link building. Yes. And I would start if you're a photographer, I'm assuming you're you have a local service area, you know, you seem like you you service clients in New York, in and around New York City. Now you have a few elsewhere. But basically, your service, you can do service New York, so that's your your service area. So you would do local Link Building for that. We talked about that. And one of the episodes it was local, local citations, with laws bark, nope, not blocks. Do the local links. Also think about some other other ways you can get links? So like vendors and partners? So I used to do this way back when I build websites, obviously, you know, when you go to a website at the very bottom, it says website by such and such. Yes. That's the website developer placing a link to their site. That's its SEO, SEO was the one of the reasons Behind that it's why SEO developers, or I'm sorry, website developers do that. No. Getting links back to the site's good for us. Yeah, sure, sure. Then in the fall, I would move to a little more advanced type of link building cuz you're ready. Yeah. I mean, once you get the local link, the local Link building is easy to do. Right? You still need to do it. Yeah, it's a requirement. It's not difficult, though. But once you've done it at all, you can't once it's once it's done.

Meredith: 16:01

How about you can't eat a piece of paper once it's chewed and swallowed and digested?

Meredith's Husband: 16:09

Well, that is accurate. Yeah. I don't know if it's a great saying.

Meredith: 16:13

How about you can't uncook a cookie?

Meredith's Husband: 16:16

How about this? Once you've built your local links? You don't? You know, that's not good either. Once you've built your local links, you don't need to build them again, you can't keep building on their zone. You know, once they're done, they're done. Right. So you can move on to it's different. Yes, once the cookie is

Meredith: 16:33

cooked, good.

Meredith's Husband: 16:35

We have to talk about food.

Meredith: 16:36

I'm hungry.

Meredith's Husband: 16:38

So I would begin looking at remember when we chose your competitors? Or we looked at competitors. The winter would be in the winter? Yes. Winter was one of the first things we did doing it. Okay. We're back in this time. Okay. Yep. So now you want to look at those websites that remember the ones that are offering the same thing, and they're doing well. We want to see what websites links to those guys as to where are they? Where are they getting their links, so that you can figure it out? Using sem rush?

Meredith: 17:10

Okay, that's when the SEM rush comes in. Sem rush again. Again, that's where it comes in. Again,

Meredith's Husband: 17:17

then in the fall, I would also start your blogging. Remember, we also looked at the competitors to see what type of stuff they were blogging about, or I would

Meredith: 17:26

otherwise known as resourcing. Yeah,

Meredith's Husband: 17:29

kind of building resource links. I'm sorry, building resource blocks, yes.

Meredith: 17:35

See, I do listen to every song.

Meredith's Husband: 17:40

And then in the in the first part of the winter, at the end of the year, I would try to start to do some sort of outreach. So this this, I think we haven't talked about. Yeah, and this is probably a little more advanced, which is why it's at the end of the year, it's kind of the final step. Yeah, we got to get to what it is, when when once you use SEMrush, to figure out where your competitors are getting their best links. Yeah, you want to reach out to those websites, and offer them the same ones. You want to reach out to the websites who are linking to your competitors. Yeah. And say, Hey, you wanna say, hey, what about me? And now, you want to do it in a little more subtle fashion. But basically, you want to say, Oh, hey, look at this resource I have for your readers. Now, this is often going to be links from like another blog to your blog. But would that

Meredith: 18:36

take that away from the first blog? And then when you get it, it's somehow watered down? Because they've shared it more than once?

Meredith's Husband: 18:45

What do you mean? No.

Meredith: 18:46

So let's say photographer A has a link called quartz. We're just gonna call the link courts. So if we then wrote to the court site and said, Hey, link to me, too. Does the courts lose the link? Does it lose its value? Because it's been diluted? Because

Meredith's Husband: 19:09

more than once, it's a different layout? I mean, so the court should be find the court site is going to link to your competitor, they might also link to you.

Meredith: 19:19

Okay, or should we find our own places that would provide?

Meredith's Husband: 19:22

Well, you want you want to do that, too. But this is this, like, this is kind of a shortcut? No, this is public information, there is a tool in SEMrush, called the backlink gap tool. And basically, what you do is you could take, you know, a handful of your competitors, you take their websites, you put them in your press go, and that's going to come back and find websites that link to your competitors, but don't link to you. So if you put four competitors into your gap, like your your gap tool, is going to come back and say, Hey, this website here, links to all four of your competitors, but it doesn't link to you. So Ding, ding, ding, what should you do? You should go get that link. Because that's one reason that those websites are ranking. Well, it's because they have good links. So you want to just it's kind of like Follow

Meredith: 20:10

the Leader party. Yes. Okay. I understand. And

Meredith's Husband: 20:14

then then and then this would be probably next year, is then you start going out and finding your own links, your own really valuable links, but you got to start somewhere.

Meredith: 20:24

Fair enough. Okay. Fair enough. I just wanted to make sure that we wouldn't be hindering our competition.

Meredith's Husband: 20:32

No, you're not taking anything away.

Meredith: 20:34

That's what I that's what I just want to make sure. Because I just want to make sure it's not that I know, you would never direct anybody into doing sneaky things. But just to me, I fear that it might be a little sneaky. And I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't I No, you don't. That's why I was surprised and mentioned that I just want to make sure that everybody can be okay.

Meredith's Husband: 21:00

No, you just want to play the same game that they're playing, you want to have the same advantages that they're having.

Meredith: 21:06

Okay, that's fine. But you understand my question? Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 21:11

And I have seen, you know, I've, you know, in many years of doing SEO, there are more deceitful ways of doing all of this stuff. Yeah. I don't want to do that, though. Yeah, that, you know, those all those methods, in the end, they that you end up getting what you, you know, you reap what you saw eventually. Yeah, that's what I have seen in the last. Yeah,

Meredith: 21:32

I agree. Well, and even if it doesn't matter, that way, that's still the way I want to live my life.

Meredith's Husband: 21:39

I think we got to wrap it up.

Meredith: 21:41

I talked a lot. I'm sorry. I didn't get out much today.

Meredith's Husband: 21:45

Yeah, if you want to, you know, be effective with SEO, it's going to be like a practice, you know, like a yoga practice. You can't decide on January 1, that you're going to be a yogi, and then learn all of yoga, on January 2,

Meredith: 21:57

can't be a yogi, and then just be set for life. Right.

Meredith's Husband: 22:01

So yeah, have some patience. Like I said, this doesn't need to you don't need to do this over 12 months, you could do it over six months or three months. But it is a process. So yes, that's roughly the process. I think in a couple of weeks, I'm going to do I think we should do like the SEO process. Okay, a little more like what all these steps are? Yeah, a little more in depth. I mean, we don't have you know, it's 20 minute podcast, so we don't have a ton of time. So look for that episode, probably one or two after this one.

Meredith: 22:33

Okay. I think that's a great idea. Because people do ask me like, I don't even know where to begin.

Meredith's Husband: 22:39

Yeah, that's, that's like the one probably the most common question.

Meredith: 22:42

Yep. Yeah. Like, I know, I need to do it. I know I need to do it. But I don't even know where to get started.

Meredith's Husband: 22:48

Yeah, we'll cover that in a little more detail. That's great. Time to go.

Meredith: 22:52

Thank you for listening. Bye bye.

Meredith's Husband: 23:02

Okay, I hope that helped. I hope that helped your website. I hope that helped your business. I hope that helped give you a little bit of confidence that SEO is not this convoluted, cryptic, crazy thing that nobody can understand. If you did like it and you found it helpful. Please share it with a couple of your colleagues. Tell them what you like or more importantly, tell me what you liked. Let me know interview. leave a review on Apple. Tell me what parts you like. And I'll try to do more of those parts. And again, thanks for listening.