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

Meredith: 0:57

we talked about last year was something that we were gonna follow up on.

Meredith's Husband: 1:01

Yes, we talked about healthy SEO habits, how you can build healthy SEO habits. And I named five topics or five categories, five areas where you can build healthy SEO habits. Okay. And then I was said I was going to follow up on them. So today is the first of those. Okay, you sound thrilled. Remember? And the first one I'm going to cover is measurement measurement. Yes. Now, last week, I went in order, the first one I mentioned was building a healthy website. And that is important. But if you're going through the process of SEO, you're going to want to first make sure that you have some measurement tools in place, a ruler, sort of an SEO ruler, because if you don't I have said this just very recently to students. If you don't have good information, you can't make good decisions. Does that make? That's yeah, I? I thought it was good enough to repeat it. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, it's very true. I mean, you could look out every once in a while and make a good decision without good information. But if you don't have good information to base your decisions on, you're really just guessing.

Meredith: 2:07

Yeah, then it's just gut. Yep. And I've seen

Meredith's Husband: 2:12

it. Yeah, it does. But typically not SEO. That's not like a gut instinct. type of thing. Right. So anyway, measurement. I know, this sounds terribly unexciting. But if you know the goal of measurement, if you know what you're trying to get out of your measurement tools, it is a little more exciting. It's kind of like science. Because what we're looking for, we want actionable insights, when we are measuring stuff when we want. Or when we're looking for our good information. We want things that we can say, Oh, hey, I see this. And that means I should do this. Yeah. Because there's a lot of information out there like Google Analytics. There is, yeah, there's tons. When you get into measurement tools. There's also I mean, just in Google Analytics alone, I don't know how many hundreds or maybe even 1000s of different metrics there could be. Yeah, yeah. Most of them, you're not going to use they're not going to, like give you an insight into something you should actually do on your website to get more leads. They're not actionable. They are not actionable. It's kind of like if you were looking at your so I can't copyright that, like the word blue. Be right. If you were, for example, if you were looking at your social media, yes. And let's say at the end of the month, you're you're looking at your, at your metrics, if you if you just say, Oh, I have 100 likes, yeah, period. Great. That's, that's more like a vanity metric that's not going to help you make any decisions. Now, if you look at the individual posts, you know, like this post had 80 likes, and this one had 15. And these other four had one each. That's pretty actionable. Because now you know, what post gets gets engagement. So that's an example of what I would call vanity metrics, versus actionable metrics. So where do you look for these actionable metrics? That's a good question. Where do you Well, Google Analytics is going to be the first place, right? And what I do, this is what I do. And it's different. If you're talking about, you know, paid media, if you're running ads, or if you're running social media ads, or you're doing newsletters, you might look for different actionable insights. But for SEO, these are the things that I look at. Okay. First, very often, number one, landing pages, landing page. So how are people coming into your site? Because it's not always going to be the homepage, people assume, Oh, visitors coming from Google, they're always going to come through my

Meredith: 4:42

Yeah, I would have thought that they would always the homepage is where you enter in? Well,

Meredith's Husband: 4:47

yeah, sort of the welcoming page. And the, the more advanced SEO you get into the more people will come through other pages, inner pages, really, for example, my own site, which I think is pretty good SEO wise in terms of content. Cobbler I get more than 90% Probably more than 95% of my traffic coming in through blog pages, other pages, you're very

Meredith: 5:20

good blogger.

Meredith's Husband: 5:24

Well, that's debatable but compared to terms of SEO, I get the and this and this is what you're kind of aiming for you want you want A blog that's going to attract visitors. Yeah. Now you may notice, as traffic builds a lot of that traffic coming in to your blog might not convert, like it might, you might have a, you know, a great blog article, and it's getting traffic from outside of your area, or whatever. That's okay. Because the more your blog builds up traffic and rankings like that, it's it's good for your entire website, it means your page is going to appear more often it means Google is likes your site. So don't fall into the trap of like, Oh, my blog is getting good rankings, but my website is not so it's not working. That is working. Okay. So, some things to look for. Yes.

Meredith: 6:19

When? I mean, you have to

Meredith's Husband: 6:23

stop talking. So, Nico, some things to look for when you are looking at your landing pages. Okay, because just looking at your landing page is great. But what does that mean? So we're one

Meredith: 6:36

just to confirm landing pages, or pretty much any page on your website,

Meredith's Husband: 6:42

a landing page, just land on? Yes, a landing page is just a page of your website exactly that somebody lands on? Could be your homepage could be your contact page. Yes, yes. I'm just confirming you're good. So

Meredith: 6:55

you're confirming what we what we're finding that you are correct, ladies and gentlemen, you heard it here. First. I'm gonna delete that.

Meredith's Husband: 7:04

So first, what are the landed what pages are attracting traffic now, especially if you're beginning, you'll probably find that your homepage is getting more visitors landing then than other pages. That's fine, then just look down the list. And when you go ahead, and you click on I think in Google Analytics, you click on Reporting, and then engagement, and then landing pages, you'll get a list of the top 10 landing pages. And you see how many people have come. Exactly. Now the deep

Meredith: 7:31

the default get this Google Analytics one of these days,

Meredith's Husband: 7:35

the default, I think you will be looking at something like the last seven days, or maybe the last 28 days, I always like to open this up and look at at least probably the last 60 days or 90 days or even six months or something that so that you have a good idea I view because because you want to know what pages have been attracting? You don't just necessarily want to look at the last week, you want to know for several months,

Meredith: 7:59

because you would like to have a measurement. Yes.

Meredith's Husband: 8:03

So now as you start to see a what blogs are attracting some traffic, here comes the actionable. Okay, insights that you're looking for. Are there pages that are near duplicates? Meaning do you have multiple blogs on like a very similar topic? Penguins? Yeah, the penguin mating season, or whatever? Yeah. Now when if you see that you'll want the first thing you want to do is is ask yourself, How is it possible that I can combine and enhance this blog into one blog that's more authoritative? So I want to make it better? Because what's happening? If you have two blogs that are very similar, you're kind of competing against yourself? Yes. So you, you if you see that you have a good blog, you want to make it better? You don't want to recreate it. You don't want to make another one. Right. You want to take that and build it up, because you're gonna start to compete with yourself. Yeah, exactly. So are there pages you can combine? Are there pages you can add to? Are there this? And this is the next one? Are there pages that have a curiously low engagement rate? So engagement rate is if you're familiar with bounce rate, engagement rate is the opposite of the bounce rate. Yeah.

Meredith: 9:16

Can you tell which one people just bounce from?

Meredith's Husband: 9:19

I don't understand the question. Can you in Google

Meredith: 9:22

Analytics, see what blogs, people bounce?

Meredith's Husband: 9:28

Oh, yes. When you are looking at Google Analytics, and you're looking at the page that lists the landing pages, it will say what is the engagement rate? Okay, for that page, you want to go for the pages that have a higher engagement rate. Now, blogs typically don't have higher blogs typically have lower engagement rates than like your homepage, because a lot of times people are going to come into a blog, they read the blog, and then they leave, it's a little more natural. If somebody comes to your homepage, they're probably going to look at a couple other pages,

Meredith: 10:00

because their intention is slightly different. Yes.

Meredith's Husband: 10:05

But if you are looking at your blog pages, and you notice that one of them has an engagement rate of say 80%, and one of them has an engagement rate of 20%, then wow, what is wrong with that one that is 20%. Go look at that page and try to figure out why are people leaving this one and sticking on the other one? Just go look at those pages as a user look at the CTA is what does that page asking people to do? If it's a blog, probably not much. You know, this this, there's probably no like contact us. But, but you can have a link to another article, another similar page, subscribe for things like this. What is it that you're asking people to do? And if you have a landing page, that's not a blog, then definitely you want to look at your CTAs your buttons? And how just think, how can you make it better? How can you, you know, tweak it, how can you test it a lot of times, testing your CTAs is good. You're not going to know beforehand, exactly what's going to work. But test, you know, change the text in your buttons. Change it from book now to contact me or let's schedule a session. Yeah, yeah. And see my screen now. So that covers landing pages. The other thing that I think is great for actionable insights in analytics, is the sources, the traffic sources, where are people coming coming from? Yeah. So this is not just SEO, this is across the board. So when we're looking at landing pages, where we're looking usually at organic traffic, now we want to see, are there other places? Are people coming from Facebook, from Instagram, from YouTube from wherever, and I lost my train of thought? Mapping and what we're looking for? And what we're looking for, yes, is the best sources of traffic. So best best, meaning, what leads to the most conversions, so the conversion rate of different traffic sources, right? For example, I had a client once, who, I've had many clients many times, but with this one particular client, we were looking at their traffic sources, and their overall conversion rate of their site was like, I don't know, it's like one and a half percent or something, which is not bad for what they were doing. Okay. So that means that means one and a half, on average, one and a half people out of every 100 contact them, okay. There, and that breaks down the organic was, I think, a little bit lower, and their paid was a little bit higher, but it was around the same rage, their conversion rate for people coming from Pinterest was like 26%, it was something it was it was like more than 10 times higher. Yeah. So guess what? They go to their Pinterest page? And like, what how can we build this app? How can we make this better? How can we pay it? Can we run ads on Pinterest? So that's another way to see to get actionable insights. Right? Where's where's my good traffic coming from? Then go there and try to get more of it? Yeah, for sure. Okay, so those are, I think two of the best ways you can get actionable insights and analytics.

Meredith: 13:09

I was gonna say feed the hungry worm. But that doesn't make sense. Not exactly. Okay. That's why I'm not gonna say it

Meredith's Husband: 13:17

yet. Don't say that don't say feed that everyone can do it. The other place or another place that you can get actionable insights is Google Search Console. Now Google Search Console doesn't have a lot of information, something like Google Analytics, there's tons and tons of stuff you can look at. There's all kinds of metrics, Google Search Console really only has a handful. But it's really actionable. It's a really good information. For example, the number one thing that I go to Google Search Console for, is to find low hanging keywords, keywords that are ranking on page two, or page three, maybe page for the bottom of page one, if you can, so that so let's say you have a keyword ranking on page two, and it's applicable, it's something that you would want to get traffic for you people looking for that keyword, those I want those people coming to my site, moving moving a keyword from page two to page one is infinitely easier than picking a keyword that doesn't have any ranking yet and starting to build it up. It is way, way, way easier. Yeah. So what do you do

Meredith: 14:19

invited to the party, it's all dressed up and ready on page two, invited to the party on page one.

Meredith's Husband: 14:25

What do you do with those keywords? Once you find that, or I guess I should say first, where do you find those keywords in Google Search Console? Yeah, so there's, they're called Search Queries when you go to Search Console. And you're gonna go to I think the tab is called performance. And you're gonna click on search queries. And it will tell you, it'll give you a list of queries, query queries. How do you spell it? Qu E R, I, E, S,

Meredith: 14:52

queries,

Meredith's Husband: 14:53

queries. For that I say, queries, queries, your look for queries, search queries. Or you know what you can do? I have a dashboard that does this. It pulls this information, I'll link it below. What it is, is it just takes you straight to this information just pulls this information right out of Yeah, yeah, it's yeah, I use it all the time. I use it like every day, and you can use it for free if you want. I'll link it below. But you're gonna want to take those keywords, you're gonna want to move them over to SEMrush to your to wherever you're tracking your positions where you're tracking your rankings. And you want to you want to put them there that can be SEMrush that can be any other keyword tracking tool. But what we want to Find is, what URLs are ranking for those keywords. And then we can see how, how can we make those URLs better? How can we make those pages better? And even more importantly, we start to see are there URLs as we move these keywords over that we know that we have ranking for we put them into sem rush will hopefully start to see oh, there are some keywords, there are some URLs that are ranking for multiple keywords. Those are really strong pages. Oh, we want that. Yes, that's good.

Meredith: 16:04

So we're not supposed to change the URLs? No, you don't

Meredith's Husband: 16:07

change the URLs. Okay. Don't we're not changing it. Don't never change the URLs. Okay.

Meredith: 16:12

I thought you said you we can change the URLs?

Meredith's Husband: 16:16

No. Okay. No, no, no, we want to, we will hopefully begin to see that we have some URLs that are ranking for multiple keywords. That's good. Those are our good pages. Those are our winters. Those are the pages we want to start making better. We want to make them how can we make them more resourceful? Can we add to them? Can we add images? Can we add video? How can we make them more robust? The more robust, most likely, the better they will do in search? And how do we make them more robust? Just look at them as a user. Just think, Oh, how can this be better? How can I make this better? If I were a user and I were to land on this page? What else might I want to see here? What uh, what images help, would a bullet list help? would outline help? Word? I don't know. Just look at it as a user. Yeah, let make it more resourceful. I'd say try to make it more resourceful for users. Also, yes, when you find pages like this, link those pages to your main service pages. So let's say you have a blog, it's one, it's one of these, it's ranking for, say a handful of different keywords. And it talks about some aspect of a family shoot you did or a kids Shoot, let's say it gets you somewhere in that blog, preferably right near at the like, right in the first sentence or in the first paragraph, link it to your children's photography page. And you ideally want to link it with it with a keyword, Hey, I've been a children's photographer, link those keywords to your children's photography page, because we know that that page is an important page in Google. Google likes that page. We want to take that page and we want to send a signal to Google Hey, this page over here is also really important this children's photography kind

Meredith: 17:59

of put an arrow towards it. Yes, exactly. This way, the beaches,

Meredith's Husband: 18:03

the beaches this way, that way. So if you can do these things, that is a really good start. That's a really, really good start. If you can get into the habit of just doing these things. Yeah, once in a while. There's a lot more. I mean, there's tons. Like I said, there's a ton more information and Google Analytics and there's other places you can get information. There's other places you can get actionable information, but if you start with ease, that's gonna be

Meredith: 18:27

really great. That's a great start.

Meredith's Husband: 18:30

It's a great start. And then next week, we can talk about how do you make your website more healthy in general, or annual physical?

Meredith: 18:39

Oh, I like that. I'll schedule my appointment with Dr. Meredith husband. All right, Dr. Husband,

Meredith's Husband: 18:49

her husband. Okay. I think the podcast is over. If you're finding these episodes helpful, I created something that I think you're going to find even more helpful. It explains the SEO process similar to these episodes in a way that I hope is new for you, but it also puts them in order so that you know what to do first and second and third through the entire SEO process. And I hope saves you a lot of time by giving you an actionable step by step plan. It's called the SEO roadmap, and you can find it at Meritus husband.com/roadmap.