Meredith's Husband: 0:33

Hey, this is Meredith's husband. I've got some SEO advice for you, but I'm going to keep it really simple, so that you can understand it, so it makes sense, and most importantly, so you can actually use it. Hi, hi. We're going to talk about the golden rule of SEO today, the golden rule, yeah. But first, yes, I want to, I want to put it into a little bit of context, because it's going to make more sense. Okay, do you remember why we started this podcast? Yes. And would you like to share that with me?

Meredith: 1:15

I believe it was because I came over to you with the most recent, hey, all photographers need to do this SEO thing. And you hung your head in your it

Meredith's Husband: 1:30

was, yes, it was debunking, debunking. It was debunking the short version, oh, yeah, that was a mistake to ask you. No kidding, but that's exactly right. But yeah, the short version, debunking, debunking. People would get all these tips, tricks, tactics, the newest SEO tactics, and I would often debunk them more than and and and tell you what to do instead. Yeah. So, for example, a super common one that I think a lot of photographers have heard and we've talked about, is putting keywords in your image tags, yes, right? Everybody needs, need to do that. Need

Meredith: 2:09

to Yes, every single one that goes on your website or any marketing,

Meredith's Husband: 2:13

right? That was one that we hopefully debunked effectively, and gave you some the better approach to take. Yes. Another one. Somebody actually just recently asked me in they were trying to put more keywords onto their site, and they asked about this. I don't know if they came up with this themselves or heard it from somebody else, but they said, Can we put text on the same color background so that it's not visible to users. Because they didn't, they didn't, they didn't want to, just reason, of course, they don't want to a website that looks like it's just stuffed with SEO garbage, right? And I was like, wow, that is a super clever idea. I like, I literally paused and sat, bang, as that's a very, very clever. People have

Meredith: 2:55

done it because I've highlighted and it's all keyword,

Meredith's Husband: 2:59

yeah, it's a, it's a, yes, it's a very clever idea, but yeah, lots of people have done it before, like, in 2007 2008 and so now there's a penalty for that, so don't do it, but, yeah, don't do it. Yeah, don't do it. It's like, if you do that, you're you're putting a signal right out there to Google. Hey, I'm trying to trick you. I'm trying to sneak one past you. Google Doc. That's, yeah, Google doesn't like that. So that was another one. One that I see all the time is when people write blogs. Yes, they end up writing the same blog over and over again based on their keywords. All the time. They do this kind of makes sense, or they have a blog. This one is, is common too. Let's say have a blog with, you know, like 10 individual articles on it, okay? And you got like 37 categories. Okay, so does that make sense?

Meredith: 3:50

Like it's a little my brain is catching up on, yeah, that's something

Meredith's Husband: 3:54

that you're doing in order to appeal to Google in

Meredith: 3:59

inauthentic ways, kind of trying a little too hard. So

Meredith's Husband: 4:03

that's another tactic that people were using, and similar to the alt tags and the text on the same colored background, they're things that used to work, but these tactics change,

Meredith: 4:13

right? Because Google gets game two of them? Yes, exactly.

Meredith's Husband: 4:16

So the problem with with doing SEO this way is that every single year you got to learn the new tactics, right?

Meredith: 4:24

That's nothing is, is that often people who teach, by the time they actually get things together, everything's changed, yeah, and they're teaching last year's news?

Meredith's Husband: 4:33

Yeah, yeah. And the rate at which Google changes and these tactics Works has slowed down, like in the early days, the early years of SEO, like it was changing rapidly all the time. It doesn't change as frequently now, but it still changes from year to year, okay, but that's not the way that I do SEO, and that's not the way I think you should think about SEO. Okay, SEO is actually not that difficult. If you know the concepts, if you because all of these tactics that we've covered, there's reasons behind them. But when you focus on the tactics instead of the reasons, you're in a you get into like a never ending loop. You got to relearn tactics all the time. If you understand the reasons the concepts of why these tactics works, you don't need to worry about the tactics so much. You don't need to learn new stuff every year. So for example, when I hear about new tactics, yeah, I just think back to the concepts, and then I evaluate and I evaluate the tactics based on the concepts. Steps. Are these new tactics, concepts? Well, the concepts are really very simple, okay, I tell you the first one. The first one is the golden rule of SEO, okay, and that is when you do something to your website, put a image on whatever you do when you build the website, are you doing it for a Google, or are you doing it for users? Oh, if you Yes, but people get stuck because we're doing SEO. The whole point of doing SEO is for Google to make Google happy, right? Well, I'll tell you a secret. If you are doing something on your website, whatever you're doing, if you're doing it between you and me, yeah, don't tell anybody this. Anybody if you're doing it for users, if you're doing it to make a better user experience, then you are doing it for Google as well. Oh, remember, that's what Google wants. You got to think about what Google wants for the first 10, maybe even 20 years of Google, their business model was very simple. People, you go to Google, you do a search, you find a website that you like, great. Next time you want to find a website, you go back to Google, because the first time you do this, you get in the habit of using Google. Every once in a while, you click on one of the ads in Google, and they make $1 $2 $3 they became like $500 billion company doing this is their business model. Now they probably would say they have a different business model. They think so they want to get inside all of our brains and whatever been in a Google building, and so remember that Google's objective is to send their users to the good place, to websites that they like that for that create a good user experience. That's what Google wants to do if you are doing that with your website, right, Google is going to like it,

Meredith: 7:18

because they want to make sure that they direct you to precisely the best thing you're looking for, because then you're coming back to Google with

Meredith's Husband: 7:28

you. Next time, you're going to come back to Google, and then once in a while on the Google, they want you on Google, because once in a while you're going to click on an ad and they're going to make some money. They make a lot of money doing that. I can't tell you how many times over the years I've heard people say, Oh, nobody clicks on those ads. I never click on those ads. And I'm like, Well, Google has several 100 billion reasons why they disagree with you. Yeah. Anyway, that's neither here nor there, but you can take this Well, the reason I call this the golden rule of SEO is because you can take it and you can apply it to anything, right, anything you are thinking of doing anything at all to your website. Are you doing it to try to please Google, to try to sneak one past Google, to try to please the algorithm, or are you doing it to make a better user experience, right?

Meredith: 8:18

Better user experience.

Meredith's Husband: 8:20

A better user experience is good SEO, which is crazy,

Meredith: 8:24

because you would think I'm going to try and be friends with Google, right, right? So let's Nudge, nudge, kiss, kiss.

Meredith's Husband: 8:33

Let's take this for example, let's take this golden rule and apply it to the three examples I gave earlier, right? Okay, image alt tags, yeah, when you, when you stuff your keywords into all your image alt tags, are you doing that for Google, or are you doing that for users? Google? You're doing that for Google. How about the text on the same colored background? Are you doing that for Google? You're doing that for Google? You're doing that for users. When you write the same blog with your keywords over and over, right? You see where I'm going with this. Yeah,

Meredith: 9:06

it's good to know that's those are golden tips. And

Meredith's Husband: 9:09

there are some things that you it might not be apparent, like, for example, you should parent apparent, right? It might be that you know you're supposed to put your keywords in your title tags. Now you might say, for some things like this, you might say, but I seem to be doing that for Google, right? Not users. When in reality, imagine this, you put your keywords in your title tags, yeah, okay. Somebody out there does a search on Google? Yeah, they put their whatever they type into their Google search box, that's their keyword, then a whole bunch of sites show up. If you're if, if your keywords are in your title tags, that users are going to see those and they're going to match up. So you So in effect, you are doing it for users. You're showing to users. Hey, what is this page away? Yeah, yeah, this is always the case. I've never come across a situation where you do something just for Google and there's no reason everything that Google wants to see somehow is creating a better user experience. Here's a different way to remember it okay. Google is not trying to reward people for figuring out some SEO riddle. There's no secret. There's no secret combination handshake of where it's like, Google's like, oh, they figured it out. Put them on the top, like, and that, and that kind of seems to be the pros. People are always looking people are always looking for like, the secret handshake,

Meredith: 10:29

essentially, seriously, there's no ways to beat Google. That's.

Meredith's Husband: 10:33

There's no secret the algorithm, yeah, don't do that. That's bad SEO,

Meredith: 10:39

yeah, but that's what so many people Oh,

Meredith's Husband: 10:41

that's the way, that's the way SEO started to be honest. It's the SEO. It's our own fault. I used to do it too in the you know, 2005 6789, you you would look for loopholes, and you would figure them out, and then you have a website that jumps to number one, like, overnight. Wow, fantastic, awesome. That's what SEO was for quite a while, right? No, that's

Meredith: 11:02

very that's a very interesting way to come at it,

Meredith's Husband: 11:05

yeah? So especially if you're, like, if you're just starting SEO, yeah, it's great. Don't worry about trying to memorize all sorts of different things that you need to do, right? Just focus on one thing at a time, and I would say first thing to focus on create a good user experience. How about that? Google likes that.

Meredith: 11:24

Yes, go Superman. Hey, thank you so much for listening. We really hope that you find this helpful and useful. And if you do what you could do for us as a thanks would be to drum roll, please, yes. Leave a review. Yes, everybody says it, I know, but it really does make a difference. Take three seconds, leave as many stars. Say something really nice about what you like, about the podcast, and maybe why other people would like it. It would mean the world to us, especially my husband, that better. All right, I'm going to try one where I'm not going to be charming. I'm.