Meredith's husband 0:00

We already recorded this episode .

Meredith 0:02

Yes .

Meredith's husband 0:02

But at the end I decided to do a little something extra because of something we discovered while making the episode . I added a little tidbit at the end . It's a little gift To , I hope , help you make the most of this tool . Excellent , so enjoy the episode . You sent me something recently .

Meredith 0:20

Yes , I did .

Meredith's husband 0:21

That was interesting . You know what I'm talking about .

Meredith 0:23

Squarespace .

Introduction to Squarespace's AI SEO Tool

Meredith's husband 0:24

Oh my gosh , yes there's a squares , there's a new squarespace , seo tool there is guess what ? It's a squarespace , ai seo yes , there is so I have not seen it . I'm what I'm , I'm thinking . I'm going to take a look at it right now and give you my thoughts live yeah , live .

Meredith 0:41

oh my gosh , I'm so excited . I will say that you're optimistic , that they're doing the right thing .

Meredith's husband 0:48

No , I'm not optimistic . I know I'm very pessimistic .

Meredith 0:51

Well , we may be pleasantly surprised , yeah .

Meredith's husband 0:54

Okay , so you know , as I've said before , in these episodes there have been I've seen many , many , many , many many tools like this claiming to boost your SEO . Yeah , easy , many many , many , many tools like this , claiming to boost your SEO , and be easy one-click wonders . Yep and I have been 100% , consistently disappointed .

Meredith 1:11

Okay , but let's see .

Meredith's husband 1:13

Let's see , because one thing I will say the people who join SEIQ yeah , when you do that , there's a little quiz in the beginning to help get you started and get you off on the right foot . Yeah , one of the questions is what platform are you using ? Squarespace , wordpress , showit , et cetera . The majority of people there are using Squarespace . Okay , so a lot of people are using Squarespace .

Meredith 1:33

Let's see .

Meredith's husband 1:34

Okay .

Meredith 1:35

Very exciting .

Meredith's husband 1:36

I need to open up a new window , do I ?

Meredith 1:37

need to open anything .

Meredith's husband 1:39

No .

Meredith 1:39

Presents A package of cookies , a package of cookies .

Meredith's husband 1:42

Okay , are you ready ?

Meredith 1:43

I am ready . Are you going to share your screen ?

Meredith's husband 1:47

On a podcast , it won't be helpful .

Meredith 1:49

Never mind .

Meredith's husband 1:50

I'm opening

Analyzing Squarespace's SEO Claims

Meredith's husband 1:51

the email that you received from Squarespace about this new AI SEO tool and I'm going to just first read what I see . Yes , and I'm going to follow the link .

Meredith 2:00

Wonderful .

Meredith's husband 2:00

I'm going to read what I see there and tell you what .

Meredith 2:02

I think this is so exciting folks .

Meredith's husband 2:03

Okay , headline smarter SEO , effortless site optimization . So right away to me that screams like that's a problem , like that sounds very familiar to me .

Meredith 2:12

And to me , the consumer . I think great .

Meredith's husband 2:15

Yes , okay , and I'll get to that in a second Subheading or byline or whatever . This is Next sentence Our AI-powered tool helps boost search engine rankings and attract more visitors with just a few clicks . Oh my gosh , that is just perfectly garbage . That sounds so awful To me . How that reads is our AI-powered tool will make sure that you have shit SEO , but it's only going to take two clicks . That's how I read that and then there's a button that says boost your SEO . Now I'm going to follow that in a second , but I'm going to finish reading the email . The email says getting noticed online just got easier . Our new AI SEO tool provides simple , effective ways to improve search visibility .

Meredith 3:00

Simple and effective , they say .

Meredith's husband 3:02

Okay , ai powered metadata recommendations for better search rankings and click-through . Okay , that's going to be garbage . I pretty much know that .

Meredith 3:12

I still want to see it .

Meredith's husband 3:13

Metadata is going to be your meta descriptions .

Meredith 3:15

Yeah , which for those who are first listening mean .

Meredith's husband 3:18

Those are meta tags and your meta descriptions do not factor into your rankings at all . Zero percent , effectively Zero . They used Meta descriptions . Do not factor into your rankings at all . Zero percent , effectively zero . They used to Right Years ago .

Meredith's husband 3:27

They used to Back in the day , I will say if your meta descriptions are blank , if you don't have them , that's bad Right . So I'm thinking , well , okay , this . I'm looking at this tool thinking , okay , well , it's probably going to be better than absolutely nothing . But if you have written meta description tags , uh , this is not going to make them any any better . It doesn't matter for us . Yet , like Google has literally said , it doesn't matter what you put in your meta description tags . You can put your keywords in there a trillion times . It makes zero difference . That's exactly what Google said .

Meredith 4:01

And and and . Squarespace just said we have something just for this one thing that is not needed .

Meredith's husband 4:06

Yes , that is what that is , and so it's going to make recommendations about your metadata for better search rankings and click through .

Meredith 4:14

It might help click through to be honest . Might help Click through .

Meredith's husband 4:17

Click through is if so , look . So let's say , your website is displayed in search results . Somebody does a search for something . Your website is up there . Yeah , website is displayed in search results . Somebody does a search for something , your website is up there . A click-through would be if somebody clicks on your website . So if they don't click on it , you don't get a click . So your click-through rate would be the number of people who see your website in search results and actually click on it . So you want a high click-through . So a meta description tag can affect your click-through information . So this statement is 50% maybe and 50% garbage .

Meredith's husband 4:51

The next statement there's only two points here automatically generate alt text for images

Testing the Alt Text Generator

Meredith's husband 4:56

, improving accessibility and SEO . I have a pretty strong feeling that is going to be bad SEO because you're going to give it your keywords , it's going to and it's going to stuff that into your alt text for images . And that is going to be bad SEO , because you're going to give it your keywords and it's going to stuff that into your alt text for images . And that is very specifically what Google calls spam . They literally say that almost word for word , like do not do that . Now , I don't know , maybe it does accurately . Try to you know , look at an image and describe what it is . I don't know , could be , could be okay .

Meredith 5:23

I don't know .

Meredith's husband 5:24

Okay , and then finally optimize just a few clicks in your dashboard , no expertise required . More visibility could translate to more visitors , more customers and more growth for your business .

Meredith 5:34

Okay .

Meredith's husband 5:35

Now , well , it would . Yeah , more visibility would definitely translate to more visitors and more customers and more growth for your business . Now the problem with statements like this optimize with just a few clicks in your dashboard , no SEO expertise required . The problem that I see with a statement like that is remember I said , lots of people are using Squarespace . Yes , and Squarespace is rolling out this tool to all of their subscribers , all of their users , and so this tool is going to be used by a lot of people , a lot of people using Squarespace . A lot of people are going to be doing it . So how would it set you apart from other websites if everybody's doing the same thing ? Conceptually , that's one of the problems to me . That's , you know how do you rise above if you do the same thing . That conceptually , that's one . One of the problems to me , that's you know how do you rise above if you do the same thing literally right okay , so now let's follow this .

Meredith's husband 6:26

Yes , because actually I'm actually curious , because your website is on squarespace right now right now and I know I have dealt with the seo and it's not awesome , uh . So I'm curious to see what more about this , so let's , let's go . So I'm curious to see what more about this , so let's . It took me to the login page , so I need to log in .

Meredith 6:43

As me .

Meredith's husband 6:44

No , I'm a . I'm a manager of your website .

Meredith 6:47

So I have .

Meredith's husband 6:48

I have my own account , okay , okay . So this takes me to something that called the search engine optimization appearance , and it has an SEO report and says all pages have metadata and one image is missing alt text . Okay , I can improve this with it . I'm going to see what it does . So , I've clicked this and it comes up and it says an image . It is a headshot image and the alt text reads smiling woman with curly hair and earrings outdoors . That's actually a good alt text .

Meredith's husband 7:21

I hate to say it , that's actually not bad . Not bad , that's not bad . Okay , I would think you could make it better , definitely , but this is a pretty good starting point Okay .

Meredith 7:33

So one point yeah , yeah , okay , not bad , that's not bad .

Meredith's husband 7:36

Okay , so that's all for the search engine optimization appearance . Next , here is SEO checklist , and this has been here for a long time to be honest , this is nothing new . Okay , so I'm going to take a look at another site that I manage , also on Squarespace . Do the same thing .

Meredith's husband 7:54

See if it comes back with different , different results . Okay , so I'm in the same place . The search engine optimization appearance . So I'm in the same place . The search engine optimization appearance . It says all the things have metadata ,

Final Assessment and Recommendations

Meredith's husband 8:04

great . It says there are several hundred images without alt text , and so I'm going to pull up some of these .

Meredith's husband 8:10

Now , there's a bunch of images here . One of them . I'm going to tell you what it presents as image alt text . It says modern hallway interior with two pendant lights , wooden flooring and a framed photo of a child jumping on a street . A small round table with a decorative vase is also present . Now I would say , okay , that's not bad , but that's awfully long . Yeah , you want it to be like I would say there's no character limit here , but I would say you want this to be a handful of words or so , because think about when image alt text would display . It's when the image doesn't load Right , or when somebody can't view an image clearly for some reason , so it's vision impaired or a slow connection . So the text is going to display where that image would be . So often , images are not big , so you don't have a lot of room .

Meredith 8:59

Right .

Meredith's husband 9:01

So two complete sentences like those are not complete sentences , but a long alt tag like that is not going to be displayed , nor are people going to want to read it , right . So I would definitely try to shorten that , but it's kind of along the right lines . So the next one I'm going to do another one framed black and white family portrait on a wall in a modern living room with a chair and decor . Again , it's a long list , but that's too long . Like I would shorten that to something like framed family portrait in modern living room . That's going to get the idea across . And as I just scan through the rest of these , it's the same thing . Some of them are very long . There's one that says woman in a red dress sitting on a bench in a garden smiling . It's not bad .

Meredith 9:43

Now is a description that's too long . Better than no description .

Meredith's husband 9:48

Yes .

Meredith 9:48

Just reinforcing .

Meredith's husband 9:50

Yeah . And so again I'm going to say the same thing If you're starting from scratch and you have done no SEO , that's a good place to start . Okay , okay , great , better than nothing . Yeah , even those alt tags that are too long , yeah , definitely better than having nothing . So , if you come , if you use this , I recommend you actually do use it If you want to see if your images are missing alt text yes .

Meredith 10:11

Yeah .

Meredith's husband 10:11

Begin with what they suggest and then try to improve them , like this is not going to . It's not going to hurt unless you already have written alt text and you go through and use this to rewrite it , which I don't see as an option here . So I would say , yeah , feel free to use this . Don't expect that your website is going to appear on page one because you're doing something different than everybody else , because you are literally going to be doing the same thing as everybody else . But so the way I would think about this , if this can help bring you up into the pack , okay . If you're behind the pack , like you're just starting SEO , you haven't done anything . This is going to get you kind of up to speed so that you're not far behind , but it's not going to get you ahead . You're not going to be the leader of the pack .

Meredith 10:55

You are not going to get you ahead , right , you're not going to be the leader of the pack .

Meredith's husband 10:58

You are not going to be the leader of the pack .

Meredith 11:00

Wait , is that all that Squarespace is doing ? Just that ? That's supposed to make a big difference ? Supposedly , yeah , no , that is that's it . It's just that .

Meredith's husband 11:09

It's just that I know I have the same response Like that's pretty minor , I mean I don't know , maybe , maybe there's something that if your site needs something else , it does something else .

Meredith 11:19

Am I missing something ?

Meredith's husband 11:20

Yeah , well , that has been my general response to all of what Squarespace offers is really . Now I will say Squarespace has its . Your site is on Squarespace . There are reasons to have it . There is no easier way to get a website online than with Squarespace . It's super cheap , it's really easy . It's really easy , it's pretty quick . The problem is the quality . But if you're just beginning and you need to get a website up tomorrow , squarespace is great . There's nothing that I know of where you can do that , so it has its place . But if you're going to use Squarespace as a business solution , know that it's not a

Bonus Lesson Announcement

Meredith's husband 11:57

long-term solution . It is a stepping stone . Yeah , okay . So keep in your mind that somewhere on the horizon is going to be moving to Wix . Wordpress . Show it something more robust , got it , but in the meantime , yeah .

Meredith's husband 12:11

Yeah , this sort of gets my stamp of approval .

Meredith 12:15

Wow , surprising , see .

Meredith's husband 12:16

Oh , by the way , I should mention where you can find this tool . If you don't get the email because I followed your email which had a link you'll need to go log into your admin , go to your website settings and it's under the tab or the side navigation called marketing . So click on marketing and the first thing you will see will be SEO appearance .

Meredith 12:35

Okay , the SEO appearance Okay . So I would say this is good for people just beginning and isn't going to hurt your website , but is definitely not going to throttle it forward and up and you will see .

Meredith's husband 12:50

I should note , if you go to this page , you will see the SEO appearance thing that I just described , which is the new AI . Beneath that , they have like what they call an SEO checklist and a couple of other SEO tips . You can follow that that's going to give you a whole bunch of recommended things to do . They are mostly garbage . They're not going to help . It's just not good . This thing has been here for a long time and it's basically useless .

Meredith 13:12

Okay , but the one thing that's not entirely useless .

Meredith's husband 13:15

That new thing yeah , not entirely useless . That new thing yeah , run it . If you have images that don't have alt text , yeah , just begin with those and then like yeah , if you can I don't know if you can copy and paste those into a spreadsheet or something I realized that it was an okay tool .

Meredith's husband 13:31

It was super , super limited in scope and what it did , but it was actually not bad as a tool . Actually , I kind of wish other tools did the same thing . The function is good . However , it's just one little tiny piece of SEO that it does , but I decided , since your site is on Squarespace , I'm just going to go ahead , I'm going to use it for your site and I created a little lesson from it .

Meredith 13:53

Oh , okay , thank you .

Meredith's husband 13:54

The link below will take you to that lesson . If you want to see how I recommend you use the SEO tool from Squarespace that we just