Meredith's husband: 0:24

So last week we talked about Squarespace.

Meredith: 0:27

Yes, we did.

Meredith's husband: 0:28

And I had a couple more episodes about Squarespace coming up. Yes, you did. We recorded one of them. Yes, we did, and I talked about a couple things specifically, like where to find them on Squarespace. If you go log in, you know click here, click here. Do that, yes, Do this.

Meredith: 0:43

Yes.

Meredith's husband: 0:43

Okay, so I went and looked at Squarespace just a few days ago, yes, went and looked at Squarespace just a few days ago, yes, and it changed.

Meredith: 0:52

Oh my God.

Meredith's husband: 0:52

Yeah, they changed the layout completely, Really, yeah, so this I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me I'll do something like this. I'll do like a demo say, go here, click this, do that, blah, blah, blah and then they changed the layout and so then I got to read it. So that episode I have to redo a little bit. The content is all the same, Like all the stuff I talk about once you get to like the SEO checklist on Squarespace. It's the same. It's just how you get. There has changed. Squarespace has added some more stuff in their I'll call it SEO section. It is as unimpressive as always, I think.

Meredith's husband: 1:27

Although they have made some effort into making it look better. But, it seems to me they have not made any effort into actually making it better, they just make it look better, anyway. So that's coming. That'll be next week. Sorry, it's delayed by a week, it's okay. Today I'm going to talk about two of the most common mistakes I see for SEO. I kind of think of this as like the Goldilocks issue with SEO.

Meredith: 1:54

What does that mean?

Meredith's husband: 1:55

Well, that'll make sense as we go through.

Meredith: 1:58

I will trust you.

Meredith's husband: 1:59

One of my students said a couple weeks ago just a comment and every once in a while, like, a student will say something and it will just like ring. I'm like oh, that's such a common issue.

Meredith: 2:08

And the student says it better than.

Meredith's husband: 2:09

I could ever sometimes say that. But this student, who is making, I think, really good progress, said something about oh, it's hard to work on this stuff constantly.

Meredith: 2:22

Yes.

Meredith's husband: 2:27

And that kind of rang a bell in my head.

Meredith's husband: 2:28

I'm like well you're not supposed to work on it constantly. You want to work on it consistently, but not constantly. There's a difference between those two and I think a lot of people I will talk about the difference, but a lot of people think, oh, it's something I need to work on constantly, I need to do it all the time. I need to, for example, be blogging all the time, I need to be working on my website all the time, and that's unrealistic and it puts a lot of pressure on you. It's kind of like, at least in my head. It's like no, it's like the gym in January.

Meredith: 2:57

Super busy, right so?

Meredith's husband: 3:00

lots of people set New Year's resolutions, and I've been one of them. I've done this myself. You say, okay, boom, this year going to work out. You start going to the gym every day in January. By the end of January you're burned out. You're like fuck this, I'm not going to the gym anymore. And so why don't people do that? Why don't people keep going? Why do they stop going?

Meredith: 3:22

Right.

Meredith's husband: 3:23

I think one reason is you probably don't see results in that short of time frame. Yeah, right.

Meredith: 3:29

Yeah.

Meredith's husband: 3:29

It's not like you can go to the gym a couple times a week for a few weeks and see amazing results.

Meredith: 3:33

And you haven't built anything. You know, they always say it takes time to create something, a process. If you just change it radically.

Meredith's husband: 3:43

It's interesting. But even that aside, if you saw like, let's say, you went to the gym, yes, three days a week for January, if you saw like amazing results at the end of January, yeah, do you think you would like? Let's say, you lose weight, you got more muscle, get more muscle, you look better, you feel better, yeah, you even start like you feel so much better, your career is going better, like everything is better, would you keep going? Yes, yeah, probably.

Meredith: 4:07

Hell yes.

Meredith's husband: 4:09

I would think so. So one thing is, you don't get the results that you….

Meredith: 4:13

It gets frustrating.

Meredith's husband: 4:14

Yeah, so that's one issue. That's one side of the Goldilocks phenomenon. You overcommit, you say I'm going to do this, and it's not really a realistic thing.

Meredith: 4:24

I have no idea what that feels like, and the other side of that is people undercommit.

Meredith's husband: 4:34

I've experienced this a lot in my career as a consultant. I've had many times where a client in fact one client in particular, potential client started and they were it was kind of an acquaintance of mine, a sort of friend, and they he was starting a business with his father and he was like let's see what we can do with this. We're just going to like throw $500 at it and see what sticks. And I was like okay, well, nothing is going to stick Like for $500, you're just getting ready, you're just setting up like nothing is going to stick in there. And they were like no, let's, we just want to do it this way and we're going to see what happens. And so $500 later, like nothing had really happened, like nah, seo didn't really work for us. That has happened. That happens often.

Meredith: 5:17

That's literally like I really feel like getting a donut and you turn around and enter a furniture store.

Meredith's husband: 5:24

I have no idea what you're talking about, but that's how I see it, that would. I think that would kind of be like going to the gym once and being like I don't feel much different. Like in fact, I feel worse, like I'm sore. So, the trick is at least as far as I see it the trick is to find a rhythm that's right for you, that you can do Right. Maybe it's going to the gym once a week.

Meredith: 5:47

And you used to say it's find something you like.

Meredith's husband: 5:50

Yeah, let's save that one for another episode, finding a way to enjoy the gym. I think that's a whole other discussion. Yes, true, but the trick is to find something you can do realistically and it doesn't have to be constantly Right, it doesn't have to be every day or every week or even every month I mean, my own stuff is not, I don't do that but you find a rhythm that you can do realistically and then you keep doing it. You have to keep doing it.

Meredith: 6:18

That's the thing.

Meredith's husband: 6:19

I remember. This reminds me of a kid I went to high school with yeah, I that's the thing I remember. This reminds me of a kid. I went to high school with.

Meredith's husband: 6:24

Yeah, I played baseball in high school. You were great. And coming into high school, this kid, he didn't have the most natural talent, let's say he wasn't as talented as probably at least a handful of kids on the team. But you could see it in his eyes and the way he moved and the way he did things that he was going to fucking do it. And I remember thinking, oh man, this kid is going to do it, he is going.

Meredith's husband: 6:51

He is not as good as a bunch of us, but he is going to be better than all of us. And he put in the time and he put in the work. He ended up getting a full ride to a pretty good university with a baseball scholarship and I think I don't know what happened from that point on, but I think he Even then set a bunch of records at that university on the baseball team.

Meredith: 7:12

Good for him Now.

Meredith's husband: 7:13

he didn't go pro, but he got a full ride. Like he got out of it, like so much.

Meredith: 7:20

How many people actually go pro as well. Yeah right Percent-wise.

Meredith's husband: 7:24

And he never. I don't think he ever wanted to.

Meredith: 7:26

I think if he wanted to, he would. It sounds.

Meredith's husband: 7:29

Perhaps, but what he did do is he identified something that he could do. He was going to go to the batting cage, say, every afternoon, and hit baseballs for an hour, whatever his rhythm was. That he could do consistently. He identified that and he did that and progress was made. I have never, ever in 20 plus years of doing SEO, I have never seen anyone put in a consistent effort over a period of time and not get results. Doing SEO, I've seen a bunch of people like overcommit and say, oh OK, I've never blogged before, but I'm going to start blogging every single day, and a month later they're like screw blogging, that's too hard and I didn't see the results I wanted. I have seen lots of people dabble, throw $500 at it.

Meredith's husband: 8:15

Or not listen to you, or say let's do SEO for an afternoon and see if it works.

Meredith: 8:23

I would be that person.

Meredith's husband: 8:24

Or say, yeah, I'm going to blog every single hour forever and a month later be like, okay, that's not doable. So my point is that you don't need to work on SDO constantly. You don't need to probably do anything constantly, but you do need to be consistent, find out what your rhythm is, what is possible, and then stick to it.

Meredith: 8:45

I have a question. If somebody like me were to say how often is often enough and how often is too often, Well, I would say how often is often enough, and how often is too often.

Meredith's husband: 8:59

Well, I would say how often can you do it Right. Start there Realistically. Yeah, you got to start something.

Meredith: 9:04

Like if.

Meredith's husband: 9:04

I said, oh, blogging once a week is really what you want to be doing, and you're have never blogged, ever in your life. That might be unrealistic.

Meredith: 9:09

Yeah.

Meredith's husband: 9:10

You know you probably don't need, you don't need to blog that often.

Meredith: 9:13

Right, oh, you don't. No, how often should one blog?

Meredith's husband: 9:17

You know, I would say and this is more for usability is, try to blog once a month, and that's just for appearance, to make it look to these people who come to your site that, oh, this blog is active, he's got something every month or she's got something every month. There's also some advantage to having a rhythm that Google will recognize and they will keep coming back to revisit your site. But you don't need to start. Like I said, if you've never blogged, you don't need to start blogging. Every month, ramp up, you know.

Meredith: 9:47

Right, Don't start at 11.

Meredith's husband: 9:49

Ultimately it's more important to have good blogs than have a bunch of blogs Right? I've always, not always. I often say that a lot of garbage is still garbage. So if you're putting garbage on your blog every day, it doesn't matter. I would rather, personally I'd rather have one good blog per month or even per three months than have a shitty blog every week or every day.

Meredith: 10:16

Yeah, written by AI from scratch.

Meredith's husband: 10:19

You know, when I log into ChatGPT does it give you, like the most popular prompts, gives you a whole bunch of prompts that I don't think it does.

Meredith: 10:26

I don't think my ChatGPT does.

Meredith's husband: 10:29

When I log in to ChatGPT, there's public prompts there. Chat GPT does. When I log in to chat GPT, there's public prompts there and they are exclusively like and I don't know if this is because of my browsing history or what I do or whatever, but it's always they're always SEO related and most of them now say 100% manually written, seo blog content. And I'm like are you fucking kidding me? Oh, my God, it's a prompt on chat GPT saying that it's a hundred percent manually written. Now, two things, okay, bullshit, obviously. And then number two that should give you some sort of clue that an AI generated blog is probably not as good as a handwritten book, yeah, anyway.

Meredith: 11:11

My chat GPT is very lovely. She's great. I love my chat GPT.

Meredith's husband: 11:17

My chat GPT is great too. He's very cool.

Meredith: 11:21

Well mine, she is just incredible.

Meredith's husband: 11:25

Okay.

Meredith: 11:26

We're keeping all of that.

Meredith's husband: 11:27

Yeah, okay, don't stress out. You don't need to do your SEO constantly.

Meredith: 11:31

Yes, you do not.

Meredith's husband: 11:32

Find a rhythm that is realistic for you.

Meredith: 11:34

And look up at the sky.

Meredith's husband: 11:35

What does that mean?

Meredith: 11:36

It's just something nice to do when you're outside. Look up at the sky, yeah do that too. It's very grounding.

Meredith's husband: 11:42

Okay, isn't that weird. You look at the sky and you become more grounded.

Meredith: 11:45

Well, because you're on the ground looking at the sky.

Meredith's husband: 11:48

I feel,