Introduction to IQ Builder Part 2

Meredith's husband 0:00

Part two of the IQ Builder how to turn SEO into common sense and if you haven't heard part one of this , I recommend listening to that first .

Meredith 0:09

I do too .

Meredith's husband 0:09

Yeah , okay .

Meredith 0:11

So make more sense .

Meredith's husband 0:12

Yes , in this episode I'm just going to go through some things that are in my IQ Builder . Okay , got five examples . If you want more , you can go to Merit's Husband . Yes , check it out . Number one and no real particular order , but I think number one . I made number one because I think it's pretty common People are confused Meta tags . You've heard a lot about meta tags , right , and how important they are for SEO . They seem like the secret thing you got to do your meta tags , blah , blah , blah . Okay , so meta tags are just . There's really only one meta tag . There's your meta description tag . Your title tag is your title tag . That's technically not a meta tag . And there's your meta keywords tag , which used to be popular years ago . Google doesn't even look at it anymore . Nobody looks . No search engines look at it . So it's your meta description tag that we're talking about now . So what people say is this is really important for SEO ,

Meta Tags Explained

Meredith's husband 1:02

right ?

Meredith 1:02

Right . Do you want to define what it is ? I ?

Meredith's husband 1:05

will . Yes , okay , but the rumor that you've probably heard is , oh , super important for SEO . You got to put your keywords in your meta description tag , right , okay ? So your meta description tag is the little bit of text that shows up right on Google . Yes , when you do a search beneath the title tag , so it's the little text , the black paragraph text . There's usually like a sentence worth of text there . Okay , now , as a user , when you go to Google and you do a search , how often do you read the meta description tag ?

Meredith 1:36

I would think always .

Meredith's husband 1:39

Well , probably not always I don't know .

Meredith 1:41

I don't have it in front of me so I can't . I don't know , so what ?

Meredith's husband 1:44

you would probably do like first , you're going to look at the title tags Title yeah . And if the title looks good , then you're going to read the meta description tag . So you're going to probably glance at a lot of at least several of the title tags and maybe one or two of the meta description tags , or maybe you just click through . So my point is fewer people are going to read the meta description tag than the title tag .

Meredith 2:06

It's less important than the title tag . Yes , that absolutely . It's in descending order . Yes , exactly .

Meredith's husband 2:13

And so if you read the meta description , as a user and you decide you want to check out that page and you go to that page . All that needs to happen is that your meta description needs to coincide with what is actually on the page . You can't stuff all your keywords into your meta description about one thing and then have your page be about like kind of something a little different , right , okay , that's the importance . If you were Google , that's what you want to have happen . Okay .

Meredith 2:38

Yeah .

Meredith's husband 2:39

So , as a website owner , you just need to make sure that every page has its own meta description tag . It needs to be different ? Okay , it needs to describe . It literally needs to describe what is on that page . That's all you need to do . You don't need to worry about stuffing your keywords in there Doesn't matter . Google has said you don't need to stuff keywords in your meta description tags . It makes no difference . Okay , here's a . That's one . That was number one , Number two JavaScript . Have you heard about JavaScript ?

Meredith 3:07

I've heard about it .

Meredith's husband 3:08

Yeah , javascript is really bad for SEO . You want to avoid JavaScript whenever you can .

Meredith 3:12

Okay .

Meredith's husband 3:13

Okay , and so what JavaScript does is it controls the action on a website . So , for example , when things move , basically that's JavaScript is making that happen .

Meredith 3:26

When things move . What do you mean when things move

JavaScript Impact on SEO

Meredith 3:29

?

Meredith's husband 3:29

basically , that's JavaScript is making that happen when things move . What do you mean by when things move , like a drop-down menu ? Oh , drop-down menus are going to be controlled by JavaScript . Videos , videos no , okay , unless if you have like something that opens up a video , like , say , there's a FAQ section , sometimes you click a question and the information drops down , that is JavaScript . If you have something like that that says display video and then it opens it up , that's JavaScript .

Meredith 3:55

Okay , okay .

Meredith's husband 3:56

Okay . So again , as a user , when you go to a webpage , what is , what are some of the first things you do ? So you probably do things like you look at the headline , you look at the subheadings , you probably look at the navigation .

Meredith 4:10

Yeah .

Meredith's husband 4:10

What you don't do . I'm assuming , or tell me if I'm wrong . You probably don't open up all the dropdowns and check to see what's inside all of them .

Meredith 4:18

Correct . Especially , you do whatever you came there to do .

Meredith's husband 4:23

Right , and so Google knows this , right . So when something is inside a dropdown , ie uses JavaScript . Yes , okay , so it uses JavaScript . Whatever is in that dropdown is going to be given less importance by Google , right , right , it's inside . You need JavaScript . So Google technically can read JavaScript . Yeah , they really kind of don't . If you put something behind JavaScript , there's a decent chance Google is not even going to read it . It's not even going to see it , and a lot of other search engines do not . Ai bots do not . They don't even bother trying to read JavaScript right now .

Meredith 5:00

Right now , by the time this podcast airs in four days .

Meredith's husband 5:04

So yeah , the concept or the term JavaScript , you know , and JavaScript being bad for SEO , that's what it is .

Meredith 5:11

Okay .

Meredith's husband 5:12

If somebody comes to your website and they need to take an action in order to see some of your content . Yes , there's JavaScript , right , that's not as important , okay , right . Okay , that was number two . Number three XML sitemap . Okay , does that sound confusing ?

Meredith 5:29

Yes .

Meredith's husband 5:34

Okay , everything sounds confusing . Xml sitemap okay , does that sound confusing ? Yes , okay , everything sounds . It's a sitemap . It's exact . It's a map of your website . Now it's xml because it used to be . They used to have html sitemaps . Remember , like , like years ago , you would go to a website and there'd be a sitemap on the bottom and you click on it and it would just list all the pages on a website .

Meredith 5:49

No .

Meredith's husband 5:50

Okay

XML Sitemaps Made Simple

Meredith's husband 5:51

, well , that used to happen . They don't do that anymore . It's what we call . They changed it and they do it with XML now , and Google and all other search engines recognize this format called XML and it's literally just a map of your website . You are literally saying to Google hey , google , here are all my pages and where to find them .

Meredith 6:13

Got it Okay , like the little brochure when you go to a zoo , which you shouldn't , yes , like a little map .

Meredith's husband 6:18

I think of it like the directory in a mall .

Meredith 6:21

Oh , that's better If you remember malls like you go into the mall , Do I ?

Meredith's husband 6:24

remember malls , there's a little directory Orange Julius . Yeah , you are here . You look at all the stars . That's like what a sitemap is doing . Got it Okay , pretty simple concept .

Meredith 6:35

Yeah , but . Xml sitemap people are yeah , why yeah ?

Meredith's husband 6:39

Again , it's because coders created these things .

Meredith 6:43

Blame the coders .

Meredith's husband 6:43

Yes , okay .

Meredith 6:45

It's all the coders .

Meredith's husband 6:45

A similar , now a similar one . That was number three , a similar one . Number four is the robotstxt file . What , yeah , sounds confusing , right ?

Meredith 6:54

All these , yeah , yeah , I can tell it's making your head hurt . Yes .

Meredith's husband 6:59

A robotstxt file is like the security guard at the door of the mall .

Meredith 7:05

Of the mall .

Meredith's husband 7:05

It doesn't . He or she doesn't let everyone into the mall , Right ? Okay , your robotstxt file does the same thing . It lets it . Presumably

Understanding Robots.txt Files

Meredith's husband 7:16

you're always going to let people into your website , but maybe you have a private area , that where you don't want people to go , and you're going to say , hey , browsers can go here , but they don't go over here . Or , what a lot of people don't realize is that there's a lot of , there's thousands and thousands of bots out there crawling the web all the time . Your robotstxt file is going to say , hey , bots from Google , yeah , you guys are allowed to go over here . Bots from Spandex you guys are not allowed . Ok , bots from destroy all websites ?

Meredith 7:47

Yeah , exactly Not allowed . Yeah , ok , that's what a robottxt , okay , bots from Destroy all websites ? Yeah , exactly Not allowed .

Meredith's husband 7:50

Yeah , okay , that's what a robotstxt file is doing .

Meredith 7:55

Pretty simple . What does a txt mean ? Is it text ?

Meredith's husband 7:57

It's a text file . That's just a text file . Yeah right , your robotstxt file is a file and there's not even two full sentences of text there . Usually Are those the things that you have on your computer and you have thousands of them , and you don't want to delete them . No , those are you mean , like the files that ?

Meredith 8:18

begin with a dot . Yeah , no , those are that's something different .

Meredith's husband 8:20

Okay , okay , that was number four . Number five this is a pretty common one 3xx errors what ?

Meredith 8:26

Again sounds confusing right . It sounds like XXX .

Meredith's husband 8:31

Well , it's 3XX , 3xx errors . So an error like a 301 , a 302 , a 304 . 401 ? Nope , those would be 4XX . Similar but different . 3xx errors are redirects . Okay , okay , a redirect . You try

3XX Errors and Redirects

Meredith's husband 8:50

to go to one page and you probably don't realize it as a user , but you might be redirected to another page . It happens behind the scenes .

Meredith 8:58

Indeed .

Meredith's husband 8:59

These are interesting because they're both good and bad . Sometimes you need them and sometimes you don't , so let me give you an example .

Meredith 9:06

Please .

Meredith's husband 9:07

Let's say you are a shop owner . Yes , let's say a hardware store , you've got a hardware store . I'm just making this up , somebody comes in and somebody comes in and they say I need a hammer . Where are your hammers ? Yes , and you as the web , the web shop , the shop owner says hammers are on aisle seven .

Meredith's husband 9:28

Super customer goes over to aisle seven . There's a little note in aisle seven that says hammers are on aisle two . Oh , okay , well , go over to , because they used to be on aisle seven . Right , right , okay . So the user , or the user , the customer , goes to aisle two . In aisle two there's a little note that says hammers are on aisle four .

Meredith 9:46

That's when you leave the store .

Meredith's husband 9:47

Yeah , well , let's say , you really really need a hammer .

Meredith 9:50

Okay , you go to aisle four .

Meredith's husband 9:53

Aisle four says there's a note that says hammers are on aisle 10 . And that's where the hammers are . Okay , so great . Oh my gosh . So let's say you knew exactly where the hammers were as the owner of the shop .

Meredith 10:05

Right .

Meredith's husband 10:06

So why did you tell the customer to go through all those ? Okay , you wouldn't do that . That's when redirects are bad . Yeah , internally , if somebody is in your site , you don't want to do that .

Meredith 10:18

No , you do not .

Meredith's husband 10:20

So let's say you hire an employee Okay , you're the owner you hire a new , a new person to help you .

Meredith 10:26

Yes .

Meredith's husband 10:27

And that person doesn't know where the hammers are , but they did know that they were on aisle four at one point . So if they tell people they were or at least they might not be now , but check aisle four , that the customer can go to aisle four and then see , oh , they moved to aisle 10 . So similarly , if other websites link to a page on your website that has moved , you want those people to be redirected .

Meredith 10:55

Yes , okay , there we go .

Meredith's husband 10:58

So those are redirects . Hopefully that makes sense . That's what 3XX errors are and 3XX 90% of the time it's going to be a 301 . It's a redirect .

Meredith 11:07

Okay .

Meredith's husband 11:08

The others are much more rare .

Meredith 11:10

Okay , so does that help make these things ? Yeah , that makes more sense . I feel like there need to be little bobbleheads or figurines of like a security guard wearing the TXT .

Meredith's husband 11:26

That's great . I should do that , I should animate . So these are all examples from my IQ builder . I should create little characters for each entry . Yeah , little icons .

Meredith 11:35

Because then you'd be able to visualize oh the 3XX .

Meredith's husband 11:39

Yeah , you know what I'm saying Makes it more friendly and approachable , just at least visual . Yeah , so if this has helped , if you know somebody who is frustrated by things like this and thinks SEO is confusing , send them this or send them .

Meredith 11:55

The previous episode yes , previous episode one right before .

Meredith's husband 11:58

This is a good intro to this one , yeah , and next week we will talk about how AI is sort of making some of these things more important than others .

Meredith 12:07

Interesting .

Meredith's husband 12:10

I hope this helps . I hope it helps too .

Meredith 12:13

And we're telling that there are no secrets because it's all common sense .

Meredith's husband 12:18

The secret is there are no secrets . Shh , don't tell anyone , there's no secret .