Meredith's Husband: 0:24

Let's answer some questions today.

Meredith: 0:25

Let's answer some questions.

Meredith's Husband: 0:27

QA day.

Meredith: 0:28

It is.

Meredith's Husband: 0:29

Random questions that have come in that I think probably, if I had to guess, are on a lot of people's minds.

Meredith: 0:34

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 0:34

So if you've ever, you know, yeah, whatever. Let's answer them. I'm just going to go through them. They're kind of long, so I'm going to paraphrase them. I guess I'd ask you to read them, but uh I can read them. I can get the idea across.

Meredith: 0:47

Got it.

Meredith's Husband: 0:47

Okay. Question from someone says as a photographer, they want to showcase their work at the top of the page.

Meredith: 0:54

Yes.

Meredith's Husband: 0:55

Understandable.

Meredith: 0:56

Yes.

Meredith's Husband: 0:56

But they go on to ask if a sc if a large image gallery is hurting their SEO.

Meredith: 1:02

At the top?

Meredith's Husband: 1:03

At the top, like a long scrolling, a whole bunch of images that you've got to scroll through.

Meredith: 1:07

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 1:08

And then they ask the same question specifically about photo gallery pages. So yeah, that is not good for SEO. But well, there's two different situations. If you have a purely image gallery page, that's what it's going to be. There's just by the definition of what it is, it's not going to have much SEO value.

Meredith: 1:26

Right.

Meredith's Husband: 1:26

Because there's not much content on that page.

Meredith: 1:28

Right.

Meredith's Husband: 1:29

Okay. People are still searching for stuff if there's no stuff for people to connect with on your page. It's not that page is more for users. Okay. So in that case, a scrolling gallery is fine. Any other page, yeah, you want to keep the galleries, you want number one, you want to keep their size limited. Okay. Because the larger the gallery, the more it's going to slow down the page. I would say if you could have a smaller gallery and then a link to like then see more, that would be a good approach. That's one that's not the only approach. That's, but that's one way you can get around it. Also, if it's not a gallery page, my thought is you don't want to open up with an image gallery. There's got to be some sort of description above, at least put it in context, like what it's the pay. Like you've got to have a at least a heading.

Meredith: 2:19

When you have your landing page, it's you want to have the above-the-screen stuff be static.

Meredith's Husband: 2:27

Well, yeah. What do you mean by static?

Meredith: 2:29

Not moving, like not a slideshow thing.

Meredith's Husband: 2:33

There's not there's not much SEO difference between a slideshow and an image, really. Okay. But you, like I said, you want to have some context above that image gallery so that people know what they're looking at, so that search engines kind of know what the page is about. Right. And AI, AI is also going to want to know, they're going to want some context for that image gallery. And then again, don't make that image gallery too long. If the page is about conveying information, that should be the core of the page. If the page is a if the goal of the page is about showing images, then that is the focus of the page. I hope that kind of helps you think about it a little bit. Okay. And the question about uh changing URLs. Somebody wrote in and said they have a current site with different offerings, and they are, in their own words, quite spammy, and they were recommended by a another SEO educator that this person is now regretting hiring. And the question is, should I change them? So the the Should I change what? They're Should I change them? The URLs. Should I change those? So the person wrote in, is it best to leave them? Should I change them? And they gave an example, and yeah, they are they are pretty spammy URLs. They're pretty bad. However, no, you should not change them.

Meredith: 3:46

Okay.

Meredith's Husband: 3:47

You should, when talking about URLs, changing a URL is something you always want to leave to like the last resort. It's not something you want to do because any web page has built up some level of authority with Google. It could be a little, it could be a lot. When you change the URL, you are effectively getting rid of that page. You are deleting it. If you change the URL, that old URL that has that authority, remember, it could be a little, it could be a lot, is gone.

Meredith: 4:16

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 4:17

Okay. Because any, and also any links going into that page from other websites have had past tense SEO value if you then change the URL.

Meredith: 4:27

Okay.

Meredith's Husband: 4:28

And I've come across this a lot. Like actually, people write in and say, oh, I hired somebody to help me with my SEO. And they recommended changing all my URLs so they would have keywords in them. And then they this person contacts me six months, 12 months later, and like I lost all my traffic. Well, yeah, you do you literally deleted all your SEO, like you threw it in the garbage.

Meredith: 4:47

And then what what is when you said um it was spammy URL, what does that mean?

Meredith's Husband: 4:53

So a spammy URL would be like, you know, you got your domain name, the root domain, the dot com, and then it's something like your city, your service. So like an example for you would be like Brooklyn Children's Photographer. Like, no. Okay. You might have children. Children would be like that's appropriate, but you don't want to have Brooklyn. If you have a good example of this, is having your city name in your URLs.

Meredith: 5:18

Right.

Meredith's Husband: 5:19

That's very uh, it's a very old technique. It had a very limited use in terms of SEO. Like it was not, it was popular for a couple of years, maybe, but it was even spammy then. Now it's just really a red flag to Google. But again, if you have had those, don't go back and change them.

Meredith: 5:37

Right.

Meredith's Husband: 5:38

But going forward, just keep this in mind whenever you create new URLs. Okay. And so one thing I always say, I want to mention also, I say whenever you change a URL, you need to create a redirect. Yeah. That redirects people, it also redirects SEO value. It does not redirect 100% of the SEO value.

Meredith: 5:56

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 5:56

It's about 80%. So even if you do things perfectly, that's why I say changing URLs is a last resort. Like, yes, you can do it. You're going to lose some value even if you do it perfectly right. But yeah, you're still going to lose, say, 20% of your value. Yeah. So avoid it if you can.

Meredith: 6:12

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 6:13

It's usually not worth it unless you have like super extreme cases.

Meredith: 6:17

Got it.

Meredith's Husband: 6:18

Okay. Uh, question about linking from blogs to service pages. This is something else I recommend. And this person wrote in that they listened to podcast episode about the Google leak. Uh that was like a year ago or something. And part of that, part of the leak, part of the information that came out was that links from pages that are highly trafficked are valuable. And that's kind of not what SEOs have thought. We thought links from pages that have high authority are very valuable. And this kind of changed that a little bit. It's that's not the case. It's not links from pages with high authority. It's pages, I'm sorry, links from pages that get a lot of visibility, that get a lot of traffic. That was the important part. So the question here is this person has a highly trafficked blog page and they want to know should they link to their service pages? Yes, something I recommend doing. And they followed up with a question they already do have links as part of their navigation. Is there value extra value in creating links from the page content? Yes, there is. Oh. Absolutely there is. Uh links in page navigation are not given the same weight. They're not given the same importance as links from within content because they're literally on every page.

Meredith: 7:30

Got it.

Meredith's Husband: 7:31

So, yes, I recommend if you have blog pages that are highly getting a lot of traffic, link from them to the pages that you want to have to get more traffic. I mean, you want you want to have them higher in Google, you want to have them more visible. If you link to those pages from your highly trafficked pages, that is good. You only need to do it once. I've seen people have like 10, 20. And and don't link to like, don't if you have a highly, you know, a really uh popular blog that gets a lot of traffic, don't link to a whole bunch of pages from it. Okay, just link to the one or maybe two that are the most relevant.

Meredith: 8:07

Okay.

Meredith's Husband: 8:08

The most relevant. That's important.

Meredith: 8:10

Right.

Meredith's Husband: 8:10

Okay. Another question about Google verification. So somebody moved, they moved from one city to another, and they have to re-verify their address with Google. So their Google business profile is up to date.

Meredith: 8:23

Yes.

Meredith's Husband: 8:24

And the question is, they had to shoot a video. So it used to be like you, like you used to, Google used to send you a postcard.

Meredith: 8:31

Oh, yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 8:32

And then for a while they would call you. And then then they had some other methods. Now they're doing a video. And the question was, is this um, did I do something wrong? Why am I being forced to do this? No, you did nothing wrong. This has been around for a while. It used to be kind of rare, but over the last couple years, this method of using a video to verify has become more popular.

Meredith: 8:53

And what is this video?

Meredith's Husband: 8:54

So the video is like you literally, like, let's say you have a retail shop.

Meredith: 8:58

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 8:59

This person moved into a studio. So let's they have a studio. What the video is, I think, pretty much is you go outside, you take, you start the video, you show your your storefront, show the address, you show, you may maybe do a 360 to show what else is around. And then without stopping the video, you walk into the business. Oh, okay. And then you show that you have ownership of the business.

Meredith: 9:20

Right.

Meredith's Husband: 9:21

And that seems to be the new norm.

Meredith: 9:23

Huh.

Meredith's Husband: 9:24

And that will probably be the norm moving forward. So no, you did nothing wrong. You did nothing that made Google suspicious. This is just kind of a new thing.

Meredith: 9:33

You're not getting punished by Google.

Meredith's Husband: 9:35

Yeah, it's uh it's so easy for us to do this nowadays. We all got a nice video camera in our pockets that we could do this with. I don't know. I don't know if people review this at Google or if AI reviews this. But no. Good. Good job, good for you. Okay. Another question about moving. Somebody this is uh common question today. Somebody moved and wants to know, they moved again from what this is one state to another state, so but also a different city, I guess.

Meredith: 10:03

You'd think?

Meredith's Husband: 10:04

I think isn't there one city that isn't too distant? Yeah, right. See? That's relevant. Okay, so and their question is what is the first thing they should do that makes sure that people in the new city can find it? So the first thing is your address. You've got to change your address and you've got to change it everywhere. Start on your website. Your complete and accurate address needs to be on your website. Number two, your Google business profile. They need to match exactly. And then literally everywhere else. So you have good you have local listings. We've talked about building local listings.

Meredith: 10:38

Help.

Meredith's Husband: 10:38

Yeah. Yeah, all sorts of directories. Okay. And this Facebook?

Meredith: 10:43

Yeah, Instagram.

Meredith's Husband: 10:44

Yeah, yeah. Like everywhere, like literally everywhere. And this is when I recommend if your address is on LinkedIn, I don't know if it usually is, but and this is when I say use a service like White Spark. Because the danger here is I've talked about how much of a pain in the ass this is to do yourself your own local listings.

Meredith: 11:02

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 11:02

It's even worse when you have to go out and claim listings and then correct them. It's more difficult than just creating a new one. And what happens a lot of times is when people move, they go out and they end up, whether they know it or not, or do it by accident, they end up creating new listings. So now they have conflicting listings. Right. So that's bad for us. Like Google sees that and they're like, oh, that's suspicious. Right. This person claims to live in this business claims to be in two different cities. Yeah. Um, that's that's a spam signal right there. Right. So you want to avoid that. Again, I would use a service like White Spark. Uh, there are others, like SEMrush has one. The one that set you can do this via SEMrush and it's a paid monthly subscription.

Meredith: 11:44

Right.

Meredith's Husband: 11:45

Um, which I don't like those as much, but it's very act, it's very fast. Like you can update your address in hundreds of directories literally overnight.

Meredith: 11:53

Wow.

Meredith's Husband: 11:54

Yeah, it's pretty good. White Spark takes longer, but it's because they do it manually. They charge you one time for the labor, and then you own those listings. It's the method I like.

Meredith: 12:03

Right.

Meredith's Husband: 12:03

But your address is absolutely the first thing that you need to do. Make sure that is correct everywhere. Also, maybe number two, can you get a local phone number in the new city? That might help. Any any local signals that you can send. Like then from then on, after you change your address, it's your your phone number. It's can you blog about the new neighborhoods or or whatever? That is all good stuff. But number one, address.

Meredith: 12:28

Got it.

Meredith's Husband: 12:29

Okay, final question. Another one about image portfolios. This one more specifically about image alt text. So this person said they were watching a video of mine. I talked about image alt text, and it was very helpful. And they were just wondering uh, is it a is it appropriate to include their business name in their image alt text? And also, is it uh appropriate specifically to include it in the image alt text for uh portfolio pages in those images? I would say no, it's probably not normally appropriate. Uh however, on a if you have a page that is strictly an image gallery, um, and like say it has this person said they had 40-ish images, it yeah, you could start that way by just giving them some generic name like your like uh family photo gallery meredis inner photography. Like that would be the the bare basics. But I I probably wouldn't do that. It's not what would you do? I would probably just leave the brand your brand name out.

Meredith: 13:31

Okay.

Meredith's Husband: 13:32

Because it because it is it's on your website.

Meredith: 13:35

Right.

Meredith's Husband: 13:36

If it's on other like your homepage, your service pages, your contact, I would, I would not do that if it unless it's like a picture of you. Like if it's a picture of you take you know, whether it's just uh an about you page or you taking pictures of other, like then yeah, you yeah, then it's appropriate because that is the that's what's in the image. Meredith Zinner is in the image. Right. It's an image of Meredith Zinner. I am everywhere on photo gallery pages, like yeah, okay, maybe. Because on those pages, it could be like, oh, this image is part of a Meredith Zinner image gallery. So it's not it it's not terrible. I don't think it's a big spam signal, especially on those portfolio pages. But otherwise, I would say I'll overdo it. Right, yeah, there's there's really no need. Focus on what's in the image.

Meredith: 14:18

Excellent.

Meredith's Husband: 14:19

And then I and then I mentioned the foundation for your image alt tags on a on a gallery page could could be that. I would say, because it's just quick and easy. You can do that very quickly and easily. But nowadays, Squarespace and Wix and probably some WordPress plugins can scan a page and give you image alt text for all your images. And it can be very accurate. So it's not very hard. So the next step would be to make it accurate. Use use a tool if you want, or just you know, describe this is a photo of. That's how I do it. I look at an image. If I want to create an image alt tag, I say this is a photo of blank. I fill in the blank, that's the image alt text. That's kind of how I approach it.

Meredith: 14:56

Got it.

Meredith's Husband: 14:57

That was the final question.

Meredith: 14:59

Thank you for submitting them questions.

Meredith's Husband: 15:03

I'm the only one here.

Meredith: 15:05

Oh my gosh, really?

Meredith's Husband: 15:06

So I was I was running up and down the hallways naked.

Meredith: 15:10

No, you were not.

Meredith's Husband: 15:11

Screaming, they're after me. Because you know.

Meredith: 15:16

Why not?

Meredith's Husband: 15:17

You don't get that opportunity.

Meredith: 15:19

You do not get that opportunity every day.