Meredith's Husband: 0:42

Hey, this is Meredith husband. I've got some SEO advice for you. But I'm gonna keep it really simple so that you can understand it. So make sense. And most importantly, so you can actually use Hey, hello, how are you?

Meredith: 0:59

I'm wonderful. How are you doing? I'm good. How's your day been so far?

Meredith's Husband: 1:03

Yeah. So far. It's good. It dropped our dog off today. Oh, yeah. It's Friday. I don't know what it is playdate or a bunch of other school.

Meredith: 1:15

Play School. Yeah. And how was that?

Meredith's Husband: 1:19

It was good. He's very eager when he when you realize is where we're going, which is usually a few blocks from our apartment. starts pulling the cycle.

Meredith: 1:31

We have a 13 month old Shih Tzu named Marcel, if we haven't mentioned that. And another 10 year old named Buster, who you'll probably hear barking at some point, perhaps.

Meredith's Husband: 1:44

So I told somebody this week about my new you know how last week I announced that people could subscribe and help support the podcast. Yeah, yeah. I told somebody, and they said, Oh, are you on Patreon? I said, No, I'm doing it. Doing it myself. Just doing this substitute. Subscribe right through the website. Like, why don't you just do Patreon? Yeah. And I was like, well, that's a good question. That's a valid question. And there are there are several reasons. And those reasons apply to more than just Patreon. And this podcast really applied. They applied to SEO, the lots of things. So I kind of wanted to touch on that. Yeah, yeah.

Meredith: 2:19

Good question. Yeah, cuz so many people are on Patreon.

Meredith's Husband: 2:23

Yeah, of course. It's very easy. Yeah, super. It's super easy. Yeah, it I mean, Patreon is great. Don't get me wrong. I think it's fantastic. But it's but you know, it makes an otherwise perhaps complicated process of setting up a payment solution. It makes it a lot easier. Yeah. And that's, that's what I mean. That's the big Yeah. And yeah, anytime, you know, in general, when something is made very easy, like Val, Val, you mean Szell Szell. Welcome to my life. Like Zelia? Like, Honey, can you fix this for me? Please? Can you turn down the refrigerator? Open the shades? Yes.

Meredith: 3:09

It's only gonna get better with age.

Meredith's Husband: 3:12

Anyway, so Patreon is great. But when when the when the solution like like Patreon, make something very easy. You do have to you should ask yourself, What am I giving up for this ease? Right? So you're trading something? So in the case of Patreon, there's a cost money one, you know, it costs 10 to 12%. Good thing depending on your plan. On top costs

Meredith: 3:36

you Yeah, that's a person who's getting money.

Meredith's Husband: 3:40

Yes, yeah. So as those so the listener says, Yes, I'm gonna give married his husband and Meredith$5 a month. And Patreon says, Okay, we're gonna take, you know, 50 cents, or 60 cents, and then give the rest to you. That's how they work. That's their business

Meredith: 3:56

model. That's, that's fine. their credit card takes money to write,

Meredith's Husband: 4:00

then the credit card that you can't really get around that you're gonna pay like the 3% on credit cards. So there's the cost. So I save a little bit there. Number two, though, what happens if they change those rates? What happens when they double it? So this is something that happens all the time. This happened, especially with Yes, with with, it's very well known for like Google AdWords, like, used to be super cheap. Yeah. And people would people started, you know, buying ads, and like, oh, wow, I can really set up my business. They set up their everything, they build their business, and then Google ads, the cost goes up. Really, for a while, like Google ads were like five, when they initially launched, they were like five cents a click, Oh, wow. Then they went to 50 cents a click, that's 1,000% increase. Can you imagine like, if you build if you build a business, and you're able to get new clients or customers at, you know, whatever the price is, and so you fit you figure out all your finance and then that price triples or quadruples or doubles, or goes up 50%. Like that's, that can really mess you up. Yeah. So there's that there's no control, like, over what the prices will be in the future? Or what about other policies? What if What if Facebook buys Patreon? What? What a Google and they decide, okay, we're gonna triple the price, or we're gonna change some of these policies or you have no control over that. Or what if Patreon goes out of business? Right? What if, I mean, Apple is just starting their paid podcast? Oh, really? encryptions Yeah. So will Spotify I assume Boom, that's gonna change the landscape of podcasting quite a bit. That's going to when is that happening?

Meredith: 5:40

I don't even know about

Meredith's Husband: 5:41

Apple Apple's doing that now. And Apple takes if your interest interested. Apple takes I think 4030 or 40% of your subscription. Yeah, right. Yeah. So if we were to charge $5 per month for this podcast on Apple, Apple would take, like two bucks. Wow. Wow. So who knows what's gonna happen to Patreon? I hope they you know, I don't want to see them disappear. I anybody fighting against Apple and the big guys I kinda, I root for the underdog, but Right, yeah, what happened? I mean, you remember MySpace? Yeah. Friendster? Like, you know, they got beaten up like, Nope, you know, companies don't last as things change so quickly. That tech companies come and go quickly, so that's so

Meredith: 6:27

true. I didn't even think that you just figure Oh, Patreon. That's what everyone does. I did

Meredith's Husband: 6:33

five years ago. Did did you know about Patreon? I don't even know if they existed five years ago, maybe they did. But I patreon

Meredith: 6:41

at patreon elephants in Thailand and then I Patreon Secret City. And then I Patreon another farm in that this guy with all these rescue animals in sweet didn't.

Meredith's Husband: 6:58

Okay? Can I use Patreon as a verb? Do Patreon so I'm gonna Patreon did I

Meredith: 7:03

say that? Yeah. Yes, yes, you can. Yes, you it has become a verb.

Meredith's Husband: 7:10

Anyway, this this all reminds me very much of the saying don't build your house on rented land. Have you ever heard that? I don't think so. I don't know where it came from. But the saying don't build your house on rented land because that's somebody else's land. Right? You know that? What if the landlord says, What if you build your new dream house on a lot that you don't own? And the landlord says I'm gonna triple your rent. Or I'm selling or I'm selling? I'm selling the lot. Yeah. Or I'm or I own the lot next door, or the lot on every side. And I'm going to build skyscrapers all around you, you know, you have no idea. So this reminds me of that don't build your house on on rented land. So

Meredith: 7:50

what's the alternative then? Well, the

Meredith's Husband: 7:52

alternative is I you can subscribe directly through my site. Our site you can? Yes. Yeah. So people subscribe. So I'm on Kajabi. By the way, if you ever are thinking of building a coaching program or putting a course online or a podcast, I do highly recommend Kajabi Kajabi is awesome. How do you spell that? Kaj a bi calm? I've tried. I mean,

Meredith: 8:19

it sounds like something you use, like Miss Piggy would scream before. Yes. Wax Kermit

Meredith's Husband: 8:28

that's pretty good misspeaking. Yeah, anyway, so Kajabi has my solutions where I host this podcast, it's where I host, my website, my blog, I put courses on there, I deliver client projects on there, I do everything on Kajabi. It does everything my email marketing, all kinds of stuff. And it is more expensive than some of the other solutions. But I've tried other Kajabi I think on the basic package, I think it's 140 or $150 a month, if you do a monthly if you pay for a year, it's like 100 or 110 or something. So that's you know, and some of the some of the competitors are like 40 bucks, or 50 bucks or 60 years 20. But I have learned kind of the hard way that it's not worth it. Good to know. Yeah. Anyway. So yeah, so when people want to support the podcast, they just, they just do that there's no middleman. So and also, like, if you so if people if we go through Patreon, if you want to support the podcast, and you our Patreon customer, your Patreon client, I don't have your contact information, right? You're not paying us, you're paying Patreon and Patreon is then giving me us a percentage a commission essentially. Now maybe it's a 90% commission, it's a lot of it, but you're you are Patreon customer. Right? Patreon doesn't have an interest in building my business. They have an interest in taking a percentage of building their business. Yeah, yeah, of course. So if if I wanted to help coach you and your SEO, Patreon doesn't doesn't care, like, okay, they're not gonna make anything off that so. So I prefer to have this content be my own. I own the content. It's not on rented land. Good to know. Exactly. So this applies to other things as well, including SEO. Okay. Tell us Oh, so when I have said you want to align yourself with Google's objectives? Yes. That's because Google's algorithm is always changing. Their their algorithm changes all the time and it has throughout the years.

Meredith: 10:34

All right, everybody's algorithm always changing Facebook, Instagram,

Meredith's Husband: 10:38

Patreon, there. Yeah, every every eBay website. Yeah, they all have an algorithm. That depends how often you get seen. And those algorithms always change

Meredith: 10:51

interest. And it changes change. Because because they seem to learn them, people learn them, they want

Meredith's Husband: 10:58

to make money. I mean, that these companies want to make money. So they are adjusting their algorithms so that they can maximize their profits. Now, that's not a terrible thing. That's what I always do. That's their company. Sometimes. Yes, like, like Google, that's a good example. Google changes their algorithm because people figure it out. And they kind of game the system. And so Google changes their algorithm. But Google's ultimate objective is to make their users happy, so they can maintain their revenue, build their revenue, right? So this is why that's exactly why you want to align yourself with Google's objectives and not try to figure out what the current algorithm is doing. Interesting. Yeah, a lot of a lot of SEO over the years is trying to figure out how to trick the algorithm. Yeah, how to game that how to game the system. Yeah. And when you do that, you might be successful. Best case scenario is, yeah, you're successful. But then when Google changes their algorithm, right, and they don't announce that they announce it after the fact, right? Some sometimes. But when that happens, you're fucked. I have literally seen companies pretty like lose 100% of their source of revenue. Instantly, overnight. And they didn't know it was coming. They know, after the fact Google, Google puts out an announcement. I mean, at that point, it's obvious. Many people will know. But they will put out a little, you know, tweet or something. Hey, we made an update. It's about XYZ. You lost your business. Sorry, shouldn't have been doing that anyway. Right. That's kind of what happened. That's the history of SEO in like 30 seconds. So align yourself with Google's objectives. And you protect yourself against

Meredith: 12:42

that, right. And Google's objectives are.

Meredith's Husband: 12:45

Remember, they want to send their they don't want to send their people to a website that's figured out how to trick the algorithms. They want to send their people to a quality site, good experience, unique content. That's, that's your objective. Really good make a really good site for your users. That's where Google wants to send people. Yeah. There's actually been a saying in SEO that content is king. Yeah, yeah. It's been around for like, 2020. Yes, it's the first. Yeah, it's like the first thing I heard, when, even before SEO was known as SEO. And it was, you know, it's not the the fun, sexy part of SEO like trying to fool the algorithm. That's what can be more exciting. But it is the only thing in SEO that has remained true. For 20 years, right? It's it. So attention is almost the currency of today, like everybody is vying for attention. getting people's attention is tricky. It's hard. It's, I think, harder than it used to be just because we're bombarded with so much stuff all the time. 24/7. So getting people's attention, if you can do it. That's, that's great. And that's why I say, you remember when I said, I think in episode like five, think of your blogs as resources, yes. Resources that will get people's attention. Yeah, once once you have somebody's attention, don't put it on somebody else's platform, right? This podcast is not on Patreon. If you have a really great resource, you don't put it on Facebook, on LinkedIn on Tik Tok, wherever you're going to put it, those companies are great because they have a lot of eyeballs. That's where you can get somebody's attention initially, but if you have your your resources, your true resources that people really value, that that should be your own. Right. And that goes on your website, right on your own well, on your blog, on your court, you know, wherever it is, you want to maintain control of that so that you are in direct contact with your clients, customers.

Meredith: 14:43

My question is, but you can't let's say you have a really good blog slash resource. You can poke Can you post that on Facebook and or Instagram, and it's still yours? Do you know what I'm saying?

Meredith's Husband: 14:57

Yes. Yeah, I mean, I'm not a social media expert. So how you use social media in that, you know, I can't tell you I can't tell you it looks look to somebody else for that. But I would say you know, put snippets like so what I do with this blog is I you know, we record the blog, this this podcast, I record the podcast and we put snippets on, on different on Instagram, we have little 32nd snippets here and there. So we so obviously, there's a bunch of eyeballs on Instagram, so hopefully we capture people's attention that way, but I don't public I don't publish the podcast to Instagram. And that's it. I'm done. It's online, you know?

Meredith: 15:41

So let me ask you another question. So I make little films. And people always say, oh, Facebook likes to be the source of the film. They want, right? Or say you. So that's why they want you to upload your film to Facebook. So then they got it.

Meredith's Husband: 16:00

Yeah, Facebook doesn't want to post videos that are already on Tik Tok and YouTube. Right? Now they will I mean, yeah, oh, yeah, they will. But you know, make sure you have those videos. You know, it's harder to host your own videos on. On your website, a lot of times they're hosted on Vimeo, but you can display them on your blog, you know, have them there. And then, you know, you can put little pieces of them on Facebook or Instagram or wherever you want. Or you can post the whole thing to Facebook, but then realize that you're, you know, in some sense, you're putting you're building a house on rent, you're giving your content to Facebook, and Facebook, Facebook makes money off the off that I mean, they don't monetize your one single video, but on aggregate they do. Right? Right. That's why these companies exist, these companies make money off of our content, and our personal data. Yes. But but they're, they're able to capture our personal data, because there's content there that we are consumed. We're interested in the content. Yeah, it starts with attention. If you don't have if you can't get somebody's attention, you can't get their personal data. So the important thing, I think, is to just be aware, we have a putting your winning you put your content places, do you have to put it? I mean, obviously, there's you don't have a million people looking at your website? Yeah, you're gonna have to get those people's attention initially. You know, social media is a great place to do that. There's all sorts of ways to do that. But don't put all your content out there on other people's platform, because you you want to, you want to have a direct as as much as possible, you want to have a direct link to your audience, your clients.

Meredith: 17:53

So I have a question. So what if you are using Wix or stuff like that?

Meredith's Husband: 17:59

That is your stuff website? Yeah, that's not. You need to host your website, right, somewhere. That's gonna be your website. You can move it from Wix to WordPress. Okay, Squarespace that's your website. But ideally, you know, you just want to direct you know, you want to have your audience's email, or phone number or however you connect with them. You want to have a direct link. Right? So somebody, I think, was Gary Vaynerchuk. Recently. He's, he's a big proponent of this owning your, your content, you know, audience, he, I think he said something. Arsenio Hall, he remember Arsenio Hall, of course, huge, huge, huge, huge. I mean, part of our culture. Yeah. And then he was on Fox, right? And then Fox Fox canceled his show. Oh, his own show you me? Yeah. Yes. And then yes, talk shows late night talk show. Huge. So and then what happened to Arsenio? Who knows? I mean, his, you know, he couldn't, there was no alternative there. This was kind of pre internet almost by his house was built on foxes land. And fox said, we have we're not renting you land anymore. What happened to our city hall, he disappeared, it's like to most to most of our society, he just fell off the face of the earth because he didn't own this. And again, nothing against our city hall. He this option was not available. But he did not have that direct connection to his audience. He relied on Fox to provide it to me when Frank said, we're not providing it to you anymore, for whatever reason, our syneos gone. What if our CEO had a had has had his own, you know, YouTube channel? Or what if he had everybody's direct email and said, Hey, guys, I'm over here. Now. Come check me out. Right. Right. He could have done that. But you know, of course. But that's, that's an example when somebody else owns your land. And they just decide, I'm not going to rent this land to you anymore. Right? You got to have a backup plan. Gotcha. No, no, that things change. They will change it is constant, just because Facebook is a behemoth now. Yeah. Doesn't mean it always will be or Google like, these guys. Will. You know, the only constant is change. Yep. That's for sure. I hope that helps. I hope it I hope that makes you think about things. Yeah, in a little different way. And about what you're doing.

Meredith: 20:24

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it gives one pause. Yeah, but not for hahaha, for pause and we can walk around Thank you.

Meredith's Husband: 20:35

I don't understand.

Meredith: 20:36

Pause P. P aw s PA.

Meredith's Husband: 20:40

Oh, right. Okay. Thank you. The best jokes are the ones you have to explain.

Meredith: 20:49

That's what I say.

Meredith's Husband: 20:50

All right. Thank you, everybody.

Meredith: 20:52

Thank you.

Meredith's Husband: 20:59

Okay, I hope that helped. I hope that helped your website. I hope that helped your business. I hope that helped give you a little bit of confidence that SEO was not this convoluted, cryptic, crazy thing that nobody can understand. If you did like it and you found it helpful. Please share it with a couple of your colleagues. Tell them what you like. Or more importantly, tell me what you liked. Let me know interview leave a review on Apple. Tell me what parts you like. And I'll try to do more of those parts. And again, thanks for listening.