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

Meredith: 0:57

Can you hear me now?

Meredith's Husband: 0:59

No, I can hear you.

Meredith: 1:01

How you doing? Oh, pretty good. Yeah. Did you sleep well last night? Yeah, I think so. Okay. Yeah, crashed.

Meredith's Husband: 1:11

I think I don't remember

Meredith: 1:15

what it was that we were talking about last night. And you said, Oh, save it for the podcast?

Meredith's Husband: 1:20

I have no idea. Not a clue. Let's fast forward a little bit. We're gonna need to reactivate your blog.

Meredith: 1:32

Right. We're gonna started writing some.

Meredith's Husband: 1:35

So that's that's gonna that's an important thing. And that's something I want to talk about. Why do you blog? Because I have a feeling that lots of people, everybody knows they should be blogging. Yeah. Everybody hears it's good for SEO? Yes. I mean, I know why it's good for you for SEO. But I think a lot of people, don't they just Yeah. So what is the advice that you're getting in the in the photography world in terms of blogging and how you should be going about that?

Meredith: 2:01

Well, blog often. And Google likes new entries. Google likes it when there's activity and new activity on your site.

Meredith's Husband: 2:13

Yeah, that's that's true.

Meredith: 2:15

And then, yeah, that's pretty much it. That I know that I remember. But realize I also tune out a lot. Because

Meredith's Husband: 2:25

yeah, there are. There are there is something to be said for blogging, you want to have a you want to maintain an active blog, if you have a blog that the last post was from 10 years ago. Yeah, Google is going to look at that and be like, Okay, that's probably not a really that's not an active blog. sleeping on the job. Yeah. But you did. It's not like you have to it's definitely not like social media, where you need to blog every day, or multiple times per day or anything like that. And I would say, so what do you like if like, if when people say you need to blog, or you're trying to blog, what do you blog about? What do you write about?

Meredith: 3:01

Well, I don't well, but I, for example, the blog that I just wrote, and I have to kind of be in the mood and just pull it out. So recently, there is a new addition to park slow. That is phenomenal to me. Our local fire station has recently adopted a pig. And her name is Penny. And her Instagram is fire pig Penny, I think. And so I spoke with the owner, asked if I could come take some photographs for them, and fell in love with Penny just in everything, everything. And she also influenced all the firefighters to no longer eat pork, which as a vegetarian makes me very happy. So I just I created a blog from that. And right now, it's just words of because it's something I care about and love. And it's important to me.

Meredith's Husband: 4:08

And that's actually that's a good blog. Because there, when you create blogs, you want to think about, there's a few reasons that you want to create blogs. Number one, is you want to answer specific questions that your target audience might have something like, how do i That's why you probably hear things like blog about how to take better pictures with an iPhone, yes, you want to answer very specific questions. The more specific they are, the better your chances of showing up when somebody makes that search. That's one reason you direct traffic like that. Another reason is to attract links, so people for one reason or another either, so from social media, from other blogs, any type of website might link to your website, because those links are going to improve your overall SEO. So the more links you have, the better in general.

Meredith: 5:05

Okay, and when when when when I asked someone, Oh, can you link to me? What does that involve?

Meredith's Husband: 5:12

So there's something that you know, if if your website is going to link to my website, then somewhere on your website, it's going to say something, just some words like here's Chris's website, and those words are going to be blue and underlined. That's a hyperlink, and you click that link and then it goes to my site that's a link from your site to my site, but that's all that's all that is. And links can be word words they can be images, they carry more weight if their words. Okay.

Meredith: 5:40

So if somebody said photos from by Meredith Zinner photography, and that wasn't highlighted, is that a link?

Meredith's Husband: 5:48

No, no, no, that's a that's a mention. With a if it's not live, you can't click on it and have something happen. That's not only

Meredith: 5:55

does it have to link to my website, or could link to social media, like my Instagram site could

Meredith's Husband: 6:01

link to your you know, there is, you know, ideally, if you want to improve the ranking of your website, you would want to link it to your website. However, Google sees your they see your social media platforms, they know, you know, they can put two and two together and say, you know, this Instagram clip, you know, profile links to this website. And so does this Facebook, and this Twitter, and this YouTube. And so you have this kind of, you know, we'll have properties and your your website would be like the hub, and then your Instagram and your Facebook and your YouTube would be like spokes branches. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, but that's, that's getting a little a little too involved for for right now. I think. What I wanted to mention is, when you when you blog, I think this is a really important concept to understand. When you are when you're blogging to attract links. It helps me and I know it helps a lot of other people to think about blogs in terms of resources, you're not creating a blog for somebody, you're creating a resource for them something for them to use. Yeah. And that for me when I started doing, yeah, that really flipped a switch when I first heard that. And I heard that from a colleague of mine who was working, he's an SEO in house SEO for a company. And they do phenomenally well. And they do it through creating blogs. And I was talking to him one day, just out of the blue, and I said something about his company's blog. And he's like, Yeah, we don't do blogs. And I was like, what? You have like hundreds of blogs, that's all you do. I was like, No, those are resources. And like, oh, okay, he's like, yeah, he's like, we changed. We stopped thinking about them in terms of blogs, and started thinking about them in terms of resources, and it changed everything. So I think when you're, if you're that's the way if you want to attract links, and you want to use your blog for SEO, which is one of the main reasons it needs to be a resource, it needs to be helpful needs to be something that other people share. And they and they use for some reason, right. Now, what about the actual content? What do you blog about? So for SEO purposes, yeah, sorry. So you so let's take your site, for example. You are a children's photographer. In Brooklyn. Yeah. So your blogs, you want to make your blogs relevant. So they should be either about children's photography, right? Children. They can be about children, they can be about photography, they can be about Brooklyn, or they can be about all three. So you're a penny, the pig? Yes, Penny. Yeah, that's Brooklyn. Right? And people are gonna love that they're gonna, they're gonna like that, that's going to be something that people will probably share. And it covers one, it covers one of your three aspects. It's about Brooklyn. And that's as important as anything else. Really, when when Google is looking at your site, they're trying to decide, you know, what is your site about? How good is it? And in your case, like, where is she? Right? You know, so when that helps when you're talking about Brooklyn, and you're using these, these terms, like, and they can be, you know, specific to your neighborhood, like Park Slope, or you can talk about you can have even things like phone numbers or addresses. Those are all geographic signals to Google that kind of tells Google where you are. This used to be? Yeah, this used to be a you've probably seen websites that say like, you know, New York photographer, yeah. New York, New York photographer. Yes. New York pictures. Yes. New York, New York, New York, New York. Don't you don't need to do that.

Meredith: 9:44

Oh, you don't? Because I see everyone do that. And I think

Meredith's Husband: 9:48

it used to be used two years ago. Yeah, that was that was decent strategy. But you really, you know, you really don't need to do that. It just turns your your. It does two things that are bad. It turns your visitors off because they're like, this is look at this garbage. It turns Google off because Google's can see oh, they're just trying to plug in all these terms. To get better rankings. This is this is garbage.

Meredith: 10:11

Yeah. Because I was told oh, you need to put all your keywords in your blogs.

Meredith's Husband: 10:15

Yeah, no, no. I mean, there are some places you need to put your keywords on your website. But you, especially your your blog, you don't you don't need to worry about just being natural. And Google is going to pick up that language. Like if you're talking about penny the pig at a fire station in Brooklyn. Google is going to figure that out. You're like oh, she's in Brooklyn, similar if you if you have a blog about, you know, children and you're doing something for like a children's daycare in Brooklyn or something,

Meredith: 10:42

or that time I volunteer for

Meredith's Husband: 10:44

yes, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Google is going to know that you're talking about children. That kind of, they're going to put that together. And if you can show to Google, that your blog, and your website is about those things, Brooklyn, and photography and children, guess what? You're gonna build, you're gonna build authority for all of those things. That's great. Yeah. So you don't need you don't need to say I'm a Brooklyn children's photographer in Brooklyn, New York, photographing children, children, kids

Meredith: 11:19

and pets. And I love photographing and being a photographer, right and doing photography for kids, children, childhood, parents, families, and more. Yeah,

Meredith's Husband: 11:33

you don't need to do that anymore. You used to, like 10 years ago, you did that. But now Just be natural. Think about your your geographic market. What is it? It's Brooklyn, children, families, photography, check about those things. You don't you don't need to repeat things over and over.

Meredith: 11:52

Awesome. Thank you. You're welcome. That's a very good lesson

Meredith's Husband: 11:57

that we're gonna have. We're gonna actually put this into practice.

Meredith: 12:03

Next October, over the summer,

Meredith's Husband: 12:06

sooner than that, I think we have to do it soon. Otherwise, you're gonna lose your good rankings.

Meredith: 12:13

Okay, thank you. Okay. Until next time, bye.

Meredith's Husband: 12:23

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 is 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. Again, thanks for listening.