Meredith's Husband: 0:33

Hey, this is Meredith's husband. I've got some SEO advice for you, but I'm going to keep it really simple, so that you can understand it, so it makes sense, and most importantly, so you can actually use it. Oh, hello,

Meredith: 0:58

hello. How are you? I'm great, thanks. How are you doing?

Meredith's Husband: 1:02

I'm pretty good listener. I

Meredith: 1:04

hope you're doing wonderfully. Thank you again for coming back for more. I hope I also wanted to say this that I have never known. I never have any idea what my husband is going to ask. So I literally am just showing up. So if I, if I don't sound like a brilliant genius that I usually prepared, yes, that's exactly just to I just wanted to get that. That's, that's how

Meredith's Husband: 1:31

I like it. I'm like the crazy director. I want to keep my actors in the dark and get their, their their true response. It's more real that way. Good director. No, actually, I mean, it does help it like, if I'm saying something and you're giving me a look, like, what the right talking about? Okay, people probably don't get this right. And if you're like, Oh yes, oh, I see, then I'm like, Okay, I'm connecting with at least one person? Yes, yes. Okay, so today, yes. This is something I've gotten this question a bunch of times from photographers, and it's something that is not it's very common in amongst photographers. It's not exclusive to the photography industry. This is something that any website can deal with, but for photographers, it's especially common, and that is, how do you deal with your hidden pages, what you probably refer to as your hidden pages? Yeah, so whatever these are. These could be your client, whatever a page on your website, that normal that if somebody, if I, go to your website, there's no link to it. So it's kind of secret. It's sometimes.

Meredith: 2:31

It's when photographers, when they do online galleries, then that's what they that's what they

Meredith's Husband: 2:39

Yes. Like, if you, if you do see it, right, if you have your online client gallery that you send that's probably on a, what we call a sub domain. Like, what are they? Zenfolio and pic time and those. So it would be like clients.yourdomain.com, yeah, that's a subdomain, and that those are also hidden these. This is what I'm going to say applies to those as well. But this also would be pages like, oh, I have a, you know, a blog post or something, or a page on website, on my website, that I don't link to. But once somebody signs up and they book a session, then I send them the link, right? There's kind of privileged information there. That's what I have found. Is that's pretty common. And so what are the SEO implications of those pages? What should you do with them? Etc? There's a very specific answer. And they need to have a password. They need to have a password, yeah. And this is kind of the question I get, like passwords. Setting passwords are kind of tricky. It's it takes extra time. It's a pain in the ass, I know, but you got to put a password on there. And why? Because even if you don't, when you don't link to your to these secret hidden pages, Google's going to find them anyway. Because what happened? There's a number of ways that can happen, but what happens the most often? If you're on WordPress, if you're on Squarespace, if you're on probably Wix, or any of these others, when you create a page on your website, you don't need to link to it. There's what they call a sitemap in WordPress, and Squarespace, they automatically generate this sitemap, and that site map is submitted to Google. Google knows the site map. So when you create a new page, Google knows about it. It has the site map, it's going to index it. So that's one way that those pages are going to get indexed. Immediately got it. So if you don't want those pages indexed, they're going to need a password. And the danger of having those pages indexed is twofold. I mean, I suppose people could enter your just random people, the public could enter your website through those pages, and you probably, you might not want that. The other danger is this starts to look like an old black hat SEO technique called doorway pages, and it immediately is going to raise a red flag to Google that you're trying some underhanded tactic that SEOs really have kind of stopped using. But it used to be, we would use these doorway pages, and we would try to attract attention from Google with these doorway pages. And they might not. They probably have content that's not really relevant to our website, so we don't link to it from our website. It's a secret page. We just want people coming in through that door. We don't want to actually, we don't want our website visitors to actually see that because, for some reason, it's not really relevant. We're just using it like a magnet to try to trick Google and get organic traffic. That's what used to happen. So you don't want to make it look to Google like you're trying to do. That. And that's what you're doing if you have these secret pages and they don't have a password. Now the good news is it doesn't need to be. It can be the easiest password in the world. It can be the same password for everybody. It can be it can be moose. It could be password. It can be 123, it can be, I like to use remember, just the word remember. It's easy to

Meredith: 5:57

remember. Yeah,

Meredith's Husband: 5:59

you can be anything. All it needs to do is stop the Google bot from following a link to that page and indexing it and then sending the info back to Google headquarters and say, here's what. Here's this page I found.

Meredith: 6:11

Why don't we? Why do we not want it indexed?

Meredith's Husband: 6:14

If it is indexed, it's going to look to Google like a doorway page. Okay, that's your you're going to look your, your website is going to appear, start to appear suspicious to Google. If you have these pages that are not linked, they're also what they're also what we would call orphaned pages. They're pages that are not are not linked, they've been and this happens a lot with WordPress. You know, people take a page off of their site, but it's actually still live, and Google still knows about it. Some people can still be visiting. It just is a it's an orphan now. It's kind of separate from your website. So this is actually an error that, as an SEO we come in and we evaluate a site and we need to fix. So I'm sorry, but you got to put a password on this good to know, just make it as easy as possible. Google bots, yes, whatever, whatever it is, or they can be separate. You know, it doesn't matter. They can have all individual keywords. No, I meant to say passwords there. I know that can be a little bit of a pain for your clients as well. Yeah. But the thing, and I spoke with someone recently, you know, when you send these pages to your clients, you are giving them kind of a little bit of an inside accent access. It's kind of like a VIP type thing, like, Oh, here's your special page. And you know what? I don't think that a client is really going to be that bothered if there's a password. In fact, I think they would. I think they would feel even more so like they're now they've signed up. Now they're getting access to some the good stuff, you know, whatever that is, you know, yet your website, it's for the public. Here's the secret.

Meredith: 7:53

Here the goodies, special, new dimension.

Meredith's Husband: 7:56

So in that I mean, so you could make it their name, that makes them feel very special, but then you got to create a new password, like I would. I would just keep the password the same and just give it to people that way.

Meredith: 8:07

Yeah, yeah, good to know.

Meredith's Husband: 8:10

Okay, so do that. Number two, there's two things today. I saw some, but I saw a photographer who was taking their, you know, they would take their, they have a shoot, get some images they want to put online, and they would put them on Instagram first, and then they would get they then they put them on their blog, or when they got to it, or whatever. And I need to say, Good, God, don't do that.

Meredith: 8:37

So don't put it on social media before you put not

Meredith's Husband: 8:40

first, not first. Remember, there was an episode we had where you got to own your content. This is kind of along those lines. If you take your image and you put it in the first place that you publish it on the internet is on Instagram. Yeah, that's it. That's Instagram's image. Now, okay, so Google sees it, Google. Google can know when a when the same image is repeated. It can find it. And it does that not by looking at it with eyeballs, like we would do, but the in the coding of an image is like 1000s and 1000s of characters. Google just reads those and says, Oh, this image is the same as this one. So when Google first sees an image on Instagram, it attributes that image to Instagram. It's on instagram.com first. Please put it on your own blog.

Meredith: 9:26

Oh, man, I've been putting I've been posting things on Instagram that I have not even put on a blog. Oh

Meredith's Husband: 9:31

yeah, if it's an image that you want to re, you know, maintain, you know, ownership of I don't legally. I don't know what the implications are, although I think whenever you put an image on Instagram, technically, I think they own the rights to do whatever. Yeah, I

Meredith: 9:46

thought they changed it, but I doubt that they did. I

Meredith's Husband: 9:49

don't know. To be honest, I don't know. I'm not alone. I have no idea. All I know is that when Google sees an image and it sees it published on site A, and then later it's also published on site B, C and D, that image belongs to site A, not B, C and D. So this, this, this has a story past, not with images, but with content. So when you think about content, if you have a blog article, let's say you're an author. You write it, you write something, you put it on, I don't know, the New York Times, and then you put it on your your blog a week later. When, when somebody is searching for that content, Google thinks that the owner of that content is the New York Times? No, and maybe. And honestly, to be honest, if you're. Writing for The New York Times. Wow, yeah, legally you have to do that, right? But, you know, this came into play, because what happened is, you know, I had a client who did this, and they got, oh, it did not end well, but they just took other people's content. So they would find content online, they would take it, they put it on their own site, and they would do this in bulk, so they had 1000s and 1000s of pages of content, and they ranked really, really well. And I kept telling them, You can't do this, you can't do this, you can't do this. And his response was, it's always worked before. It'll always no, no. It doesn't kill it doesn't Yeah, and he was very upset with me. Why? When it didn't go well? Why didn't you told him I'm like, I Here are 10 emails where I very specifically said, if

Meredith: 11:18

people you know this is one thing as a wife, for of you, that I can say the number of times, and I'm sure I've said this on this podcast before, but the number of times that you tell people, just do this, just and don't do that. They don't. They don't listen to you, and then there's so much shit that happens when they don't listen to you. So listeners listen

Meredith's Husband: 11:43

there are, you know, and obviously I'm not gonna tell you about the times where I fuck up and I do something stupid, although that's to be honest, it doesn't happen all that I know. I because I don't tell people very specifically do this, unless it's super concrete, like, you really need to do that. Like, this is not my opinion. This is, like, a well known industry, true in my industry, yeah, you know. So that's when I am very specific, and I tell people you need to do this and and sometimes they don't. They don't think I'm. They think it's I'm just, I don't know, blowing smoke. I don't know, I don't

Meredith: 12:21

know, I don't know, but it but, but, of course, of course, the ass

Meredith's Husband: 12:25

of you know, of course they're gonna blame me for that. Yeah, they're not gonna blame themselves. Nope, no. People rarely blame themselves. So even if I told them they were gonna, they'll say something. Well, you didn't make it clear enough, or something whatever. Anyway, I don't want to turn this podcast into a rant. So no, no, no,

Meredith: 12:42

it's just I, I'm merely saying that. Yeah, it's best to listen to you. You know what you're talking about. Uh, on some some and I'm not paid to say that,

Meredith's Husband: 12:54

right? I don't pay her anything. But, okay, so, so, yeah, so, so, you know if and maybe you have images where you where it's fine, you don't care if they go on Instagram first. What if your selfies, you know, whatever, what

Meredith: 13:12

if you put your watermark on it,

Meredith's Husband: 13:15

yeah. Well, still, you know, Google is going to see that image and be like. That image was published on Instagram a week ago, and now Meredith is putting it on her site. Ah, now

Meredith: 13:28

what if I re edited it? Would that change that?

Meredith's Husband: 13:33

Would that would change it? Yeah, okay, but, but, but same thing, if it is, if it is like one of your client, if it's a photo that you value at all, and maybe you think, hey, if people, I want my potential customers, my potential clients, to see this image. I want this image to appear in Google when somebody does a search, and I want them to see this like, then put it on your blog first. And maybe, you know, maybe, if that's just not gonna fit in your workflow, like, you know, I understand it's harder to put an image on your blog than it is on Instagram. I get that. Maybe you can have, like, a private Instagram account and embed images from your from that private account on your blog, I don't know, try, try to find a workflow where this is easy, it doesn't need, you know, maybe you can have some blog pages that are just, just photos, just right shoots from photos. Or, you know, maybe you can have photos, yeah, if you have a photo, you can take a shoot from it. Yeah, as photographers, maybe have a blog post that's just like, here's, you know, sort of duplicate what's on your Instagram page and just have it be images. It's just load images on there. Just say, Hey, here's, here's my Instagram feed. It's essentially the same thing. Can do that that's really good. Try to try to do that. Try, especially, like I said, if it's an image that you want potential clients to see and can come to your website, website as a result, yeah, then put them on on your blog first. So What? What? What you should send me your your workflow. If you're listening this and you're like, I don't know how this is going to work, just tag me on Instagram. Meredith's husband say, Here's my workflow. Tell me what your workflow is. I will tell you all the things wrong with it. No, because I'm curious, because there's I'm sure everybody has a different workflow. Some things work, some things don't. Some things are easy, some things are not. Some

Meredith: 15:31

things flow. Some things don't.

Meredith's Husband: 15:33

So please do those two things. Okay,

Meredith: 15:37

thank you. That's it. Those are good to know. Those are two very important buttons that are important.

Meredith's Husband: 15:45

All right, I'll see everyone, actually, I won't see anyone. You'll hear from us soon. Yes,

Meredith: 15:51

we look forward to your tuning in. We look forward to your ideas and thoughts and comments and thank you for listening. Thank you,

Meredith's Husband: 15:59

everybody. Bye.

Meredith: 16:02

Hey, thank you so much for listening. We really hope that you find this helpful and useful, and if you do what you could do for us as a thanks would be to drumroll please, yes. Leave a review. Yes, everybody says that. I know, but it really does make a difference. Take three seconds, leave as many stars. Say something really nice about what you like, about the podcast, and maybe why other people would like it. It would mean the world to us, especially my husband, that better. All right, I'm gonna try one where I'm not gonna be charming. You.