Meredith's Husband | SEO for People Who Don't Like SEO

SEO for people who don't like SEO. I run an SEO agency. My wife Meredith is a family photographer. Our podcast explains how I got Meredith's website to the top of Google and answers questions from photographers about SEO and website marketing.

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Meredith's Husband | SEO for People Who Don't Like SEO

One Week To A Healthier Website

November 17, 2025 • A professional photographer and her SEO husband • Episode 169

0:00 | 9:20

In this episode, Meredith's husband explains why there was no show last week and how the very first COVID-era videos he created accidentally led to a 4,000-visitor-per-month blog. He unpacks how “document, don’t create” reshaped his business, why giving away his secret sauce made him happier, and how the new one-week SEMrush Challenge can help website owners dramatically improve their technical SEO scores.

Timestamps

[0:00] Introduction
[0:24] “Welcome to Smartless” (not really)
[0:37] Why there was no episode last week
[1:23] Recording close to release because AI changes fast
[2:03] COVID boredom → early screen-share SEO videos
[2:14] “Document, don’t create” and starting a new blog
[3:21] The blog grows to 4,000+ monthly visitors with zero marketing
[4:26] Using the SEMrush free trial + blog to reach an A score
[5:06] Running the live one-week SEMrush Challenge
[7:10] Giving away the “secret sauce” shifted Meredith's husband's career
[7:16] “Don’t be afraid to blog — it might make you happier”

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Meredith 0:24

Welcome to Smartless.

Meredith's Husband 0:26

That's funny. That's funny because this isn't Smartless. You know there was no podcast last week?

Meredith 0:33

There was no podcast.

Meredith's Husband 0:34

Can you believe that? I cannot.

Meredith 0:36

Oh, why?

Meredith's Husband 0:37

Why was there no podcast for that? And I will explain. But I will say also, like we record these episodes like pretty close to when they are released. Because I like them. Sometimes we talk about stuff that's happening, like with AI, and it's kind of timely.

Meredith 0:51

You want to keep it fresh.

Meredith's Husband 0:53

And it changes every other day. So I don't want to like you know record episodes and have them drop months later. Anyway, so we record pretty close to when we released these.

Meredith 1:04

Yes.

Meredith's Husband 1:04

Well, a couple of weeks ago the Dodgers were in the World Series. Oh, that's right. So forget about it. I was busy.

Meredith 1:12

Yes.

Meredith's Husband 1:13

On top of that, I did something last week that ended up being a lot harder than I thought it was. For me, not harder, more time consuming than I thought it was going to be.

Meredith 1:22

What isn't?

COVID Blogging And Documenting Work

Meredith's Husband 1:23

But before I get into that, do you remember years ago, like during COVID? Wasn't that fun? When I was doing I started doing those videos, like we were bored off our ass. So I started doing videos up in the living room, just recording, and like I would yell down to you, I'm doing you would sneeze and be like, I'm doing a video. Memories. Well, that's what I'm gonna get into. They were so I've uh you know, on this podcast, I would say how important it is to make your blog a resource, yeah, to like make it helpful for people. And so I I struggled with that for uh years, like years and years.

Meredith 2:02

Who doesn't?

Meredith's Husband 2:03

And it was during COVID that I started trying something new. And specifically, I was using or I was kind of following, trying to follow the advice from Gary Vee. Remember, document, don't create.

Meredith 2:14

Yes.

Meredith's Husband 2:14

Rather than trying to create something new, just document what you're doing. So I started creating these blogs. I started out just making them videos like screen share videos about how how specifically how I would use SEMrush and go through and fix things on clients' websites.

Meredith 2:31

Right.

Meredith's Husband 2:33

And I was kind of afraid to, or not afraid, I was hesitant to put that on my own blog because it was very specifically the thing I was charging money for.

Meredith 2:44

Right.

Meredith's Husband 2:44

And I was like literally showing people how to do it.

Meredith 2:47

Right.

Meredith's Husband 2:47

And my thought was, well, no, you know, nobody's gonna hire me if I'm showing them exactly what it is that I'm doing.

Meredith 2:53

Well, nobody wants to do it. Well, yeah, that's you can lead a horse to water. You you can't make it write poetry.

Giving Away The Process Without Losing Clients

Meredith's Husband 3:00

So I put that stuff on a new blog. I created a new domain and I just started, I just put a blog on there and I just started blogging. I didn't do anything special with it. I didn't do any uh SEO tricks, I didn't even use SEMrush on that blog. Like I didn't do anything. And over the course of 12 months from when I launched, it built up over 4,000 visitors per month.

Meredith 3:21

Wow.

Meredith's Husband 3:21

Yeah. Yeah.

Meredith 3:22

I was with no quote marketing.

Meredith's Husband 3:25

Nothing. I did absolutely nothing with it. I just put stuff online and just put it out there. And that even surprised me. Like the the not only just the growth, but how steady the growth was. A lot of times when you're looking at growth, like the amount of traffic you get over months, and you're looking at a line graph, you know, that on Google Analytics or something, it's very jagged. It goes up and down. You have you know spurts of growth and then you know, decline sometimes. This line was like almost straight. Wow. Um so I was, yeah, I was really surprised by that. I still didn't know what to do with it though. Like I had this blog, it was getting lots of traffic. I'm like, but what do I how how what do I do with it?

Meredith 4:04

Right.

Meredith's Husband 4:04

Well, not too long ago, I had an idea.

Meredith 4:08

I could we all had to sit down after.

Accidental Blog Growth To 4,000 Monthly Visitors

Meredith's Husband 4:10

Yeah, right. What I was thinking is you could you could do that stuff. You could use the Sumrush free trial and do the stuff that I had in that blog. Like use that blog as a resource while you're using the SUMRush free trial to get your score to like an A.

Meredith 4:26

Mm-hmm.

Meredith's Husband 4:26

To optim to do the technical optimization for your website.

Meredith 4:30

In one week.

Meredith's Husband 4:31

In one week. With the SEMrush free trial.

Meredith 4:34

So I said free trial is one week. There we go.

Meredith's Husband 4:38

Yeah. So last week I did this thing. It was a one-week SEMrush challenge. Get your score to a 90 or better on SEMrush. And it was kind of the first time I did it in a sort of live format. Like I rolled out the things every day. As you know, I was recording them, not recording them, but like fixing things the night before based on what happened that day. So they'd be ready the next day. Awesome. Uh took a lot of work. So that's why there was no podcast episode last week. I apologize.

Meredith 5:05

You're working hard.

The One-Week SEMrush Challenge

Meredith's Husband 5:06

I was working very hard. Anyway, that challenge is now over. It's still online. It's not going to be there forever. It was going to expire, but you know, I thought now it's online. I would actually like to give it to my listeners.

Meredith 5:19

Oh.

Meredith's Husband 5:20

Some some people were there. Some if you're listening this, you're like, wait a minute, I was there. Like, yeah, thank you. Awesome. But also, maybe some people didn't hear about. So I'm going to leave it online for another week.

Meredith 5:31

Nice.

Meredith's Husband 5:31

I will put the link below if you want to go. It's free. And it helps. It literally helps. And the thing that I really like about SEMrush and the technical SEO is it's very concrete. Like you have a score. You set your project up, it analyzes your site, it gives you a concrete score, and you can do some work and you see that score go up. It's one of the very few things, well, in life really, but in SEO and marketing and business where you can you can really measure with accuracy like how healthy your website is.

Meredith 6:03

Right. Right. That's great.

Concrete Scores And Visible Progress

Meredith's Husband 6:05

Anyway, so that's online. Uh I was going to take it down midweek this week, uh, but it's going to be online for the rest of this week. If you want to check it out, it's now online. So you don't have to wait for it to drip you know, day by day. It's all there. There are no videos that are that long. And also those old blogs, if you want to see my old blogs about the these are not exactly the ones that I was screaming down to you to be quiet. I was doing a bit. I have I've I redid them since then. They're still uh, you know, they're still uh precious.

Meredith 6:36

They're precious. Someday they're gonna be worth a lot of money.

Leave-Up Window And How To Access

Meredith's Husband 6:41

But anyway, I was on my way to the office today. Yes, and thinking, you know, what I'm doing now, this SEMrush challenge, it all started because of my blog. Oh, because I tried to, I I gave away my secret sauce, as I as I sometimes call it. The thing that people are afraid to, you know, give away because then what are you gonna do? And that kind of started me doing a a new thing. That has kind of shifted the focus of my career.

Meredith 7:08

Yeah, it has.

Meredith's Husband 7:10

And dare I say, I think it's made me a happier person.

Meredith 7:14

I think it has as well.

Meredith's Husband 7:16

Don't be afraid to blog. It can make you happier. If that's not an inspiration, I don't know what it is.

Meredith 7:23

But also, what's important is that so Sumrush has the free week trial and your free course is a week.

Meredith's Husband 7:33

Yeah.

Meredith 7:33

And so everything is free.

Meredith's Husband 7:36

Yeah.

Meredith 7:37

But it's all helpful.

Meredith's Husband 7:39

Yes.

How Sharing Shifted A Career And Mindset

Meredith 7:39

And it's all stuff that you used to charge for.

Meredith's Husband 7:43

Yes. So that's uh and if if you are taking that and if it's helpful, I do offer for a charge, it's not for free, but the the when I do this for clients, yeah, I created a spreadsheet to use myself.

Meredith 7:56

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband 7:56

To keep because I've done this a lot. I know what works and what doesn't. And also to share with clients to help them. Because now as I have shifted away from being a practitioner and to more being a consultant, I assign to the client, here, give this to a an intern or a junior level or your web manager, and they will be able to do it. If you want that spreadsheet that I created to do that, to share with the client, you can purchase that. If you want, it's not necessary, but if you want it, that's there also.

Meredith 8:24

And it's cheap.

Meredith's Husband 8:25

It is very reasonably priced.

Meredith 8:28

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband 8:28

When I used to when I used to when I used to like do this for clients, like that would start, like doing that work would start at $2,500.

Meredith 8:36

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband 8:37

It is not $2,500.

Meredith 8:39

It's very generous of you.

Meredith's Husband 8:41

Yeah, well, I hope it helps.

Free Course, Paid Spreadsheet, Practical Next Steps

Meredith 8:42

I think it will.

Meredith's Husband 8:43

I'll link it below.

Meredith's Husband

Host

Meredith Zinner

Co-host