November 3, 2025 • 8 mins
In this episode, Meredith and her husband break down a misconception in SEO — that you need to be a technical genius to succeed. Meredith’s Husband explains why most modern website platforms already handle the “tech stuff” and why Google actually rewards usability and trust over perfection. You’ll also hear how the new SEMrush Challenge helps you reach “good enough SEO” — an A-level site score that’s more than enough to win.
Timestamps
[0:00] Introduction
[0:24] SEO isn’t as technical as people think
[0:34] How the SEO industry promotes complexity
[1:39] “Part of the problem since 2002”
[2:03] What “Good Enough SEO” means
[2:22] Why Google doesn’t care about technical perfection
[3:00] How modern platforms (Squarespace, Wix, WordPress) handle technical SEO
[4:12] Thinking like Google: What does Google really want?
[5:45] What “good enough” looks like (A-grade site, not 100%)
[7:21] Introduction to the SEMrush Challenge
--
CONTACT
Leave Feedback or Request Topics:
https://forms.gle/bqxbwDWBySoiUYxL7
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Meredith's husband (00:24):
Gonna talk about a misconception today.
About SEO.
No, and not a not a myth, amisconception.
It's not really a myth.
Meredith (00:30):
No, that's a Muppet joke.
Muppet movie joke.
Meredith's husband (00:34):
And that is that SEO is like this technical
uh thing.
It's like this technical beast.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah, that's really not true.
That's not the case.
Really?
Yeah.
I mean, we've talked about thatbefore, but like specifically,
I just did something, I did a Irecorded a slash short lesson
for some group about uh kind ofon the along these lines.
Meredith (00:57):
Yeah.
Meredith's husband (00:58):
And I'm gonna play that in a second.
It's only five minutes.
It's five minutes long.
But that is what the SEOindustry wants you to think.
That SEO is technical, that youneed to be some sort of
technical genius to be able todo SEO.
Yes.
That's that's literally whatthe industry has, you know,
promoted.
Yes.
I was just writing my own bio,I think for that little lesson
that I'm gonna share with you.
(01:19):
I was writing my own bio, andthe byline is like Meredith's
husband loves Meredith.
No, the headline is Meredith'shusband, and then the byline,
this that is the I don't knowwhat the byline is, but the
little tiny tiny line of textright after it says Meredith's
husband.
I usually say something like,you know, SEO consultant since
2002 or something.
Meredith (01:39):
Yeah.
Meredith's husband (01:39):
And what I wanted to do for this one is
instead of that, say part of theproblem since 2002.
Meredith (01:48):
But you haven't been part of the problem.
That's the whole thing.
You've never been like thegross guy.
You've been the one that.
Meredith's husband (01:55):
Yeah, I try to shed light.
Anyway, that's what we'redoing.
That's what I'm gonna do here.
Some light.
Meredith (02:02):
Shed some light.
Meredith's husband (02:03):
So this video that I'm gonna share, I
call it good enough SEO.
Meredith (02:07):
Okay.
Meredith's husband (02:07):
Oh, I like that.
Your SEO just needs to be goodenough.
It does not need to betechnically perfect.
Google, and when you'll I'llexplain this in the video, but
Google is not going out thereand looking for technically
perfect websites so they cansend their own users there.
Meredith (02:22):
Okay.
Meredith's husband (02:22):
So you don't need to be technically perfect.
What you usually need is like atranslation of SEO of SEO
things.
What do they mean?
And what like what do youactually what are you supposed
to do with them?
Meredith (02:32):
Right.
Meredith's husband (02:33):
Okay, so enjoy this lesson.
After the lesson, I'm gonnashare something that I just
created called the SEMrushChallenge.
Meredith (02:41):
Oh.
Meredith's husband (02:42):
And you know I've been working on this for
several weeks and pulling myhair out.
Meredith (02:46):
Yes.
Meredith's husband (02:48):
All right, let's talk about a uh myth that
I hear often.
Actually, I don't hear itoften.
People don't come to me and askme about this, but this is
something that I see that seemsto be the people believe.
And that is that SEO is verytechnical.
You gotta have a like technicalexpertise to be able to do SEO
well.
And that is really not thecase.
And there's two, there's abunch of reasons for that that I
(03:10):
could explain, but there'sreally two main ones.
The first is that, yeah, itused to be true, like years ago,
just putting up a website wasyou had to be very uh
technically proficient.
It was not an easy thing to do.
Then WordPress came along,sites like Squarespace and Wix
and all these other things, andthe need to be a technical whiz
(03:30):
in order to create a website haslargely gone away.
You can put up a uh websitewith like pretty much no
technical experience in a coupledays.
And these platforms that dothis, Squarespace, Wix,
PixieSet, they take care of alot of the technical stuff,
obviously.
But that also means that theytake care of a lot of the
(03:51):
technical stuff that you wouldneed to do for SEO.
Like they make sure that yourwebsite is fast and that it's
going to adjust for mobiledevices.
It takes care of all thatstuff.
Now, a downside of that is thatit takes care of it for you, so
you can't do it.
You don't have the access youwould need.
And so because you don't havethe access, you can't do quite
as much as you would be able todo if your website was
(04:13):
completely built from custom oron WordPress.
WordPress is a little moreflexible in that regard than is
like Squarespace.
But even Squarespace is prettygood.
So in that respect, you don'tneed to be a technical genius.
And the second reason, imagineif you were Google.
So I do this a lot.
This is really my wholeapproach to SEO.
Imagine if you were Google.
(04:34):
What is your what is yourobjective?
Let's think this through.
You're Google, you havecustomers.
People come to Google, they'relooking for something.
Let's call those people yourcustomers.
What is your job?
What you want to do is you wantto get your customers to the
information they want as quicklyand easily as possible.
You want your customers to behappy so they keep coming back
(04:55):
and they keep doing moresearches.
That's Google's entire ifGoogle doesn't make that happen,
Google has a big problem.
So, what does it mean to sendyour customers to a website
where those customers are goingto be happy?
Does it mean you need to sendthose customers to a website
that is technically perfect?
No.
No, no.
You are not, as Google, you arenot going out and looking for
(05:17):
websites that are technicallyperfect in order to send your
customers to.
You're looking for websitesthat have a good user experience
and have good content and aretrusted authorities.
That's where you want to sendyour customers.
Just because a website, if itis technically perfect, it might
not be useful to somebody.
In fact, if a coder builds awebsite from scratch and it is
(05:40):
technically perfect, there's apretty good chance in it's not
going to be that great forcustomers.
I've worked with a lot ofcoders and they are insanely
good at a lot of things, and myentire profession wouldn't even
be possible without them.
But they're often also not thebest in terms of like creating
user-friendly experiences forpeople who go to visit those
websites.
(06:00):
That's what a designer is allabout, or more of a strategist
like myself.
So in this respect also, youyour website doesn't need to be
perfect, doesn't need to be 100out of 100.
And these platforms that dothese things, what most of us
are building websites, either onWordPress or Squarespace or Wix
or one of these platforms,they're going to do the
(06:20):
technical heavy lifting for us.
What you and I need to do asowners of these websites is put,
is make sure that we're we'regiving Google's customers what
they want.
We're creating a good userexperience for people who come
and visit our website.
That's what Google wants.
And if you can do that and yourwebsite is just good enough,
meaning it's reasonably fast,pages aren't broken, images
(06:43):
aren't broken, links aren'tbroken, it displays on different
devices, desktop, mobile,tablet, et cetera, that's going
to be good enough.
Google just doesn't want tosend people to sites where
things are where there areproblems, where things are
broken, where it's really slow,et cetera.
If you basically get an A inthat in your score of your
website, if you're 90 or higher,you're good.
(07:04):
You don't need to worry aboutbeing a 99.
Okay, so hopefully thisclarifies, hopefully this
alleviates some you know anxietythat you need to have a
technically perfect website.
It just needs to be goodenough.
And then you need to createsomething that visitors are
going to appreciate.
Okay.
I hope this helps.
Meredith (07:20):
That's a great video.
Meredith's husband (07:21):
What'd you think?
Yeah, you like it.
Meredith (07:22):
I loved it.
Meredith's husband (07:23):
So the SEMrush challenge is just aimed
at getting you the good enoughSEO, how you use a free trial on
SEMrush to get your websiteessentially an A from Google.
Meredith (07:33):
Excellent.
Meredith's husban (07:34):
Specifically, I go through setting up a trial
on SEMrush, using the freetrial to get your good enough
SEO.
There's some QA, and then howto downgrade your free trial at
the end of the week because theSUMRush free trial is a week
long.
If you don't want to continuepaying for it, then how do you
downgrade to a lesser featuredbut permanent free plan?
Meredith (07:53):
Will it also maintain the results, or do you need to
have a paid SUMRush account?
Meredith's husband (08:00):
The free SUMRush permanent account will
do kind of like a maintenanceplan.
It will audit your site onceper month, whereas a paid
SUMRush account, well, you cando it anytime.
You can do it 50 times a weekif you want.
The free SUMRush accountforever will run a website audit
once per month and send you theresults so you can kind of
monitor your A status.
Meredith (08:22):
Okay.
Meredith's husband (08:22):
I will link to that below.
Gonna talk about a misconception today.
About SEO.
No, and not a not a myth, amisconception.
It's not really a myth.
Meredith (00:30):
No, that's a Muppet joke.
Muppet movie joke.
Meredith's husband (00:34):
And that is that SEO is like this technical
uh thing.
It's like this technical beast.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah, that's really not true.
That's not the case.
Really?
Yeah.
I mean, we've talked about thatbefore, but like specifically,
I just did something, I did a Irecorded a slash short lesson
for some group about uh kind ofon the along these lines.
Meredith (00:57):
Yeah.
Meredith's husband (00:58):
And I'm gonna play that in a second.
It's only five minutes.
It's five minutes long.
But that is what the SEOindustry wants you to think.
That SEO is technical, that youneed to be some sort of
technical genius to be able todo SEO.
Yes.
That's that's literally whatthe industry has, you know,
promoted.
Yes.
I was just writing my own bio,I think for that little lesson
that I'm gonna share with you.
(01:19):
I was writing my own bio, andthe byline is like Meredith's
husband loves Meredith.
No, the headline is Meredith'shusband, and then the byline,
this that is the I don't knowwhat the byline is, but the
little tiny tiny line of textright after it says Meredith's
husband.
I usually say something like,you know, SEO consultant since
2002 or something.
Meredith (01:39):
Yeah.
Meredith's husband (01:39):
And what I wanted to do for this one is
instead of that, say part of theproblem since 2002.
Meredith (01:48):
But you haven't been part of the problem.
That's the whole thing.
You've never been like thegross guy.
You've been the one that.
Meredith's husband (01:55):
Yeah, I try to shed light.
Anyway, that's what we'redoing.
That's what I'm gonna do here.
Some light.
Meredith (02:02):
Shed some light.
Meredith's husband (02:03):
So this video that I'm gonna share, I
call it good enough SEO.
Meredith (02:07):
Okay.
Meredith's husband (02:07):
Oh, I like that.
Your SEO just needs to be goodenough.
It does not need to betechnically perfect.
Google, and when you'll I'llexplain this in the video, but
Google is not going out thereand looking for technically
perfect websites so they cansend their own users there.
Meredith (02:22):
Okay.
Meredith's husband (02:22):
So you don't need to be technically perfect.
What you usually need is like atranslation of SEO of SEO
things.
What do they mean?
And what like what do youactually what are you supposed
to do with them?
Meredith (02:32):
Right.
Meredith's husband (02:33):
Okay, so enjoy this lesson.
After the lesson, I'm gonnashare something that I just
created called the SEMrushChallenge.
Meredith (02:41):
Oh.
Meredith's husband (02:42):
And you know I've been working on this for
several weeks and pulling myhair out.
Meredith (02:46):
Yes.
Meredith's husband (02:48):
All right, let's talk about a uh myth that
I hear often.
Actually, I don't hear itoften.
People don't come to me and askme about this, but this is
something that I see that seemsto be the people believe.
And that is that SEO is verytechnical.
You gotta have a like technicalexpertise to be able to do SEO
well.
And that is really not thecase.
And there's two, there's abunch of reasons for that that I
(03:10):
could explain, but there'sreally two main ones.
The first is that, yeah, itused to be true, like years ago,
just putting up a website wasyou had to be very uh
technically proficient.
It was not an easy thing to do.
Then WordPress came along,sites like Squarespace and Wix
and all these other things, andthe need to be a technical whiz
(03:30):
in order to create a website haslargely gone away.
You can put up a uh websitewith like pretty much no
technical experience in a coupledays.
And these platforms that dothis, Squarespace, Wix,
PixieSet, they take care of alot of the technical stuff,
obviously.
But that also means that theytake care of a lot of the
(03:51):
technical stuff that you wouldneed to do for SEO.
Like they make sure that yourwebsite is fast and that it's
going to adjust for mobiledevices.
It takes care of all thatstuff.
Now, a downside of that is thatit takes care of it for you, so
you can't do it.
You don't have the access youwould need.
And so because you don't havethe access, you can't do quite
as much as you would be able todo if your website was
(04:13):
completely built from custom oron WordPress.
WordPress is a little moreflexible in that regard than is
like Squarespace.
But even Squarespace is prettygood.
So in that respect, you don'tneed to be a technical genius.
And the second reason, imagineif you were Google.
So I do this a lot.
This is really my wholeapproach to SEO.
Imagine if you were Google.
(04:34):
What is your what is yourobjective?
Let's think this through.
You're Google, you havecustomers.
People come to Google, they'relooking for something.
Let's call those people yourcustomers.
What is your job?
What you want to do is you wantto get your customers to the
information they want as quicklyand easily as possible.
You want your customers to behappy so they keep coming back
(04:55):
and they keep doing moresearches.
That's Google's entire ifGoogle doesn't make that happen,
Google has a big problem.
So, what does it mean to sendyour customers to a website
where those customers are goingto be happy?
Does it mean you need to sendthose customers to a website
that is technically perfect?
No.
No, no.
You are not, as Google, you arenot going out and looking for
(05:17):
websites that are technicallyperfect in order to send your
customers to.
You're looking for websitesthat have a good user experience
and have good content and aretrusted authorities.
That's where you want to sendyour customers.
Just because a website, if itis technically perfect, it might
not be useful to somebody.
In fact, if a coder builds awebsite from scratch and it is
(05:40):
technically perfect, there's apretty good chance in it's not
going to be that great forcustomers.
I've worked with a lot ofcoders and they are insanely
good at a lot of things, and myentire profession wouldn't even
be possible without them.
But they're often also not thebest in terms of like creating
user-friendly experiences forpeople who go to visit those
websites.
(06:00):
That's what a designer is allabout, or more of a strategist
like myself.
So in this respect also, youyour website doesn't need to be
perfect, doesn't need to be 100out of 100.
And these platforms that dothese things, what most of us
are building websites, either onWordPress or Squarespace or Wix
or one of these platforms,they're going to do the
(06:20):
technical heavy lifting for us.
What you and I need to do asowners of these websites is put,
is make sure that we're we'regiving Google's customers what
they want.
We're creating a good userexperience for people who come
and visit our website.
That's what Google wants.
And if you can do that and yourwebsite is just good enough,
meaning it's reasonably fast,pages aren't broken, images
(06:43):
aren't broken, links aren'tbroken, it displays on different
devices, desktop, mobile,tablet, et cetera, that's going
to be good enough.
Google just doesn't want tosend people to sites where
things are where there areproblems, where things are
broken, where it's really slow,et cetera.
If you basically get an A inthat in your score of your
website, if you're 90 or higher,you're good.
(07:04):
You don't need to worry aboutbeing a 99.
Okay, so hopefully thisclarifies, hopefully this
alleviates some you know anxietythat you need to have a
technically perfect website.
It just needs to be goodenough.
And then you need to createsomething that visitors are
going to appreciate.
Okay.
I hope this helps.
Meredith (07:20):
That's a great video.
Meredith's husband (07:21):
What'd you think?
Yeah, you like it.
Meredith (07:22):
I loved it.
Meredith's husband (07:23):
So the SEMrush challenge is just aimed
at getting you the good enoughSEO, how you use a free trial on
SEMrush to get your websiteessentially an A from Google.
Meredith (07:33):
Excellent.
Meredith's husban (07:34):
Specifically, I go through setting up a trial
on SEMrush, using the freetrial to get your good enough
SEO.
There's some QA, and then howto downgrade your free trial at
the end of the week because theSUMRush free trial is a week
long.
If you don't want to continuepaying for it, then how do you
downgrade to a lesser featuredbut permanent free plan?
Meredith (07:53):
Will it also maintain the results, or do you need to
have a paid SUMRush account?
Meredith's husband (08:00):
The free SUMRush permanent account will
do kind of like a maintenanceplan.
It will audit your site onceper month, whereas a paid
SUMRush account, well, you cando it anytime.
You can do it 50 times a weekif you want.
The free SUMRush accountforever will run a website audit
once per month and send you theresults so you can kind of
monitor your A status.
Meredith (08:22):
Okay.
Meredith's husband (08:22):
I will link to that below.
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.