#138 Optimising Images, Authority in E-E-A-T, AI audio transcription, and Homepages

Jonny Ross 00:19 - 00:28 Hello, welcome. It's the 90-Day Website Mastery Podcast with Jonny and Pascal. Thanks for joining us. Hello, Pascal.

Pascal Fintoni 00:29 - 00:40 Well, hello, Jonny. And apologies if you're watching it live. It's a fraction later than planned, but it's my fault. I would just be rushing back from a conference this morning.

Pascal Fintoni 00:40 - 00:44 So thank you, Jonny, for your patience and for our live viewers and listeners as well. Jonny Ross 00:45 - 00:46 Well, we're glad you're here, Pascal. Pascal Fintoni 00:47 - 00:47 Uh, yes. Jonny Ross 00:47 - 01:03 Thanks for joining us.

Whether you're on the replay watching or listening, we love the fact that you're here. This is the nine state website, mastery podcast, the perfect companion to our nine state website, mastery program, and our book. Web Proud, which is, of course, available on Amazon. Jonny Ross 01:03 - 01:17 It's our 57th episode.

We're excited to bring you even more valuable insights and practical advice to help you enhance your website's performance and ultimately to start feeling proud of your website again. We've got four segments in every episode. We have the you ask, we answer. Jonny Ross 01:17 - 01:40 We have website stories where we share.

Well, this week with part three of our EAT sessions. So we're going to be talking about authority today. And then we've also got the Third section, which is the website engine room, where we'll share perhaps an app or a piece of kit to help you as a website manager, manage your website better and produce a website you're proud of. Jonny Ross 01:40 - 01:48 And of course we finish every piece of content with the website call to action.

Listen, let's get started with you ask, we answer. Pascal Fintoni 01:55 - 02:38 Now, this is a lovely question, actually, for this segment, Johnny, because this came about during an in-person masterclass, and I've been obviously banging the drum for many, many years now about content creation and how now our thinking has been challenged with AI overviews and generative optimization. And so we were working on the copy and I said, well, and of course, and of course, you know, you must make sure you have a good, good visuals to accompany this lovely articles.

And the conversation went into the tagging of those photos. So someone said, well, I'm using a WordPress site and whenever I upload a photo, I've got this bizarre form that pops up with different fields. Pascal Fintoni 02:38 - 02:56 I'm not so sure what to do with them, but actually, I'm also, I think, lacking the discipline, or I'm not very consistent. Sometimes I do it, sometimes I don't, and so on.

So I want to explore all that with you, but the question is literally as follows. When I upload a new image on my website using the WordPress CMS, I can see fields to be completed. Pascal Fintoni 02:57 - 03:14 What are they for, and how do I use them? How do I motivate myself to do so?

It's a very long question, multi things in there. But can I ask you, I mean, you will obviously be more than familiar with the fields that will accompany an image upload on the website. Pascal Fintoni 03:14 - 03:19 Can you take us through again your own experience and your own thoughts on that? Jonny Ross 03:20 - 03:51 Yeah, well, I was delivering a workshop yesterday evening about AI visibility, and I found myself talking about the naming of images and not calling them 123.

jpg. And in my mind, I'm like, I was saying this 20 years ago. You know, am I starting to sound a bit sort of out of date here? But what's crazy is that stuff that, you know, good SEO that we were doing many, many years ago is just even actually more important right now, especially when we bring AI visibility into it.

Jonny Ross 03:51 - 04:23 So I think before we even get to WordPress and the discipline, which actually, you know, Pascal, you're more disciplined than me, so I'm interested to hear your take on that. Actually, before we even get to the fields to fill in, we need to make sure that we're even naming the, uh, the file correctly and using descriptive words, not stuffing keywords, but actually just, you know, whether it be the brand or whether it be just describing what's in that image in a, in a few, uh, short words.

Um, and that becomes the name of the, the, the image that you're then uploading. Jonny Ross 04:24 - 04:43 But yeah, you've got a whole rich. section of fields where you can populate data. And what we say in SEO and visibility is if you've got a field to fill in, fill it in.

So if you're creating a new LinkedIn profile, if you're creating a Google business listing, fill every field in. Jonny Ross 04:43 - 05:15 So you've got things like alt text, which is the alternative, if an image is not shown for accessibility reasons or whatever it might be on a website, then it's what text is shown instead of the image. You can have the title of the image included in the field, which is sort of the internal reference. And that helps you even just from searching for the right image when it comes to searching for images in your media library.

So much easier if you actually give the image a title. Jonny Ross 05:15 - 05:41 Captions, those are the, the, the words that might be, uh, underneath the image that are visible. Uh, all of these things add, uh, SEO, uh, good for geo, good for AI visibility. And of course, things like descriptions as well, but how, how do you deal with the discipline?

Uh, because sort of, I know what I do in my own mind, but I'm curious, uh, Pascal, how you get into a position where you, you actually just make sure you do it. Pascal Fintoni 05:42 - 06:09 Yeah, that's interesting. So what I've done for myself, which I then, you know, transfer over with my trainees and mentees is decided that the real work is actually on the website. So what I mean by that is very often people put so much energy into the crafting of the article that their commitment is to the article itself, the words in Word document or Google Docs or another version.

And in a way, the website bit almost becomes an inconvenience. Pascal Fintoni 06:10 - 06:35 So you kind of reset everything to go, all you're doing is gathering ingredients. So the words in Word documents, ingredient number one, the photo where the file name has been changed on the computer is an ingredient and everything else, you know, so you gather the ingredients. And then the real work and the moment of joy comes when you put all this and make it come alive on the CMS.

So there's just a mindset shift. Pascal Fintoni 06:36 - 07:11 The second thing is particularly when it comes to the photos. So again, what people will do is they will write the article, the word, they will put the words on the CMS, and then they look around for an image and that becomes boring, tedious, or they'll go too quick. We eventually go i've got to get this done i'm gonna move on to the next thing so the final image is ok they may remember to do the final name change johnny but after that we go i'm gonna move on to the next thing so what i tend to do then i start with the image not with the words so what i tend to do is think of it like i'm filmmaking where you have a poster.

Pascal Fintoni 07:11 - 07:43 When the teaser trailer then full movie so in that order your images to poster for the for the movie. and you spend just a bit longer on the description. And what I tend to do is, I said to her, imagine your favorite client, imagine your favorite friend, I'm sure you have one or two on this thing, and you're doing it for them. So it's not, you're not doing it for the CMS, you're not doing it for Google and AI overviews or ChatGPT, you're doing it for that person that is in your mind, and you'll find that then you'll be a bit more committed.

Pascal Fintoni 07:43 - 08:01 And then you kind of do all the different fields, you know, alt text, title. I use caption as well if I want to quote the source or if I want to add, you know, value. And I also do the description, but I do the image first and then I add the text. And that creates a bit of a hierarchy.

Pascal Fintoni 08:01 - 08:11 But if you think about it, Jonny, that's logical, because that's what people will see first. They'll see your title, or the article, or whatever that is. Then they'll see the visual. Then they'll see the copy.

Pascal Fintoni 08:11 - 08:37 And the argument being that if you have a strong visual, they'll be keener. to read the article. And finally, what can really create discipline is, of course, to batch upload your content. So you may have four or five articles lined up, four or five images, and you'll find that if you can do four or five articles that can be timestamped so they are released all the time in that one hour kind of bit of work, you're also more likely Pascal Fintoni 08:37 - 08:44 to do it.

So yeah, that's what I've been inventing all the time, but that's been my own experience and I pass it on to my clients. Jonny Ross 08:44 - 09:07 Yeah, sounds sounds like a very good discipline indeed. By the way, all my clients are my favorite clients. I don't have a you know, if you're listening right now.

And yeah, and actually just to round this off, I just thought I would mention the importance that some of these have. Jonny Ross 09:08 - 09:33 So the alt text is critical from an accessibility point of view, and Google really is bothered about accessibility. Um, I would say the next sort of highest in terms of sort of SEO and geo value is the caption, uh, followed by the description. So, uh, those are the, uh, the things to bear in mind.

So make sure that, you know, you're naming the file name, thinking about the old text, thinking about a caption and a description. Jonny Ross 09:33 - 09:43 The benefit of the title is that you'll be able to be able to search in your media library to be able to find the right one afterwards. Good question, Pascal. I like it.

Yeah, very much so. Jonny Ross 09:43 - 09:47 We'll move on to our next section, which is website stories. Pascal Fintoni 09:53 - 10:33 So as you mentioned, Johnny, during the introduction, we are still going through this wonderful, wonderful article from Ahrefs. We've been looking at expertise, we're looking at experience, and that's been interesting to understand the difference.

And going through what Mateusz Makusewicz and Joshua Hardwick from Ahrefs have been exploring, we're now going to move on to A for authority, the third letter into this acronym. From my point of view, what has been interesting is to both explore what obviously the team at Ahrefs think about authority, but also then to delve into our own experience. Pascal Fintoni 10:34 - 10:59 Now, this one is kind of interesting because again, we may have some challenge between authority and the final letter, Johnny, of T, which is trustworthiness, because you could argue, you know, what's the difference?

But as far as the team at HRS is concerned, this is what is meant by authority. Authority means being recognized by others. as a trusted go to source in your field or industry. Pascal Fintoni 11:00 - 11:31 And the by others for me is probably the one I want to kind of spend some time on because you could obviously think that what I'm going to do is create more information about myself, you know, from myself, that makes any sense.

And that will establish authorities. But as far as the Google kind of guideline and framework of EE80 is concerned, it's authority means being recognized by others. And that's where it's very different to expertise and experience, which is more about the claims you're making about yourself. Pascal Fintoni 11:31 - 11:38 So, I mean, do you think that that's enough to understand authority, or do we need to delve into it a bit more, this idea that others are vouching for you?

Jonny Ross 11:39 - 12:08 Yeah, you're right that there's such a huge crossover, isn't there? However, if we were to look at it like this in terms of what others are saying, I think that's actually a really good way to segment them, because we know that there's such a crossover. So for me, the thing that screams out here is actually just good old-fashioned PR. I'm not just sort of making up stories, but obviously we're looking for, you know, real stories where, where there's, where there's real credibility to have that PR in place.

Jonny Ross 12:09 - 12:46 So it, you know, good SEO, good link building is built on things like PR. So I think authority comes from you know, if, if, if you have the authority, it makes sense that you are going to be featured in different places. So from a you know thinking about some of the e-commerce brands i work with and whether they be online retailers where the small or large it doesn't really matter but being featured in things like gift guides being featured in in magazines being featured on other websites is a brilliant way to create authority to demonstrate authority.

Jonny Ross 12:46 - 13:04 I think I'd be interested to see where the segment goes from this article in terms of trust in the next episode. But the other thing that comes to mind is reviews. So third parties saying what they think about you. And I think that does build authority.

Jonny Ross 13:04 - 13:39 Does it build authority to you as a person? No, it builds it more to the brand, to the website. So I think The bit that i take from the authority is that this is about you as a person as well and so that's why i can potentially see how reviews filter into both. So going back to the person, what press coverage can we get about you and whether that be in trade press, in local media, you know all the different digital footprints that you've got across the ecosystem, how can we get mentions and who could you partner with what other Jonny Ross 13:39 - 14:23 brands could you be doing collaborations with would be of interest as well and sometimes that's a really easy fit so not necessarily sticking with e-commerce for a moment but taking for example a wedding photographer well in the wedding industry there's sort of 20 other things like the wedding flowers, the events, the venues, all the different, the photographer, the videographer, all work together, a bit like mortgage brokers and insurance brokers, they recommend each other, and solicitors even.

So who could you collaborate with would be, I think, a way of demonstrating authority. What other ways do you have experience in terms of building authority, Pascal? Pascal Fintoni 14:23 - 14:35 Do you know what's interesting? You reminded me of an activity you and I used to do a long time ago.

Maybe we should bring it back again. Do you remember when we used to look at websites and actually establishing authority through your website? Pascal Fintoni 14:35 - 14:51 And we used to say, well, if the website is in the middle of this circle, but the circle is not made up of your own website, but someone else's website. And we used to have four groups.

Remember, we used to have business directories was one group of website. We used to have the industry news was a group of websites. Pascal Fintoni 14:51 - 15:19 So we used to kind of create this idea of, you're going to ring fence your website with the support from others. That's really, really quite important.

So I think the other thing that people need to, again, it's about having a system, isn't it? If you are invited to speak, it could be a small business, localised business club, it could be a larger event, but can you make sure that actually that invitation appears online? Pascal Fintoni 15:20 - 15:36 It doesn't have to be an even bright page, it can be just the local business club's website, it's got you listed. as the guest speaker for an informal Q&A and so on.

Because all this adds validation to, of course, people, but also for the platform. So I think for me, it would be a good thing. Pascal Fintoni 15:36 - 16:04 And you're very good at this, by the way. If you have been invited, if you can do a recap of what you've said on your website with a link back to the wonderful organizers and host, have a look on Johnny's website.

It does us superbly well. Of course, you mentioned it, you know, so you've got the press coverage, but also could you try and find a way to be almost like a regular columnist in specific trade publications and podcasts, whatever. Pascal Fintoni 16:04 - 16:22 So more than once is probably what we do here. And by the way, for all of you listening, the local media, the local press is really well liked by the likes of Google.

And I know you've noticed that. So don't think that you have to aim, well, you should try, you know, BBC, The Guardian, Financial Times, all other publications are available. Pascal Fintoni 16:22 - 16:53 But actually, a very localized news platform can do your business wonders and the authorities wonders. And they like that co-citation between your address and of course, the address of the publication.

But I think for me, the one that will create authority is to remind yourself about all what I call the badges and battle scars. So if you belong to membership organization, if you want some awards, and we all have that kind of, you know, modesty and humility that's been built in from, you know, we've been brought up. Pascal Fintoni 16:53 - 17:18 But if your organization belongs to membership organization, which you take a bit for granted, but that could be actually the sign of authority where you can not only put the badge, but also link back to maybe the page where you're listed or to write an article about it as well.

But so for me, the word would be, who are the others in your line of work, in the world of your customers? Who are the others that literally can vouch for you? Pascal Fintoni 17:18 - 17:40 And that's probably the best way you can kind of work it out. So if we were to do a recap on what we've done so far with E, E, A, and then T next time, with experience, you know, the question people could have, Johnny, would be, well, have you done this before?

You know, I don't want to be a guinea pig. as a client, but with expertise, is how deeply eligible are you? Pascal Fintoni 17:41 - 17:50 Or it's just a win. And then with authority, do others recognize that your claims are valid and credible?

That could be one way to look at it. Jonny Ross 17:51 - 18:10 and very excited to look at how we're going to shape trust in the next episode. Yeah. And it's all coming together.

And this fundamentally, if you can get EAT right, you are most of the way there in terms of visibility, whether that be through Google or whether it be through AI chatbots. Jonny Ross 18:11 - 18:20 I think it's been brilliant to focus on this Pascal in the detail that we're doing it. Let's move to our next segment, which is the website engineering. Pascal Fintoni 18:27 - 18:39 Now in this part of the show, Joni and I surprised each other with a new discovery from the interweb, something that can make life easier as a content creator and website manager.

So what have you come across, Joni? Jonny Ross 18:39 - 19:02 Well, I do have my favorite notetaker. However, there is a huge buzz right now about a specific notetaker and having a play with it and hearing some of my peers using it, it's quite impressive. It's called Granola, Granola AI.

It's an AI notetaker that listens to your meetings, formats the transcripts into notes, Uh, you can even send it into a meeting when you're not even there. Jonny Ross 19:02 - 19:12 Um, if there's, there's other competitors out there, but it is, uh, standing out right now. Uh, and there's a lot of, uh, people liking it. So.

Have a look at it. Jonny Ross 19:13 - 19:19 Granola. Uh, I think it's granola.ai, but if you just Google granola, uh, note, take it, you will find it straight away.

Pascal Fintoni 19:20 - 19:31 Well, that's interesting because we prepare the show notes separately. We're very, very busy. We look forward to, this is an excuse for you and I to get together. People have discovered that, I'm sure, by now.

Pascal Fintoni 19:31 - 19:50 The podcast is for you and I primarily, just joking. But so it so happens that I also have something that is all to do with audio and audio transcription, so without consulting you in advance. So I've been recommending a lot for my clients to capture conversation where they can. It could be also monologues, by the way.

Pascal Fintoni 19:50 - 20:07 You're in your car, you're thinking something through. That could be a new service, that could be a lovely article idea, that could be a campaign on social media. And there's something about the way we speak compared to the way we write that is very, very important, Jonny. And I think you and I have studied this for many years now with the podcast production.

Pascal Fintoni 20:07 - 20:29 So I've been asking my clients to do something to actually check their mobile phones. And number one, make sure that you have the latest updates for the operating system. Because by now, all mobile phones have had historically a native audio recorder. But they should not now, by now, all have an AI transcription feature free of charge.

Pascal Fintoni 20:30 - 20:52 And to be honest with you, that's been kind of a revelation, because in the past, you'll have had to use an app, maybe also try and chat to co-pilot and then hope for the best and so on. So now you're in a situation where you could have, with permission, a meeting with a client, and you can get that transcribed. That could become all manner of resources and reports. But also, again, with permission and credits being given.

Pascal Fintoni 20:52 - 21:17 If you went to a series of events over the course of the year, you could essentially then put together an amazing kind of events roundup article with links to, you know, the authorities and that kind of thing, which will help you a great deal. The limits essentially is whatever your imagination will take you. But yeah, so native audio recorders by now, they're all going to have an AI transcriber and summarizer. Go and check it out.

Jonny Ross 21:18 - 21:53 And the power of voice noting, talking. Not only is it the whole thing richer because you tend to say more things than you would have written down or typed, but we speak three times faster than we write. So you can brain dump so much quicker and give much more richer information. So whether it's in a meeting or whether you're just using it to record just whilst you're out walking the dog or whatever else it might be, I highly recommend just using the native app as well.

Jonny Ross 21:53 - 21:55 Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Pascal Fintoni 21:55 - 21:56 Nice, uh, nice apps. Jonny Ross 21:56 - 22:02 And I love the synergy, Pascal.

Let's move to our website called to action. Pascal Fintoni 22:09 - 22:18 So in this one, this is a one change, the one adjustment that you should be making right now to make your website work harder for you. Johnny, what is your recommendation? Jonny Ross 22:19 - 22:38 So I've been running some workshops for Adventure in Yorkshire recently on how to sell without being salesy, which has been quite interesting.

And it fits really well into marketing. Marketing and sales is, I typically call this growth nowadays. The two need to work hand in hand. Jonny Ross 22:38 - 22:57 And a lot of it's around confidence.

But one of the things that I've helped delegates bring to life is what I call the value statement. So giving that sort of very clear statement of how you are going to add value. And my recommendation for the website call to action this week is review your homepage headline. Jonny Ross 22:57 - 23:40 You've got seconds, not minutes, but you've got three, four, five seconds max to make sure that your headline is clearly explaining what you do, clearly explaining who you help and why visitors, why potential clients or customers should be choosing you.

And that ultimately all comes out of having a very clear value statement, obviously written in your tone of voice within your brand, but you've got three, four, five seconds to get across why someone should choose you and that is all about speaking in their language and getting across your value. So explore your value statement and update your headline on your homepage would be my call to action. Pascal Fintoni 23:40 - 23:53 Thank you very much. Such a wonderful reminder to revisit that list once or twice a year.

And listen, everybody, it's not easy, but that's the way it should be. Literally, what Johnny has mentioned is important, but not easy. Pascal Fintoni 23:53 - 24:07 And if it's easy, you're probably not doing it right. That makes sense, Johnny?

You want to spend some time on that, maybe get some feedback from real people, not just AI, because you never know. AI could just agree that you're amazing at writing headlines. Pascal Fintoni 24:07 - 24:47 So some mine is informed i guess by this conversation today but again i was doing quite a bit of work doing master classes on the eye for. Digital marketing and of course content is a big massive thread and i've been championing long form content production you know and i can things.

But I stumbled upon a ancient, ancient presentation from 2013, which is when I was going through, you know, my folder systems. And in there was a couple of slides with the very, very bold statement, the perfect anatomy, not the anatomy of a perfect article, sorry. Pascal Fintoni 24:47 - 25:21 I thought when I was younger, I was obviously much more, you know, much bolder and confident. I'm not sure there's such a thing as perfect.

But anyway, so I was reading it thinking, actually, not bad at all, young Pascal from, you know, 13 years ago. But there was one thing in there that I must confess, even I would be guilty of forgetting, which is to add citations and add links to authoritative sources to essentially complement, supplement, and sometime, you know, validate, what you're doing in your long form article. Pascal Fintoni 25:21 - 25:55 So my call to action is to review your website traffic reports and look at your big hitters, the best performing blog articles or similar resources.

And literally, with the support of a good AI search engine, add the stats, add trends, add links, add citations to books and more in terms of authority with links. So the links out are an important little signal as well as part of the EEAT you have spoken about. That's going to bring it alive again, this article of yours, give you a reason to reshare it as well. Pascal Fintoni 25:55 - 26:08 And maybe things have moved on.

So what I've seen people do as well, Johnny, which is lovely, is sometimes they add a little box, say, update, you know, June 2026. Actually, the statement we made two, three years ago, things have moved on, or our thinking has moved on. So you're really bridging the line. Pascal Fintoni 26:09 - 26:18 But that's why that would be my recommendation, adding external citation, if you will, with links to supplement your best performing articles.

Jonny Ross 26:19 - 26:44 And as you say, that's a great thing to boost your EAT. So a nice finish we've been talking about look you've got authority but is your site showing it. And we've given you lots of tips on how you just need to be explicit and get that across and lots of methods to start getting other people to start mentioning you in terms of your authority. We've shared some great apps.

Jonny Ross 26:44 - 27:07 We've focused on AI transcripts today as well. And some call to actions on things that you should be doing that you could do on your website right now to start feeling proud. And of course, Putting some discipline in place for uploading images and getting the best out of it. So that's from an accessibility point of view, um, and, uh, and making sure that you're getting the best out of SEO and geo.

Jonny Ross 27:08 - 27:09 Thank you very much, Pascal. Pascal Fintoni 27:09 - 27:11 You're very welcome. Pleasure to research all this. Jonny Ross 27:12 - 27:31 That is a wrap for episode 57 of the 90 day website mastery podcast, your audio companion to the 90 day website mastery program.

For more information, visit 90daymarketingmastery.com where you can book a discovery call with either myself or Pascal. It's goodbye for now. Thanks so much for joining us.

Jonny Ross 27:32 - 27:39 Let us know what you think. Leave us a review, tell a friend, and we will see you on the next episode. Take care.