EP 77: SEO For Photographers: Get Found & Booked

Swell AI Transcript: 77: SEO For Photographers: Get Found & Booked

Alison:
Search engine optimization, okay? What is even that? That is just optimizing your site, your content to be easily understood by the Google bots and therefore come up and search results. Picture this, two military spouses, cameras in hand, businesses in boxes, moving across the country again. I’m Allison, six-figure family photographer based in Hawaii, married to the Marine Corps, business mentor to photographers craving more clients, more income, and more freedom. Oh, and professional PCS survivor.

Melissa:
I’m Melissa, newborn photographer by day, SEO wizard by night, and fellow expert in the art of rebuilding your business from scratch.

Alison:
We’ve been each other’s voice of reason through 27 combined years of photography entrepreneurship and nine business relocations that would make anyone’s head spin. Countless Marco Polo videos later, we realized we’ve got some stories to tell and some wisdom to share.

Melissa:
Now we’re taking those real, raw conversations public because every photographer needs a friend who gets it. Ready to keep it moving? Let’s go! All right, guys, if you’ve ever wondered why some photographers show up on the first page of Google and maybe you don’t or others don’t, this episode is for you. Today we’re going to break down some SEO in plain English. We’re going to try to avoid the tech jargon. Allison and I have deep dived this topic many times, so we’re also going to try to keep this one a little bit lighter, but give you guys references to past episodes. So there’s a section in here. Rapid fire. Yeah. I want to know more about this. You can go listen to a deep dive on that specific thing. So, Allison, let’s get started. Yeah, okay.

Alison:
So what is SEO? Actually, search engine optimization. Okay, what is even that that is just optimizing your site, your content to be easily understood by the Google bots, and therefore come up and search results when somebody is putting an inquiry out for whatever they want, whether it’s a family recipe with certain ingredients or a certain type of photographer in a certain area. It’s just making it easy for the Google bots and the Google gods to find you. You’re speaking its language, you’re thinking of it like a filing system, you’re helping Google categorize you and find where to put you amongst all the other options. And the difference between paid ads and organic search is why SEO matters the most, because we’re not paying. for ads in this. This is completely different. So SEO is an organic way to show up at the top. If you can. Free. A.K.A. free. Free. Free. Organic equals free, y’all. That’s what that means.

Melissa:
Yeah. So why do your Google rankings actually matter? And here’s the thing. People still look at Google. I know everybody’s talking about A.I. and oh my gosh, how do I show up on A.I.? A.I.’ ‘s looking at Google. Yeah. Guys, A.I. is now. And in fact, I think I heard recently that ChatGBT is no longer pulling from Bing. They’re actually pulling from Google. So there was a shift. Well, I’m one being anyway, but yeah, you want to be everywhere. But but your Google rankings matter because that’s how people are going to find you. And if you’re buried on page 12, they’re not going to find you. You know, they’re going to go through the first page definitely. Maybe the second, probably not the third unless they’re really deep diving something. And so and those rankings matter, too, because Alice and I both can attest the people who find us on Google spend the most money, book the easiest. They are buyers ready to buy versus when you’re getting somebody off social media. And what I love about SEO in my Google rankings is they work even when I’m sleeping or when I’m out doing something else. So that’s the big thing.

Alison:
I woke up to three inquiries this morning that I was trying to respond to before we started recording. Three overnight. It’s search engines, guys. It’s search engines. So Melissa, and this is so important. This is something that I was deep diving and teaching myself before I met Melissa. I was moving from Japan back to the States on the East Coast, and I knew I could either pay somebody thousands of dollars to do it this one time, or I could invest myself into my knowledge into it because I knew I was going to be doing this on repeat.

Melissa:
And the thing is, like we were saying too, with the future of search and AI and stuff, if your SEO can do double duty and get you found in Google search and in AI searches, like why would you not want to do that? And also, I did an episode, episode 65. So if you guys want to go back and listen to me talk more about AI searches, you can listen to a deep dive on that one. There it is.

Alison:
Okay, so choosing the right keywords. So this is kind of the crux of all things SEO, right? What are keywords? They’re the exact phrases that you or any person would type into that search bar on Google. Okay, think about yourself. Are you going to just type photographer into Google if you’re looking for somebody? No, you’re gonna type in either the type of photographer, like a family, a couple, a wedding, a newborn photographer, and you’re gonna specify where, your location, your area, your state, your what have you. So, I know it’s hard, but just think about common sense. What would you do? And you need to set your business up for what even you would do or other people would do. So think about your ideal client. I know, I hate this, is the ooh, ideal client, where are they at? Where are they doing? What kind of things are they shopping for? No, really. Like you might be your own ideal client or you may not. But think about how your ideal client is using that search bar and then target that. And it’s a lot simpler than we tend to think. It is. Yeah. Simplify. Get out of your own head. It really is this simple. Use Google’s auto-complete when you’re typing things in for suggestions to see what people are searching. You know, like when it auto-suggests like… Yeah, people are getting lazy with that.

Melissa:
I am.

Alison:
I am. I’m like with Christmas decoration ideas, renter-friendly house gadgets. I’m like, oh, that’s a good thing. That’s a good idea. What is that? Let’s just search that. Right. Yeah, exactly. So use that to your advantage. Then, of course, listen to episode 49 to learn all about our favorite keyword research tool. We’re going to start with the obvious, but then we’re going to research and do our due diligence to make sure we’re getting some volume and traffic for that stuff. And then episode five for a deep dive on picking the right keywords because you want to make sure people are searching for it, right?

Melissa:
So once you’ve kind of figured out like, OK, I know I need SEO. Now I’m going to go figure out the right keywords. What are you going to do after that? So the big thing I tell people is to focus on your homepage and you want to break break this up into bite sized pieces like this shouldn’t feel overwhelming. Your homepage. It needs to answer the who you are, the what you do, the where you serve. Like, I always tell people, I’m like, go back to, you know, papers in school. Who, what, when, where, why, and how. Those are the questions that need to be answered. Like, that’s going to stand the test of time, I think. So, make sure your website answers that. If I land on your page, and this happens all the time, and I can’t tell where you are, That’s a problem. If I can’t tell where you are and your client can’t tell where you are, Google can’t tell where you are. So make sure that your home page is answering all of those questions. And then honestly, that first paragraph matters a lot with connecting with your new client. So They want to look and they go, OK, hey, yep. Like on my home page, I think about it. It says, OK, Melissa serves this area. And then it comes down and I talk about no poses, no props, you know, no costumes, stuff like that. So now I’m immediately speaking to my ideal client or I’m repelling somebody who wants that kind of stuff. Winning either way. Yeah. And so I’m connecting with that client. I’m also working my SEO there. And then the big thing, too, with your homepage is in all your pages, your page title and your meta description. So you’ve got to make sure your keyword is in your page title and you’ve got to make sure it’s in your meta description. And a lot of times I see where people will split their keyword up in their meta description. And so they’ll have family photographer and then they’ll have their cities in a whole other sentence. You got to pick that keyword, stick with it. It goes in your header, goes in your H1, it goes on your page title, it goes on your meta description, and then you’re going to use that keyword throughout your page. And that’s going to help your homepage rank better for SEO and for that keyword.

Alison:
Yeah. Okay, well, what about blogging, you’re thinking? If you’ve been listening for a while, you know that we preach and push blogging for SEO. So where does that fit in? Big picture. What actually is served in a search inquiry is not a whole website, but individual pages. And every time you create a blog post, you’re creating an individual page that answers a particular question on your website, and you want it to be found. So blog posts help you rank for specific searches. Think about the local expert stuff. Think about all the other things you might be blogging. Each post is a new opportunity to be found because pages are being served, not whole websites. So, a location plus a topic is the kind of thing you want to think about. So, like, best locations for family in Arlington or gluten-free dessert places in Charleston, South Carolina.

None:
30?

Alison:
For a newborn session. Right. Whether it’s client education, location-specific, mom-specific, what have you, very specific information.

Melissa:
If you guys need some topic ideas, check out the show notes. I’ve got my link to my 35 plus blog post topics. So that’ll help you get started if you’re not sure about blogging or what to do. Okay, so you’ve heard me talk about the blogging club before, but here’s a major update. We just rolled out AI powered tools that help you write faster while keeping your authentic voice. Plus we’ve got a tool that takes your blog post and creates all your marketing for the week in minutes. Our member results are incredible. Danielle just finished an entire blog post, including photos, in under an hour. Sarah moved to a new city and now has 13 pages ranking on page one of Google. And Jasmine booked a baby plant client directly from one blog post. Here’s the thing. While social media posts disappear, your blog posts work for years. I’m still getting clients from blogs I wrote in 2019. If you’ve been on the fence about joining, now’s the time. Get 50% off your first month with code keepitmoving at thebloggingclub.com because your blog should work just as hard as you do.

Alison:
Yeah. And so you can also you can deep dive more of our stuff about blogging on episodes 43, 27, 24, 22, and 15. But hey, don’t write this down. These links are going to be in the show notes. Yeah, I did all the research for you guys. And we did all the linking because that’s that’s a struggle.

Melissa:
It was funny. I was surprised at how many episodes we’ve done on blogging. I was like, we could probably lay off of blogging for a little bit. A little bit, a little bit. So next up is image file SEO. So we don’t have a deep dive on this one. I think that’s, that’s going onto the list of something, but just keep in mind that Google can’t see your photos and know what keyword you’re targeting or know what’s going on in the photo. I mean, I know it’s getting better with AI and stuff, but also we all know that AI is crazy at times and hallucinates. So I don’t necessarily want it telling me what’s in that photo. Right. So. You want to make sure that with your photos, you got to change the file names, guys. You got to stop doing IMG underscore one, two, three, four dot JPEG, and you need to change it to your keyword. So it’s got to be the keyword for your blog post or the keyword for a page. So like Allison said, you know, let’s say you’re doing best locations in Arlington, then you’re going to rename those photos to be best locations in Arlington or something along that. That’s going to do way more for your SEO than image one, two, three. And then you’re going to want to make sure the alt text, you describe the image in the alt text. I like to describe the image and then work my keyword in. So it might be, you know, family at, I’m going to make this up, Cove Park, which is one of the best locations for photography in Arlington or something like that. You know, I’m going to work, try and work that keyword in so that that way it’s in there and stuff. But images can drive traffic, too. That’s the big thing to think about is when you have named your image, it’s going to show up in Google image search. That used to be one of my favorite things as a wedding photographer. I would load a new blog post and I would have all the files named for that location. Then I would go back and check a week later on image search and I would see my photos all over the place. And I’m like, that one’s mine. That one’s mine. Those can drive traffic to your website also. And then getting your site indexed on Google. So making sure you’ve set up Google Search Console. Indexing is basically so that Google knows your website exists. So if you haven’t told Google, hey, by the way, I have a website, and here’s a map. So I’m going to call it a map, but it’s called a sitemap. And the sitemap is basically a map of your website. So it’s going to have all the links in the URL, you know, all the URLs and stuff of all your different pages. And so with that, you’re going to submit that to Google Search Console. Most of your website platforms have some kind of SEO tool, or you’re gonna have a plugin for that. They’re gonna auto-generate a sitemap, so you can just get that URL and put it into Google Search Console. And if you’re like, Melissa, what the heck is Google Search Console? I have a blog post that’s linked in the show notes about how to walk you through setting it up. So go down there and check that out, and you can get that set up.

Alison:
All right, guys, so this has been super rapid fire, but just remember, you don’t have to do this all at once. I don’t even do this all at once when I know I’m moving and I have six to 18 months worth of planning ahead of me. Make sure your search console, that’s the first thing. If you don’t have that going, you must do that immediately. But then from there, start with one thing at a time and build on. Write a massive to-do list, put all this on paper, and just tackle one thing a week or one thing a day. You can do it. I’m learning.

Melissa:
And once you’ve gotten through some of the things we’ve already mentioned, I do also have a masterclass with five specific mistakes I see photographers making all the time that stops them from ranking on Google. So we’ll link that in the show notes. But it’s the five SEO mistakes killing your photography business. And it goes way deeper than what we could cover today. You can sign up for that in the show notes and stuff. And then you’ll also get my SEO kickstart guide. So I do mention at the end my group coaching program found in books. So if you need help with your SEO, you can always sign up for that.

Alison:
Awesome. Well, thanks for listening. You can do this. Your people are out there waiting for you. They just need to make sure they find you.

Melissa:
would be awesome. And two, forward this episode to a biz bestie, mill spouse, or anyone facing moving their business. We’d love it if you shared this episode with even just one person. If you have questions, you can reach out to Alison on Instagram at AlisonBellFotag, or you can find me, Melissa, in my Facebook group, Picture Perfect Rankings. Check the show notes for links, and we’re so excited to have you guys here.

None:
Bye!