EP 29: Evergreen Blogging Strategies

00:00:57 [Melissa]
Honestly, one of these posts y’all, I wrote, like, almost ten years ago.
00:01:01 [Melissa]
And it’s in my top 10 of posts of people clicking on it.

00:01:04 [Alison]
That is the definition of the eighty twenty rule right there.
00:01:08 [Alison]
Hey, I’m Allison, military spouse and family photographer.

00:01:11 [Melissa]
Hey, I’m Melissa, also a military spouse, lifestyle newborn photographer, and SEO expert for photographers.
00:01:16 [Melissa]
Between the

00:01:16 [Melissa]
two of us, we have

00:01:17 [Melissa]
a combined twenty seven years in photography and have lived through nine business relocations.

00:01:21 [Alison]
We’ve coached each other through all these channels, and we want to share our experience with you.
00:01:25 [Alison]
On this podcast, we’ll give you actionable steps to help you keep it moving.

00:01:31 [Melissa]
Hey, guys.
00:01:31 [Melissa]
You’re listening to the Keep It Moving podcast.
00:01:33 [Melissa]
In today’s episode, Allison and I are gonna peel back the curtain and talk about our best evergreen blog posts.
00:01:39 [Melissa]
Woo hoo.
00:01:40 [Melissa]
This is, like, content that keeps on giving is what we like to say because it still drives great traffic to our websites, even though, honestly, one of these posts y’all, I wrote, like, almost ten years ago.

00:01:51 [Melissa]
And it’s in my top 10 of posts of people clicking on it.

00:01:54 [Alison]
That is the definite of the eighty twenty rule right there.

00:01:57 [Melissa]
And I will say this post is one that I have posted on Pinterest, and I have gotten emails from people who want me to help them with their it’s for staircase gallery.
00:02:06 [Melissa]
Like, the last inquiry I got for this was, like, a girl in Romania, and she wanted to know if I offered, like, virtual services for this.
00:02:12 [Melissa]
And I was like, I just don’t have the time or the bandwidth to do it right now.
00:02:15 [Melissa]
So I was like, I had to tell her no.
00:02:16 [Melissa]
But From Romania.

00:02:18 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:02:18 [Melissa]
This was just a couple weeks ago, but that post too also brought me, like, two clients that I did go on-site and do gallery walls for them and stuff.
00:02:25 [Melissa]
So that post was written a long time.
00:02:27 [Melissa]
I’ve gotten two clients from it.
00:02:28 [Melissa]
I haven’t done anything with it pretty much since it was written.

00:02:31 [Melissa]
Yeah.

00:02:31 [Alison]
Leave it and forget it.

00:02:33 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:02:33 [Melissa]
That’s the thing with evergreen content is that the longer it sits, the better it gets.
00:02:37 [Melissa]
And I’ve got I was just showing Allison a graphic too that we’ll talk about, just showing how things that have been sitting on my website forever have skyrocketed recently.
00:02:46 [Melissa]
But anyway, we’re diving in.
00:02:47 [Melissa]
But before we dive in, don’t forget to somebody come leave us a review, please.

00:02:51 [Alison]
Please.
00:02:51 [Alison]
Please.
00:02:51 [Alison]
The stars will take the stars.
00:02:53 [Alison]
Please.

00:02:53 [Melissa]
I know, but I’d like to see some words from somebody.
00:02:55 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:02:55 [Melissa]
You have stars.
00:02:56 [Melissa]
It’s gonna be really nice to have some words.

00:02:57 [Alison]
I totally agree.
00:02:58 [Alison]
Totally agree.

00:02:59 [Melissa]
So that’s gonna be my pity plea for a good review, y’all.
00:03:02 [Melissa]
But anyway okay.
00:03:03 [Melissa]
So let’s get back into the why.
00:03:04 [Melissa]
Now we’ll go past that.
00:03:05 [Melissa]
We’ll move along.

00:03:06 [Melissa]
But why do you wanna think about these evergreen blogging strategies?
00:03:09 [Melissa]
Is you wanna get in front of the clients before they’re looking for you.
00:03:13 [Melissa]
So that’s the whole thing about blogging in general as a local expert, as a problem solver.
00:03:17 [Melissa]
As we talked about in the last episode in this funnels, you’re in that awareness stage of your funnel, and so you’re trying to get in front of them so they become aware of you.
00:03:26 [Melissa]
With that caveat too, there are some blog posts that I think we’ve written that aren’t necessarily meant to get clients

00:03:33 [Alison]
Right.

00:03:33 [Melissa]
That are doing well.
00:03:34 [Melissa]
They’re more of just getting traffic to our website to help with our Google positioning for other because even if somebody’s clicking on your website for a post that’s not necessarily photography related, if it’s interactive and they enjoy it and they’re staying on it and they’re reading the whole thing, Google sees that and realizes that you have helpful content on your site.
00:03:53 [Melissa]
So that’s the biggest thing we’re doing.
00:03:54 [Melissa]
So maybe not everything is always gonna be photography related, but we do try to tie it back to our clients and what they might be interested in.

00:04:03 [Alison]
So There is definitely always a purpose.
00:04:05 [Alison]
The purpose may not always be the same.
00:04:07 [Alison]
Hey.
00:04:08 [Alison]
Yes.
00:04:08 [Alison]
I’m talking to you.

00:04:10 [Alison]
How are you feeling about this move?
00:04:12 [Alison]
Lot to process, but I’ve got something for you.
00:04:14 [Alison]
I want you to grab my pre move checklist to make things a little easier.
00:04:18 [Alison]
Even if you’re not sure where you’re going yet, it’s not too early to start.
00:04:22 [Alison]
But you could be losing time on that SEO juice if you dilly dally.

00:04:25 [Alison]
So head over to alisonbell.co, that’s alisonwith1l,bell,.co, to get your pre move checklist.
00:04:33 [Alison]
You got this.

00:04:34 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:04:34 [Melissa]
The purpose the funnel the end of that funnel may not be for them to book me.
00:04:39 [Melissa]
Other ones are that way.
00:04:40 [Melissa]
So this is having multiple strategies going on.
00:04:43 [Melissa]
But you talk about evergreen blogging strategies.

00:04:45 [Melissa]
These are so the big thing with evergreen blogging stuff is these are things that kinda stand the test of time.
00:04:51 [Melissa]
These are ones that that they have.
00:04:53 [Melissa]
They’re high quality.
00:04:54 [Melissa]
They’ve got really good SEO value because these are the ones that people are searching for.
00:04:58 [Melissa]
You wanna keep them as timeless as possible.

00:05:00 [Melissa]
And so the and the longevity of it, you don’t want them to you have to constantly be updating.
00:05:05 [Melissa]
Alison’s got some posts that are going to be long term for her, but they are gonna require being updated more often.
00:05:11 [Melissa]
But they bring in good traffic, so she’s willing to do it.

00:05:14 [Alison]
Absolutely.
00:05:14 [Alison]
It’s love.
00:05:15 [Alison]
Yeah.
00:05:15 [Alison]
So I’ll get started.
00:05:16 [Alison]
So some of my best evergreen blog posts shocked me.

00:05:20 [Alison]
We’re always I’m always trying to think of My last two duty stations have been tourist spots where people come in for a week at a time and then head out.
00:05:27 [Alison]
And so I need to get in front of them before they arrive.
00:05:30 [Alison]
I want them to book me before they arrive.
00:05:32 [Alison]
So I’m solving some of those travel problems.
00:05:34 [Alison]
Right?

00:05:35 [Alison]
And so that’s my primary goal with a lot of my blogging is serving them before they realize they wanna do photos.
00:05:41 [Alison]
So my top performing blog post almost ever up until this summer was written Y’all hold on to something for this.
00:05:48 [Alison]
July 2021, and it’s Virginia Beach restaurants with kids, like, where to eat.
00:05:53 [Alison]
Best restaurants in the Virginia Beach area.
00:05:55 [Alison]
I am coming up for, I think, a dozen different variations of these keywords.

00:06:00 [Alison]
I did the keyword research.
00:06:01 [Alison]
It was something I was looking for myself.
00:06:03 [Alison]
It was something as a local after having lived there for two years that I wrote and knew well.
00:06:08 [Alison]
And it’s also a topic that there were a couple particular restaurants in Virginia Beach that were local gems for families.
00:06:16 [Alison]
We’re talking about actually, it was a family favorite, but they deserve to be recognized and shared because they were serving a clientele that needed to find them.

00:06:23 [Alison]
Right?
00:06:24 [Alison]
You know, you

00:06:24 [Melissa]
do Google reviews and stuff.
00:06:25 [Melissa]
Mhmm.
00:06:26 [Melissa]
I think one of my most viewed reviews as a Google reviewer person is of a restaurant in Virginia Beach for kids.
00:06:32 [Melissa]
Because when we got there and we sat down, they immediately swooped in and brought, like, a fruit plate to Grace, and she was, like, two.
00:06:38 [Melissa]
And David and I were like, oh my god.

00:06:40 [Melissa]
And then they brought the kids’ food out before ours so we could cut it all up.
00:06:44 [Melissa]
And then immediately once the kids were like picking up their forks to eat, they dropped mine and David’s food and they checked drink refills before that.

00:06:51 [Melissa]
And he and I were like, oh my God, we love you people so much.
00:06:54 [Melissa]
So Yeah.

00:06:55 [Alison]
Yeah.
00:06:55 [Alison]
Part of the success of this post is one, the people coming in, but two, the quality of the recommendations I’m making.
00:07:01 [Alison]
You really gotta go to these place.
00:07:02 [Alison]
One of them was a counter service, but it had the most epic outdoor kids play area.
00:07:06 [Alison]
It was phenomenal.

00:07:07 [Alison]
Like it was worth going to eat just so you could get to their park.
00:07:10 [Alison]
And then the other one had an arcade in it.
00:07:12 [Alison]
It was a sports bar, pizza place with an arcade, but it’s so enjoyable.
00:07:15 [Alison]
And they were made for families to come in large groups.
00:07:17 [Alison]
Like, most of the tables were ten and twelve tops.

00:07:20 [Alison]
So it was meant for, like, with a crowd.
00:07:22 [Alison]
And it was just awesome.
00:07:22 [Alison]
So it’s still driving traffic, y’all.
00:07:24 [Alison]
I haven’t been in Virginia Beach now for a year, and it’s still my second highest performing blog post ever.
00:07:30 [Alison]
I’m gonna jump ahead for a second.

00:07:32 [Alison]
It is second only to when I did this summer.
00:07:35 [Alison]
So this one’s a little different in that it was July 4 events, like where to find fireworks on Oahu for July 4.
00:07:41 [Alison]
I did it maybe a week and a half, ten days ten to fourteen days before July 4, so mid June, it doubled my other stuff.
00:07:50 [Alison]
In the course of its whole history, three year history, the Virginia Beach post got about 1,200 clicks.
00:07:55 [Alison]
And in about a month, this July 4 post doubled that.

00:07:58 [Alison]
It was somewhere in the 3,000 something.
00:08:00 [Alison]
So time sensitive.
00:08:02 [Alison]
It is evergreen in that I’m going to do it again and update it next year for this.
00:08:06 [Alison]
And same with my Christmas events.
00:08:07 [Alison]
But I got thousands of clicks out of a blog post that had nothing to do with family photography.

00:08:12 [Alison]
It was all about being a local expert in my area, which we’ve we’ve already done an episode about that.
00:08:17 [Alison]
So you should you should definitely go check that out.
00:08:19 [Alison]
And then quickly, my other ones, snorkeling for beginners in Oahu.
00:08:23 [Alison]
I wrote that in 2003.
00:08:25 [Alison]
It’s ’23.

00:08:26 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:08:27 [Melissa]
2023.
00:08:28 [Melissa]
Yeah.

00:08:29 [Alison]
Oh my God, I do that all the time.

00:08:31 [Melissa]
My kids are weird.
00:08:32 [Melissa]
I was like, I think she might have still been in high school in 2003, y’all.

00:08:35 [Alison]
I thought so.
00:08:37 [Alison]
But yeah, so in ’23, yep, that one is still one of my top three.
00:08:41 [Alison]
I think it’s in the top three.
00:08:43 [Alison]
February ’23, I wrote what to wear for beach photos.
00:08:46 [Alison]
That’s not even specific to Oahu.

00:08:47 [Alison]
It’s specific to my style, right?
00:08:49 [Alison]
My style of shooting, which is based on being in Hawaii.
00:08:53 [Alison]
But that is a nationally ranked page, like generally ranked page.
00:08:56 [Alison]
Rainy things to do in Virginia Beach.
00:08:59 [Alison]
I wrote that in February ’22.

00:09:01 [Alison]
It is still one of my top performing pages.
00:09:04 [Alison]
Yeah.
00:09:04 [Alison]
So even though they’re time restricted, still update them every year.
00:09:08 [Alison]
It doesn’t have to be evergreen in the truest sense.
00:09:11 [Alison]
Right?

00:09:11 [Alison]
There’s all different Yeah.

00:09:12 [Melissa]
For your yeah.
00:09:12 [Melissa]
For her Christmas and July 4 post.
00:09:14 [Melissa]
Like, the big thing with those is even if it’s something that isn’t necessarily considered evergreen, I don’t want you guys creating a post every year for it.
00:09:21 [Melissa]
I want you to capitalize on the traffic you got before.
00:09:24 [Melissa]
For that July 4, Allison can just go in next year.

00:09:26 [Melissa]
So for starters, she didn’t put it as July 4 twenty twenty four fireworks.
00:09:31 [Melissa]
She just did it for her URL, something like fireworks and whatever.

00:09:35 [Alison]
I guess Where to find July 4 fireworks on a walk?

00:09:37 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:09:38 [Melissa]
There you go.
00:09:38 [Melissa]
She left the year off.
00:09:39 [Melissa]
She can put it in the now having it in the page title in the meta description, like updating that every year, that’s good.
00:09:44 [Melissa]
Because I do feel like with that kind of event, somebody wants to make sure it’s this year.

00:09:48 [Melissa]
They don’t wanna go through the post and then be like, oh, this is all last year’s.

00:09:50 [Alison]
And I’m sure that’s what I did.
00:09:52 [Alison]
It says 2024 in the meta and in the title.

00:09:55 [Melissa]
It is in the URL.
00:09:57 [Melissa]
Yeah.

00:09:57 [Melissa]
So now all she has to do is come back next year, update her page title on her meta, update the content that’s in it, make sure she’s got the new dates, the new locations, that kind of stuff.
00:10:05 [Melissa]
And so it’s a minor so it’s not truly evergreen.
00:10:08 [Melissa]
But like I said, I’ll think about them as evergreen posts because I don’t want you recreating these year over year because you’re gonna lose that traffic.
00:10:14 [Melissa]
And what we’ve learned from Google is that they pay attention to thirteen months’ worth of clicks to a page.
00:10:20 [Melissa]
So even if she’s only getting that traffic for a month of the year, it’s still gonna be tracked at Google Mhmm.

00:10:26 [Melissa]
That next year.
00:10:27 [Melissa]
They’re still gonna see she had that traffic, and then now they’re gonna show her again for that.

00:10:31 [Alison]
Yeah.
00:10:31 [Alison]
Google realizes they’re seasonal inquiries, and that’s Right.
00:10:34 [Alison]
Definitely one

00:10:34 [Melissa]
of them.

00:10:35 [Alison]
Some of these posts, so the ones I just mentioned were, like, crazy top performers, hundreds and thousands of but then there’s other I have other blog posts that aren’t doing that well that I thought would.
00:10:45 [Alison]
None of us ever set out to write a blog post that’s not gonna get any clicks.
00:10:49 [Alison]
We always are doing our keyword research.
00:10:50 [Alison]
We’re always optimizing.
00:10:51 [Alison]
We’re always putting in the proper power words and the title and the right Yeah.

00:10:56 [Alison]
Formatting and everything.
00:10:57 [Alison]
But I do have blog posts that aren’t doing as well, but they’re still doing something for me.
00:11:02 [Alison]
Right?
00:11:02 [Alison]
So they’re still getting couple 100 clicks over their lifetime.
00:11:06 [Alison]
I’m still getting in front of people and they’re still creating awareness for me.

00:11:09 [Alison]
For me right now, that’s best baby stores in Oahu.
00:11:11 [Alison]
I did that though.
00:11:13 [Alison]
Where to buy matching Aloha wear?
00:11:14 [Alison]
Yeah.
00:11:15 [Alison]
So I get the question all the time about where to get matching Aloha wear, recommendations for colors, where to get them.

00:11:21 [Alison]
So I definitely would have thought that’d be a little higher, but maybe that’s more client education.
00:11:25 [Alison]
And then that actually segues nicely into this other one, why you need to do a sunrise session.
00:11:30 [Alison]
I wrote that one.
00:11:31 [Alison]
I optimized it for everything.
00:11:32 [Alison]
It does get search volume, albeit a little bit.

00:11:35 [Alison]
But that particular post was not written to create awareness.
00:11:39 [Alison]
Like, I wanted to if it’s gonna work.
00:11:41 [Alison]
The purpose behind that was not to get in front of a problem solver for awareness.
00:11:45 [Alison]
It was meant to be client education for people who have already considered and inquired with me and for me to convince them why they need to get up at the butt crack of dawn with their family, extended family, and be photo ready.
00:11:57 [Alison]
Because nobody is truly on board with that and hear about my similar reasons.

00:12:01 [Alison]
And I got some good reasons, so I put them in a blog post.

00:12:03 [Melissa]
Hey there, photographers.
00:12:05 [Melissa]
Struggling with what to blog about?
00:12:06 [Melissa]
Tired of staring at that blinky cursor waiting for inspiration to strike?
00:12:10 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:12:10 [Melissa]
We’ve all been there.

00:12:11 [Melissa]
That is why I created the blogging club.
00:12:14 [Melissa]
Imagine this, every you know exactly what to blog.
00:12:17 [Melissa]
No more guessing games or frantic Googling.
00:12:19 [Melissa]
Each month, I’ll walk you through SEO friendly blog post outlines with examples, teach you the latest SEO and marketing tips in a master class, and support you live in a monthly q and a to answer all your blogging questions.
00:12:32 [Melissa]
Plus, we’ve got a community to cheer you on after every post.

00:12:34 [Melissa]
Let’s take the guesswork out of blogging and start driving those dream clients to your site.
00:12:39 [Melissa]
Head to the bloggingclub.com and use code t b c trial to get 50% off your first month and join us to

00:12:47 [Alison]
So that is education over awareness.
00:12:49 [Alison]
Use it in my emails, it’s in flow.

00:12:51 [Melissa]
You probably have more clicks in Google Analytics from direct track for that post than you do in Google Search Console.

00:12:57 [Alison]
Exactly.
00:12:57 [Alison]
So even though it is evergreen content in the truest form, it’s not creating awareness.
00:13:01 [Alison]
It’s client education.

00:13:02 [Melissa]
And I would just say too, if you have a post, you’re like, why is this not getting any clicks or any searches?
00:13:07 [Melissa]
Make sure it’s indexed.
00:13:08 [Melissa]
I was trying to pull some of my lower performing ones.
00:13:11 [Melissa]
And, Andrea, I’ve been doing this for sixteen years, so I was like, I’m having a hard time, like, finding the right ones.
00:13:15 [Melissa]
But one of them, I was like, oh, why is my maternity clothes in Richmond so well?

00:13:18 [Melissa]
I was like, that’s weird.
00:13:19 [Melissa]
It literally got indexed two days ago.
00:13:21 [Melissa]
I was like, oh, that’s why.
00:13:23 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:13:23 [Melissa]
I didn’t check back in on it and make sure it had gotten indexed.

00:13:26 [Melissa]
So now it’s indexed, and now it should see some traffic and stuff for it.
00:13:30 [Melissa]
But, but, yeah, it’s annoying.

00:13:32 [Alison]
You just

00:13:32 [Melissa]
gotta pay attention to that.
00:13:33 [Melissa]
So some of my best posts so my first one, and this kind of goes with the graphic Allison and I were looking at.
00:13:39 [Melissa]
So I was showing her my Google Search Console in that my traffic really exploded a lot more recently for these blog posts.
00:13:47 [Melissa]
Probably, it looks like it was starting, I think, September.
00:13:49 [Melissa]
October is when Google started doing some of their more helpful content updates, and we’ve seen a couple of those now.

00:13:55 [Melissa]
I think there was one in September, and there was one, like, in February, and then there’s one this August right now.
00:14:00 [Melissa]
It was March.
00:14:01 [Melissa]
That’s what it was.
00:14:01 [Melissa]
In the March when a lot of people saw declines and stuff, I saw my traffic just exponentially take off, like super crazy, going from, like, less than a 100 clicks a day on stuff to over 300 clicks a day on stuff.
00:14:15 [Melissa]
I think it shows here.

00:14:16 [Melissa]
So that just and these are all posts that I wrote years ago.
00:14:19 [Melissa]
So just by making sure that I was being helpful.
00:14:22 [Melissa]
So the first post for me that gets the most traffic, I wrote this in April 2020, which was gonna explain, like, the topic.
00:14:28 [Melissa]
So if we all remember April 2020, yeah, one was working, got everything down.
00:14:33 [Melissa]
Nobody was able to do baby photos and stuff.

00:14:35 [Melissa]
Like, I remember my April, everything got pushed till May, or we were all, like, trying to get it done in March before we were like, oh my god.
00:14:43 [Melissa]
There’s a rumor of a lockdown.
00:14:44 [Melissa]
We gotta get this done before Yeah.
00:14:46 [Melissa]
It happens.
00:14:46 [Melissa]
So my big post is how to take your own DIY newborn photos.

00:14:49 [Melissa]
And I realize people probably are like, Melissa, why in the world would you write that if you’re a newborn photographer kind of thing?
00:14:56 [Melissa]
And for me, anyone who’s searching DIY newborn photos is not going to hire me anyway.
00:15:01 [Melissa]
I am so far out of the price point for that that I am not even worried about it.
00:15:06 [Melissa]
I do, in the post, talk about, like, these are really pictures of dad with baby alone, pets with baby, siblings with baby.
00:15:12 [Melissa]
Because mom’s gonna be the one taking them.

00:15:14 [Melissa]
And then dad’s gonna try to take pictures of mom with the baby, and they’re gonna suck and she’s gonna realize she needs a real photographer.
00:15:19 [Melissa]
Let’s be honest.
00:15:20 [Melissa]
Amen.
00:15:21 [Melissa]
But in the last three months alone, I’ve had over 10,000 clicks on that one blog post.
00:15:26 [Melissa]
So many.

00:15:27 [Melissa]
That’s the thing.
00:15:28 [Melissa]
So for me, because I know I’m not getting clients from that post, I do have a lot of affiliate links on, like, swaddles and onesies.
00:15:35 [Melissa]
Go get a new iPhone.
00:15:36 [Melissa]
I don’t know.
00:15:36 [Melissa]
I don’t care.

00:15:36 [Melissa]
Here’s a link for it.
00:15:37 [Melissa]
I don’t think that’s

00:15:38 [Alison]
supposed to happen.
00:15:39 [Alison]
Thrifty 50 lens.
00:15:40 [Alison]
You’re gonna Yeah.

00:15:41 [Melissa]
I think I have I do think I have links for presets for your phone in there and stuff.

00:15:45 [Alison]
So do

00:15:45 [Melissa]
it that way.
00:15:46 [Melissa]
There’s a few affiliate links and things like that, so I can make a little bit of money off of that post.
00:15:49 [Melissa]
It brings in a lot of traffic, establishes to Google that I am a newborn photographer, I’m an expert in my field, and I’m sharing tips and advice.
00:15:56 [Melissa]
Those are all things that Google wants to see.
00:15:58 [Melissa]
Those those clicks.

00:15:59 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:15:59 [Melissa]
My next highest post is one that I would send to clients, what to wear for lifestyle newborn photos.
00:16:04 [Melissa]
And I published that in October 2021.
00:16:06 [Melissa]
It’s gotten clicks in the last three months.
00:16:08 [Melissa]
How to prepare a lifestyle newborn photoshoot.

00:16:10 [Melissa]
Again, that was in August 2020.
00:16:12 [Melissa]
I’ve had 1,700 clicks.
00:16:14 [Melissa]
I also have I have what to wear for beach maternity photos.
00:16:17 [Melissa]
So Allison has what to wear for beach photos.
00:16:19 [Melissa]
I narrowed mine into maternity because that’s what I was shooting in Florida, And that one was more recent, August 2021, and I have about 318.

00:16:27 [Melissa]
And then, like, top five Miami birth scene centers, that’s actually still bringing a good amount of traffic.
00:16:32 [Melissa]
And that’s one of those that I had to pull my lead magnet off of that we talked about in the awareness and funnel stage episode because I’m not there, so I don’t need that funnel anymore.
00:16:40 [Melissa]
There’s no point.
00:16:41 [Melissa]
There’s no point nurturing those leads, but it’s providing helpful information.
00:16:45 [Melissa]
So I’m gonna let it go.

00:16:47 [Melissa]
This one cracks me up.
00:16:48 [Melissa]
I do featured nursery posts, and these are, again, some of it, yeah, I’m looking for some SEO type stuff, but these are more general.
00:16:54 [Melissa]
Like, I’m not expecting someone who comes across this particular post, which is a golf inspired nursery.
00:16:59 [Melissa]
I’m not gonna I don’t expect that you’re

00:17:00 [Alison]
in a niche,

00:17:01 [Melissa]
yeah, into a client for me.
00:17:03 [Melissa]
But it is helpful for them with my clients when they’re booking with me and they’re like, oh, we haven’t planned the nursery yet.
00:17:08 [Melissa]
And I’m like, oh, check out this section of my website.
00:17:11 [Melissa]
I’ve got all kinds of inspiration stuff.
00:17:13 [Melissa]
That post, I tend to get a lot of questions about where they got their decor, that one and the my Star Wars nursery one.

00:17:18 [Melissa]
I finally had to reach out to the mom.
00:17:19 [Melissa]
I was like, look, I got all these people wanna know the paint color, put it all in there.
00:17:23 [Melissa]
But that was like another twenty twenty one.
00:17:24 [Melissa]
And then like I said, my decorating your home with photos, and then it’s my staircase gallery wall.
00:17:29 [Melissa]
It literally was me setting up our staircase gallery wall in our old house, and that was from July 2015.

00:17:35 [Melissa]
And I actually am gonna redo that.
00:17:37 [Melissa]
Allison’s seen pictures and stuff.
00:17:38 [Melissa]
We have a Yeah.
00:17:39 [Melissa]
Gallery wall, and I fill process of that.
00:17:42 [Melissa]
It’s gonna be a reel this time.

00:17:44 [Alison]
Yeah.
00:17:44 [Alison]
Yeah.

00:17:44 [Melissa]
Because I recorded it all.
00:17:46 [Melissa]
But I’ll probably go in and update that post with basically a similar version of what I did at the other house, but just a little different because obviously it’s a different wall and everything.
00:17:54 [Melissa]
Yeah.

00:17:54 [Alison]
And then embed your Instagram Reel into your blog post.

00:17:57 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:17:58 [Melissa]
There we go.
00:17:58 [Melissa]
Even that post there, that post has gotten, like, 256 clicks in the last three months.
00:18:02 [Melissa]
So, obviously, I’ve got some bigger numbers on some things, but then I’ve also got some smaller numbers and stuff too.
00:18:08 [Melissa]
Yeah.

00:18:08 [Melissa]
But in the last

00:18:09 [Alison]
three months, it’s still really good.

00:18:10 [Melissa]
Oh, yeah.
00:18:11 [Melissa]
It’s a it’s a ton of traffic.
00:18:12 [Melissa]
And what that does is all of those things mean that, like, right now, I’m number one for my local keyword that I’m targeting for Charlottesville and stuff.
00:18:21 [Melissa]
Like, for newborn and maternity and family, I’m at the top there, which is what I’m looking for.
00:18:25 [Melissa]
So I’m getting inquiries for that kind of stuff and booking clients.

00:18:28 [Melissa]
And here is the thing.
00:18:29 [Melissa]
I get this question a lot in, like, the blogging club and in my group coaching program and stuff where people are implementing this, and then they come back and they’re like, Melissa, all these posts are outranking my main pages.
00:18:40 [Melissa]
Is that normal?
00:18:42 [Melissa]
And I’m like, yes.
00:18:43 [Melissa]
That is very normal.

00:18:44 [Melissa]
Being is more people are going to be searching for what to wear for lifestyle newborn photos than are searching for Charlottesville newborn photographer.
00:18:52 [Melissa]
Because Charlottesville newborn photographer, it’s a small area.
00:18:55 [Melissa]
I’m out in the rural sticks and stuff.
00:18:57 [Melissa]
It’s not a big city.
00:18:58 [Melissa]
It doesn’t have as many people in it.

00:19:00 [Melissa]
But you’re talking, like, what to wear lifestyle newborn photos, that’s global.
00:19:03 [Melissa]
That’s the other thing with this evergreen stuff is it can be for larger areas.
00:19:07 [Melissa]
I think some of Allison’s are a little bit more niched into her location and everything.
00:19:10 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:19:11 [Melissa]
Whereas most of mine are a bit more broad.

00:19:14 [Melissa]
So they’re bringing in more traffic ranking for keywords like newborn photos or DIY newborn photos and stuff, not Charlottesville DIY newborn photos.

00:19:22 [Alison]
My home page, to speak that, is the seventh ranking page on my website.

00:19:27 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:19:27 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:19:27 [Melissa]
I think mine is somewhere around there too.

00:19:29 [Alison]
Yeah.
00:19:30 [Alison]
It’s either seven or eight, I can count.
00:19:32 [Alison]
And it’s second to I’ve got two Virginia Beach posts that are outranking my website.
00:19:37 [Alison]
And Yeah.
00:19:38 [Alison]
I’ve been in Virginia Beach for a year.

00:19:39 [Alison]
So

00:19:40 [Melissa]
So mine’s the sixth ranking.
00:19:41 [Melissa]
The yeah.
00:19:42 [Melissa]
My homepage is the sixth ranking k one.
00:19:43 [Melissa]
So that’s totally normal.
00:19:45 [Melissa]
It just happens to be that a lot of that we talked to you guys about blogging about just has more search volume.

00:19:50 [Melissa]
More people are looking for restaurants in Miami than we’re looking for newborn photographers in Miami.
00:19:55 [Melissa]
So you write a post on that, it’s just gonna have more traffic.
00:19:57 [Melissa]
So that’s why those are gonna outrank, and that’s totally fine.
00:20:01 [Melissa]
Just make sure in all of these posts that you’re linking to your money pages.
00:20:05 [Melissa]
All of my life’s even my DIY newborn, I’m like, you really wanna hire a photographer.

00:20:09 [Melissa]
Like, I gave you a whole spiel on how to do this, but you really wanna hire someone, here’s my link.
00:20:14 [Melissa]
And I do think that one is the one that I’m getting inquiries from all over the country now.
00:20:18 [Melissa]
I’ve got, like, Brooklyn.
00:20:19 [Melissa]
I’ve got New Jersey.
00:20:21 [Melissa]
I’ve been sending referrals out to people because one lady for New Jersey, I was like, woah.

00:20:26 [Melissa]
I don’t I’m not traveling.
00:20:27 [Melissa]
Here’s this.
00:20:28 [Melissa]
And she was like, when are you gonna be traveling?
00:20:29 [Melissa]
I just put that other because I don’t travel, but then I thought about it.
00:20:32 [Melissa]
I was like, maybe I’m just gonna set a price that, like, if you want me to travel for your newborn session, it’s like $5.

00:20:36 [Melissa]
I don’t know.

00:20:36 [Alison]
I think you should.
00:20:37 [Alison]
I think you should.

00:20:38 [Melissa]
Like, there you go.
00:20:39 [Melissa]
If I’m gonna travel, this is how much it costs.
00:20:41 [Melissa]
But Yeah.
00:20:42 [Melissa]
And photographers should pay for referral fees.
00:20:45 [Melissa]
But I am getting inquiries from all over the place because of that more general post.

00:20:50 [Melissa]
So Yeah.

00:20:51 [Alison]
That is it all serves our end goal of rising in the rankings.
00:20:54 [Alison]
It really does.
00:20:55 [Alison]
But we don’t wanna overwhelm you.
00:20:56 [Alison]
This is all to say we’re sharing these numbers and pulling back the curtain on these because that’s a vision for you for what’s possible.
00:21:02 [Alison]
I was telling Melissa before we started recording that I didn’t realize I wasn’t thinking, like, general national level search results of what to wear for beach photos until I worked with my marketing girl who was like, no, that’s what we need for you.

00:21:15 [Alison]
And it took her encouragement, her saying, yeah, that’s absolutely possible, and then making it happen before I realized what was truly possible.
00:21:23 [Alison]
Right?
00:21:24 [Alison]
And it has served my She knew this.
00:21:27 [Alison]
That’s why she did it.
00:21:28 [Alison]
She has served my entire purpose.

00:21:29 [Alison]
My website has taken off since working with her, and that’s why we paid her the big bucks to make it happen.
00:21:34 [Alison]
So we want you to understand that more than 50 clicks in three months is possible.
00:21:41 [Alison]
You know?
00:21:41 [Alison]
It doesn’t need to be in the thousands.
00:21:43 [Alison]
It can be a few 100, but also just take a breather and know that not every post is a winner.

00:21:48 [Alison]
Even when you are strategizing, doing your keyword research, writing for the end search results user in mind, right, with that end user experience, even when you’re doing all of that really well, some of it just may not take off.
00:22:02 [Alison]
Like Yep.
00:22:03 [Alison]
My Rushini Beach took off and it still has its own life.
00:22:07 [Alison]
I did the same thing here.
00:22:08 [Alison]
It was a very first blog post I wrote about in Oahu.

00:22:11 [Alison]
Crickets, maybe a couple 100, certainly not thousands of of clicks.
00:22:15 [Alison]
And that’s okay.
00:22:17 [Alison]
I’ll still take those few clicks.
00:22:18 [Alison]
I still did the I still did the work.
00:22:20 [Alison]
It’s still valuable information to people who are on my email list.

00:22:23 [Alison]
It’s still out there.
00:22:24 [Alison]
So just don’t get upset when if it doesn’t work, just do your best and keep going.

00:22:28 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:22:28 [Melissa]
And if you think about it too, if you go back to our episode on taking a blog post and turning it into a week of marketing, even if it’s tons and tons of traffic, but you were able to create a week’s worth of marketing and maybe you got interaction from, like, your social media or from your email newsletter, like, that was still worthwhile.
00:22:44 [Melissa]
Like, you still were able to put it out and do those things.
00:22:48 [Melissa]
And you never know.
00:22:49 [Melissa]
Like I said, a lot of these posts for me took off more in the years after they were written.

00:22:54 [Melissa]
Three to four years after they were written, suddenly, they’re doing stuff a lot more for me.
00:22:59 [Melissa]
So keep that in mind too.
00:23:00 [Melissa]
Like, with all of these rollouts that Google’s doing with helpful content and stuff, you may find yourself at one time going, wow, this post isn’t doing great, and update.
00:23:07 [Melissa]
And they’re like, oh, turns out we do really like your post.
00:23:09 [Melissa]
Bam, shoots to the top, and then you’re getting all this traffic.

00:23:12 [Alison]
Yeah.
00:23:12 [Alison]
Absolutely.
00:23:13 [Alison]
So it takes time.
00:23:14 [Alison]
And even with it being evergreen, share it, reshare it, rehash it, all of your social medias and everything.
00:23:19 [Alison]
So that’s the beauty of it.

00:23:20 [Alison]
Guys, thanks for listening.
00:23:21 [Alison]
As always, if you have questions for either one of us, hit the link in the show notes to reach out to us on Instagram.
00:23:26 [Alison]
Leave us some feedback, some reviews, some stars, some words, and of course, always share this with a friend.
00:23:31 [Alison]
So thanks so much for listening, guys.
00:23:33 [Alison]
Bye bye.

00:23:36 [Melissa]
Thank you so much for listening.
00:23:38 [Melissa]
If you’re so would you do two things for us?
00:23:40 [Melissa]
First, leave a review.
00:23:41 [Melissa]
Just stars would be awesome.
00:23:43 [Melissa]
And two, forward this episode to a biz bestie, no spouse, or anyone facing moving their business.