EP 5: Keywords for High Performing SEO

00:00:07 [Alison]
Hey.
00:00:08 [Alison]
I’m Allison, military spouse and family photographer.

00:00:10 [Melissa]
And I’m Melissa, also a military spouse, lifestyle newborn photographer, and SEO expert for photographers.
00:00:16 [Melissa]
Between the two of us, we have a combined twenty seven years in photography and have lived through nine locations.

00:00:22 [Alison]
We’ve coached each other through all these challenges privately on Marco Polo, and now we’re bringing our polos public.
00:00:27 [Alison]
On this podcast, we’ll give you actionable steps to help you keep it moving.
00:00:35 [Alison]
Alright.
00:00:36 [Alison]
Now we are going to start talking about some nitty gritty stuff that you can do before you move.
00:00:41 [Alison]
First up, SEO, the biggest monster, the one that takes the longest time to bake, and the biggest part of SEO is keywords.

00:00:48 [Alison]
Melissa, this is your bread and butter, your background.
00:00:52 [Alison]
Give it to us.
00:00:54 [Alison]
Alright.

00:00:54 [Melissa]
So the first thing people always wanna know, what is a keyword?
00:00:57 [Melissa]
And recently I’ve had people ask me what’s the difference between a keyword and a tag, which I thought was interesting.
00:01:01 [Melissa]
But a keyword is basically something that you type into Google.
00:01:04 [Melissa]
Like anytime you’re searching something in Google, you’re probably utilizing some kind of keyword.
00:01:09 [Melissa]
Now, typically, a keyword that you’re going to enter for a photographer website is going to be something like whatever genre it is, photographer, location, something along those lines.

00:01:19 [Melissa]
So most of the time when we’re talking about keywords that you should be targeting, it should be something like my old keywords, Miami newborn photographer.
00:01:25 [Melissa]
And so I was very specific about the city I was serving, the genre that I was shooting, and that I’m a photographer.
00:01:31 [Melissa]
So that’s the easy way to figure out, like, what’s your main keyword?
00:01:34 [Melissa]
But you’re also going to want to do some research and make sure people are actually searching for that.
00:01:38 [Melissa]
Because if you’re typing in some obscure teeny tiny, like it’s not a big city, you may find that more people tend to use the bigger city when they’re searching for things.

00:01:48 [Melissa]
So keep that in mind.
00:01:48 [Melissa]
Like where we’re at right now, we’re out in Charlottesville, but we live in Palmyra and pretty much no one is searching for Palmyra newborn photography.
00:01:55 [Melissa]
We were out in the sticks and not many people live here.
00:01:57 [Melissa]
So if I was to target that, sure, I could be number one at Google, like probably the next day from when I put my keywords out, but no one’s searching for that.
00:02:06 [Melissa]
So that’s where you really have to figure out what are people searching for.

00:02:09 [Melissa]
One of the tools that Allison and I both have used is Keywords Everywhere, and that will help you get some estimates on traffic volume.
00:02:16 [Melissa]
Google Search Console is another one that if you do not have Google Search Console set up for your website, go do that right now.
00:02:22 [Melissa]
Go get it set up because Google Search Console is gonna show you what keywords you’re already for and what position you’re ranking and what pages are ranking for those keywords.
00:02:30 [Melissa]
And it’s going to give you a lot of data.
00:02:32 [Melissa]
And it’s like Google Analytics.

00:02:33 [Melissa]
Like, you got to set it up now so it’s collecting data.
00:02:35 [Melissa]
Even if you don’t understand it, you don’t plan on touching it for six months, it’s going to collect data for six months.
00:02:40 [Melissa]
So you want to have that set up as soon as possible.
00:02:43 [Melissa]
So like we said, yeah, a keyword is something that you’re gonna you’re gonna search.
00:02:47 [Melissa]
If I’m gonna look for a dentist, I’m probably gonna type in probably Charlottesville dentist.

00:02:52 [Melissa]
I might try typing in Palmyra dentist because I’m looking for somebody real close and I don’t wanna travel.
00:02:57 [Melissa]
But most likely, I’m going to type in Charlottesville or I might type in Richmond or something like that.
00:03:01 [Melissa]
So what you want to do is think about for your homepage, I always recommend to people pick something that your favorite genre.
00:03:07 [Melissa]
Like, what is it you want to shoot the most?
00:03:08 [Melissa]
So for instance, for Allison, it’s families.

00:03:11 [Melissa]
So her homepage keyword is going to target more family type stuff, whereas mine is going to target more of newborn type thing.
00:03:17 [Melissa]
And then you can also look at if you’re in a smaller area, like for me, for Charlottesville, newborn photographer gets like 20 searches a month, I think.
00:03:25 [Melissa]
I don’t even know if it’s that many, actually.
00:03:27 [Melissa]
Charlottesville photographer gets way more.
00:03:29 [Melissa]
So I actually am targeting Charlottesville photographer right now just to get more of the broad.

00:03:33 [Melissa]
It’s a small town, but get more people searching.
00:03:36 [Melissa]
But I do still rank for Charlottesville newborn photographer too, just because my site is about newborn photography.
00:03:42 [Melissa]
So you want to keep your keywords like location based to start with.
00:03:45 [Melissa]
Because remember, in previous episodes, we’ve talked about that you want to have certain keywords that not keywords, but certain blog posts that are going to be more long term blog posts that are not location specific.
00:03:56 [Melissa]
So those are going to be the things of like your albums or what to wear.

00:03:59 [Melissa]
You’re talking about, like products, you’re talking about FAQs, that kind of stuff.
00:04:03 [Melissa]
You want to have a good mix of those.
00:04:04 [Melissa]
But when you are moving to a new location, you really have to establish to Google that you are in that new location.
00:04:11 [Melissa]
And the best of that is to write about that new location.
00:04:14 [Melissa]
So you want to figure out what are some location based keywords that you can use to talk about that location.

00:04:21 [Melissa]
I see this all the time where somebody will publish, let’s say, an engagement session, and then they’ll say whatever their location is, engagement photographer.
00:04:28 [Melissa]
That’s not that’s not sending a signal to Google that you’re an expert on that location.
00:04:33 [Melissa]
That’s just using your keyword in the wrong place.
00:04:36 [Melissa]
So keep in mind, when you pick out your keyword for your main homepage, you’re not gonna use that on every blog post.
00:04:41 [Melissa]
You’re not gonna use it anywhere else, in fact.

00:04:43 [Melissa]
See, I like to tell people, you wanna rank for as many keywords as you can, but they each need to have their own page.
00:04:49 [Melissa]
So you wanna sit down and you wanna write out what are these genres that I’m shooting, where are these locations that I wanna shoot.
00:04:54 [Melissa]
You wanna start putting those keywords together, check their check their traffic and stuff on something like Keywords Everywhere.
00:04:59 [Melissa]
Ubersuggest might be another one, But figure out what the traffic volume is.
00:05:03 [Melissa]
Make sure you’re not targeting a zero volume based keyword.

00:05:06 [Melissa]
You don’t wanna use your keywords over and over again.
00:05:09 [Melissa]
And then once you’ve got all of that kind of mapped out and okay.
00:05:12 [Melissa]
This is gonna be my homepage keyword.
00:05:14 [Melissa]
This is gonna be my port this is gonna be blog posts.
00:05:17 [Melissa]
So really start laying into those blog posts ahead of time.

00:05:20 [Melissa]
So that way okay.
00:05:21 [Melissa]
I’ve got 10 or 15 posts scheduled out that are all about my new location.
00:05:27 [Melissa]
And someone had asked me recently about they’ve done that thing where they’ve got all these posts that just happen to have their old city location on the back of the title.
00:05:35 [Melissa]
And so they were like, I don’t really wanna go rewrite these blog posts.
00:05:39 [Melissa]
I just happen to stick that on my title.

00:05:40 [Melissa]
Should I go remove that?
00:05:42 [Melissa]
Absolutely.
00:05:42 [Melissa]
If you’ve got blog posts that aren’t driving any traffic, go back and re keywords that you don’t need to target anymore because they’re not doing you any good.
00:05:50 [Melissa]
And the whole idea is you’re gonna have to reestablish to Google that you’re in a new area versus being in the old area.

00:05:56 [Alison]
Oh, okay.
00:05:57 [Alison]
This is a lot.
00:05:58 [Alison]
Recap.
00:05:59 [Alison]
Keyword is the primary SEO tool that is a search query somebody is searching for.
00:06:03 [Alison]
We use that on our end to target the people that are searching for those keywords.

00:06:09 [Alison]
We have we never use keywords for two different pages.
00:06:11 [Alison]
We never use it twice.
00:06:13 [Alison]
So it’s one keyword per page.
00:06:14 [Alison]
And then when it comes to our blog post, we do something specific to that blog, usually to do with location.
00:06:21 [Alison]
What about all these other things?

00:06:23 [Alison]
How do we use how do we use these keywords?
00:06:26 [Alison]
How do we make them make sense?
00:06:27 [Alison]
Do we stuff them into one big paragraph with all our keywords and then hide it with white text?

00:06:34 [Melissa]
No.
00:06:34 [Melissa]
That that that used to be a thing back in 2008 when I first got started, but it is definitely a big old no now.
00:06:41 [Melissa]
So with those keywords, now you’ve picked the perfect keyword.
00:06:43 [Melissa]
And let’s say you’re gonna write a blog post.
00:06:45 [Melissa]
So you wanna include that keyword in the title of your blog post.

00:06:47 [Melissa]
So you gotta make sure it’s gonna sound natural.
00:06:49 [Melissa]
Like, someone was talking about on the last episode, her blog post on kid friendly restaurants in Virginia Beach.
00:06:54 [Melissa]
So I’m pretty sure her keyword that she was targeting had something to do with restaurants in Virginia Beach.
00:06:59 [Melissa]
And then what she did was she took that keyword and she made it specific to her audience by researching kid friendly restaurants because she’s a family photographer.
00:07:07 [Melissa]
So this is something that her clients would be searching for.

00:07:10 [Melissa]
So you wanna take that keyword that you found and you wanna figure out how do I create a post that is specific to my client.
00:07:17 [Melissa]
So once you’ve got that, you figured out your title, it’s including your keyword, then you wanna write a meant for it.
00:07:21 [Melissa]
So these are, like, the first top two things you gotta do.
00:07:24 [Melissa]
So a meta description is a book jacket.
00:07:26 [Melissa]
It’s gonna describe your post and entice people to click on it.

00:07:29 [Melissa]
But you are limited to a 160 ish characters.
00:07:33 [Melissa]
So you really wanna think about what are you saying, and you wanna include that keyword in your meta description.
00:07:39 [Melissa]
So you wanna have that that that searcher intent kinda thing is covered there.
00:07:43 [Melissa]
So if somebody’s looking for kid friendly restaurants in Virginia Beach, Allison’s gonna talk about, hey.
00:07:48 [Melissa]
You’re traveling to Virginia Beach, but you need to find a place to eat with the kids.

00:11:09 [Melissa]
You’re describing it in a way that people are gonna click and that you wanna include your keyword in there also.
00:11:15 [Melissa]
And that can get a little bit tricky.
00:11:17 [Melissa]
That’s where you’ve just gotta work with it.
00:11:18 [Melissa]
But the biggest thing is you wanna make that enticing because that’s what’s gonna get someone to actually click on your listing versus someone else’s.
00:11:26 [Melissa]
Once you’ve got that in your title, your meta description, then you gotta think about your text.

00:11:31 [Melissa]
You really wanna make sure you have at least 600 words in your blog post, and then you wanna make sure you’re including your keyword in that blog post enough times.
00:11:39 [Melissa]
And keywords too, there’s a whole thing now of a keyword concept.
00:11:43 [Melissa]
They’re just an individual keyword.
00:11:45 [Melissa]
So a keyword concept, let’s say, for Virginia Beach family photographer would also be Virginia Beach family photography, Virginia Beach photos, Virginia Beach family photos at Virginia Beach, family portraits at Virginia Beach.
00:11:57 [Melissa]
All of those have the exact same they’re all part of the same concept.

00:12:01 [Melissa]
So Google looks at those as someone who’s got that searcher intent is looking for most likely a Virginia Beach family photographer.
00:12:08 [Melissa]
But this way, Allison doesn’t have to write on her website over and over again, Virginia Beach family photographer.
00:12:13 [Melissa]
She can utilize some of these other that mean the same thing and make the the post sound better.
00:12:19 [Melissa]
Because otherwise, like, we all start sounding like SEO robots.
00:12:22 [Melissa]
So that’s gonna help with that.

00:12:23 [Melissa]
You also wanna keep those keyword concepts together for, like, your alt tag alt text.
00:12:28 [Melissa]
So when you are putting your image into your blog post, you’re gonna describe that image and you’re gonna use either your keyword that you’re focusing on or one of those other keywords that’s related to that keyword.
00:12:39 [Melissa]
And you can mix them up.
00:12:40 [Melissa]
You wanna describe what’s in the image, that kind of thing.
00:12:42 [Melissa]
And then like I said, with the text and everything, you wanna include it in some of your headers and header structure.

00:12:46 [Melissa]
You wanna make sure that it it flows, that it’s in the text.
00:12:49 [Melissa]
You really want it to be clear to Google that this post is about whatever your keyword is, and you’re serving the searcher intent of your client.
00:12:58 [Melissa]
Not just any client because if she was writing a post on restaurants in Virginia Beach and she’s writing it on, like, the best ones to propose at, that’s not gonna do anything for her family clients.
00:13:07 [Melissa]
They don’t care.
00:13:08 [Melissa]
They’re not searching for that.

00:13:09 [Melissa]
So you really wanna focus on those being related to your clients.

00:13:15 [Alison]
Okay.
00:13:16 [Alison]
So this whole concept keyword concept you just mentioned, first time I’ve heard of that, but it’s really resonating with this our example post here.
00:13:23 [Alison]
I have that post here, and so it’s called five best restaurants restaurants in Virginia Beach with kids.
00:13:30 [Alison]
And I come up with all kinds of keywords like the top results.
00:13:33 [Alison]
So where to eat with kids, favorite places to go with kids, where to eat with kids, easy places.

00:13:38 [Alison]
And it’s interesting.
00:13:39 [Alison]
So they don’t even have the same It’s not even as similar as photography and photographer, but it all is the same concept of where to eat and kids.
00:13:48 [Alison]
And if I look at my search console, it’s probably half a dozen or more keywords that I’m not targeting, but I’m a top result for all to do with restaurants in Virginia Beach with kids.

00:14:01 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:14:02 [Melissa]
Because at this point, Google has figured out the searcher intent is someone looking for a place to eat with their kids, whether it’s easy, cheap, fast, fun, whatever, and then that location.
00:14:11 [Melissa]
And you’ve got a post that covers all of those things.
00:14:13 [Melissa]
So that’s a great example of keeping that keyword concept in your head.
00:14:17 [Melissa]
Now it does limit your keywords in that sense.

00:14:19 [Melissa]
I’ve had people ask me, if I can only use that keyword one time and now I’m using, like, five keywords in one post, what else am I gonna write about?
00:14:26 [Melissa]
There’s tons of other things you can write about, but you really wanna make this article strong enough that isn’t it great that you have one Arden that is now ranking for half a dozen, if not a dozen terms, and you were only targeting one term, but you picked up all of the others.
00:14:39 [Melissa]
You didn’t have to write 12 other posts.
00:14:41 [Melissa]
You just wrote one really good post.
00:14:43 [Melissa]
So keep that in mind with your keywords and stuff too.

00:14:46 [Melissa]
You wanna have one really good post, and that’s gonna do a lot more for you than 12 posts that are okay.

00:14:53 [Alison]
That’s awesome.
00:14:54 [Alison]
It’s a lot.
00:14:55 [Alison]
It can really feel overwhelming.
00:14:56 [Alison]
But, Melissa, you’re really good at breaking it down, simplifying it, and you have more about that, don’t you?

00:15:02 [Melissa]
Oh, yeah.
00:15:02 [Melissa]
If you’re still like, okay.
00:15:03 [Melissa]
I’m scratching the surface, and I need more help.
00:15:06 [Melissa]
We have a keyword research course.
00:15:08 [Melissa]
So if you’re like, okay, I don’t really understand how to search for keywords.

00:15:12 [Melissa]
I don’t know how to figure this stuff out.
00:15:13 [Melissa]
We have a course that you could take that just walks you through all of it.
00:15:16 [Melissa]
If you’re like, okay, I want help with keywords and implementation and blogging, we have a group coaching program.
00:15:23 [Melissa]
And within that group coaching program, it’s four months long, and we walk you through everything from figuring out what keywords you should be targeting, to how to implement them on your homepage, your portfolio pages, location pages, and then planning out and mapping out and how to take the keywords you find in your keyword research phase and use those for blog posts.
00:15:40 [Melissa]
And when we do that research, like I said, it’s not just location.

00:15:43 [Melissa]
It’s gonna be things that are specific to your genre of clients and what they’re searching for so that you can be your blog can be very well rounded.
00:15:50 [Melissa]
It’s not just about, hey.
00:15:52 [Melissa]
Here’s the Jones family session.
00:15:53 [Melissa]
You’re gonna cover a whole lot more than that, and it’s become a resource for your clients.
00:15:58 [Melissa]
Like I said, that group coaching program is four months long, and you can find out more information about all of that over on my website at pictureperfectrankings.com.

00:16:06 [Melissa]
See, there’s a couple different items in the shop course wise.
00:16:09 [Melissa]
We do also offer a done for you service.
00:16:12 [Melissa]
That is for the client who doesn’t wanna deal with it.
00:16:15 [Melissa]
Melissa, I’m busy, and I need you to just come in and do it all for me.
00:16:20 [Melissa]
And so we do have that service on the website too that you can take a look at.

00:16:24 [Alison]
That’s awesome.
00:16:25 [Alison]
So, yeah, Melissa and I have both coached each other on back and forth on moving our businesses.
00:16:29 [Alison]
She’s been instrumental in helping me get some of these blog posts to where they are, honestly, and getting found faster in Hawaii and every other time we’ve been acted while I moved.
00:16:39 [Alison]
So what?
00:16:39 [Alison]
Three moves now?

00:16:40 [Melissa]
It’s crazy.

00:16:41 [Alison]
So awesome.
00:16:42 [Alison]
Hopefully, you found something useful in here.
00:16:45 [Alison]
There are some action items in here.
00:16:47 [Alison]
So hit repeat on this if you need to pause, go back, do it again.
00:16:51 [Alison]
And as always, if you have questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to either one of us.

00:17:00 [Melissa]
Thank you so much for listening.
00:17:02 [Melissa]
If you’re enjoying this show, would you do two things for us?
00:17:05 [Melissa]
First, leave a review.
00:17:06 [Melissa]
Just stars would be awesome.
00:17:07 [Melissa]
And two, forward this episode to a big male spouse or anyone facing moving their business.

00:17:12 [Melissa]
We’d love it if you shared this episode with even just one person.
00:17:15 [Melissa]
If you have any questions, reach out to Allison on Instagram at alison belle photog or Melissa in her Facebook group, Raise Your Ranking.
00:17:22 [Melissa]
Check the show notes for links.