138 | This One SEO Strategy Will Change Your Business

If you're ready to stop wishing for success and instead, have a strategy that takes your photography business to the next level,  join us inside AMPLIFY! My lifetime-access, group coaching program that will help you take action, overcome blocks & challenges, and support you as you expand through all seasons of business growth.

--

Summary:
The #1 question I get from clients when it comes to their SEO strategy is -- where do I start?!?

And I get it, SEO can feel really overwhelming. When it comes to SEO trainings I’ve seen and listened to, it usually goes something like this --  they give you a ton of information and tasks to complete in order to optimize your SEO -- and you leave the training feeling more stuck and lost than you did before you watched the training. Where do you even start?!

In today's episode, I’m here to help you answer this simple question – Krista, what is ONE thing I can do today that will help me with my SEO? 

--

Links from today's episode:
Keywords Everywhere
Google Keyword Planner (need to create a Google Ads account)

If you're ready to create more momentum and visibility inside your business (meaning: more inquiries and more booked clients) -- you'll want to join me for my next free workshop.  This workshop will be interactive meaning you get real-time coaching & strategies to grow your business. Head over to heykristamarie.com/workshop to save your seat.

Ways we can work together:

• <<Coaching>> Photographers, are you ready to create a sustainable business strategy?
• <<Brand Photos>> Is it time to elevate your business and get updated , gorgeous brand photos?

I'D LOVE TO CONNECT WITH YOU!

• Say hello on Instagram 👋
• Watch/Listen the podcast episodes on Youtube 📺
• Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 🎙
• Join the email community ✍🏻

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello and welcome. Friend, you're listening to the she Calls Her Shots podcast, the show that empowers photographers like you to take inspired action and earn more money as a full-time photographer and business owner, and the number one question I get from clients when it comes to their SEO is simply where do I start? Right, raise your hand if this is also true for you, because it can feel really overwhelming. And when it comes to SEO trainings even the ones that I've seen and, believe me, I have seen and been through many SEO trainings they often give you so much information and, while it's amazing, they do give you so much value I find that it often leaves photographers feeling more stuck and not knowing what to prioritize or focus on first, and so I'm here to help you today. Answer that question, right, krista? What is one thing that I can do today that will help me with my SEO? And we all want to feel like we have a plan for our SEO strategy, right? And in this episode, I'm going to help break down just a few things that you can do today that will help you create your own SEO plan. And I want you to know we're not delving into the depths of SEO today. My goal is to help you feel empowered to take action and start growing your SEO, even if you're starting from scratch. Like all things in life and business, having an SEO strategy starts with taking small steps, and if we haven't met yet, I'm Krista Marie. My mission is to help you build a thriving photography business that creates more wealth and freedom in your day to day life, and I know firsthand how complicated SEO can feel, and it can feel like a really long and daunting process, and it likely won't magically click overnight. So at the end of the episode, I'm going to share more information about how I can support you in creating an SEO plan that feels both good to you and also helps to eliminate the overwhelm from the strategy and the process.

Speaker 1: 2:05

But for now, let's go ahead and dive into today's episode, all right. So, first and foremost, I just think it's important to share I'm not a keyword and SEO expert, right? I'm just going to put that out there, because there will likely be, at some point, some SEO guru that's going to listen to this and either think that I'm oversimplifying the process or not giving enough information, or not providing enough to create a thorough SEO strategy. But hear me out, that's kind of the point, I'm not here to trick anyone or throw anyone off, but there are a ton of trainings out there on how to fully optimize your SEO strategy and how to build a robust plan from start to finish. But what I found is that a lot of the SEO teachings feel really overwhelming and a top to bottom SEO strategy, in my opinion, is kind of worthless if you feel too overwhelmed and you don't know how to take action right, like, how beneficial is this crazy detailed plan if it feels so overwhelming that you don't know where to start? So the things that we're going to talk about today, I'm really going to hone in on one way that you can get started and start taking action, because I want you to remember, progress comes from practice, and that's exactly what we're going to tackle today is how can I start practicing and putting in place a simple SEO strategy that will allow me to make progress and become more comfortable? So I want to get that out first and foremost, just so you know what to expect, and I want to also throw out. So this is going to be just a few. I want to clear up some things that you might have either heard about SEO or some thoughts that you might have about SEO. I want to clear up just a few things before we dive into the actual tactical parts of the strategy.

Speaker 1: 3:57

I want to just first and foremost note that it is really important, as you're thinking about writing any sort of content for your blog or anywhere where you're thinking about implementing this SEO strategy, we don't want to keyword stuff, and what do I mean by that? Essentially, we don't want to stuff a bunch of keywords in our content over and over and over again. Right, let's say we'll talk about examples later. But let's say you are posting specifically about an engagement session at a certain location. We don't want to repeat the location name and engagement session like seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 10, you know, like all the time in the post, in order to try and better our SEO, because Google is smart enough to actually flag that. Like they're going to know that you're trying to keyword stuff, so that your goal is that you're hoping to be seen more, but Google is actually likely going to flag your content if you're trying to keyword stuff or force the keyword to show up when it doesn't feel natural in your text. So I want you to just think about it in this way. You want your content to read how you would say it. So if it feels like if you're reading it out loud and it feels like a robot is reading it or you're repeating the same keywords just to try and make the keyword show up more, that will be a flag to you to pull back and make it sound like how you would say it to someone.

Speaker 1: 5:29

This goes for your content itself, also for your blog post titles. We don't want to keyword stuff and repeat things in the titles. This is also important for our alt text that we put on our images. If you don't know what alt text is is whenever we upload a photo to our website or onto our blog post, the alt text is what describes the image on the page and what it does is. It helps visually impaired people understand what the image shows and it helps search engine bots understand the image contents. So it's really helpful for accessibility, but it also can help for your SEO.

Speaker 1: 6:08

But this is another case where we don't want to try to keyword stuff. If your photo is a picture of a couple smiling in the sunshine in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, that's what you want to put as the alt text Right Couple smiling at the camera in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, right, like we don't want to try and keyword stuff. We want to just say what it is Again, keep it readable as you would say it to somebody, and of course, this probably goes without saying. But we also don't want to keyword stuff on our actual website copy Right. So same thing goes for your website pages.

Speaker 1: 6:43

If you're a wedding photographer, write it, you know, a few times on your page. Have a few links about wedding photography. Google will be able to see that. You know if you're we're not getting into this today but if your SEO meta description is wedding photographer in San Francisco, california, I don't need to try to fit in wedding photographer, san Francisco, california in every single paragraph. Google will be smart enough to know to read what is my website. What is it linking to on this page? Maybe it's wedding galleries? They'll see that I'm in San Francisco. I might talk about it a couple of times, but I'm going to make it again feel natural. So just some things that I want you to think of as we're starting to think about our SEO.

Speaker 1: 7:27

Really, the TLDR here is make it how you would say it right. So if you find yourself overthinking or trying to stuff keyword somewhere. It's probably not a good idea. Because here's the thing if we're, if we're stressing about trying to write for Google, if we're trying to create the perfect, most perfectly written SEO post in Google's eyes, we are likely not going to actually make progress and actually write the blogs Right. I have worked with clients who part of the reason why they're so overwhelmed or SEO feels so daunting is because they're trying to make it perfect, and I want this to be a reminder for you that if, if the idea of perfection is what's holding you back and keeping you from right, writing the blogs or creating the content, create the content, the SEO is always something that you can go back and fix later, I would much rather have you take the initiative to write out the post, to brainstorm a potential keyword and then actually write the post and like, get all of the content there and then you can always go in and tweak it If you find a better keyword later, if you change it, like, let's eliminate the overwhelm and not fall into this idea that it needs to be perfect. And here's the other thing to note is that when it comes to long tail keywords, which again, we're going to talk about later, but you need to have a different keyword for each blog post that you share Same thing with your website.

Speaker 1: 8:56

If you have an SEO description or an SEO title for a page on your website, you don't want to use the same SEO title on every single page Because, again, google is going to flag that. They want to know what is your page about and I'll just share briefly. So, for example, my home page if you go to HeyChristinMariecom, my SEO description or meta description for SEO is I believe it's SEO, I believe it's SF Bay Area brand photographer, like that is on my homepage and the reason that's I've done that intentionally because I've done a lot of SEO, seo work on my website. My homepage lists all of my branding packages. The process behind booking a branding shoe, like my homepage is really where all of my brand photography information lives. So it makes sense for my home page SEO title to be SF Bay Area brand photographer, because that's exactly what I'm speaking to, whereas my about page is actually going to I think right now it's my name, christinmarie, and then a line and about or about me, right. Like we want to actually have each page SEO title or meta description actually reflect accurately what that page is about. And here's one just little quick tip I'll throw out If you are a photographer and you don't have your main offerings on your homepage, I highly recommend doing that.

Speaker 1: 10:27

I've worked with SEO strategists. I actually am a part of Fuel your Photos with Dylan and Corey and they have helped me do so much SEO work on my website and I can tell you I get a lot of my leads from Google so I can single-handedly tell you that what the work that I've done with them has worked and one of the biggest things that I implemented and changed that was so helpful. So if you take nothing else away from this episode, if this feels too complicated with keywords, if you take nothing else away on your homepage list out, you can use my website as just an example to see what type of information I share on my homepage. But listing out your pricing, your process, like, don't have it on a separate page. Put it all on your homepage, because when you can optimize your homepage and have an SEO title on your homepage, that is like the keyword that you want people looking for, right. So like SF Bay Area brand photographer or Indianapolis wedding photographer or Sioux Falls, north Dakota wedding photographer, like whatever it is that you want people searching for. If they can come to your homepage and immediately find all of the information that they're looking for, it's gonna help your SEO so much. So, if you do nothing else, please use that as a takeaway from today.

Speaker 1: 11:49

But I wanna go ahead and dive into the strategy of using long tail keywords and I just wanna first say that I again I know that this can feel a little bit overwhelming and I'm gonna share at the end of this. If you want extra support here, again, I'm not an expert, but I have done a ton of SEO work, both in my wedding photography side, my brand photography side, so this is not something that is brand new to me and I am happy to help you if you want some additional support. I also recommend, if you're really looking to dive into SEO. Like I said, I'm a part of the fuel, your photos course and membership and I highly recommend it. So if you really wanna dive in, highly recommend. I'll leave the link below.

Speaker 1: 12:27

But when it comes to your long tail keywords, I want you to think about them in this way these are specific search terms and it's usually a grouping of four words or more that your ideal clients are Googling in order to find you. And with these long tail keywords, the way I want you to think about this are what are my ideal clients searching for alongside searching for me as a photographer? So we talked about the meta description or your SEO title for your homepage, your about page, right? You can think of that as, essentially, those are your long tail keywords for those specific pages. So your long tail keyword for your homepage could be SF Bay Area brand photographer. So we know, if someone is searching for a Bay Area brand photographer, they are likely to find my page based on my homepage, right? So these blog posts and these other pages we're going to create, we're trying to think of what are my ideal clients also searching for? Because if we know okay, there's a good chance, right, like that, they will find me based on their photographer search. If you're looking for a Bay Area brand photographer and you type those words into Google, people will likely find me. I can it's a good strategy to create more blog posts with similar keywords, right? So, for example, some of my long tail keywords I have used are brand photography session in Carmel, right? So you can kind of or brand photography session in Berkeley or brand photographer session for a designer in Napa, so I can have some long tail keywords for blog posts that will still help me in the brand photographer searches, but what we're going to talk about today is kind of branching out from that.

Speaker 1: 14:18

So what types of things can you talk about that will speak to your clients in what they're also searching for? So some examples for wedding photographers specifically could be outdoor wedding venues near the beach or vineyard weddings near San Francisco, california, or beach wedding venues in California, proposal spots near San Francisco, golden Gate Bridge, right? Like these are long tail keywords that people are Googling. And I want you to think about how you Google, right? Usually, when we Google, we don't type in like full sentences, right? So you'll see that these keywords are kind of written in that way Proposal spots in San Francisco, or proposal spots near Golden Gate Bridge, or beach wedding venues in California, right? We're not like. These aren't some super long flowy sentences. It's specific search terms that our ideal clients are looking for, and so, as you're starting to think, I want your brain to start thinking about what would some potential long tail keywords be that your ideal clients are searching for, and there's a tool that I love to use. It's called Keywords Everywhere. So if you go to Google speaking of if you go to Google and search Keywords Everywhere you'll find it. It's actually a plugin that you can download that embeds itself into Chrome, so it's just a Chrome plugin.

Speaker 1: 15:50

There's also, with that one, there is a paid plan that I'm a part of. I think I have the one that's $1.75 a month, so I think it's like less than $22 billed annually. I like using this tool because, essentially, what it does is getting the paid plan. It's not exactly 100,000 searches, but you're able to do like 100,000 keyword searches you can think of it in that way and it'll tell you whether that's going to be a good long tail keyword for you to use or similar long tail keywords that could be better. So I really like it. It's like, like I said, less than $2 a month and all I have to do is go into Google and search something and I get the information popping up right in my Chrome browser.

Speaker 1: 16:39

There's also something called Google Keyword Planner. The only reason I don't recommend this one as much is because they actually moved it under the Google Ads platform, and so, in order to use Google Keyword Planner, you have to make a Google Ads account, and so, if you already have a Google Ads account, search for Google Keyword Planner and you'll be able to log in with your Google Ads account and essentially what it allows you to do is, in Google Keyword Planner, you can type in your long tail keyword that you're thinking of using and it'll give you the relevant information that you need, which we're going to go over in a second or, like I said, I use keywords everywhere and, for less than $2 a month, I can just go straight into Google, search the keyword that I'm thinking of and then get all the data just right there in Chrome. So I just think it's easier. That's my preference, but there's also a million other SEO tools that you could use. It's just. Those are my two go-tos, and so, no matter which tool, which of those two you decide to use, again, I do think it's important, because that tool is going to give you the information you need.

Speaker 1: 17:42

That's going to make sure that the keywords you're using are good, right, that they're like high volume, that people are searching them, because what we don't want to do is just create keywords out of nowhere that we think people want, when, in reality, if nobody is searching for that specific set of words, that string of keywords, if no one's searching for that, we've put all of this work into creating this really informative blog post and nobody is searching it, so we're not getting found. So I do want to emphasize that it is important to use something. But no matter which tool you use, there's two main things I want you to focus on when it comes to figuring out is this a good keyword like search? Are these good keywords for me to use? Right, this long tail keyword? So we're going to want to look at the volume and the competition. So I almost would love to encourage you if you're editing or if you're on your computer, pause this episode right now. Download keywords everywhere, install it, because then we can kind of do this together and you can see exactly what I'm talking about. But even if you can't, this is still something you can come back to and use as a refresher if you need it.

Speaker 1: 18:59

But essentially, when we do a Google search I'm just going to use keywords everywhere as an example. If we do a Google search, it's going to bring up on the right hand side of the page a whole bunch of search strings, right, I'm actually going to pull up one right here and I'm just going to say wedding photographer Bay Area. Okay, so we're going to see on the right hand side that a whole bunch of information pops up, but what we're going to want to pay attention to our first is the volume, right, and so you'll see in its VOL volume, so under the volume, this is essentially how many people are searching for this on an average basis. So, as you can probably guess, the higher the volume, the better, because that means more people are searching for them. So, when I put in the keyword wedding photographer Bay Area, one of the related keywords or things that people also search for are San Francisco photographers. That tends to be a pretty highly searched keyword. Makes sense, right, because it's a little more vague than wedding photographer Bay Area, right, this is just San Francisco photographers, so any kind of photographer. But this tells me that San Francisco photographers has a volume of a thousand searches per month, or close to that. San Francisco wedding photographer City Hall that has a volume of 880 searches on average. So these are going to be things that I want to pay attention to because, as a photographer right, if I was a wedding photographer here in the Bay Area. I'm going to want to make sure that I have a blog post with the key word long tail keyword San Francisco photographer, where I talk about either sessions that I've done. So it can be kind of a highlight blog post where I highlight maybe three, four, five sessions that I've done in San Francisco where I'm just kind of highlighting that in the blog post.

Speaker 1: 21:49

It's also going to be important that if I have photographed a wedding at City Hall or if I want to photograph a wedding at City Hall, having a blog post with the keyword long tail keyword San Francisco wedding photographer, city Hall, is obviously going to increase my ranking and being able to be found in that search, because I know it's highly searched by people, likely by ideal clients. So if I hadn't done a wedding at City Hall, I might go to City Hall and get a bunch of photos of the City Hall building and locations and write a highlight post about it, about how to prep for a City Hall wedding, right. So again, we want to keep the content on our blog post page relevant to the keyword. But if I had done a wedding at City Hall, great, I'll want to make sure that that is the keyword that I use for that blog post. Or if I haven't done a wedding at City Hall, but I want to and I want to be found in searches, I can get a little bit creative and go and maybe bring a friend Maybe I like bring a friend who's gotten married, dress her up in her wedding dress and take some bridal portraits there, right Like.

Speaker 1: 22:56

But I'm going to want to focus on how can I get a piece of content that really speaks to getting married at City Hall with those long tail keywords? So these are going to be things you want to pay attention of is the volume how highly searched is this on an average basis? But there's another thing that we also want to look at, because something might be highly searchable, right, it might have a really high volume, but it also might have a really high competition. And so you'll notice again, when you do the search on the right hand side, you'll have some things come up, and when you see CMP, the abbreviation CMP, that's going to be your competition. There's also CPC in the middle, cost per click. We're not going to get into that today because, again, that's just something that I don't want to dive into.

Speaker 1: 23:44

I want to keep this really simple, but we do want to look at the competition, because that's going to determine whether this is a keyword we want to use or not. So searches with a competition of one so just like the full number of one mean that they are going to be the most competitive searches and our content, if that's our keyword, if the competition is one, we're going to have a really hard time having our content be shown to people who search. So you can think about this in like a percentage perspective, right? So the competition of zero obviously being very low, or 0.01 or 0.1 or 0.3, or, you know, 0.14, the lower that is, the more likely our content will be found when people search it. So we want to just keep in mind, right, we want something that has a high volume, but we also want something that's a lower competition.

Speaker 1: 24:47

So, for example, just using this wedding photographer Bay Area, when I'm looking at the data that keywords everywhere gave me, san Francisco photographers has a volume of a thousand and has a competition of 0.36. So it's not bad. I mean, it's maybe not the lowest, but it's definitely nowhere near one. So that is, that is something that I would personally want to focus on as a potential long tail keyword. Even better, san Francisco wedding photographer City Hall has that volume of 880 and a competition of 0.22. So that's again even lower. So that's a long tail keyword that I know I won't want to have on a blog post because that's going to be something that is highly searched and doesn't have a ton of competition, so I'm more likely to be found even better. Right?

Speaker 1: 25:38

I love finding things like this, because there is a wedding venue here in San Francisco. It's called Foreign Cinema and again, this is why I love keywords everywhere, because it's telling me people also search for and it's showing me that foreign cinema wedding has a volume of 140. So it not nearly as high, but again, just imagine 140 people. If 140 people are searching for foreign cinema wedding, how many weddings do you need to book on a yearly basis, right? So 140 is the volume for this, but the competition is 0.03. That is so incredibly low. So if I wanted to really increase my bookings and really look for venues that I could partner with that I could potentially shoot a whole lot of weddings at, especially if I want to just organically be found on Google, you can bet that is a venue that I will be writing a blog post about, because the search volume is decent and the competition is so incredibly low. So this is honestly my favorite tool, because it takes all of the guesswork out of it and it just makes it so easy.

Speaker 1: 26:48

So what I want to encourage you is start doing some searches for some example long tail keywords that you think your clients are looking for, and let yourself just experiment. Google a bunch of different keywords, see what comes up. Sometimes I'll get a related keyword. I'll do a Google search and I'll get a related keyword. Sometimes I take that related keyword and then Google that to see what comes up. Right, like, let yourself kind of go into a rabbit hole of searching here with really figuring out what are some high potential long tail keywords that you could think about using for potential blog posts and as a wedding photographer right, think about what are your clients searching for alongside searching for you as a photographer. They are probably searching for wedding venues, right? So, again, get specific, like the foreign cinema example, right, search specific venues in your area and also search. Maybe there's some beaches or art galleries or specific vineyards that you'd love to work at. So start searching. What are the wedding venues. Maybe do some searches around, like the best time of year to get married, right? That might be something that your clients are searching for. So see what comes up when you look for that. Bridal shops that's another really big one. So, putting in a Google search for bridal shops in your area and then figuring out what keywords or related searches come up, for that People might be searching for engagement photographers, right. So same thing Portrait photographers, right. Let yourself start experimenting.

Speaker 1: 28:21

And I want to Quickly distinguish, because I know that I said long tail keywords are best if they are four words or more. You'll notice that some of these, right, like foreign cinema wedding, was only three words. But the reason that that had high volume and low competition, or at least the reason it had high volume, is because it is a very specific search. So you can use three word long tail keywords if it is very specific, to like the venue, for example, or a store name and a location. If it's a very specific search like that, you can likely do a three word long tail keyword. But what you don't want to do is to do a long tail keyword that only has three words. That's like wedding photographer California. Because if you search that you're going to get so many results right Like it's just not specific enough.

Speaker 1: 29:14

And I also want to note that you might notice for some of your searches some of the volume might be really low. So, for example, as a brand photographer, I'm actually noticing branding photography is actually not searched very heavily. Almost all searches I've done for branding photography or branding photographers have come back with a volume of like either zero or zero to ten or ten to a hundred right Like, they're actually not heavily searched. Now it doesn't mean that I'm not doing blog posts that have the words brand photographer in it. However, I am searching for related keywords that are performing well. So, for example, something that is performing well and is highly, highly searched is headshots, bay Area, right? So people are searching for headshots because branding photography is still a little bit newer, like not everybody is doing a search for brand photographers. So I want you to know that it's okay if the search volume is low. It's okay to still use that as a keyword sometimes for some blog posts, but you want to make sure that you're also creating content around high searched and related keywords.

Speaker 1: 30:29

Okay, I know that was like a full on training in this podcast episode, but I've been speaking with clients and with listeners of the podcast and I know just how daunting SEO can feel. And my whole point here was I hope that I can empower you to feel like you can start searching for these long tail keywords and you can just start writing content, start writing blog posts, start, start just putting that out there again, not focusing so much on trying to keyword stuff or make it perfectly SEO written. Write it first and then we can always go back in and tweak it to make it SEO searchable, but don't try to make it perfect from the beginning. And here is a fast action start for you. If you're like Chris, that was a lot of information. I would love to do that, but I'm going to need to go back and re listen and take notes. Here's something that you can do today, right now, as soon as you're done listening. You could do this.

Speaker 1: 31:28

I want you to go on Google and I want you to find a local vendor or a venue, one specific place, and offer to do a highlight blog post for them. So what does this mean? Right Again, for wedding photographers. I use that, you know, foreign cinema. If I were going to do this myself. I would probably use foreign cinema San Francisco because, again, of what I found.

Speaker 1: 31:51

But, as a wedding photographer, do searches for individual venues that you would like to shoot at, right. So, for example, sunstone Winery weddings or Jacuzzi family vineyards wedding like. Start searching for specific venues that you would love to work with and then notice which of those venues or vendors has a decent search volume right. Look for that high volume and low competition and then reach out to that specific venue or that vendor and ask if they'd be open to you featuring them on your blog, right. 99% of the time, someone is going to love if you're going to write a blog post about them, their business, their venue, because it gets them more exposure. So this is always you. This is always like a very a loved strategy, because it's a win-win for everybody and they feel really special that you want to write about them, and so you can either send them a list of questions to answer or they might have kind of some frequently asked questions and answers on their website.

Speaker 1: 32:50

But the goal here is to create a blog post on your site that individually speaks to that venue or that vendor and answers any and all questions that dream clients might have. So, if you're a wedding photographer highlighting a venue, what are the questions that a couple would have that wants to have a wedding at that venue? They probably want to know how much does it cost? How many, like maximum guests can they invite? How soon in advance should they book? What are the different ceremony locations? What rentals do they have on hand? What? What vendors do they partner with? Right, like, think about what questions would a client have in order to book this venue and answer those questions in the blog post. Again, we want to make this a resource for dream clients.

Speaker 1: 33:39

If it's, if you're a portrait photographer, maybe you find a local vendor or a store, right, maybe it is a cute boutique that moms buy a lot of clothes for their family's at that, you want to do a vendor post for that works as well. So, again, thinking about what question would someone have? Well, what types of clothing do they specialize in? When are they open? How often are they adding new inventory? What's the style? Or, like you know, like, can you share more about the person behind the business, right, who owns this store, so that people can feel more connected to it? Really, just think about how can I proactively answer the questions that these clients would be asking.

Speaker 1: 34:17

And again, the point here is that when you share a blog post like this, the venue or the vendor is likely going to reshare this post right, whether it's on their email list or social media or on their website. They're going to be so excited that you feature them and they're likely going to share it with others. And, as a further SEO strategy that we didn't talk about today, this also gives you backlinks. So when an external place links back to your website or your blog to Google, they see your blog as being more credible. They see your site as being more credible and having an authority, because people are linking to you, so clearly you're providing helpful information. So we didn't talk about today, but it also helps with backlinks, which is amazing. And also when someone searches for that venue or that vendor, if it has a high volume, and especially if it has a low competition, your post might appear on Google. So especially, like I said, if there's that low competition, we want our content to be found right, and so that's a really great strategy for SEO and, as a bonus, it helps you build relationships with that venue and with that vendor for any future collaborations and partnerships that you might want to have. As a little bonus there, you can even visit the vendor or the venue. You can snag some photos of your own that you can add to the post to make it even more pretty and even more impactful. And then, just as a quick note, I always like to run the edited final post by my contact, so by the venue or by the vendor. I want to run it by them ahead of time so I can get their written approval that the information is all correct and that they like the post. So we just want to get that final approval with them before we actually share it and tag them.

Speaker 1: 36:03

But I know we shared so much today and I want to give you this opportunity so that you can write down some of these takeaways and things that you can focus on this week. I want you to remember don't overcomplicate this strategy. Create your blog posts and your content in a way that feels really natural to what people are searching, right. Don't write for Google, write for the clients that are reading it. I also shared my two favorite tools for finding your long tail keywords, my favorite being keywords everywhere. And again, you can also use Google Keyword Planner as well. It gives you the same, if not very similar, information. We also went over some tips for how to brainstorm what those long tail keywords might be right. So just start thinking about what are my ideal clients also searching for when they're looking for me as a photographer.

Speaker 1: 36:54

And I also shared that super easy way to get started with this by writing that venue or that vendor highlight post on your blog. Truthfully, that will be such a game changer for you and it's something that is scalable that you can do for multiple venues and vendors. So I just hope that you feel so inspired about how you can start taking action on your SEO today, because I can promise you these steps are going to help you ditch the overwhelm. They'll help you start somewhere with your SEO strategy and, after all, we all have to start somewhere, right?

Speaker 1: 37:26

So, as you're thinking about how you can implement this in your business, I want to emphasize the best thing you can do is find the simplest way that you can move forward, because your SEO strategy doesn't have to be robust at first and it doesn't have to be this complicated, overwhelming process, and if you want more support, if you want more clarity around how you can take this SEO strategy and make it work for you.

Speaker 1: 37:52

I'd love to have you join us inside of Amplify. It's a group coaching program that I have for women business owners and specifically photographers, and once you're in, we can dive straight into creating an SEO strategy that feels simple, impactful and that helps you call in those next dream clients. So you can find the link to join us inside Amplify in the show notes below. But thank you so much for joining me today for this episode. I just hope it was mega helpful and giving you the much needed inspiration to be able to dive into creating an SEO strategy for yourself, and I'm so excited to continue supporting you even further as you focus on growing your business.