How to Get Your Photography Business Found on Google with Krista Jones

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Summary

Krista and Christa discuss the importance of SEO for photographers, emphasizing how it builds long-term credibility and attracts clients without relying solely on paid advertising. They explore practical strategies for optimizing websites for Google and AI, including keyword use, content creation, and mindset shifts for consistent, long-term results.

Key Topics

• The power of SEO for long-term client inquiries
• Optimizing website content for Google and AI
• The importance of owning your website platform
• Using GEO keywords to attract local clients
• Creating evergreen content for sustained traffic

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Transcript

Christa (00:01.041)
Welcome back everybody to the Uncap Photographer podcast. This is where we help establish photographers grow and scale their businesses. I'm Krista and I have another Krista with me today that I'm so excited about. This is Krista with Davian Krista. They are Show It brand and website designers. And Krista, I don't know if it was my first time officially meeting you. was many, many years ago. I think at a conference at a Creative at Heart back, way, way back.

Krista (00:25.717)
Uh-huh.

That sounds right. I feel like that was so long ago at this point, which makes me feel really old.

Christa (00:33.989)
I know we're so old. But, you I was introduced to you guys and it was really, you guys were the first people that really shared in depth about SEO. And I remember doing your resources and the, remember telling you again at the next conference, my inquiries had exploded because of SEO. And that's something, even though I've pulled back in a lot of ways with marketing to have more room for coaching, the SEO still works for us. We still have people finding us from that.

And that's how powerful it is, which is what I want to do to come and speak to our photographers today.

Krista (01:08.494)
Yeah, well, I'm really excited to chat about it. And I've seen that in my own business. So I also used to be a photographer. And I stopped shooting everything in 2018 when our first child was born. And I just took my photography website down, I think it was last year, and I was getting a few inquiries a week. And I had not touched it in probably seven years. And that's all because of the power of SEO. So it's really crazy how much work it can do for so long.

Christa (01:35.175)
And that was without, you weren't even running paid Google ads or anything. Like that's how powerful you can build it up on your own without paying is.

Krista (01:41.494)
Yeah, that was running a business that didn't, the business didn't exist and it hadn't existed for several years, but people were still inquiring. And so at some point I was like, I should probably take this down so that people aren't confused why I never say yes to shooting anything. So.

Christa (01:55.089)
They're like, we're waiting on them to shoot our wedding, which again is also why I wanted you to come speak because you have been in the photo space and you know what photographers are looking for. So Krista, I'd love for you to share like, what is SEO actually doing for photographers website? And why does it still matter with all of the other marketing, you know, people are doing the running Facebook ads there. You know, obviously I teach connecting with local businesses. Like why is SEO still so important for photographers and what does it do?

Krista (02:21.772)
Yeah, I think it is so many things. First of all, those platforms like Instagram, social media, meta ads, they're harder to control and you don't own them. I think that you and I both probably started our businesses back when Google pages or when Facebook pages were like the thing. And now that's a dead space. All that work that we did all those years ago to build up our Facebook pages no longer matters. And so I think that platforms can come and go. But the work that you do on your website is a space that you own and that's always going to live.

And it's such a good credibility factor for all the other things that you do. So if a friend is talking about Krista Renee as the photographer, and they hear about you, they might go also searching on their own and search for photographers in Greenville, South Carolina. And if the friend recommended you and you're showing up first in Google results, you're much more likely to get that referral or that inquiry because lots of people are referring you. So they're like, she's a much more credible business because not only are other people talking about her,

Not only do I love the way that she's showing up on social media, but she also shows up in Google. She has all of these credible results, all of these reviews listed there. And I think it just makes people a lot more likely to work with you. That's also a platform that you can take with you. So if you move to a different location, you can change out your keywords and you don't lose all of the work that you've done before. And so I think that treating your website like a home base that is easy to discover is just the long-term game versus

trying to put a ton of work into a platform that may or not be there in five years.

Christa (03:53.543)
I love that. And I will say too, similar to what you were, you and I are both saying above, you know, it's a platform longevity wise that is going to reap you results versus if you're basing your business and I have no problem with Facebook ads. I've even tested a few this year and showed my students a couple of things. But if your ad account gets shut down or something like that, like there goes your business. If that's, if that's your main source of revenue.

Krista (04:14.626)
Yes. Yeah, and that would be totally scary to be so reliant on that. I think that I've seen a lot of people have their businesses hacked. They lose that page. They lose their Instagram account. And then that work that they've done is completely gone. So it would be much harder to completely lose your business on your website, especially if you're hosting with a platform like we recommend, which is show it because their team is just behind you 100%. And you know that if something happens, they're going to help you figure it out.

where I don't know that meta is going to do the same thing for you.

Christa (04:46.151)
That makes complete sense. So kind of a buzzword I've heard in this space instead of SEO is GEO. Would you be willing to share a bit about that? If someone literally has never heard that before, could you speak to us like we're in fourth grade? Because I know I need that when talking about SEO.

Krista (04:53.079)
Yes.

Krista (05:00.142)
Yes, so GEO is like the new kid on the block and that stands for Generative Engine Optimization. I don't think that you need to remember that. You just basically need to know that GEO is your mentions in AI search results. So when you get mentioned in ChatDBT or Cloud or Google's overview, that is all GEO. And you think that the great thing about it is that if you've been doing SEO well over the years, if you're constantly blogging, you're sharing your work, you're talking about the things that you do,

you're creating educational content that is rich with keywords, rich with answering questions in your content, you're naturally going to set yourself up to show up higher in GEO. Over the last year, we've started to receive inquiries for our design services from ChatGBT, which is crazy because I never would have thought when I started my business that an AI tool would exist and that it would be sending work and referrals my way.

And so I think that for photographers, as time goes on, it's just gonna become more vital that we optimize our sites for GEO because I think that so many people, especially these younger audiences, these younger couples, these younger families are going to be turning to tools like AI tools to find their photographers. And so I think when you could do that well, it really sets you up for a long-term success.

Christa (06:19.559)
Okay, I love that. So when we're optimizing to be found on Google, to be found on AI, are those two different things or can they work together and the same work can yield to getting results on both?

Krista (06:26.989)
Yes.

Krista (06:33.772)
Yeah, they could work together. And so it's gonna be a lot of similar things to optimize for both areas, making sure that if you're location-based, which I would think that for most photographers, you're going to be location-based, because even those of us who are willing to travel to shoot, we're far more likely to get work in our local area, and we're far more likely to book somebody in our local area who will then take us somewhere else than we are to to target huge broad keywords. It's gonna be really hard to rank for something like family photographer.

But if you can rank for Greenville family photographer, it makes it a lot more likely that somebody might take you elsewhere if you are willing to travel. So for a lot of us, it's using our keywords naturally. It's blogging our past sessions, making sure that we're mentioning the keywords, making sure that we actually write text in those blog posts. I know that can be tricky. I know a lot of us just don't feel comfortable writing. We feel more comfortable with the visual side, but aim to describe the session, talk about where it was, talk about the lighting and the style.

the family, the more that you can talk about that, the more content both Google and these new AI tools can go through and scrape. And you would be far more likely to come up for autumn portraits in Charleston, South Carolina. So we want to make sure we're doing all of that. We want to make sure that we're adding alt text to our images and having h1 tags and h2 tags used on our site. Those are really easy to add and show it. There are a ton of tutorials out there. I think if you head to our YouTube channel and just search for SEO, we have tutorials there too.

Christa (07:45.745)
love that.

Krista (08:01.538)
But just using those keywords all over is going to be a really great way to show up at all of the search results. For GEO specifically, the way that GEO is working really well is that if you think about the questions that somebody is asking, and then you prompt that in your blog post or on your page, and then you answer it. So it might be something like, when should I schedule my newborn photos? And you could even elaborate on that and say, in Charleston, South Carolina.

And so you would put that exact text in your blog post, and then you would answer it. So if you look at our blog, you'll see that we have a lot more question and answer sessions than we did a few years ago. And I'm also really pushing my clients to have FAQ sections on all of their services pages, because that is really easy content for Google to scrape and for AI to scrape.

Christa (08:49.191)
Okay, I love that. So as a photographer, you need to think through what is your ideal client searching for on chat and think about like for yourself. Like what are you searching for? A family photo ideas, when to take your newborn photos. Like where's the best place in Charleston for senior portraits? I love that. Okay. That makes complete sense. And then also people are still Googling those things too. So you can show up on chat, Google, even Pinterest and use it all together. I love that.

Krista (08:55.692)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Like what should I wear? Yes.

Krista (09:16.334)
Yes, I think that if you think about creating one strong piece of blog content each week, then sharing about it on Pinterest, so creating several Pinterest graphics, it gives you a piece of content that you can then take over to Instagram and TikTok and all of the other places. But our content strategy has always stemmed from that main blog post every week and then spinning it out as many places as we can and not just doing it once, but doing it again and again over the years. Because if you're creating content that is evergreen,

I mean, outfit content is always going to be evergreen, location content, how to plan for different types of sessions. Like the questions that people are asking, just because you write it once doesn't mean that it should just be dead. You could share that again and again. And if traffic is always going to that content, it signals to different search engines, it signals to AI that it's a more popular piece of content, which makes it more likely that it will be delivered to other people.

Christa (10:09.575)
Okay, I love that. So with one piece of work, like one blog, you can then utilize it across the board. So blogging is not dead. It's not dead. I tell my students that too, Krista. It's like, no, you still need to blog. And also, I don't know, I do know about y'all. If I don't have to pay for leads, like whenever I have students who ask me that, like, should I put the time in SEO? Should I be paid ads? I'm like, listen, if I don't have to pay for leads, I'm all over that, right? Like, it's great.

Krista (10:16.564)
No, it is definitely not dad.

Krista (10:32.586)
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that kind of content, lives for ages. I mean, we have content that we wrote a decade ago on our blog, and it's still ranking really high. And that is like not the way that Instagram and TikTok and all of those platforms work. I think that Pinterest has a longer lifespan, but I think that people probably trust Google search results a little bit more. And if you don't have something go viral on TikTok or Instagram in 24 hours, it's probably dead.

And that is not the same case for SEO and for DEO. That blog content can drive traffic for years and years.

Christa (11:10.247)
Okay, this is great. So in the photo space, Krista, I'm curious, like, what do you think the biggest mistakes photographers are making on their websites?

Krista (11:19.01)
Yeah, I think one big mistake that I see people make is treating their websites like just a gallery and having no text. Yes, AI, yes, Google can look at those images, but not in the same way that it can read text. And so we want to make sure that we're having different bits of text on our site. talking about ourselves, talking about where we work, our locations, mentioning venues if we are a wedding photographer, talking about different cities, using the kind of phrases that people are searching for.

That is how we're going to be ranking. Another thing that I see photographers make is to not name their image files correctly. So they might just export them from Lightroom and say have file name like DSC4892.jpg. Google and AI can read through the image file names. And so it's going to be really smart for you to export those with some keywords. Don't make them super long. If you make your image titles too long, they can get cut off. But

Christa (12:02.257)
Yes.

Krista (12:16.96)
If you shot a autumn family portrait session in Charleston, name those images when you export them Charleston fall or autumn family portraits and then add your numbers.jpg and then make sure that you're sizing them correctly too. Don't just take the huge image files that you exported from Lightroom and upload them. I like to run mine through raw pixel. I don't like raw pixel to actually inject the code into the website. I think that that's not great for SEO and it really

kind of holds that content hostage because it's really hard to ever change it. But with raw pixel, used to be called blog stop, you can export those images at a smaller size, but they still look sharp and then upload those. And then when you upload them to your blog, to your website, give them an alt tag. So put in a little bit of a descriptive text where the alt text goes so that different tools can read through that.

Christa (12:59.495)
Okay.

Christa (13:10.119)
Okay, that's amazing. So don't just dump images that you exported for a client gallery to your website and hope it's good because you're missing out. I will say, Krista, even like if it's like my images are always named by name, like Krista Renee photography, that's not going to help, right? Like a client searching for a photographer isn't searching Krista Renee photography. They're searching, you know, Greenville family session with a dog. So super helpful here. Um, so I'd love to ask you this Krista for the photographer.

Krista (13:15.223)
Yes.

Krista (13:25.003)
Mm-hmm.

No.

Yes.

Christa (13:38.715)
That's like, hey, my time is really limited. I'd love to hear like, if I had like just, you know, 30 minutes a week to work on my SEO, what should I do to reap the biggest results?

Krista (13:49.602)
I would think about the questions that people are asking you on a discovery call or in a sales session. So if they're asking you, what size prints do I need? Or when should I book this newborn session? Or when is the best time of the year to schedule a family photo shoot? Write those down and then turn each one of those questions into a long form piece of blog content. That's going to help you have a content strategy for everything else. I bet that once you write that initial blog post, I think that you could probably even

dictate it to an AI tool and then have it optimize it for search and then add that, it's gonna be really easy to repurpose it for an Instagram carousel and a reel and a TikTok video. And if you have a mailing list, put it in your email. And so I think that when you think of content that way, it becomes much more manageable. You can probably even batch schedule a bunch of them at a time and have one come out every week over the next several weeks. And then that's going to...

signal to search engines that your site isn't just a dead place that never gets updated. Google and AI are going to reward the sites that have the freshest content. And so if we can keep coming up with that content, we can keep educating people. We look more like an authoritative source because we actually know what we're talking about. People see that, Krista knows what I should wear to my newborn session. She's going to know that I don't feel great because I'm really postpartum. And she's going to, I trust her to help me feel really good.

and look beautiful in my photos even when I haven't slept. And so I think that it does that. And then it also signals to those search engines that there's fresh content on our site.

Christa (15:23.431)
Okay, super helpful. Krista, I talk to a lot of photographers and I think sometimes they hear the word SEO and get completely overwhelmed. They don't even want to star, even if there's simple steps in front of them. what would be kind of leaving us with this final capstone? What's a good mindset shift? Photographers were creatives, right? Often like the business side of our brain isn't as strong as the creative side. So what is some coaching maybe you could give us around the mindset of implementing SEO and GEO?

Krista (15:53.958)
that I don't think is as hard as people make it seem. I think a lot of people when they teach about SEO and these are like SEO experts, they tend to make it feel so complicated that it just feels like this mountain that we would never want to climb. And I don't know if that is just like part of a strategy for them to get you to hire them. But I don't think that we need to spend a lot of money and hire an SEO. I think it's really manageable for us to figure out how to do it ourselves. And so

The biggest way that you're going to rank is doing the things that we just talked about in this podcast. So using your keywords on your site, making sure that you're mentioning your location. People need to know where you actually live and where you shoot in order to consider hiring you. Blogging consistently and just showing up and proving that we are an expert and that other people trust us. So make sure you're getting reviews and feedback from clients too on Google and then bring those over to your website. And really it's just those simple things.

I think if you hear other people talk about some of the technical stuff that you should be doing, I would just ignore that and focus on the things that I listed here, because those are going to be the things that really have the biggest impact, not whether your cascading style sheet is minimized and compressed.

Christa (17:08.017)
like a final thing, Krista, I'm going off script a little bit here, but one thing that I feel like mindset wise too, is that like it can be a longer game. You you might not make these updates or blog once and get 10 inquiries that next week. And I think sometimes that holds photographers up is trying to get that immediate result. And just that reminder of just like you're saying a decade later, it's still working in your favor. And I truly think a lot of the strongest marketing

Krista (17:17.238)
Mm-hmm.

Krista (17:22.252)
rape.

Krista (17:32.023)
Yeah.

Christa (17:35.417)
is the one that takes time and is done consistently to build up and that will outweigh smaller quick cash injections. Yeah.

Krista (17:43.234)
Yes, 100%. It takes a few months to get these different tools, these different resources to see that your content exists. I mean, when you first launch your website, Google's probably, if you just bought your domain name, Google's probably not going to recognize it for several months. And there's nothing that we can do to get around that. But if we have a strong content strategy, if we have a strong search strategy, if traffic is consistently coming back to our website, those tools are going to see it as a more credible source.

And like you said, we're going to show up high in those search results for a decade and not just have a viral post that may or may not connect with the right person who could actually afford to hire us in our location. yeah, I think that's a really great mindset.

Christa (18:24.519)
I love that. Okay, this was so helpful, Krista. I know you're so busy and I appreciate your time. Krista and I and her husband, Davy, we've been friends, colleagues for years and years now in the photo spaces. We've transformed our businesses. I just have the utmost respect for y'all. So photographer, if you're listening and want to connect with Krista and thank her, Krista, where can they connect with you? And also I would love if you could share about the incredible resources you have for photographers, because I am a paying customer.

of yours to those things. So I'm speaking from someone who actually has done multiple websites, Chris has done multiple websites for me now. I've gotten multiple of her resources. I'd love if you could share all of that with us.

Krista (18:57.006)
you

Krista (19:03.278)
Well, we always love working with you. You're so much fun. You can find us everywhere at Dave and Krista. So D-A-V-E-Y and my name is K-R-I-S-T-A. So we spell our Kristas a little differently. Same as a born Instagram. And then if you want a website that starts to do some of this work for you and the mix it really easy to update. Krista and I are both big fans of Show It. So we sell pre-designed website templates for Show It. You can go over and grab one of those and then pop in all of your content.

And I have a lot of tools and resources that come with those templates to teach you how to optimize them for search so that you're not just like left hanging, wondering whether you're actually doing your H1 tag correctly or whether you have the right type of content on your homepage in order to get it to lead people to an inquiry and then a sale.

Christa (19:52.731)
And we will link all of that in the show notes, but your resources are great. guys, like the really cool thing about baby and Chris's resources is like they were photographers. Like they were right where you're at. They understand probably more than most designers out there, like what it is like to be a photographer and have a say that you need optimized for that specific thing. So check out the resources, slide into their DMs if this was helpful. Krista, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it.

Krista (20:01.846)
Yeah.

Krista (20:16.96)
Yeah, well thank you for having me.