Engaged In Chaos
A Wedding podcast built to bring vendors and engaged couples closer together.
Engaged In Chaos
EP5 SEO, AI & Google - Oh My! (For Photographers)
If the word SEO makes your eyes glaze over, this episode is your wake-up call. I’m joined by Kim and Caroline from North & South Agency SEO and website design specialists who work specifically with photographers to break down what actually matters in 2025.
We cover it all: what SEO is (and isn’t), the biggest mistakes photographers make, choosing the right website platform, how to optimize your Google Business profile, and whether blogging is still worth your time. We also dive into how to use AI tools like ChatGPT to create content that ranks and reflects your voice.
This episode is super important to me because I learned so much during this conversation, and being their client, so I know you will too. If you’ve been feeling stuck trying to get your name out there (same), this one’s for you.
Connect with North & South Agency:
🌐 Website: northandsouthagency.com
📸 Instagram: @northandsouthagency
🎥 TikTok: @genzweddings
As always, we love to get your feedback and questions - CLICK HERE to fill out our form! We cant wait to connect.
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Autumn & Company Photography: @autumnandcophoto
Engaged In Chaos Podcast: @engagedinchaos
Bye Loves!
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Engaged in Chaos. Today I have with me some wonderful friends. Oh, and... So I'm going to just hand it right off to you guys. Today we are going to be talking about SEO and we have Caroline and Kim with us. So tell us about you both, how you guys got started and what North and South Agency does. Awesome. So my name is Kim. And I'm Caroline. And we're from the North and South Agency. And we started probably about a year and a half ago. It was actually Caroline's idea to start up a marketing agency directly sort of targeting wedding photographers. She reached out to me and found me on Instagram through like Instagram SEO, which is really perfect for this episode. And reached out to me and asked if I could do her branding and website. She initially went onto my website did a lot of research for other web designers as well too but like really felt drawn to my website just because it's done up really good and it showcases my personality so she's like okay well this is the vibe like this is the girl i want to work with and um created her brand created her website and then hired me on as a social media manager and during like the beginning stages of it she's like hey like let's kind of do this together i i I'm from Canada, flew down to Charleston and we did sort of like a mini style shoot at a bar. It was just like kind of one set. It was free. We invited like a bunch of photographers in the area and we just kind of fell in love with each other. And we really kind of talked about like, we have a lot of like complimentary aspects when it comes to our business. And we just kind of just decided, just do it together. And ever since then, it was just long story short, it's been really good. Having to meet all these wedding photographers and really kind of digging in and understanding how they work. We just kind of fell in love with the artistry, the people. And now we just want to help so much more of you wedding photographers. oh that's so beautiful i actually got to meet you guys back in february at a summit that you guys had and that's i'm actually one of their clients fun fact they if you check out my website it was done by them these beautiful ladies so caroline what about you what's what's this experience been for you guys um it's just been honestly like a labor of love and just like kim said you know we started off kind of small with it being just one project that evolved to two that evolved to, hey, we're friends now. Hey, we're best friends now. Hey, let's just do this together. And so, yeah, it was, the agency was originally under a different name and then we decided to rebrand it to North and South because Kim's from Canada, I'm from South Carolina. And then that just was more representative of us. And then meeting you Autumn at Southern Bride, that was another like moment like that, you know, The Southern Bride family is just so amazing and getting to meet people like you through that, which has been such a blessing. This whole industry has just been like the power of positivity. So, yeah. Oh, that's awesome. And shout out to Southern Bride because you guys have your first publishing in there right alongside. Yeah, we're there together. We're like a few pages apart. I
SPEAKER_00:know. We're together.
SPEAKER_01:It was so hard to keep that secret too. So let's dive right on into it. So tell me, what is ICO and why is it important in our businesses as photographers? Yeah. So SEO stands for search engine optimization. And basically all it is, is just strategies to help your website become more visible for both Google and AI assisted engines like ChatGPT and Google Gemini. It's really important because it's more than just like chasing an algorithm. It's actually like a sustainable foundation for getting found, you know, while you sleep, while you vacation and while you're actually at a photo shoot or a wedding. So it works for you so that way you don't have to constantly chase after it yeah it's not like Instagram where you're like constantly posting and then the post dies and no one sees it after a while it's called like evergreen content where you kind of do it once put all of your energy well not do it once but you have to kind of touch and go at it like here and there but it's not as much work as like marketing for Instagram you get it done you Google trusts you and it kind of just like pushes out all the right content and you're to like your ideal audience. I think like not many people realize, you know, your posts on social media, they'll probably stay for like 24 to 72 hours. But something like a blog or something evergreen like that, you know, that could be accessed years later, it could be relevant. So it's just something a little more sustainable. I've always been so oblivious to SEO and all of that stuff. Like I've never fully understood it. I've always had how to look our market in other directions to get clients. And then I met you guys and I learned so much. You should see my iPad notes that I took during y'all's conference. I took so many notes and immediately it was like, me and Eddie came home and I'm like, we're hiring them, I need this. They're so much fun and you guys have been such a pleasure to work with and I'm so excited to have you guys on today. I wanna go over, What are some of the most common SEO and website mistakes that you see photographers make? Because I know I'm probably like one of those people that have done all of those things. So like Autumn, like previous to like working with us, what was like the knowledge that you had with SEO at all? Like what did you know? I knew what the actual term SEO meant, the search engine optimization thing, but I didn't understand what the purpose of blogging was or how it helped or how frequently you should do it or the keyword. I really didn't understand any of that. I know we're going to go through a lot of those points later on, but I just... I didn't know. I cared more about the aesthetic of how was the picture that I put on my website pretty. I really had no basis, which that sounds terrible coming from somebody who's been in this industry as long as I have, but I just truly didn't. Literally within, what was it, two, a week or two of launching you guys' website with me, I had three Google inquiries right off the bat and booked two of those three, by the way. That's amazing. So good. Right. So y'all have changed your changed so much for me and I'm super excited. Awesome. Okay, so going back. So the most common mistake that we see photographers make on the website is not using their focus keyword strategically enough. So what a focus keyword is, is like a phrase that someone would typically type into Google. So like, for example, it could be like candid wedding photographer in Chicago. So if you want to rank for that specific keyword, you need to use it like pretty consistently throughout your website in a way that sounds really natural. girl so i always say at least like two to three times on your home page to say candid wedding photographer chicago um so that google really knows what's going on onto your website um some mistake that i see a lot too is like when photographers are choosing candid wedding photographer in chicago they're not marking that as an h1 tag like do you know what h1 tag is h2 tag h3 Not a clue. No? Okay. Do tell. Do share. Do you want to kind of deep dive into that a little bit? So there's kind of like a structure on websites, but also on blogs within websites. You have your title, which is your H1. And then underneath that, you have your like subtitle, which is like H2. So think about it like Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Harry Potter is your big title. And then the Sorcerer's Stone is your H2 tag underneath that. So whenever you structure things kind of like that, it just makes it easier for Google to read. It makes it easier for AI engines to read. It's just easier to follow along. Yeah, because Google... like if you're with photographers all the time they're just going to slap images onto their website and like not have any copy that's like the biggest thing as well too and I think that was with your website as well too because it was just a lot of beautiful images but not a ton of copy so we want to be strategic when it comes to doing both so making sure that h1 tag that candid wedding photographer Chicago is marked as h1 like you'll be able to go into your website and mark it as h1 so that Google knows like okay this is the topic of the website and And here's all the information about it because Google can't really read your images at all. More of like a text thing. And when you say it like that, it makes so much sense. But like on my side, I'm caring about like the aesthetic of how things look and not the text copy behind it. So it makes sense that the that like Google and search engines and stuff, they have to have that those tags and those keywords in the copy there. for it to pick up on, to refer to people in the search engine results. Exactly. Please do not beat yourself up because pretty much every photographer that we've talked to is the same way. SEO is not sexy at all. It's a lot of technical stuff, but when you go into the results that you can get from SEO, that's the sexy part, right? But that's not something that presents itself right away. I think that's a really big benefit of us as photographers investing in professionals like you guys because we're already doing so much when it comes to clients and we need to stay focused on that when there's people like you guys who are experts in that field. We're just here to support you guys and take things off your plate, honestly. So that way y'all can just focus on what you do best. Yes. You guys describing that to me when I was onboarding with you guys was so, so clear and concise is true. Like I don't I don't know my website. I don't know that back end, but you guys do. And so like, let me focus on the photos that I can give you guys the aesthetic side of it. And you guys can give me the optimization side of it. So it was a really good teamwork. So question, does it matter what platform you host your site on? Is that relevant? Because I know I used to host on things like Pixy said, and then some people, they won't actually have their own domain name. Is there any kind of like, is there a preference? Does it matter? Because everybody kind of uses different things. And I was always curious about that. Yes, it does. But like, not all platforms are created equal. So like a site with something like yours, like your site actually was on an official domain, I believe. But I see a lot of wedding photographers that are like, companyname.pixieset.com and actually we spent the time to research how much traction those photographers were actually getting to that domain name and it was like zero it was like crazy we're like what the heck every like a lot of photographers have this domain but it's not bringing in any traction and What's really important that we realize is that like having your own domain is very important. It has to be like yourcompany.com, not like yourcompany.pixieset.com. So that's something that you have to keep in mind. But when it comes to the design platform, again, they're all created equal. There's like benefits to it and there's disadvantages to it. The platforms that we love are ShowIt. That's the one that we designed Autumns on. It gives us like full creative control, just like a beautiful website. It's relatively easy to learn. The only downside to it that we find is that you can't do like email marketing or analytics onto it just like Squarespace or Wix. So that's the only disadvantage of show it. But if photographers are using like HoneyBook, they can use that as like a CRM that's added on to it. So that's pretty much exactly what I do. Yeah. So that's a benefit to show. And that's like a lot of photographers do it that way. Another option, like a website platform that we really love as well as Wix Studio. It's really awesome because it has like all of the email marketing, it has payments on there, automations, all of that is like integrated into Wix Studio. It's a little bit more of like the like intermediate kind of advanced sort of person to learn it. But it's still like a really fun website to do. They have like a really cool animations, but still like show its art. bread and butter but sites like Squarespace and WordPress are also good but we don't love them because they're it's just harder to use even like for me as a web designer who can pick up like websites pretty quickly so Squarespace and WordPress is like difficult for me to kind of learn and really like excel at okay so that's really cool it's not as much as the site that you're using but the domain name is important yes domain name and having like a really good foundation for your website And then when you were on, because you bought your domain through Pixieset, right? No, I didn't. I use domain.com. Okay. And then you designed it on Pixieset? Yes. Okay, okay. Was it like easy for you? It was pretty easy. I felt... It was kind of restricted. There are certain templates that you could use, and that was kind of it. Now, I believe now, like this year or so, they've changed it to where you can have a full control of how things look and not just templates anymore. But once I had already gone through that effort and made it the way that I wanted it and used the template they had me provide or provided to have me use, I was like, I'm not redoing this again. Did you get any clients through your website at all? Like finding you through Google or anything? No, not really. So at this conference that we were at for Southern Bride, you guys pulled up some sort of website and you were able to like see their rankings or something on there. And Eddie kept telling me, like, you should, we should give them, you should give them our website. I was like, no, no, no, not at all. Ours is going to be negative. I already know that. Like, this is why I'm here. Now it's all good now, though. Yes. Yes, it is. But also, too, like, I think that's super, that's like a moment where a lot of business owners and especially, like, photographers, I think, are kind of afraid to, like, see what exactly is going on with their website analytics. So that was pretty brave of you to like reach out to us and stuff like that, because we know a lot of people that they're just like, oh no, like it's okay. You don't need to mess with it at all. But like, that's literally like what we're here to do. We're here to help and, you know, hold your hand throughout the process. You know, no one's ever, we create like a judgment-free zone. No one's ever here to like say you're not doing it correctly because you're Again, like you guys are just supposed to focus on the photography and then we're supposed to handle the rest. Absolutely. So if you guys were launching a photography business tomorrow, what would be the first thing that you would do to try to show up online? The first thing would be to piggyback off of what Ken just talked about. Just build a website and have a domain. Because the longer that you have a website in existence, the more that... all these search engines will see you as like a trusted business and a trusted source of information. And the more likely they are to recommend you whenever somebody is looking for exactly what you provide. So that would be the first thing, even if it's just something like what you did, just setting up like a free website, just kind of getting it out there. As long as you have the domain that you're gonna keep for a while, then you're good to go. We can change the aesthetics and the strategy later. I remember I asked you guys too about whether to change my domain name. And you guys were like, no, like you already have a bunch of backlinks in this and like how this lines up with everything. You should keep it the same so that you have a bit of establishment with this URL. So like we shouldn't change it. I didn't know that that mattered, but that makes sense now. Well, it's kind of like running a marathon. If you're running a race and you've been running it for a long time, you're getting pretty far, right? But if you jump off course and go to a different marathon, you're kind of starting all over again. It's kind of the same thing with the domain names. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And I'm also, because of you guys gearing people more to writing me Google reviews instead of just writing a review on The Knot or something like that, to kind of gear more reviews to go there for reliability. Yeah, Kim actually, with one of our clients, she was in this Google... Can you talk more about it? The Google class that you attended, it was kind of like where they had the Google person, the professional... yeah so we hopped on a call with like an actual person from google who focuses on google my business pages and they gave us like a lot of details as to like how to optimize your profile how often you should optimize it and like what you should do to optimize it and everything like that so It was really, really helpful because like the more you optimize your Google My Business page, which not a lot of people do, the more you're going to like rank higher onto Google, which is pretty crazy. It's just like an easy quick fix. You kind of like click, click, click, update like little minor things. But Google really loves that. Kind of piggybacks on the authority of your website too. What are some of those little things that you can do? on your My Google Business page? Yeah, so two or three little things would be to, there's an option on Google My Business page to update like posts, like an updated post that would be like, hey, like I just did this wedding, here's a shoot or just, If you feel like you need to protect your client's privacy, you could just put like the location of where it was at. Just shot a wedding at this location. It was really beautiful. And then underneath it, you can actually add like a book now button and then just like update the post. It's almost like a Instagram, Twitter feed, kind of like that. If you post, update that. That would be really good for Google. Another option would be to upload new images onto your Google My Business profile page. That would be really important as well too. So kind of keep those two in mind. And they mentioned to do it probably every quarter. Okay, nice. That's so useful. And when clients leave you reviews too, if they could mention your name and then mention the services that you provide, those are two huge, huge, huge things for you, especially building more SEO because then Google and AI is able to say, oh, Autumn provides wedding photography services in this area, but it's also being mentioned by other people. It builds you more authoritativeness. Okay, it makes sense of more keywords.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Always make sure your client mentions your business name. You just said that that was like super important. That's so much fun. I love this. I'm learning. I'm learning so much. So is blogging something that is still relevant for photographers? Has the game changed? Like, what does that look like? Is that something we should be putting more time into or is it just? Blogging gets a really bad rep because it was so popular like in the early 2000s. You know, if you were a blogger, that was like the influencer of that day. So now people think that it might be like an outdated thing to do, but actually it could be one of the most powerful SEO tools that you can have in your tool belt. It's a way to not only build your authority because you're speaking about the subject, you're speaking about what it's like to work with you. You're building that like authoritativeness, but also you're building in more keywords to your website. So what it is, is it's saying to Google and AI, hey, I know about this topic. This is what it's like to work with me. And not only that, my business is relevant and current because I'm updating it frequently. So one of the things that came up during that summit that we attended was somebody said, you know, how often should I be blogging? That answer really is like whatever is most sustainable to your business. So some people blog every day. Some people blog once a week. Some people blog like once a month. But whatever you can do to build that consistency to show that you're relevant and you care about your business. Okay, cool. Yeah, because that was something I really struggled with. And I even asked you guys that the day of the summit. So I was like, how often do I need to do this? Is it relevant? I don't know. Again, completely curious. Was it you that asked the question? It was. It was straight up me. How often should you be doing this? Because I don't blog at all. How often? And it's been fun because since that in February, I've started emailing clients their story, a questionnaire about their story prior to like the week before their wedding or so whenever we have our final planning call. I'm emailing them over a little what's the scoop. So I go, how was wedding planning? How's it been? Like, what's your story? How did you guys meet how'd you get engaged you know that whole thing can you tell me all of your vendors so I can make sure to quote and link them to kind of give me a foundation to build a story blog off of that and that's been super beneficial as well for me to take what you guys gave me and go okay well how do I make this process easier for me how do I tell my client story better and so I've been able to make that little thing in a honey book to send them prior to or like right after the wedding so they can tell me and give me their advice and how their wedding went, their favorite moments, their stories, so I can go write a little blog about it and then tag all the vendors and send it to everybody. I love that. That's an incredible strategy to do because not only are you using backlinks onto your blog with other vendors, but you're telling the story, you're telling the location as well too. That is huge. I analyze a lot of wedding photographers' websites and blogs bring them a lot of traffic, so that blog that you talk about like their love story, where they're located, all those vendors, like super beneficial to driving more traffic to your website. So consistency, like I, I'm still working on it. Cause I did, I was like, I've got to put out two a month. Like I've got to start with two. You guys were like, try for once a week. And I'm like, I'm already like two weeks behind what I was saying I was going to do. So that's what I'm, that's my current goals. Yeah, truthfully, you can use AI to write blog posts for you. You can put in information and have ChatGPT come up with an outline of what you can talk about and make it easier for you. Google does not differentiate between human written blog posts and AI written blog posts. So if you find yourself like during the middle of a busy season and ChatGPT has just totally helped you with your posts, it's not going to rank necessarily differently. Now, marketing agencies like us, like whenever you hire blogging services for us, we actually have somebody on staff that writes blog posts for us full time because that's just like a professional level of service. But if you're just starting out, out and you don't have a lot of time, you don't have a lot of resources, using ChatGPT or Google Gemini can really help. and then something to keep in mind too for your blogs is like keep it to 1500 words and adding photos in too because like sometimes I see blog posts like without photos I think the ones with photos do really well because like they're engaging people take time to like look at it scroll through it so incorporate photos 1500 words and then follow the guideline like with Autumn we installed an app called Yoast SEO and it just kind of guides her how to create like an optimized blog post and again you need to do a focus keyword on your blog title and like repeat it three times change your alt text for your images of those focus keywords too so it keeps you in line yes I was gonna see I was gonna see if you guys didn't quote that I was gonna actually ask you what the name of that was I forgot it I knew it started with a y it's it's helped me so much because it'll literally be like no this is bad this is red fix it this isn't right put this keyword in and I've tried to write the whole whole blog and then you're like no you need to fix like all of these things so it's really helped that it's I feel like the program is also teaching me how to how to blog better and how to make it more seo appropriate without bothering y'all all the time amazing you can bother us anytime um so i know i mentioned backlinks i didn't really know what those were till i met you guys either so that's just like the link tagging like another website or another company or something right Yeah, pretty much. So they kind of work as almost like referrals or votes of confidence, like in the eyes of Google. So every time you backlink, that means if you have a tagline being like, check out my article here and you put highlight article here, link it to Southern Bride. Southern Bride is a reputable, reputable brand. And now Google understands like, okay, she's a trustworthy website. Southern Bride is huge. Let's push her out to more people. So keeping in mind, like tagging other people, collaborating, all that, that is so important for your blogs. Do you guys want to talk more about keywords, especially when they shoot in multiple cities? So the best way to get started with keywords is to put yourself in the shoes of your client. What are they searching for when they're looking for specifically what you provide? So you can start with something easy like keywords. What's your location? What's your service? Those are really easy keywords. And then you can get a little more niche. So you can do more keywords about what makes you unique. Are you a documentary style photographer? Are you cinematic? Are you more light and airy? People are searching that too. And then make sure too that you understand that it's like building over time. It's not something that's going to happen like right away. And it's not something that's going to happen on just one area of opportunity to use them. So like, for instance, you're not just going to put keywords on blogs and not on your landing page. You're going to put them on your landing page. You're going to put them on your blog. You're also going to integrate them in your social media accounts, whatever those might be too.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Something to keep in mind for keywords as well, too, because I know we get questions as well. Like, I'm a destination photographer. No one's searching up destination photographer. Like, it's very small. I'm not saying no one does, but it's like pretty small. Something that I recommend you focusing on if you're like a Charleston photographer, but you're willing to travel is Charleston wedding photographer. And then focusing in on that keyword and then creating blog posts that showcase like that you're able to travel as well, too. Like if you travel to Canada, do a post on like Canada as well, too. So kind of extending on that, that really helps. But it's really tough when you're trying to find like this destination photographer willing to travel photographer and trying to put that into a keyword because no one really is. searching for that. And now when you're kind of finding a keyword that really works best for you, and you're like, I'm not sure if this is going to work for or not, or are people actually searching for this? There's a really great website that we use called ubersuggest.com. That lets you know like how many people are typing in that keyword. There's a ton of other websites, but that's the one that we use. So try to use that one and focus on that. But test out different keywords, see how many people are actually typing for that, and then kind of from there. Okay, great. Yeah, I feel like in the photographer world too, there's so many people have, whether it be on their Instagram, and I was one of them too, that had like destination wedding photographer plastered everywhere. But it makes so much sense when you explain it that way to try to stay local to your area or the city that you're in and then say that you can travel and you can go to these other places and use blog posts and your keywords to show that you do travel, that you can be a destination base while remaining local to your area. Exactly. Yeah, we hosted a course, an in-person and online course about destination photography last fall. And the main thing that we were able to relay to the people that were there was focus on like two to three locations that you really want to go to and then talk about those locations and expand from there. So if you want to travel, pick two or three places that you really want to go to and start utilizing that language like Kim said in the blogs and stuff. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So moving past this just a little bit, are there any red flags that you guys see that like don't legitimize the website or that couples that are searching can look out for that is are things that photographers shouldn't do so they look legit so something that brides are always looking for as well too is like your portfolio um like a red flag that i kind of always mention to them make sure you're choosing a wedding a great wedding photographer but like looking at your at their portfolio so there's a ton of wedding photographers using style shoots and we have like nothing against style shoots at all they're amazing they're beautiful you're able to really focus in on your skills but there are wedding photographers out there that only strictly use style shoots for their whole website so that is something that brides need to really keep in mind when it comes to going onto a website go onto the portfolio making sure that they're like highlighting a couple and like telling the whole story like you're seeing like the beginning of the day to the end of the day so if you're waiting for talk for make sure you're encapsulating and showing everything so that's really important as well too yeah absolutely me and eddie just just talked about this of like i love style shoots i'm literally i love them they're a lot of fun to be creative have fun but You have to say that it's a styled shoot. You can't act like the styled shoot's a real wedding or use it as a real wedding on there. The gallery is not going to look the same. So if somebody asks for that gallery or they want to see a full wedding gallery from you, you can't send that. It's great art and great exposure to practice and use, but you can't post it or share it as if it's a real wedding day. I agree with that. 100%. Are there any other red flags that people should look out for like we shouldn't put on our website? One other red flag is when a photographer does not post their pricing. So that's something that comes up a lot. And I know it's controversial, but being transparent with pricing, more and more couples are looking for that. And they might bypass your website if you don't post your pricing because they're automatically gonna think, oh, they don't post pricing, they're probably too expensive for me. So it's always better to just get it out on the table, tell them where you start at and where you go from there. And then that way people can get an idea and also the leads you're getting in are going to be um already like pre-filtered and they already know like going into it what to expect i wholeheartedly agree with this like everybody's so busy and like my time is valuable just as much as this client says so i used probably three years ago now i i was one of those photographers that like You emailed, you put in your inquiry. I wanted to get on a call with you, learn everything about you, and then create your quote on that phone call. And like, okay, here's the pricing. And then I'd get ghosted so much. After that, I was like, what do I do? And I actually invested in my own little mentorship. And she was like, just send them your pricing. Create a file. They email you. You email it back. And then if you never hear from them, it's okay. That wasn't your client. And it was so simple but so mind-opening. mind opening what um but it was it changed the way i thought about things and i was like yeah that's so true and now as many inquiries as i get i honey book i have an automated system that it automatically sends out my booking guide if my if my calendar is free on that day it has a little hello message from me here's my booking guide and my booking guide and it reiterates multiple times like hey if my pricing works for you if all of this looks good and you want to book a call like here's a calendly link set up a time with me let's get on a phone call and um that's when And I'll invest back into you guys and the client can invest back into us of your story and all of that stuff we can go over. Because I think making sure that you know who you're booking as well is so important when you're looking for your photographer. You have to trust who you're booking. And it starts with your website and moves on from there. Exactly. Now, I've seen you guys talk so much on your social media about ChatGPT and how you use them. And it's been recommending you guys. It's been recommending clients to you. And you've gotten clients from talking to ChatGPT. How are you doing this? Is it something intentional that you guys are doing to build trust with the search engines and the AI? Or is it just completely organic and you have no idea how it happened? So that, we'll never forget the first time that we got recommended by chat GPT, we were texting each other like, Oh my gosh, is this real? Like this has to be fake. That's so crazy. Like, because literally in like, we use type form for our inquiries and it said, how did you hear about us? It said chat GPT. And we were like, Oh my gosh. So from there, that just kind of started this obsession that we had with, okay, well, like, just like you said, was it by accident? You know, If so, if it wasn't like, how did this happen? And how can we get this to happen again? And through using certain strategy, there is a strategy to it, but it all starts on a solid foundation of SEO. which a lot of people don't realize. And that's another reason why SEO is so important is because people are going to search chat GPT or whatever other AI assistant to try to find their vendors. It's not so much, it's happening a little bit now, but going into the future, that's going to become more and more common because people are going to search exactly like, I want a light and airy wedding photographer in 30A that charges between this and this. Who do you recommend? And like they're getting very specific with it. So you want to make sure when they get that specific that you're the one that shows up. So there's there's a couple it's it's called. So SEO is search engine optimization. Getting found through these through AI assistance is called AIO. which is AI optimization. That's basically changing all of your copy to make sure that it's readable. Like Kim was talking about earlier, the H1, H2 tags, stuff like that. And then there's LEO, which is LLM or learning module engine optimization. And that's Google Gemini and ChatGPT. And basically that strategy is how to optimize so that way they recommend you. Those two together are what combined with SEO is that those three things are or what helps you get recommended by ChatGPT. And I can go into, I've got like a little list of exactly how you get found because the first thing that we typed into ChatGPT after that first lead was, how did this happen? And the GPT responded with a little short list It said, first, show up like a business, not like an artist. So it's a strategic website with consistent, intentional voice. Use your voice everywhere. So doing stuff like this, like podcasts, as well as social media, as well as blogging, as well as getting backlinks. It's like a more holistic approach to getting seen. Investing in a real strategy. So blogging regularly, having a solid SEO structure, creating Pinterest pins, and then optimizing everything for both AI and humans. Basically, they want to see it that you're in the long haul, that you're not just trying to get one lucky referral and that be it, that you're actually like putting in the work every day, just like going to the gym, that you're going to the gym every day, doing your pushups and then getting the results that you're looking for. So doing kind of the boring things that move the needle, doing the unsexy SEO things, move the needle, that's kind of the stuff that they see that you're putting in the work. Also, like we talked about earlier, earlier, collaborating like a professional. So having great reviews from your clients and then also mentioning vendors in everything that you post and everything that you do, hyping your other people up and then using AI like a creative assistant rather than a shortcut. So this is One thing, we were part of a Facebook group for like GPT prompts. And one of the posts was like, hey, if the prompt is, what is it like to work with me? Please describe it. And when people are like posting their answers, a lot of the people that were getting like really good detailed answers The end always, the GPT always ended with, you use me like a collaborator, not like a shortcut. You're actually like treating me like a partner. You're always asking me my opinion, taking suggestions into consideration. You're not just asking me something and then ghosting. You're like actually trying to work with me to create something new together. So that's super huge. Oh, I love that. That's so interesting. I actually got my podcast lineup of questions that I wanted to talk about and how to run it is because I asked chat GPT, I was like, Okay, so what are things like, give me a detailed list of questions that brides and grooms are asking, or couples in general are asking you that they need help on? What are they asking you? What are they confused about? What are they looking to you for help on that maybe I could talk about? And when I tell you I have the coolest list, I'm going to ask you the coolest list. I have the coolest list of things that it gave me and I have it saved and I'm so excited. It's so helpful when you really do use it in a manner of collaboration and it's cool that it picks up on that too. So do y'all feel like AI is like the marketing aspect of the future? And is it as reliable as I guess it feels like it is? 10,000 million percent. Absolutely. I mean, Kim, how do you feel about it? I am very heavily dependent on it. And I'm kind of worried in the future because there's this thing called smooth brain or marble brain as well, too. I'm worried that people will use it so much that they won't be able to have cognitive skills at
SPEAKER_00:all in the future.
SPEAKER_01:But with that being said, everyone is going to be using it and ChatGPT is only going to get better and better. And so that's why it's so important to really focus on like your marketing efforts to really kind of play on ChatGPT and kind of work together. Now, like for me and Caroline, our business is like super, super niche. Like I think there's maybe like one or two other businesses that are similar to ours. So it's easy for ChatGPT to really kind of push us out when photographers are looking for wedding photography and marketing agencies. So I think it's going to take a them to like figure out like what's the other back end stuff that I can do that other photographers aren't doing and those blog posts that they gave you like you should 100% be like putting your energy towards that absolutely yeah and not to get too like futuristic or anything but I mean truthfully the people it's not going to replace artistry but the artists that do use AI are going to have such a leg up on the future because I mean, artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution. And the more that you can get on board earlier and figure out how it'll help your business, just the better off you'll be in the long run. Yeah, I agree with that. I fought it, um, when it came to when Photoshop first launched their like beta program for, um, AI. Now I, I still feel like on me as the photographers, I feel like there's a big difference in, you know, taking a garbage can out in a photo that's not supposed to be there and completely taking a background out to me that becomes a composite, not a photo anymore. But in regards to like chat GPT and using those things to help your business grow, to help with ideas on how to write things, um, I'm fully wholeheartedly behind it. Funny story. Eddie, my husband, was very against chat at first. Very, very against it. He's like, I don't want it. I don't want it. No. He thought it was going to try to read his phone and all of these funny things. He's going to get me for saying this, but I will. And then, again, we went to Southern Bride. And the social media marketer or manager over there, Bailey, I think is her name. She had her whole thing on. chat GPT how useful it is how you need to use it how you how it can be used and all of that those details and it changed it changed Eddie as well he immediately downloaded it and and now he's like this is so useful we've told our kids about it and um and yeah it's like you can use it in so many different ways so he's he's jumped on board on board with it as well because I I do think it's we need to learn more about it and that's why I love that I have you guys with me today to talk about these things because I'm I'm learning so much from this that's why I feel like I don't have as much to add as I would like to because I'm just like tentatively listening to everything both of you have said. And I can't wait for everyone to hear it and learn as well. Now, I saw you guys have a little thing coming out soon, right? Something that's wrapped around it. Can we plug that? We're building an SEO course called Rankings to Revenue, and it's really specifically targeted to wedding photographers. It's made for you. It helps you kind of like find the keyword research with it. We talk about like how to build core found like SEO foundations into your website. So I'll be kind of like clicking through like change this, change this in an H1 tag, make sure this is your focus keyword. I'll teach you how to like understand your analytics, how to keyword research. Caroline talks about how to blog, which is like really important as well too. Talking about how to set up your Google My Business page, social media SEO. So it's like a lot of SEO action that that you'll be able to learn. And I think it's going to be really valuable because yeah, SEO is so, so important when it comes to local businesses. Do you think it matters whether you how long you've been in business, whether it's been six months or six years? Do you like where somebody is at photographer wise, whether they could benefit from it or not? Yeah, it's it's really meant for anyone at any at any level, just like how our business was created. It was a labor of love. This course has also been a labor of love. We have We had it to a point where we were like, okay, we're ready to launch it. And then we had a meeting where we're like, oh wait, we need to add this one extra section on it because that would be so valuable to photographers. It's really truly like very in depth. You can also like, even if you've got a little bit of knowledge on it, there might be a different section of SEO, AIO, LEO that you might not know about that could really like help you expand your business knowledge. Awesome. Are there any myths about about SEO or web design that drives you nuts? Probably like one myth about SEO is that SEO is a one and done thing. A lot of clients come to us and kind of just want a one and done SEO package. And then they think they're going to get a bunch of clients after that. That's not the case. It takes probably about like three months to really kind of see everything kind of unfold and see your actions really taking off. Now there's going to be exceptions where like you autumn where you launch right away and you get a client so soon, which is amazing. amazing but SEO is definitely it takes a little bit of work takes a little bit of time to for Google to really understand where you're coming from also depends on like where you're located so if like you're a New York photographer who is exclusively doing weddings it's going to take some time for Google to understand that you're a wedding photographer in New York just because there's like so many New York wedding photographers out there so it's going to take some time a like three months for a it to pick up and then after that you kind of really have to focus on blogging and we recommend blogging like yeah once every two weeks every now and then um just be consistent with your pattern and then doing your best to make it like quality blog posts as well too I think if it's like so many blog posts and it's just short and messy like you're you're not going to get optimized for that at all. And do you guys have any industry hot takes? Any industry hot takes? I've got a juicy one. One hot take, photographers will sometimes keep relaunching their website with a different aesthetic, thinking that it's going to land them more clients. But if you keep rebranding your website without implementing any strategy, then you're just spinning your wheels and wasting money. That's true. That's very true. So you have to make sure you have a strategy to go alongside with with the aesthetics that I think has kind of been the underlying comment of this entire episode too. It's like you have to have a strategy to implement and you can't just care about the aesthetics of how stuff looks to end up being successful with your SEO and website. Well, I want to say thank you guys so much for hanging out with me and taking time out of your busy lives to meet with me today, be interviewed and all of the things. Let's tell everyone where can they find you guys at and any of your upcoming releases. You can find us, our website is northandsouthagency.com, Instagram at northandsouthagency, TikTok at genzyweddings, and our upcoming release of Ranking to Revenue. You can find that on our website as well. You can get on the wait list, the early birds list. So that way, as soon as it drops, you'll be one of the first people to know. Absolutely. Well, thank you guys again for hanging out with me. And we'll see everybody next week with something new. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Thank you.