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Welcome to episode 35 of the Refocus Your Photography Business Podcast.

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My name is Jon Glaser and I am your host and today we are going to have the

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incredible Richard Wayne who is a headshot photographer and he is also a killer

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SEO expert when it comes to doing website and website design and making sure

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you optimize your SEO and

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everything that goes along with your website so that you can build your website

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out to have an amazing organic reach in your area or the areas that you're trying to target.

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So I am real excited to have Richard on the show today and have him share his expertise.

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And I'm sure you're going to get a ton out of it.

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This podcast could be like three or four podcasts, but we wanted to keep it

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to around an hour, but it is chock full of information, some tidbits of information

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I had never heard and never knew before, and I am excited to share with you.

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So let's get started and let's get in on with episode 35 with Richard Wayne.

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Welcome to Refocus Your Photography Business Podcast, where we empower aspiring

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photographers to unleash their full

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creative potential and thrive in the competitive world of photography.

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Join us as we bring you inspiring success stories from renowned photographers,

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biographers, industry experts, and marketing gurus who have mastered the art

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of growing their businesses. Here's your host, John Glaser.

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All right, everybody, if you are interested in SEO and how it works for your

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business, this is a podcast that's for you today.

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I'm excited to have Richard Wayne on today.

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Richard runs a successful headshot and studio business in Lancashire, Pennsylvania.

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I first met Richard through Peter Hurley's headshot crew, And we have become friends over the years.

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And Richard is one of the smartest guys I know when it comes to SEO and making

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your business profitable. I'm thrilled to have him on today. Richard, thank you so much for joining me

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on the podcast and the live video today. Well, thanks for having me, John. Good to see you, buddy.

2:10

I haven't seen you in a little bit of time here. Yeah, I mean,

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we got to see each other. We had dinner at WPPI with a group of friends.

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That was really cool. That was fun. It's always great catching up with you and all that stuff. But,

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you know, Richard, I had the opportunity to work with you a few years ago,

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and you kind of educated me personally one-on-one on doing some SEO stuff.

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And I was just like, man, I am not doing any of this right.

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And so you have learned a lot about this, and you've become not just an accomplished

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photographer, but you're a total badass when it comes to understanding websites

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and SEO. How did you learn all of this stuff?

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Oh, yeah, that's a good question. So I'll take it even further back that when

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I got into the photography industry, I was just like everybody else.

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I didn't know what I didn't know. A couple of guys in the headshot crew were talking about their websites,

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and I didn't even have one. So I said, I should probably get one of these.

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And at the time, they were talking about Squarespace. And I said,

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okay, well, this is pretty easy. It's drag and drop, right?

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I get this. This I can understand. stand.

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Remember, I had zero background in websites at the time.

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So I decided at some point that I wanted to change my site up.

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But there was a specific look that I had in my head that I couldn't really manufacture

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using the Squarespace tools.

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So I said, reasonable fellow and reasonable fellows are inquisitive and we can

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go out and we can figure out how to make things happen.

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And so I literally started to learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and all the like by myself.

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I've never been tutored by any one person. I've never been to school for it.

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But I found that the deeper down that rabbit hole of design and code that I went,

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the more I realized that the job of a web designer and builder is not that far

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from search engine optimization.

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In other words, how can you possibly build a site and be like,

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yeah, I don't really need it to rank. I'm okay.

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It doesn't really work that way. The two are very much aligned.

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Right. And I never wanted to be the guy that said, okay, I've got this done,

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now go see somebody else. That's not necessarily to say that there aren't specialties and there should be.

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And SEO really is a specialty, but for me, I wanted to bring them together. And so-

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My inquisitive nature just kept me going.

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It propelled me down more and more rabbit holes, and I just kept learning as I went.

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And I won't tell you that I know it all, but I've done a lot of my homework

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and a lot of research, and I've had a lot of success because of that.

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That knock on wood, a lot of knock on wood there, but, uh, you know,

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I'm grateful I'm blessed, but that doesn't mean that's where the work stops

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because as you've probably heard me quote a million times before websites,

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much like SEO are a journey, not a destination.

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Right. No. And it's, it's interesting you talk. Cause I actually had one of

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my questions on here was like, how do you see,

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like, is it matter what kind of website you use, whether it be

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WordPress press or a box website or something like

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that that's like you know you have the

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customization it sounds like you're doing where like if you go with

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a squarespace or something and like you know like that you you don't have as

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much customization so it's interesting that you started off with squarespace

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and then you moved into doing kind of your own thing i'm assuming wordpress

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is that what you're using no no no either or not i don't so i actually use a

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lot of different builders for different purposes.

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So this is a fairly common question, which builder is better than the other?

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And I'll tell you outright, there's no such thing.

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Okay. For SEO purposes, there's no such thing.

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Okay. Some make it easier. Some make it a little more difficult.

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You can still accomplish the same things in all builders.

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Otherwise we wouldn't be possible. It It wouldn't be possible to do it without

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a builder at all, but it is. So you can do the same things on Squarespace that you can do on Wix that you

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can do on WordPress and so on and so forth right down the line.

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However, where those tools are, that's a little bit different.

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So in other words, every website has a title. Everyone has a description.

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Every one of them uses header tags and alt tags and so on. So if they all have

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the same elements and every website has the same element, then technically you

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should be able to perform all of those things. So there is not one builder that's better than the other in terms of that.

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It's a matter of how you're designing and building it on the back end.

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That's what I learned from you. And that's what I want to dive into a little bit with you in this whole thing,

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because, you know, one of the things that I learned talking to you that kind

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of dawned on me was just like, you see all these people that I'm a website builder guru.

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Well, they might be a website builder guru, but what I have found,

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and maybe you find the same kind of thing is website builder gurus are designing

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and putting together pretty websites. They're not doing SEO websites. And it's where you're saying like,

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sometimes there's that differentiation and you have to be careful if you're

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going to go to the guru, that's going to help build you a great website.

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Now there's questions. If I were to ever do it again, you know,

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there was questions that I would ask that I would have to have the right answers

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before I would move forward. It's not just about the prettiness of the website. Cause that's not going going to rank you.

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You know, it's, there's so many other things that play into it.

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One of the things that you taught me and, and I, and you put it in very,

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I felt very simple terms. And I think this is something that most people that have done anything with

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their website have no idea what it is.

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I always used to think just like most people, like an H1 tag was a title,

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like it made it bold and big and everything.

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And that's where I was going to put bold things on my page. And H2 tags were

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where I was going to put smaller things on my page.

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And then H3 tags were this and that and all that stuff.

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Can you explain to the listener and the viewer that's watching right now,

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what is the difference between all those H1, H2, H3 and all that stuff?

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And why would I want to use them for certain things?

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Sure. So what I would suggest is that for all the folks listening,

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watching, and including you, John, we're not going to leave you out of the conversation.

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When you think about your website, think about it like a book.

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No, a book has a title. What's the title of your book, right?

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That's your H1 tag. And notice that it's not going to be the name of your business, right?

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The name of your business is not the title of your book.

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What is it that you do? Why should I care? So your H1 tag, in my case,

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where I am, I'm a professional headshot photographer. I'm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

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Professional headshots, Lancaster. That sounds like a pretty good title of a

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book. I've got my geography, and I tell people what I do. Awesome.

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That is not a tagline. It's just an H1 tag. That is the title of the book.

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Tagline is something totally different, and we could talk about that at another point.

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So what else does a book have? Well, it has chapters beyond the title.

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What are those chapters? And now we're into H2s, which are more granular than an H1.

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So for our headshot audience, That might be your acting headshots or your corporate headshots.

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If you're a wedding photographer, you can find those niches,

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perhaps, that are within the overall category that are just slightly more granular.

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Then your H3s are more granular than your H2s. So for acting headshots,

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that could be theatrical and commercial headshots.

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For your corporate folks, that could be the website headshots.

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And it could also be employee headshots. shots, office headshots, et cetera.

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So the more granular you go.

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Well, that number goes up, so H1, 2, 3. I tend not to use 4,

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5s, and 6s for ranking anything because I don't feel that they are as effective

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or efficient, although that's technically what they're there for.

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What I might suggest, however, is that you keep the number of these tags to

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something reasonable because the power of those tags gets diluted the more you use them.

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So for each page you should

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have one h1 tag and no more

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than that for h2s and threes you

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can certainly go with a greater quantity but i would be careful about how many

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you throw out there right i'm sorry go ahead go for it go for it keep going

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the the point that you were coming across before is well people scratching their

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heads about how they end up with bold text here and bold text there,

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and all of their header tags kind of get misaligned.

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And that's because when you go into these website builders,

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what you're likely to see is when you create a section or an area with text,

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there's a drop down there that says header tag one, header tag two,

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three, body, paragraph, normal, whatever.

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And people go, ah, this is how I'm going to get my text a little larger or a

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little more bold or change the style and the look. and I'll say that's not what it's there for.

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These are functional titles for the text that you're highlighting,

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not stylistic. So don't use those for style.

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That's something totally different, and that's meant in your design.

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That's something you'll use CSS for or another part of your page builder,

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but don't use those to designate what your text should look like because it

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changes the function, and that's not what you want.

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Yeah. So, and, and, and like, that was the big misnomer I under like,

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and I, I'm sure anybody that's listening is probably doing the same thing.

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You like, look at that for the prettiness of your site and you go H1.

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Oh, that's a really bold. I want, I want that to stick out. So I'll use an H1

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here, but then you want this to stick out later on.

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And so you use H1 twice and now you've used like three H1 tags on your, on your, on your page.

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And then everything else is kind of secondary. And now you've just totally screwed everything up.

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So that was one of the biggest things that I learned that like automatically

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just changes everything in your mindset of how you're using those things.

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Cause I know I use WordPress and if I was going to do something in bold,

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but I don't want to make it an age tag, I just make it a text tag,

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but then I can change the boldness.

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To those same things that the H1, H2, H3 does, but they're not tagged now as

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one of those titles, subtitles, and paragraphs or whatever, right?

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So if you're listening, that's probably the number one thing I want you to take

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out of this is make sure you're using your H tags correctly because it's a huge thing.

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And I guarantee you, if you're listening and you've never talked to Richard

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or somebody that really knows SEO, you're probably not doing that right.

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That's probably the number one thing you're probably not doing correctly.

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So definitely Definitely take a look at that and see how that is set up in your in your website.

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So what is the like? I probably said probably the number one thing.

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But what do you think is the number one thing that people have wrong on their website?

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That's like little to nothing that helps them with nothing with SEO.

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Like what is the thing you find often that people have problems with?

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I'm going to start at the top of the site, and I'm not going to tell you that

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it has any real function for search engine optimization.

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But one of the number one things that I find,

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I find kind of from all ends of the photography spectrum where people end up

14:12

screwing up their sites is that there are so many links in a navigation that

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I legitimately have no idea where you want me to go as a consumer.

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So this morning before I jumped on, I was working with somebody on their website

14:26

just to kind of give them a rough audit, a rough idea of the direction they should be going in.

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And I think I spotted about six or seven links in the navigation alone.

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And I said, okay, so you've got a link for the page that I'm currently on.

14:42

There's an about, there's a contact, there's a this and that,

14:45

there are a couple of links for social media, and there's a rates.

14:48

Where do you want me to go? What is it that you want your customer to do?

14:53

Some of this content that you have in those various links could be built into the homepage itself.

14:59

And those that can't be built into the homepage, those links could occupy some

15:05

space in your footer underneath your website, right?

15:09

So basically declutter your header, keep it a little bit neater and cleaner.

15:14

Container keep only those links that are essential in

15:17

the navigation because otherwise i won't

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know what you want me to do and i'm probably not

15:23

going to choose you if you don't give me the information i want

15:26

because that's really what people are there for they're not

15:29

just there to look at pretty pictures i have never seen somebody

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go surfing through the web you know on a

15:36

google search and say you know what i think i'm just going to check out

15:38

photographers today like that just

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doesn't normally happen other photographers do that

15:44

but that just doesn't happen they specifically have

15:47

a problem that they're looking to solve and they're going

15:50

to go look for those service providers that can solve those problems so really

15:55

they have a purpose in mind and the last thing that we should be doing is convoluting

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the issue by giving them so many different possible paths to follow just give

16:05

them the information that they really want show them your work be a problem problem solver,

16:10

be direct with your messaging in your own voice and in your own way.

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But don't confuse them. Right. I think that's the number one issue I find is confusion.

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And I find that like when I see people's websites and I'm not the guru that

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you are, but I know what's right and what's wrong and indifferent and all that kind of stuff.

16:27

But one of the biggest things that I find, especially in the photographer world

16:31

is people will put like on their

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homepage picture after picture after picture. I got to show you my work.

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I got to show you my work because that's what's important. That's what's going

16:41

to get you you to go here, but there's no like, so where do I go next? Your work is beautiful.

16:46

I think it's amazing, but there's no like button to go book a session or contact

16:51

us or, you know, there's no nothing.

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And so it's just like, where are they supposed to go? And, and if you're,

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if you're one of those, that's what your website is when you come to the homepage

17:01

and there's just a bunch of pictures and there's no navigation to going to learn more or book now,

17:08

or, you know, contact us or something where there's a call to action,

17:14

so to speak, then, then you need to go fix that right away because you're missing.

17:18

It's like, people can be coming to your website going, oh my God,

17:20

this person's website is beautiful and they have beautiful work,

17:24

but they're, they have, nobody is going to work to find out how to get to you.

17:29

You have to put it right in front of them, right in front and center.

17:33

And the other thing too, is make sure when you're doing this,

17:36

and I'm sure Richard would attest to this, whatever you're doing on your website,

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and this isn't SEO, this is just design,

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make sure that it looks good, not just on desktop, because we usually design

17:46

it on our desktop, but we never look at it on our phone because most people

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are going to look at your website probably on their phone because we don't sit in front of a desktop.

17:56

I'm actually going to go one further and tell you that you should design it

18:00

on mobile and then design it on desktop and then lay out what your mobile looks

18:06

like first. first and as you expand the screen, then your desktop comes on.

18:10

It's called mobile first design and that's actually favored by Google and others.

18:15

So just something to be aware of, but I agree with you wholeheartedly.

18:19

Mobile responsiveness is a big issue. I think that that's where you will run

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into one of the points you just made a moment ago about having an infinite scroll of images.

18:29

Well, if all you really want to do is show me all your images,

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which I love, I love looking at beautiful images, but on mobile,

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all those images get stacked one after another.

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It just becomes one big infinite scroll.

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And now I, as the consumer have no information, no way to get information.

18:47

And I'm stuck in an infinite scroll of images, right?

18:50

Not exactly a good, not a good impression on a mobile.

18:53

Well, and the thing is, is like when it's on a desktop to having.

18:57

Let's say eight images in a gallery or something as like part of your,

19:01

your, your stuff doesn't look so bad, but then if you keep that same gallery

19:06

and go into a mobile, now it's eight images back to back to back to back.

19:10

And you're just gotta like, you've got to scroll eight times before you probably

19:14

get to any kind of verbiage or call to action and all that stuff.

19:17

So definitely something that you need to take into consideration and my take

19:20

on it too. And maybe you would disagree. I would love to hear your thoughts on this, but my take on it is people came

19:26

to your website for a reason. And especially with what I do, I do a lot of Facebook advertising and all that stuff.

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And that image that I already did from advertising and stuff is what drew them in, in the first place.

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So yes, it's important as photographers to show imagery because that's what they're coming for.

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But the biggest and the number one thing is to get them to respond.

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And it's not continue to show them images. Now they're on your website.

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Now it's give them information, get them to respond, not keep showing them more

19:59

and more and more images because they picked you for a reason.

20:01

Now they want to know what you're offering and how you're offering it,

20:05

what your pricing is, what those type of things are, because that's what's going

20:09

to differentiate them anymore. Is that correct?

20:11

I think that there's some truth there.

20:14

And I think that we can certainly take it a little bit further than that in

20:18

saying there's a time and place to show your work.

20:23

Of course, when you get to a photographer's website, you expect to see images

20:26

and I certainly would too. So you should use some space perhaps in your top third of your website for showcasing

20:35

a couple of your images for sure. As you start layering in content, then you should certainly use more images

20:44

to reinforce the content that you're putting out.

20:47

And we could talk about one of the strategies I use that I actually learned

20:52

from another headshot crew colleague.

20:55

So it's actually quite an ingenious technique, but he calls it a trifecta.

21:00

I'll credit Mike Schacht for this, but it really is fantastic.

21:04

And I've been using it for years with great success.

21:06

And it's really simple that I'm going to talk about a particular topic.

21:11

Let's just say for argument's sake, it's acting headshots.

21:14

So my H2 will be acting headshots for my location.

21:19

And I'm going to talk about that through the lens of expertise,

21:24

experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, which is exactly something

21:30

that Google wants. And they use that terminology.

21:33

The acronym is E-E-A-T, and they want your content to be filtered through that.

21:38

Basically, what do you know and why should we trust you?

21:44

What is your credibility, basically? basically so

21:47

you'll have your header tag you'll have your content

21:50

you'll have that header tag within the body

21:53

content so you'll have the title acting headshots

21:57

and then in the content you'll use words like actor headshots just kind of talking

22:02

organically but then you'll use a picture to reinforce the entire thing this

22:08

is an acting headshot or an actor headshot in the alt tag the alt text,

22:14

which we can talk about as well.

22:16

Very quickly, alt text was designed to be words for visually impaired.

22:23

For those that were visually impaired, it's a descriptor text of what's going to appear on screen.

22:28

There are people with visual impairments that use web browsers.

22:31

They use something called the screen reader. So the screen reader will tell them exactly what they're looking at.

22:37

Okay. But what also happens using that alt text is Google categorizes your images

22:43

that way and it indexes your stuff.

22:46

So if you've got an acting headshot, it's going to say, oh, that's an acting headshot. Cool.

22:50

So you have an opportunity to better optimize those alt tags.

22:55

And so the trifecta is your header tag, the mention in the copy and the picture,

23:02

but then we'll throw in the alt text to go with it.

23:04

So you've got a wonderful trifecta right there that reinforces that you know

23:09

what you're talking about and you're an expert on the topic.

23:13

But that only really comes across if your content is written that way.

23:17

It can't just be willy-nilly throwing these elements around and call yourself an expert.

23:22

You actually have to sound like you know what you're talking about.

23:26

But so the point is, yes, use your images to reinforce the point,

23:31

but use them strategically and judiciously.

23:35

We're not just throwing images up for the sake of having a beautiful portfolio

23:40

website. excuse me, portfolio website.

23:42

Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah, no, totally. Totally. Okay. Totally.

23:46

So I want to change gears a little bit and talk about copy because I know copy

23:50

plays into SEO and stuff like that too.

23:53

So how much does copy play into it and what are some of the things that we should

23:57

be looking at when we're putting our copy into our website?

24:02

Okay. The first thing that I will say is at the end of 2022,

24:08

Google released the helpful content update.

24:11

Now, anytime I mention Google, this is, in this case, it's specifically about

24:16

Google, but largely I use Google as a proxy for other search engines because

24:21

this kind of follow the leader in this market. Anyway, Google released the helpful content update. They singularly did.

24:30

And what that Content, Helpful Content Update stated was that they are going

24:36

to use artificial intelligence to crawl a section of one of your pages,

24:44

the one entire page of your site, and or your entire site.

24:49

And it's looking for content that they deem as helpful and useful to human beings.

24:55

I'll say that just one more time because I find that to be a little bit weird,

24:59

that they're going to leverage artificial intelligence to determine if your

25:04

content is helpful and useful to human beings.

25:08

That's an interesting one. Basically, what they've realized is that people can game the system.

25:13

If you have any sort of technical prowess, it's relatively easy to rank a site.

25:18

But it doesn't mean that what you're putting out is helpful and useful to human beings.

25:23

And so user experience and relevant content is really important to Google.

25:29

To Google, relevance is the sexiest word in their vernacular.

25:33

So you need to have really good content.

25:37

That being said, as we go through the copy, right, it's less about what can

25:42

I use for keywording, even though that's still important, and more about how

25:48

you can help another person. What information are you putting on your website that's helpful to a client?

25:55

When they arrive at your site, are they just going to bounce because,

25:58

you know, in other words, jump off of your website because you're not producing

26:02

the information they need? So content is really

26:06

important here helpful content is important

26:09

truth is nobody knows what's really helpful until

26:12

we start seeing it right so you're going to have to

26:15

pay attention to some analytics there what i

26:18

do not recommend is leveraging artificial intelligence like chat gpt or you

26:24

know bard and gemini for any of those purposes and here's why if you just need

26:30

to develop some content for your website and you go to an artificial intelligence, large language model.

26:37

Well, what are they going to give you? Content that they've already learned from other people's content.

26:43

So now you're half plagiarizing somebody else's content. You have no idea if

26:47

it's actually accurate. You don't know where it comes from or whether or not there's any truth to it.

26:52

So the better idea instead would be to leverage AI for an idea generator,

26:59

and then you write the content yourself.

27:02

That does save time. Okay, it's not going to save the time that just having

27:07

AI to write it would do, but it will be a whole lot better quality.

27:12

And I think that's the better idea here.

27:15

So with speaking of AI, because that was one of the things I wanted to touch

27:19

on, because I know there's a lot of back and forth.

27:22

I've seen some people say, you know, you can use AI stuff to help generate content

27:26

and then you can not use it because you're going to get punished.

27:29

And so there's two different, I feel like very wide sides of that spectrum,

27:35

right, of opinions with that. And I don't know how much of an opinion versus fact, because you hear very reputable

27:41

people saying it on both sides. But when it comes to AI, I know you, I like what you said, you know,

27:47

using AI and we do this in our own business where it's just like,

27:50

we use it for content creation ideas, not necessarily the content creation.

27:55

So for example, give me 10 ideas for engaging families to do family photography.

28:02

Well, you know, I'm just throwing that off the top of my head and it gives you

28:05

10 ideas and you're like, oh, I like number two and I like number four and I

28:08

like number five. So you do 2, 4, and 5. But what people go wrong, and you would probably agree with this,

28:15

is they'll say number two is... Getting photos of your family is the most important thing to do in their lives

28:21

or something like that. You know, like that, that maybe is one of the topic ideas.

28:24

They'll say, make a blog post for make for topic number two,

28:30

and then it writes the whole blog post, right?

28:32

So that is, I feel like the direction you don't want to go down using step one is a good idea.

28:38

Then take that blog post number two that you chose or whatever that topic is, write your own content.

28:44

You know, I'm not the best writer and tell me this is where I get confused if this is right or wrong.

28:50

I'm not the best writer in the world. That's why I have my studio manager do

28:53

all my writing, but I'm not the best writer in the world.

28:58

But what I would do in that aspect is I would take that content and write what

29:03

I would write in my John Glazer brain, right?

29:07

Is it wrong to then take that content, put it back into ChatGPT,

29:12

Gemini, or whatever you're using and say, clean this up, make it blah,

29:16

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because now it's your content,

29:18

but now it's kind of doing some revision for you. Is that right or is that wrong?

29:22

I don't see anything wrong with that. I mean, that's why we have Grammarly, right?

29:26

Correct. Yeah. I believe our studio manager does something along those lines

29:31

and then she puts it in Grammarly and then does another revision of it.

29:34

So then it's like this jumbled mess where it's not, hey, it's AI written, you know, or whatever.

29:40

Everybody's a little different, right? Not everybody has, and forgive me for

29:45

saying so, not everybody has fantastic command of the English language,

29:48

right? They can't all write properly. What you talking about? Which is very, it's really funny.

29:54

I've always said that we are a bunch of creatives that can't actually create.

29:58

We don't write creatively at all. In fact, I have found more plagiarism among photographers than any other profession ever.

30:06

It's simple because what happens is people don't see writing as a money-making activity for them.

30:14

So for them, it's just a waste of time in some ways.

30:17

And in other cases, I think that we simply don't lend it enough time to have

30:23

command of the English language. And I say that, I don't mean just in conversation. I mean writing it, creative writing.

30:30

It's a pain point for sure. Now, what you're suggesting is taking content that

30:35

you've written and let's just make the assumption that the grammar is atrocious.

30:39

Well, filtering it through an AI is certainly not going to be a bad idea.

30:44

It is a large language model, but you do need to work your prompt so that it

30:50

knows what to do, which is clean up the grammar. grammar, and you can also tell

30:55

it what kind of tone you're trying to achieve as well.

30:58

And so the more specific you are with your prompt, the better.

31:02

Now, of course, I'm not saying that everybody is deficient in the use of the

31:07

English language, but if that's your pain point, do the best you can because

31:12

there are tools out there that will help clean that up.

31:15

You certainly don't want to be in a position where you are taking,

31:20

in my estimation, the lazy way out, which is throwing a prompt at AI,

31:25

taking all of that information, throwing it on your website, calling it good.

31:29

Google literally redid their documentation saying that use of AI is not frowned upon, right?

31:37

But in my eyes, it's kind of like speaking out of both sides of your mouth.

31:41

Go ahead, use AI, but we also understand it's not unique content.

31:46

I don't see that, right? So to me, it's a little bit strange and incongruous.

31:52

So I'll simply say, create unique content, make it helpful,

31:56

make it useful, and put your words through a large language model like ChatGPT

32:02

or other AI to clean it up for grammar and to make it sound as you intend it to sound.

32:09

Well, and I'll take that a step further. and, and, and I'll be honest,

32:13

we do this in our business and, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this.

32:17

I assume I know what your answer is going to be, but I don't know.

32:20

We will take that content that we write for a blog post, for example, or something, right?

32:25

I, we have gone back in and put it into some kind of AI program like Gemini

32:31

or chat GPT and asked it to create alt tag headers for the content.

32:38

Is that a good practice or a bad practice us to be doing?

32:42

It depends. So ChatGPT can't look at a website and say, okay,

32:47

I have no- So it's not looking at the website. It's looking at the content that I'm putting in. So like at that blog post that

32:52

I made, I would copy and paste that blog post in.

32:54

I would say, create alt headers for this and give me the alt header tags.

33:00

And it will actually give me the tags and the headings and all that stuff based on the content.

33:04

I would still filter it out using your own head, because what basically what's

33:09

probably going to do is generate a list for you.

33:11

And you'll have to use the ones that are more strategic for what you're trying

33:15

to achieve. I certainly wouldn't use all of them.

33:18

Right? That you could potentially have a paragraph of alt tags for a picture

33:23

that may not be as beneficial to you as you might want it to be.

33:27

So I guess my question is, have you ever done that before? Have you ever done it?

33:31

No. Okay. No, I write all of them myself. Okay. So we have, and what I do is

33:36

like, I've taken it and I've put it into like a chat GPT and I say, make alt tags.

33:41

So it will actually rewrite, I mean, not rewrite,

33:44

it will take the content that I have and put headers in that,

33:49

like as it would be written in a blog post so I can copy and paste and it'll

33:52

say H1, this H2, this H3, this it'll actually tell you that.

33:58

Those aren't all tags, John. Those are header tags, buddy. I mean, header tags. Sorry.

34:03

Give me the listener. I'm not the guru that.

34:07

I'm sorry. You feel me for a loop. I was like, this is why I had.

34:10

Sorry. Okay. Okay. Great. I'm with you. I'm with you. Great correction. If you're listening and watching,

34:16

there is a difference between alt tags and header tags.

34:19

And I use the wrong verbiage. Make sure you're using the right verbiage with

34:22

Richard because he will pick it apart. Well, I didn't mean to put you on the spot there. It's all good.

34:29

But I did that for header tags. And so it would say header tag one,

34:34

header tag two, header tag three. And it would tell me where to put those things within the content so that when

34:40

I'm then putting it into my website, I put the right header tag and I'm not

34:44

putting H1 in my thing three times and H2s 20 times and all that stuff.

34:51

I understand what you're saying. I winced a little bit because I'm not sure...

34:56

You're putting the horse before the cart. I feel like you're putting the cart

35:00

before the horse here. And I'll explain what I mean.

35:04

It sounds like you've written the content and you're trying to find a title

35:07

for your content, but how do you know that that's the content that people are looking for?

35:12

And so the only way to do that, that I know of is to do some keyword research

35:17

and to figure out what topics people are actually trying to learn more about.

35:21

And I actually have some really good techniques for that, which are a little

35:25

bit more visual, but just the same. We're talking about creating titles for these paragraphs of information.

35:32

Essentially, that's what these header tags are.

35:35

Whereas you're saying, I've written content here, now find me titles.

35:41

But how do you know that those are the titles that are actually being for?

35:45

So I feel like you're putting the cart before the horse, and instead,

35:50

we should probably find the search terms that people are most likely looking

35:54

for and building the content that is more, more helpful to them around that.

36:00

Okay. So then that leads into a great question in the sense of what tools are

36:04

you using or what do you suggest of tools to find that, like those search word

36:09

things and how to create that? Cause like, I, I know I've driven into the realm of like, I'm banging my head again. I don't know.

36:17

And then how many are too many and how many are not enough? And like,

36:21

Hey, how do you balance that? And, but where do I find that information and where do I get that?

36:25

I know there's programs out there, but some are better than others with that

36:28

kind of stuff. What would you recommend using for these things?

36:31

All right. So I'll, I'll tell you straight out. I have no shame in my game that

36:36

if I don't have to pay for things, I don't want to.

36:38

All right. There you go. It's pretty straight forward. We're getting free advice

36:42

and free content, like places to go from Richard.

36:47

Right. Like, Oh, I think we lost. you

36:50

froze there though oh no you're good you're back you froze for a

36:52

second okay just for a split second there yeah so basically if i don't have

36:57

to pay for things i don't want to right and and that's a really big statement

37:01

because you can get into software that will help you with all of this stuff

37:06

on many levels and much more granular detail but it costs you about 100 bucks a month.

37:13

No. I mean, I'll be honest, right?

37:16

While I do make a living doing this, I also make a living doing headshot photography.

37:20

So it's probably more useful to somebody like me who actually uses it to make money.

37:25

If this is not who you are and you're just a photographer trying to better your

37:30

own website, please don't go spend a hundred bucks a month on that.

37:34

You're going to drain your bank account and you're not going to understand the

37:37

data any more than you did beforehand. him.

37:39

So I would take that kind of stuff out of the way. But what I'm going to suggest

37:44

involves a little bit of elbow grease. Okay. First, you're going to get information if you just go into Google, Google itself.

37:53

And if you were to type in your core niche, so John, you're in pet photography.

37:57

I know you do some of that in your studio.

38:00

Just a little. So just a little bit, it, right? So if you start Googling pet photography,

38:08

pet photographers do it geographically, even in other geographies,

38:12

you're going to see a whole bunch of listings in the SERPs.

38:15

The SERPs are search engine results pages.

38:18

And read some of that. Some of those words are in bold for a reason.

38:23

Also look at how those accordions unfold that say people also ask.

38:28

Task those are interesting because you're

38:31

just kind of arming yourself you're you're taking it all

38:34

in you're making notes you're trying to figure out what's being targeted and

38:37

why it is where it is okay that's just for starters look all the way at the

38:43

bottom of that google search page and you're gonna find some other words in

38:47

bold also good place to look now i'm not saying that

38:52

those particular search terms are destined for your website,

38:56

just don't overlook them. Just don't glance over them. Take them on board. Other places to find keywords.

39:04

I'm a proponent of using, and I'll be honest, I do not run Google ads, not a single one.

39:12

Which is amazing to me that you're doing what you do all off of SEO and word

39:16

of mouth and all that stuff. I mean, and that's a testament to like you have figured this out.

39:22

So bravo to you, my friend.

39:26

There's a reason I did, but I appreciate that, my friend. I really do.

39:30

What I'd say is that if you're in a larger market, for instance,

39:34

like a major metropolitan city, you're going to have to find a way to play in the ad space.

39:40

I never needed to based on where I am and the areas that I service.

39:44

However, the downside to that is that I've also had to service a much larger

39:50

footprint than most others because of my location, my geography.

39:55

It's not a major metropolitan area. I'm an hour and a half from the largest

40:00

city in the area, which is Philadelphia, another hour and a half to Baltimore.

40:05

I'm kind of in that central Pennsylvania area where there's no real big city.

40:09

So I've expanded my footprint and it has allowed me to avoid having to spend on ads.

40:15

However, all things being equal, Google's keyword planner is a really great place to start, right?

40:21

And I know that you know a little bit about that because I know you run some ads,

40:25

but Google Keyword Planner, you can certainly dive into some details about what

40:30

the search volume is like and what kind of search terms you're trying to get a grip on.

40:36

It's a good research tool, but again, it's nothing but research until you implement it.

40:42

Another great place, and I think it's overlooked quite a bit,

40:46

is Google Search Console. And so I'm going to try to describe this in an easy way, and I know that people

40:54

are going to have questions about it, so we can certainly do a quick demo at another point.

40:58

But Google Search Console is a Google property that takes in your information

41:06

from your website and assimilating that information,

41:10

you're learning how your website is being used, what its performance is like,

41:16

what kind of issues you might have on your site.

41:20

And it's a little bit more granular detail than you would ordinarily have.

41:25

On the performance tab of Google Search Console, right, you'll have all sorts

41:30

of metrics. There's like four different metrics. Mostly, you'll have two that are checked and two that are not.

41:36

Those four should be checked, and then you're going to change your date range to 12 months.

41:41

Hit the export at the top right, I think, of the screen and export that to a Google Sheet.

41:47

What you're getting at this point are

41:51

your click-through rates and your impressions and a

41:54

list of keywords that people have

41:57

actually come across in relation to your site so we're going to take all of

42:03

those columns of information and we're going to sort and you're going to sort

42:07

them from i think highest to lowest so z to a and you're going to use the impressions

42:14

as the category that gets sorted.

42:17

So in other words, we want to see the keywords and the search terms that are

42:21

highest with impressions and lowest click-through rate.

42:26

In other words, if something, let's say, ranks top five, right?

42:33

Let's just make a search term glazer pet photographer, right?

42:38

And lots of impressions, but you rank like top five.

42:42

Well, I'm not going to care too much about that because that's doing pretty well.

42:46

But let's just make the assumption I've got, I don't know, something a little

42:51

bit more obscure, like let's just say senior portraits, right?

42:58

Optimized on your site, let's just say. And you've got a lot of impressions,

43:03

but maybe the ranking is like 60 or 90 or something like that.

43:08

Well, that just presents an opportunity there.

43:11

You just need to do a little bit of work for that search term,

43:14

right? So that's the kind of stuff I'm looking for.

43:17

I'm looking for those keywords or search terms that are making impressions.

43:23

In other words, people are coming across them somehow, some way.

43:27

They're possibly even searching for them.

43:30

You just don't rank very well for them. And I'm taking those opportunities and

43:35

I'm actually going to flesh them out a little bit and bolster that click-through

43:39

rate to the best of our ability. That's something I would absolutely suggest doing. I think that's totally worth the time.

43:47

One of the questions from one of the Facebook chat comments was a list of things

43:53

to do on a daily or weekly basis.

43:56

And I know we'll probably end up talking about that a little bit more,

44:00

but I did take that on board and I was thinking, what's something I do every day?

44:05

And I really do spend every single day in my Google business profile.

44:10

Every single day. And it's not just to take on the statistics and understand

44:15

them, but to actually push my own reputation a little bit further.

44:19

It's very local, right? And because it's so local, and I know that that is tied

44:24

to my site in some ways, only some. own. And in some ways, the search console is tied to that too.

44:32

So these are all Google properties under the big umbrella and everything affects everything else.

44:38

And so how is it that I'm going to get my name out there a little bit further

44:42

for when somebody Googles a headshot photographer in my area?

44:46

Well, of course, I'm going to improve my reputation with my reviews.

44:50

That should go without saying, I hope you're doing that because the quantity

44:54

of your reviews and the quality of the reviews are also ranking signals.

44:59

So the higher that number goes, the better. You want to keep it in the four

45:04

or five star categories. If you can keep it up higher than four, five star, that's certainly helpful.

45:10

So I'm focused there, but also I'm showing activity to Google and to my would-be

45:16

audience here by posting a picture Monday through Friday.

45:21

And while I'm a Jewish guy, I don't take off at the Sabbath.

45:24

I just choose not to do anything on Saturday or Sunday.

45:28

Monday through friday i post a picture but on

45:31

monday and it's a unique picture that's very

45:34

important unique because google doesn't want you to spam

45:37

it with duplicates so don't use something you've already used if you use a picture

45:41

put it in a folder never to be retrieved for google's purposes on mondays also

45:47

i also write an update post so you can certainly do that and use another Another unique picture.

45:55

Now, I know I get this question a lot, which is, well, won't you run out of pictures?

46:00

And my response is, you're a photographer. Go make more.

46:06

You should have a plethora of pictures. Well, if you've been at it for some

46:12

time, I would hope you've got a library of images.

46:14

But even if you haven't, you're still a photographer.

46:16

You wield the camera, pick it up, go shoot something.

46:19

Right. I think that's the big thing is that we are content creators in many ways.

46:24

And the idea is to remove the hat that says I'm a photographer and start putting

46:29

on the hat that says I'm a businessman. And in order for people to know what I do and how I do it, I need to showcase it. Right.

46:37

So with the content creation in Google and stuff like that, and I know that

46:43

as funny as this is, and it's like people, people listening are probably going,

46:48

why are we talking about Google? Google my business when we're talking about SEO, but correct me if I'm wrong,

46:55

they're one in the same and they kind of match up together.

46:57

And if you're not doing, if you're doing one and not the other,

46:59

like Google kind of goes, how legit is your business? Is that correct? Yeah.

47:05

Kind of. So Google has a lot of properties, a lot of entities under their umbrella.

47:10

Okay. When people use the word Google, it's kind of like using the word Kleenex,

47:14

but you really mean to say tissue, right? It's kind of like that.

47:18

So Google owns a lot of properties. Google business profile is an entity under the Google umbrella.

47:25

Google search is an entity under the umbrella.

47:29

Okay. Google workspace is an entity under the umbrella. They all interplay with

47:35

each other because Google loves to keep us within their own ecosystem.

47:39

But that doesn't necessarily mean that one has more to do with the other, right?

47:45

If you think about where your website is positioned, right, in relationship

47:50

to all these entities, they all kind of feed back and forth to it, right? Right.

47:54

In some ways, we'll use Google Workspace either through email or sheets or whatever have you.

48:00

Well, there's definitely a connection there and there's definitely a connection

48:03

with Google's Google business profile and then the Google search.

48:09

So the website is kind of the common denominator here.

48:12

That doesn't mean that Google business profile and Google search are working

48:20

together, even though there are elements that are easily read.

48:24

In other words, here's the bridge between Google Business Profile and Google Search is Google Maps.

48:31

That's the bridge because your listing for your Google Business Profile can

48:36

only be accessed in two ways that I know of at this point.

48:40

One is through Google search by typing in the name of your business, right?

48:44

So I would do Richard space, Wayne space, photography, and boom,

48:47

here I am. There's my Google business profile. And it's also accessible through maps.

48:52

There is no standalone app any longer. Yeah. It used to be its own thing.

48:56

And now it's, now it's through maps or whatever. That's right.

49:00

And, and Google experienced plenty of issues in that migration too.

49:04

You can still type Google my business and it'll, and something will come up,

49:07

but it'll They'll direct you to my business page through like maps and all that stuff.

49:11

Yeah, they have all those redirects set up. But ultimately, those are the only

49:15

two access points that I even know about any longer.

49:18

So, yes, the bridge is Google Maps, which is a proximity thing.

49:23

If you think about it for search, everything is proximity related for Google business profile.

49:29

But you still need to be kind of out front with what you do, how you do it.

49:35

You need to be active. There's lots of different elements here.

49:39

There's no real key wording per se, but I will tell you this.

49:44

Under your business categories, you should have more than one business category listed.

49:50

Your primary category, if you are a photographer, should be photographer, right?

49:57

There shouldn't be any mystery about that, but if you are like me,

50:01

a headshot photographer, for instance, you're going to want to select a couple

50:06

of other categories like portrait studio, like photography service,

50:09

like photography studio. That's like leaving free money on the table and walking away from it if you

50:16

choose not to leverage other business categories.

50:19

You can leverage up to 10 categories, so why not? not.

50:23

Of course, if it's not listed, don't go making them up willy nilly. But.

50:29

If you go back into your dashboard and you find these categories yet again,

50:35

Google will actually make other suggestions for other services that you provide

50:41

underneath those categories. And you should certainly take them up on their suggestions if that's something that you do.

50:47

Sometimes if you're like, for instance, a photography studio and under that general category,

50:54

they may have things like weddings and let's just say, you know,

50:58

engagements and bar mitzvahs and quinceaneras, you know, like the event type

51:03

of stuff, right? Whatever that looks like. But you don't do any of that. Well, don't do it.

51:08

Don't click on it. Right. But if that's something you do, definitely add that

51:14

because who wouldn't want more money coming into them?

51:17

All right. No, totally. Totally. So you're not going to have that opportunity

51:21

to optimize for terms, but you should select the ones that are applicable to you. Right.

51:25

And then like, how does like, I've heard this too. And this is probably something

51:30

that people have that question. How does YouTube play into that? Because I hear people saying a lot.

51:36

If you know, you need to create more video content because it will help boost your overall thing.

51:41

And it's part of that umbrella like you're talking about of Google.

51:45

How does that play into this whole thing? well surprise

51:48

surprise google search is not the world's strongest search engine youtube is

51:54

and and if you it really is yeah it's powerful you know if you ever wanted to

51:59

learn something you probably went to youtube to learn it i know i've done it

52:04

so i became a photographer. There you go i honestly i think i don't have a degree in it i have a youtube

52:10

degree and a Scott Kelby subscription degree.

52:14

Well, you know what? You and I are not that different, sir, because that's really where I started.

52:19

I mean, that's where I found Peter Hurley to begin with. So I found Peter Hurley

52:24

through my brother-in-law,

52:26

but then did some searching and stuff and found him on YouTube,

52:29

but then got introduced to Scott Kelby because of Peter Hurley and everything.

52:35

And so I learned through those aspects of different things about lighting,

52:40

about how to work with people and all that kind of stuff.

52:42

And I went to the things that I went, but a lot of it was like, oh crap, how do I do this?

52:46

And I went to YouTube, you know, how do you do that? You know,

52:48

like I remember a flurn when I was first starting out, I was on learn all the time.

52:56

Aaron's incredible teacher. Yeah. Right. It's like amazing.

53:00

And he, and he puts it all out there, you know, great, but, but it's,

53:04

it's YouTube, YouTube, YouTube. So it makes sense what you're saying. It's just Just like having that kind of content on YouTube.

53:10

So what I hear you saying is if you're in business, you need to be creating

53:15

some kind of video content. Does it matter how fancy that video content is?

53:21

I'm going to tell you straight up, John, I am the world's worst videographer.

53:25

I don't think that there's a single human being that could come close to the

53:28

amount of failure I've had taking video.

53:31

But what I will tell you is that it's not about your production quality.

53:36

It's a matter of doing something. Having something. Yeah, do something. You're not going to be good at it if you're

53:44

doing it for the first time. Lord knows I'm not. but you do one thing and you get a little bit of muscle

53:50

underneath you and you do it again and you, your work gets better over time.

53:54

And a great example of this whole, this whole thing, like the podcast is like,

53:59

I got to, I read a book and the guy said, if you want to do like education or

54:04

podcasts or something do, and it started with a daily vlog.

54:08

I don't know if anybody that has followed me a while, I had this daily vlog

54:11

and it just, I didn't keep up with it Cause it was daily.

54:14

It was like, but he said, do it for five minutes a day.

54:17

Right. And, and talk about whatever.

54:20

And you're going to start, it's like he, he equated it to a comedian.

54:24

Comedians go up with 10 different jokes. When three of them land,

54:27

they get rid of the seven and then they go and find, you know,

54:30

they do the same three again, and then they find seven new jokes and then two

54:34

of those land and then they do five. But it's like, that's where you start getting your voices at five thing.

54:39

And then how many clicks? So then I was starting to see, oh,

54:41

wow, there's a lot of clicks on this one. So that's something that people think

54:44

is really important. And I do the same thing with podcasts.

54:46

It's like, oh, there's a lot of clicks in this kind of interest.

54:49

So I need to go find more people that are interested in that with the podcast. But it's the same thing.

54:54

It's the same concept of just start somewhere and you never know where it's

54:59

going to go. And you'll start to get your comfort level.

55:01

I don't care how uncomfortable you are in front of a microphone or in camera or whatever.

55:05

You have to start somewhere. And And five minutes is better than no minutes.

55:09

Absolutely. Yeah. A great example of this. I remember when Pete Coco started doing his video work.

55:15

And I remember that the beginnings were not exactly smooth running for him,

55:20

but his work, the video work, the production quality has gotten significantly better.

55:25

He does a beautiful job on camera. He's exceptionally articulate.

55:30

He does a really good job, which didn't come from nowhere.

55:35

He had to work at it. And so I'm not so worried about production quality.

55:39

Get something out there. Put out content, once again, that is both helpful and

55:45

useful to other human beings. I might even suggest going as far as to say be slightly more entertaining.

55:52

And the reason why is because if you think about infotainment,

55:57

that's really the business that we're in is infotainment.

56:00

Right you're not really going to secure tons

56:04

of clients just on a video but your

56:08

expertise and your credibility and your authority will come through over a period

56:12

of time yeah what i might suggest if there's anything that i can suggest regarding

56:18

video which in my limited knowledge is not much i admit just have really good

56:23

audio right i think that's the key i'm showing it right Right here,

56:27

I have this little device that clicks to my phone,

56:30

and I put it on my lapel. It cost me maybe $100.

56:33

I don't even remember. But it's perfect, and it just plugs into a little USB

56:38

to recharge, and it's great.

56:41

It doesn't take much to do something like that. I've got different audio equipment

56:46

for other stuff, but I think that's the key to really good video, personally.

56:54

Just the same, YouTube is a really strong search.

56:57

Engine, I don't think you should overlook it. You have an opportunity to put

57:00

plenty of verbiage in the descriptions and the titles, and just make sure that

57:06

you're captivating your audiences, because ultimately, that's what's going to

57:09

keep people coming back. No, that's, it's such a good, like, I mean, as you guys are hearing this,

57:15

there's so much that goes on to SEO.

57:18

My last question that I want to ask you, and, and, and I feel like this is like

57:23

one of the bigger questions that most people that are going through this have,

57:26

I guess there's two questions I want to ask you, right? Right.

57:29

One is, would it be, what should people be proficient in SEO and learn how to be proficient in SEO?

57:38

Or is it better to hire somebody to do the SEO work and help you with the SEO

57:43

work instead of you doing all the, because like, I I'm sure there's others that

57:48

are on here and there's things that you and I have talked about.

57:50

And we've talked about these things before that are just like,

57:54

Oh my God, in my mind, I'm going, I need to do some updates and some fixes to my website and stuff.

57:59

And I don't have the time and I don't have the energy and I don't have the whatever.

58:03

And I can make a bunch of excuses, but I've learned from you also,

58:06

it's taking bits and pieces at a time and doing something daily.

58:09

It doesn't mean sitting down for an eight hour day and just doing nothing but SEO.

58:13

But if you do like, you know, 10, 15 minutes of, I'll do this page today and

58:18

clean it up. I'll do this pages today and clean it up. I'll clean this item up.

58:22

I'll clean up all my H tags, you know, like today, you know?

58:26

So you can take it in bits and pieces, but what would you recommend?

58:29

Somebody becoming proficient in SEO or getting somebody to work with your SEO

58:34

on your website? What are the pros and cons there?

58:39

So once again, I'll kind of circle back to what I said earlier,

58:42

which is if I don't have to pay somebody to do something, I'm not going to.

58:45

And I don't often recommend that people do that.

58:49

For a few reasons. So when I build websites for photographers,

58:53

and you know this, John, I will only work with photographers only because it's an industry I know well.

58:58

Right. And so when I do this kind of work for photographers,

59:03

the one thing I tell them outright is that at the conclusion,

59:07

when I'm done with the project, I'm going to go through your site with you and teach you how to use it.

59:13

And the reason why I do it that way is because I don't believe in becoming a webmaster.

59:18

It will take me an inordinate amount of time to look after your site.

59:23

You'll hit me up every once in a blue moon asking for a specific change.

59:28

And for that, I'm going to charge you a monthly fee, which will make you very

59:32

cash poor and me just render my time kind of like- And that's a whole other

59:37

podcast, by the way, with Richard. He's very good in profitability in your business.

59:43

We could talk about that. Yeah, yeah. We'll talk about that another day. Yeah, for sure.

59:48

So at the end of the day, I think it's a very expensive thing to go out to somebody

59:53

and say, here, do you steal my website? Be a webmaster, right?

59:57

I just think that's an expensive proposition for small businesses.

1:00:00

And I don't necessarily think that that's where we should be kind of focusing our money.

1:00:07

However, you should have some form of foundation for your website.

1:00:12

In other words, you should know how to operate it. You should know what should

1:00:16

and can be changed and how to do that.

1:00:19

Nobody can make the corrections to your site like you want them made unless you do it yourself.

1:00:26

You could be very specific with a web designer or a builder or a developer of any sort.

1:00:32

You could say, this is what I want, but then you are still going to have to

1:00:37

inspect what you expect, which is kind of like, yeah, well, why am I having

1:00:42

you do it? I might as well do it myself, save myself a little bit of money.

1:00:45

The downside here is there's a little bit of learning curve.

1:00:49

But if you can get over that and just understand the basics of what needs to

1:00:54

be where and how you accomplish that, then web development doesn't have to be that difficult.

1:01:01

SEO doesn't have to be that difficult. But as you said very well,

1:01:06

John, 1% better every day. Just take a little bit off. Right.

1:01:11

I Rome wasn't built in a day and your website won't be either. Right. Okay.

1:01:16

I I'm a real firm believer in that 1% better every day.

1:01:20

Yes. There are elements of my own website that I really need to get back to.

1:01:23

And, and the thing is that there is nobody else to do it other than me.

1:01:27

So I'll just have to kind of deal with that in my time.

1:01:31

But it shouldn't be as difficult. And if you are running up against specific

1:01:36

SEO related issues, you know, there are plenty of resources out there.

1:01:43

Whether or not you can understand them is another story, but there are plenty

1:01:45

of resources on how to deal with it. So I do recommend that people learn it. No, I really would agree with you.

1:01:52

And I was doing it for a while. And then, you know, things got really busy with

1:01:57

some different things within my business, just like anybody else's business.

1:02:00

And I got away from it where I was doing that 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes a day where

1:02:05

I was going and doing stuff. And then I've let some things go awry in my website, to be honest.

1:02:11

And it needs to be cleaned up. Now, that doesn't mean my website's not performing

1:02:16

on some level, but it's just not doing what it should be doing completely.

1:02:21

Right. And so I need to go and clean that up, just like I think anybody else.

1:02:24

But the encouraging thing is like what you're saying. Take one piece at a time. You know, and what I found personally,

1:02:31

and I know everybody's different, everybody's personality is different,

1:02:34

but, you know, hiring a time of an hour with Richard Wayne or somebody like

1:02:39

that's like you that can go through these things with you and then kind of give you ideas.

1:02:45

And I'm sure we gave you some ideas just listening to this podcast today,

1:02:48

but of giving you ideas of, okay, do this, do this, do this.

1:02:52

And remember, it's a marathon, not a race.

1:02:55

And you can do it over time, you know, and if you're sitting there watching

1:02:58

your ranking, your ranking is not going to jump from 100 to one overnight.

1:03:03

Like, oh, I did something on my website. You know, you got to,

1:03:07

you got to like, remember, it's going to take some time to get these things going.

1:03:11

It's going to take some time for you to do those updates. but I will agree with Richard.

1:03:15

It's really beneficial to you to learn what that is and tweak it as you go and,

1:03:21

and make it better as you go then to pour money.

1:03:25

Cause website people are expensive, expensive. And yeah.

1:03:31

You can go to those people and spend thousands and thousands and thousands of

1:03:35

dollars for them to do stuff. And then as soon as they're done with it, you go, oh, I'm going to go change

1:03:40

all my pictures on this page. Well, now you've just messed up everything that they just did for you and you

1:03:46

spent thousands of dollars on if you don't know what you're doing,

1:03:49

updating those pictures on that page. You know what I'm saying?

1:03:52

Absolutely. I think it's important also to mention, John, that we should always

1:03:56

be A-B testing things. If I put this up, what are the results?

1:04:01

Let's just say it's a picture. I put this picture up. I have no idea what those

1:04:05

results are automatically going to be. Let me try it for a period of time.

1:04:09

Let me try this bit of content for a period of time. If I have success and traction,

1:04:13

we'll roll with it for a little bit. If I need to change it, I have an opportunity to change things up.

1:04:19

A-B testing is very important. Again, this is a long game, a very, very long game.

1:04:26

And I think that there are certainly things that we can do over a period of

1:04:32

time to get us where we're going.

1:04:34

But I don't really think that you're going to get there overnight.

1:04:38

And I think that expectations should be tailored accordingly.

1:04:41

As you said, we're not going to rank number one overnight.

1:04:44

This is a really big point that I wanted to bring up even before we got on.

1:04:49

There are only three things that move the rankings in the search engine results.

1:04:55

What you do to your own content, in other words, how you manipulate your own

1:05:00

optimizable content, what your competitors do, how they optimize their own content,

1:05:07

and then what Google decides to do.

1:05:09

And when they decide to do things it's all bets are

1:05:12

off because they've made up their mind and that's the end of that so and that's

1:05:17

not to say that they probably haven't solicited feedback but let's be honest

1:05:20

they are some really brilliant minds over there so there's a reason for everything

1:05:24

they're doing but what they are doing will ultimately change the configuration of the.

1:05:34

And I cannot remember. I apologize. The person that did ask the question about

1:05:38

the daily or weekly activities. I was going to ask you that question because this all leads into what you're saying.

1:05:43

What is the key habits one should be doing weekly to improve your SEO?

1:05:49

Okay. So here's the thing is that you have no idea what has changed or when it's changed.

1:05:56

Okay. So I would not spend inordinate amount of time trying to figure that out,

1:06:01

but you should at least be aware of what your analytics tell you,

1:06:05

what your bounce rates are, okay?

1:06:07

And for the record, to the best of my knowledge, bounce rate is not a ranking

1:06:12

signal, but rather the relevance of the content and how long people spend on

1:06:17

that content will give other indicators to Google about the value of the content.

1:06:22

So it's not like people get on your website and they jump off and Google said,

1:06:25

ah, people have no idea what's on here.

1:06:28

We're going to demote this website. That's not how that works.

1:06:32

What they're basically saying is that the longer somebody or people spend on

1:06:35

the content is that it's going to weigh the rankings a little differently,

1:06:40

a little bit more in your favor based on how much time they spend on it and

1:06:43

how valuable they find it. So that being said is that you need to focus on just creating really good content

1:06:51

for your demographics. Graphics, okay, that's real big.

1:06:56

Good, helpful, relevant content will get you where you want to go a lot faster

1:07:01

than trying to game the system. The system was reconfigured because people were gaming it.

1:07:08

So they came up with other ways.

1:07:11

You can monitor your competitors, okay? There are certainly ways to do that.

1:07:16

But what you're really trying to do is figure out what they're doing and then do it better than them.

1:07:22

That's with anything in business, though. Of course. But the truth is that nobody knows what that is.

1:07:28

And for years, and I hate to stick a feather in my own cap, but they do say

1:07:33

that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.

1:07:38

But for years, people get on and off my website like it's going out of style.

1:07:42

And I know that they're photographers, and every one of them are looking to

1:07:45

figure out what it is I've done or how I've done it.

1:07:48

But very few of them will pick up the phone and ask me

1:07:51

the question even though i offer the information

1:07:54

i'm like here i'll just tell you right and

1:07:57

as you guys can see richard is he's a pretty open book and like when you sit

1:08:02

down and you spend some time with him he he will explain any i what i like and

1:08:06

appreciate about you is you put it in terms that make sense like i i see a lot

1:08:10

of people get too technical with the terms and the explanation and all that

1:08:14

stuff and you're like Like, it's over my head. I don't know what the hell you're talking about.

1:08:18

What good, John, is any information if you can't understand it?

1:08:22

Oh, I get it, but there's plenty of people that don't, you know, it's like it's over your head and you're like, I'm clueless.

1:08:27

So I'm propping you up in the sense of like, if you worked with Richard and

1:08:30

you did want to get help with your SEO and stuff like that, Richard will not

1:08:34

only give you practical things to do with your website, but he will also give

1:08:38

you it, explain it to you in terms that you can understand.

1:08:41

Kind of like the, the, the H tags that we talked about at the beginning and

1:08:45

talking about that as a book. That's why I started with that. Cause I was so like, I was writing notes when

1:08:50

we, you and I met and I was like, Oh, okay. That makes sense. Okay. That makes sense.

1:08:54

It's the, it's the title, the chapter, the verse, you know, or the paragraph.

1:08:58

Graph and right but you put it in a way that makes

1:09:01

sense for the lay person that's like going into seo

1:09:04

and it feels so overwhelming so the last

1:09:07

question here is it is from

1:09:10

the same person she asked what and i

1:09:13

think we kind of answered this question earlier on but what do you recommend

1:09:17

best for seo is there something that's better than another you know like if

1:09:22

somebody's trying to get started i don't know exactly what she means i don't

1:09:25

know if it's like doing search terms or Or if you were paying for something or whatever,

1:09:31

or kind of monitoring your stuff,

1:09:34

or if it's like, what's better for your website?

1:09:38

Let's take that. Let's take that because we already answered the other one.

1:09:41

And I know we touched on the website side of things when it comes to SEO.

1:09:45

Is there a better platform for

1:09:47

the person that's not, that's like really getting into this fresh and new?

1:09:52

Because I know some platforms are more difficult than others.

1:09:54

Where would you go if you were starting and you had no knowledge?

1:09:58

Okay. So just so from my clarity, are we talking about where would I build a

1:10:03

website if I had that knowledge? Yeah, that's going to be helpful to be SEO friendly and get you going and all that stuff.

1:10:08

All right. So because I really don't believe that any platform has stronger

1:10:13

SEO capabilities or signals than any other, I will always err on the side of simplicity.

1:10:20

Because I also don't necessarily believe that everybody comes out of the womb

1:10:24

knowing how to design a website or figure out how to build it.

1:10:28

So the easier thing to do for you is probably something like a drag and drop editor.

1:10:33

I know that Wix has come a long way, but I'm still a Squarespace proponent.

1:10:38

That being said, and I will qualify this, Squarespace has a long way to go before

1:10:45

they can make me a very happy man. And the reason why is because they believe

1:10:49

in loading their websites with lots and lots of code.

1:10:52

If you don't know what it is or how it functions, you're fine.

1:10:57

But on the back end of things, they basically load a lot of stuff just in case you need it.

1:11:04

But if you don't actually employ it, it's still loading anyway.

1:11:07

Anyway, and that that has some

1:11:09

weight to the website, and I just wish they would get rid of that stuff.

1:11:12

But they are very easy to use, and it's easy to develop a really beautiful website,

1:11:18

and it has all of the the capabilities you would expect of something for a photographer

1:11:24

for search engine optimization. As I said, I know Wix has come a long way. I've not yet. They don't put their platform. form.

1:11:32

I know for a fact that WordPress is an exceptionally robust program,

1:11:38

both for a search engine optimization, for designing websites, but the learning curve is exceptionally steep and there

1:11:45

are way more security threats because most of the stuff functions on plugins,

1:11:50

which are third-party developed.

1:11:53

In other words, most people have no idea where they're coming from or what other

1:11:56

vulnerabilities they have. It's possible that you end up with a totally hacked website.

1:12:01

And then on top of that, you need other resources like CDN, which is a content

1:12:07

delivery network, a way in which your assets like your pictures and logos can be shown on your site.

1:12:15

Because what a CDN does is it basically says that if you are close to this server

1:12:23

farm, wherever that is, your information will come in at a specific speed.

1:12:28

But if you're significantly further away, unless there is another server farm near you,

1:12:35

then that data has a longer distance to travel, which means your site gets slowed down.

1:12:40

So what I like about Squarespace is that it actually houses its own CDN.

1:12:46

WordPress is just a platform to build on. You require a CDN,

1:12:50

whether it's internal through like a GoDaddy or whatever your host is,

1:12:55

or through like a Cloudflare, right?

1:12:58

You do require that. So I think their

1:13:01

requirements for WordPress are a little bit more complicated than

1:13:06

oh i agree i'm a wordpress guy and my my site

1:13:09

is a wordpress but it's so like i've thought about changing

1:13:12

but it's like i've got so much content that's a daunting thought that's how

1:13:16

many pages on my page i'm like i'm i i dug the grave that i i mean i've dug

1:13:20

the hole that i've dug and i'm not gonna go out of it because right i mean the

1:13:24

amount of time it would take for me to go over and then index things and i was

1:13:29

just like uh no i'm Yeah, I'm I,

1:13:31

you know, I'm I'm I'm doing so.

1:13:34

I guess part of the answer is like wherever you are at, don't start over from

1:13:39

scratch unless you really, really have to, you know, you know,

1:13:42

I mean, depending if you only have two or three pages,

1:13:45

it's easier to start from scratch than if you have a hundred or a thousand or

1:13:49

whatever that might be on your back end. If you have to start again, then don't get rid of your existing site.

1:13:56

And you just take it one day at a time, rebuilding things the way you want it

1:14:00

to be until you can go live and then you do the whole migration accordingly.

1:14:05

So you basically end up in a mirror almost, right? Where you have two basically

1:14:09

redundant sites. One is live, one's not.

1:14:12

And then you flip the switch. Right. I think there are ways to do it.

1:14:16

But anyway, going back to the question on simplicity, I do believe in simplicity.

1:14:21

I do think Squarespace is worth a look. I think Wix is worth a look.

1:14:25

But ultimately, SEO is not about the capabilities of the builder and rather

1:14:30

it's your capability and what you know to put on your site. Right.

1:14:35

Richard, I mean, this has been awesome. We could go forever with this stuff.

1:14:40

It's just like we've been going a long time as it is. But thank you so much for being here.

1:14:44

If somebody wanted to reach out to you, how would they get a hold of you?

1:14:47

I mean, we're going to put this in the show notes, but how could they get a

1:14:49

hold of you if they were looking for some help with their SEO and their website? Sure.

1:14:54

You can start by emailing me at info at richardwayne.com.

1:14:59

That's I-N-F-O at richardwayne.com.

1:15:07

If you go to my website, which is richardwayne.com, there is a chat widget there,

1:15:12

and I promise you that is legitimately me. And the only time I will not answer

1:15:16

is when I'm working with a client. And of course, all of my other contact information and socials are certainly

1:15:22

listed on that website as well. And I'm sure John will end up taking those links and putting them in the show notes too.

1:15:28

Yeah, we'll put all that stuff in the show notes. But I just want you to know

1:15:31

if you're listening or watching right now, Richard is definitely somebody if

1:15:35

you're needing help with this stuff, reach out to him.

1:15:37

Have a chat with him. See how he can help you and everything because he is a

1:15:42

wealth of knowledge, as you could hear. today and we've just,

1:15:46

like barely broke the iceberg here of what SEO can do and what it can do for

1:15:52

you and your business and all that stuff. So Richard, again, thank you so much for giving me the time and coming on here.

1:15:58

It's always a pleasure speaking with you. You're a wealth of information.

1:16:01

I need to have you on again so we can talk about profitability one day because

1:16:05

that's a whole other topic that you're really, really well versed in and I love about you.

1:16:10

And so thanks again for being on and I can't wait to have you on again someday soon.

1:16:16

John, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. And just remember,

1:16:19

you know, this stuff isn't sexy, but ringing the cash register is very sexy.

1:16:23

It is. So that's what it's all about, right? There you go.

1:16:26

It's all about how to get people in. Right. There you go. Thanks so much for

1:16:31

having me, John. I really appreciate it. Thanks for being here,

1:16:33

Richard. Talk to you later. You got it. What an amazing interview with Richard. I have worked with Richard.

1:16:39

I've known Richard for years. He has given me ideas.

1:16:42

I've hired Richard to help me with different things when it comes to stuff.

1:16:46

And every time I talk to him, I learn something new. And today was no different.

1:16:50

Richard is an amazing human being. If you are looking to get some help with

1:16:55

your SEO and your website and learn more about SEO and get Richard to help you

1:17:00

get on the right track, you can go into the show notes, find his information, contact him.

1:17:05

I am sure he would be happy to talk to you and help you out with whatever you're

1:17:10

in need of with getting your SEO on track with your business.

1:17:14

So definitely reach out to Richard. Richard, thank you so much for being on

1:17:18

the podcast and everything. And so I'm so glad that I got the opportunity to work with you and have you

1:17:24

on the podcast. So thank you so much. A couple announcements.

1:17:28

I am sorry I haven't been around here in a while. For the last couple of weeks,

1:17:31

We have been moving, a personal move. We've been moving from one house to another, not far from our house.

1:17:36

We're not moving out of state or out of country or out of whatever.

1:17:39

We're just moving two miles from where we were before. There's a long story

1:17:43

to that. I don't want to get into that today, but...

1:17:46

That has preoccupied all my extra time. The move is done. We are just now trying

1:17:50

to get settled in. So everything is good.

1:17:53

But that's why you haven't seen me on the podcast for the last couple of weeks.

1:17:57

But we are getting back on track. This week, we had Richard.

1:18:00

Next week, we are going to be playing the podcast of Jared Clark from Scipio.

1:18:06

Both of those are live podcasts that we did and are on our YouTube channel.

1:18:11

So if you go to John Glaze Photography, a YouTube channel, you'll be able to see them there.

1:18:16

So the live video recording.

1:18:18

If you're interested, go to our, please go to our Facebook page and look for

1:18:24

Refocus Your Photography Business. The links will be in the show notes and click on it and join our Facebook group.

1:18:30

It is a free group. Doesn't cost you anything to be a part of.

1:18:34

It's a place where photographers can collaborate and ask questions and all that stuff.

1:18:38

We do have a paid subscriber membership group if

1:18:41

you're interested in that just reach out to me you can call me

1:18:44

or not call me you can email me at john at jonglaserphotography.com or send

1:18:49

me a text through like instagram or facebook and i'll be happy to point you

1:18:53

in the right direction but join the facebook group refocus your photography

1:18:56

business and from there you can ask any questions and all that stuff when it

1:19:01

comes to the subscription group the subscription group is great Right.

1:19:04

Every other week we have an hour long phone call and we go over different parts of business.

1:19:08

Like this last week, we talked about texting within your business and nurturing

1:19:13

client relationships with texting and not having to make a bunch of phone calls

1:19:18

all the time and everything. So the week, the two weeks prior to that, we talked about sales and how to maximize

1:19:26

your sales and everything. So we talk about different things that go with our business and it's stuff that

1:19:32

I'm actually doing in my business. So I'd love to have you in the group. It is a paid subscription.

1:19:37

There is the free Facebook group, but there is a paid subscription group as

1:19:40

well and love to have you in it. So thank you again for coming into the podcast.

1:19:45

If you can do me a favor and go and like the podcast, you'll get reminders of

1:19:50

future podcasts that get published. And if you would do something and be so kind, it would be amazing if you would

1:19:56

give us a rating and click on any kind of rating that you have and rate the

1:20:01

podcast for yourself so that you,

1:20:03

you know, so we can get rated and, you know, and, and get like legitimized with what we're doing.

1:20:09

So I hope you're getting a lot out of this. I hope you're getting a lot out of the guests.

1:20:12

I am so thankful for everybody that is participating in a part of the podcast

1:20:16

and all of our guests and our future guests.

1:20:19

And I can't wait to see where this goes into the future.

1:20:23

So So my name is John with John Glazer Photography and Refocus Your Photography Business.

1:20:27

Thanks again for tuning in and we can't wait to see you again next time.