April 23, 2024 • 56 mins
Google Search Console is something you need to understand as a creative entrepreneur with a website and today, I’m chatting with Matt Dykstra, one half of Avenlee Collective and we’re diving deep into GSC: what it is, why you need it, how to use, etc.
I know that as a creative, these techie things can feel really “out there” for us, but it is vital that we understand them, at least enough to know when something is WRONG or not working properly.
Matt breaks it all down for us in this episode and because I opened up this discussion to my Elevate members first, they were able to ask some of their own questions as well. You are going to get a lot out of this episode, so make sure you are taking notes!
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CHAPTERS:
0:00 Understanding Google Search Console for Photographers
10:08 Improving SEO and Tackling Google Updates
15:48 Google Updates and SEO Strategies
26:52 Optimizing Photography SEO for Google
37:42 Optimizing Website Performance and SEO
45:44 SEO and Conversion Strategy Tips
51:56 Importance of Blogging for SEO
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Search Console is one of those tools that very few
people realize is even out there, but it is so vital because it
is the place where you submityour sitemaps to Google.
It's the spot where you canfind out are my pages even being
indexed?
Are they being found?
How are they being found?
What keywords are working,which ones are not?
(00:21):
So it's critical to a lot ofpeople focus on the analytics
side, that's, just telling youwhere your traffic's coming from
and how to get more traffic,but the keywords and the root
data for that is all held withinSearch Console.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Welcome to Tried and True with a dash of woo, where
we blend rock solid tips with alittle bit of magic.
I'm Renee Bowen, your host,life and business coach and
professional photographer atyour service.
We are all about gettingcreative, diving into your
business and playing withmanifestation over here.
So are you ready to getinspired and have some fun?
Let's dive in.
Hey, hey, this is Renee Bowen,your host.
(01:02):
Welcome back to Tried and Truewith the Dash of Woo.
Today we are diving into allthings.
Google Search Console I knowsuper fun but honestly, this is
something we need to know aboutas creatives and photographers.
And it's a question that comesup all the time in my coaching
and I'm not an SEO expert, nordo I want to be, but I know
(01:22):
enough to kind of get youstarted.
But we need to be talking toexperts in these fields because
it's a whole different ballgameand especially with Google
Search Console, I find that alot of you guys just don't
either know about it or knowwhat to look at when you open it
and like, why would I even wantto hook this up to my website?
(01:44):
That kind of thing.
But it's actually a really,really awesome tool, and so
today I have brought on someoneI have used for my own SEO
services.
Like he's helped me a lot withjust my own website and I want
to introduce you guys to himbecause he's a great resource
for you you guys to him becausehe's a great resource for you.
His name is Matt Dijkstra.
(02:05):
He and his wife, lisa, runavonleacom and together they
help build a solid foundationfor service-based businesses to
be the professional businessesthat you want to be, that you
strive to be.
They do brand and websitedesign.
They work a lot with the ShowItwebsite, but Matt is a tech
(02:27):
specialist and a ShowIt expert.
He also does know a lot aboutother platforms in terms of SEO,
so he does have some servicesthat you can reach out to him
for.
For instance, he helped me withmy Google Analytics, my G4
switchover, and then we did alittle SEO consult at the same
time and it was really superhelpful for me.
(02:48):
So today I am asking him someof your most asked questions,
and I also had members of mymembership Elevate hop on the
call and ask some questions aswell.
So this is going to be reallyuseful for you guys.
You're going to probably wantto take notes and listen a
couple of times, but let's getright to it.
(03:09):
Thanks for being here today.
I am really excited to talkabout Google Search Console.
I know that's like really kindof geeky and nerdy, but like a
lot of people don't reallyunderstand what it is or what
even to do with it, right, and Iknow that in what you do.
(03:33):
So you guys just so you guyshave a little bit of context,
matt, it's you and your wife,right, that run Avonlea.
Yes, it is, yep, yeah.
So he is like an expert at thewhole show it thing too, as a
side note, so let me just kindof like turn it over to you for
(03:53):
a second and give us like alittle pre-frame about who you
are, what you do, and then we'llget into some questions.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Sure, yeah, I mean my wife and I have been doing our
brand and web design businessfor 12 years now.
We came across ShowIt Gosh.
It's probably been six or sevenyears now we've been designing
with them.
I've shifted more towards thetechnical side, so I'm dealing
more back-end development.
(04:17):
I handle a lot of situationswhere people have questions
about Search Console, theiranalytics, their SEO, even as
much as connecting their website.
They can't figure out why acertain menu isn't working,
things like that.
So kind of a problem solver Inthe show group I like to say a
show at handyman.
(04:38):
So I can pretty much handle anysituation that anybody throws
at me and I'm always happy tohelp.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
So Awesome, yeah, Very cool, Okay, Awesome.
Um.
So let's just kind of um jumpinto some Google search console
stuff so give us like just kindof a basic understanding, just
to kind of get us started.
Um, why it's you know why it'simportant like what, at the very
(05:05):
like 30,000 foot view right,what it's going to do for us and
why it's kind of important topay attention to.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Sure, yeah, search console is one of those tools
that very few people realize iseven out there, but it is so
vital because it is the placewhere you submit your sitemaps
to Google.
It's the spot where you canfind out are my pages even being
indexed?
Are they being found?
How are they being found?
What keywords are working,which ones are not?
(05:37):
So it's a critical to a lot ofpeople focus on the analytics
side, that's, just telling youwhere your traffic's coming from
and how to get more traffic,but the keywords and the root
data for that is all held withinSearch Console.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Yeah, and that's kind of like one of the main issues
that I see is especially withkeywords, and this question
comes up a lot with my groupsespecially.
It's like you know, how do Ieven know what keywords to use,
and all of that.
So does Google search consolehelp with all of that and how?
Speaker 1 (06:12):
A little bit.
I mean, I like to say and I raninto this just with a client
just this week there are toolsout there like RFs and SEMrush
and things like that, where youcan pay a lot of money to get a
lot better data.
Search Console is for the basicperson to understand what's
going on.
What it won't do is it won'tprovide you with additional
(06:36):
keywords that maybe you're notusing.
It's going to tell you what ishappening right now.
There are other free tools Ilike to use.
Google ads Keyword planner is agood tool to use that can kind
of give you some information onwhat other keywords are similar
that are getting ad traffic.
But search console is what'shappening right now with your
(06:57):
keywords and how and your pages.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Okay, yeah.
So what is, I guess, like theone of the first steps?
If somebody doesn't have it yetthey've never like even logged
in or anything like that whatshould they do in particular?
Like is it easy to just kind ofjump on there and set up?
What do you suggest they kindof do first?
Speaker 1 (07:25):
is getting it connected.
Once you get logged in, you'lluse whatever you want as your
admin profile with Google.
Usually I try to tie it withanalytics.
Now they don't necessarilyspeak to each other, but just
for ease of use, use that sameprofile that you're using with
analytics.
So you got it in the same area.
But it is a bit technical toget connected.
It's not like analytics whereyou get a little code, stick it
(07:46):
on your website.
You do have to go into yourdomain host, you have to add a
TXT record into your DNS andthat allows Google to verify
that you own that domain andthen it will start collecting
data on that.
So there's a bit of a technicalstep to get that situated.
If you're comfortable with that, by all means, it's not hard to
(08:06):
do.
Um, if you're not, there'speople like me out there that
can set that up and get it goingfor you.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah, that's very cool.
Yeah, Um, and I know that youknow Matt had helped me with my
um G4, getting that all hookedup, so he is really good about
that kind of stuff.
So it's good that you alsooffer this kind of thing to
people as well if they needextra help getting this situated
.
But I did find it not too hardfor myself, like when I did get
(08:34):
my Google search console hookedup.
It wasn't too hard, you know,and I don't consider myself
super techie, but maybe techieenough and it's really just time
for me, like I, you know, likeI just don't have myself super
techie, but maybe techie enoughand it's really just time for me
, like I just don't have thetime or capacity to do a lot of
stuff like that.
But just as a side note, Ididn't find it super, super hard
.
But then, once you're in, it'skind of confusing.
(08:56):
And that's kind of where I wantto dig into is like what do we
do with this?
What should we be looking at?
Especially as photographers andI know that you probably work
with a lot of photographers Alot of photographers tend to be
drawn to the show at sites.
I know that I love my show atsite.
(09:17):
What do you think you know isthe most important, I guess,
report to look at?
Or the data that we're lookingat, like what should we even be
doing with this and how can wemake it not so overwhelming?
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yeah, I mean it's there's a lot of different
options on the left hand sidethat whenever I'm doing an SEO
call with somebody and kind ofdiving into this stuff, I don't
touch on about half of the stuffjust because they are next
level, advanced stuff that thegeneral person isn't going to
dive that deep into.
And I don't want toovercomplicate something that
(09:54):
really doesn't need to be thatcomplicated.
Really, the two things thatyou're going to be looking at is
your performance and yourindexing, which, when you load
Search Console, those are thetwo charts that show up first.
Starting out, you want to makesure, obviously, your sitemap
gets submitted and any time thatyou update your site or change
(10:16):
pages specifically URLs changeor anything like that resubmit
your sitemap so Google puts itinto their priority to crawl
your site again.
Resubmit your sitemaps, soGoogle puts it into their
priority to crawl your siteagain.
And then, once you've allowedthat to happen and it's indexed,
go into the indexing report andit's going to tell you all of
(10:36):
the pages that did get indexedand the ones that are not.
I do get a lot of people thatkind of get into a freakout mode
.
They say, well, I've got 150pages that aren't indexed.
Something's wrong, like no hangon, let's look into it.
It'll give you reasons whythey're not indexed and most of
them are perfectly normal.
You can ignore them.
The things like your tags.
Pages like WordPress willcreate a page for every single
(11:00):
tag you have.
Most people don't want thoseindexed, but Google is going to
find them and it's going to tellyou hey, there's something not
indexed here.
So it's things like that.
You just have to go through thereport and see if there's any
pages you do want indexed thatare not being indexed, and then
you can go from there to try toget them indexed.
But that's the first step ismake sure your pages are indexed
(11:22):
.
Once you've done that, then youcan start looking at the
performance data and starting tosee the list of keywords that
you are getting impressions andclicks, and it'll even show you
your average ranking for eachdifferent keyword, so you can
take a look at those and adjustaccordingly.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Okay, yeah, so that would be the most important and
I totally get like I'm glad thatit can be so overwhelming Um,
just to kind of, especially withthose non-indexed pages.
I know that when I switched overto show it, um, and like
everything kind of like wentover there and I was.
I was looking at Google searchconsole and I was like, oh my
(12:05):
God, over there, and I was.
I was looking at Google searchconsole and I was like, oh my
God, like there's so many thingsthat are not indexed.
But again, like one of thethings that I run up against and
I've heard from a lot ofphotographers, especially those
of us who have had sites andblogs for a long time, like I've
been, have had a WordPress blogsince like 2008.
So there's a lot of those blogposts, right, that I don't
(12:27):
necessarily even want out there,but is it going to hurt me if I
delete those?
Like that's kind of one of themain things that I do hear from
a lot of people, um, and do youhave like any sort of guidance
with that in particular, like ifit's like really old pages, and
is it going to hurt our ranking, that kind of stuff?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
The answer is it could.
That's where you want to startdiving into the analytics side
of things.
You want to find out how muchtraffic is actually coming from
one of those old posts.
If you're getting a decentamount of traffic, keep it.
Anything that provides thattraffic is going to help your
SEO.
If, if it's not, and it's justsomething old that you want to
get rid of and let go of, thengo ahead and do that, but, um,
(13:11):
the more content you have andmore importantly is fresh
content for Google.
So if it's something old thatis getting a little bit of
traffic but you really want tomove on from that, um, then make
that move.
Um, and keep up bringing thatfresh content, because that's
more important is being relevantthan having, you know, hundreds
of posts from years ago thatyou know maybe aren't actually
(13:34):
converting or helping, you know,drive your business forward.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Also, though, like, what aboutif we update a post right Like
so, if I go into, like you know,a old blog post and I'm like,
oh, I can actually this is agreat topic and I am getting a
decent amount of traffic, maybefrom Pinterest or whatever, what
if I update it?
Will that help or hurt?
Necessarily, it could be eitherone.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Yeah, depends on what you do to the post, and if you
are, anytime you're tinkeringwith the keywords that are in
there, it will have an impactone way or the other.
If your URL is the same, it'sgoing to impact.
However, that's ranking Right.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
So there's really not a way to predict that.
It just kind of depends on whatyou do to it.
You know specifically, right.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
I mean you can predict it in a little bit.
I mean, if you're going inthere specifically to help the
ranking for that particular post, then that's going to help.
That's something also that alot of people don't keep in mind
is that every post is a newchance to rank as well Every
page.
It's not your whole site as awhole that Google sees.
They see every individual page.
(14:48):
So you can go into that blogpost and say, all right, well,
this isn't ranking, but this isinformation that I feel could
really help sell my package.
So I want to work on this andyou can update that SEO, put
more keywords in there, maybe adifferent location, kind of play
with it a little bit to see howit impacts it.
So, yeah, I mean there's a lotyou can do with every single
thing in your site.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Yeah, okay, what about this latest Google update?
I have a friend of mine who isa blogger and she makes money
from her blog.
So she's been doing this for along time and she probably makes
about $25,000 a month just onad revenue just from her blog.
So you know, she's been doingthis for a long time and she
probably makes about $25,000 amonth just on ad revenue just
from her blog, and she said thislatest update tanked her
(15:32):
impressions like tanked, and soI'm wondering what you are
seeing with your clients and ifyou have any sort of like tips
and tricks for us as they startto like navigate this because
didn't they update this becauseof AI, or am I wrong about that?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Google is such a beast that you really can't tell
.
I do know that there is.
When is that kicking in?
I know that they are gettingrid of cookies and that is going
to be a massive impact on adrevenue for thousands and
thousands of people.
Interesting, so that's onethat's coming.
That's there.
(16:09):
Chrome is the only browser thatstill uses cookies and, yeah,
and google is the only companythat's generating ad revenue
from that information, so theyare getting rid of it.
I want to say it's coming upsoon.
I can't recall the date offhand, but that's something to be
aware of for people that aregenerating a lot of ad revenue.
(16:30):
The whole ad ecosystem withinChrome is going to change.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Okay, interesting.
I know that most of us don'treally have that going on.
I just didn't know if that,because they're kind of always
updating it, like you said, likethey're a beast and it's hard
to know what's coming, but Ijust didn't know if you had
heard any.
You know other murmurings oranything like that about it and
you know I think that we allsort of like expected it right
(16:59):
with all of the changes in AIand everything.
But I do know, like what youhad just said, just to piggyback
on, that is like updated,current, relevant, valuable
content still just like our bestcourse of action, basically
when it comes to SEO.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
I think that's always going to be just.
I mean sticking to the basicsof SEO, getting good keywords
getting out there.
I know they are the and maybethat's the update she's talking
about is the location aspect ofseo is going away.
That's where you know the, thesystem can understand where
you're coming from and willautomatically apply a location
(17:40):
so you don't necessarily have toput as much effort into.
You know chicago weddingphotographer.
It can just be weddingphotography or in the specific
niche that you are in, surepeople are know that they're in
(18:06):
the right spot for thephotographer they want um, but
the seo is is shifting a bitaway from that and not
necessarily needing that in thekeywords as much anymore oh,
that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah, that's.
That's definitely like a bigsort of shift right, because
we're kind of always we've beentold that for so long to having,
like you know, los angelessenior photographer or whatever.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Um, but for the meantime I would still keep that
in there and keep, keep goingwith it until they've phased it
out entirely.
But I think it's more importantnow for the user experience
than it is for seo okay.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Um, I'm seeing a comment coming in from Gretchen
in the chat and she wants to seeif you can define indexed Like.
Is that basically Google hasthat page in its system to show
when people search.
Is that what?
Like the whole idea of indexing?
Speaker 1 (19:07):
will identify every page on your site.
They'll know it exists.
If it's indexed, that meansthat it is available to be
searched.
So they cache it, they stick itaway.
They say, okay, people can findthis.
If you are not indexed,nobody's going to be able to
find that page.
Google knows that it's therebut they've decided for whatever
reason and, like I said, theydo explain the reason why but it
(19:27):
will not be found.
So it's vital If it's a pageyou want indexed and it's not in
there, you want to resolve thatas quick as you can.
Sometimes Google's kind of a Iguess it's kind of a crapshoot
at times when you look at someof these errors that they're
showing.
So Google runs through billionsand billions of pages on a
(19:52):
daily basis and so sometimesthey get it wrong.
So the first step in trying toget something indexed that isn't
is to go into Search Console,click on the non-indexed page
and then just request to have itre-indexed.
That'll tell Google to put itin their queue.
They'll take a closer look atit.
A lot of times that willresolve an indexing issue
(20:12):
without having to do anythingabout it.
If that doesn't work, then it'ssomething content related,
which then it gets a little bitmore gray area there on what's
going on.
But Google decided that thecontent wasn't good enough to
get it ranked in there withother pages, similar pages, so
(20:34):
that would be.
The next step is to look atyour site and figure out okay,
how do I improve this page toget it indexed?
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Okay, cool.
Mary wants to know, with them,moving away from using keywords
for location, what are theyusing to show where a business
is located?
Speaker 1 (20:52):
I guess, yeah, using to show where a business is
located, like how, I guess.
Yeah Well, they can identifywhere you are at by your IP
address.
So they already know whereyou're, where a customer is
logging in from.
So if they are in a Chicagosuburb, they know that.
Okay, we're going to show youChicago photographers first,
because that's where you're atand they know where you are as a
(21:13):
business owner.
By the same reason.
They know where you're loggingin, they know generally where
you're from, um, so it's it'skind of using that ai technology
to connect the two and put ittogether what about people who
shoot in other locations, though, like if they have multiple
locations?
Speaker 2 (21:33):
I know, mary, for instance, you work in like two
specific States, but like someof us even.
For instance, I have a lot ofclients who come and find me
right from all over the UnitedStates because they're coming
out to LA and they want theirsenior pictures done at the
beach.
Let's say so how does that workfor that situation?
(21:56):
Do you still recommend that wedo use the locations in that, or
will it?
Speaker 1 (22:01):
hurt us if we do that kind of thing.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Any kind of destinationphotographer definitely wants to
continue to key in on locations.
It's going away for those thatare local, that are looking for
photographers in their area.
But if you are a destinationphotographer, a local
photographer, things like that,then you definitely want to
continue to key in on thoselocations to try to, because
(22:24):
you're not necessarily lookingfor people at that location.
You may be looking for somebodyin New York that wants to shoot
at Lake Tahoe and you are inColorado.
You know you're, you're lookingat connecting pieces at a
distance, um, and so it's veryimportant that somebody that
looks for a Lake Tahoe, alow-move photographer, can find
(22:45):
you, um, even though they aren'tanywhere close to that and
neither are you Um.
So that would be an instancewhere location is still
important and it would stillhelp.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
So, like in that respect, maybe like with with
relation to blogs, you know,maybe creating content that is
still specific to, like you know, my favorite Los Angeles beach
photo shoots or something likethat, where it kind of showcases
, you know, valuable informationfor people but is still
(23:18):
location based in that respect,but anybody could find it.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Okay, yeah, that's reallyinteresting.
Yeah, I had no idea that theywere doing that.
So I do think that that isgoing to be.
You know, I wanted to make sure, sure, because there's a lot of
photographers who shoot in manydifferent locations, like you
said, like wedding, weddingdestinations and that kind of
(23:40):
stuff.
So, um, I feel, like I mean, Ireally feel like blogging is, um
, important and that's probablyone of the reasons why is
because you can create specific,like you said, like each page,
each post is a new opportunityto be found technically.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, and it's that relevance piece.
I have a particular Chicagoluxury wedding photographer who
was doing fantastic, was bookedup 18 months in advance and he
got his new website launched andeverything.
And he came back about ninemonths later and he said my
business is like I'm not evenbooked out 18 months in advance
and he got his new websitelaunched and everything.
And he came back about eight,nine months later and he said my
business is like I'm not evenbooked out three months.
We looked at him like youhaven't blogged in two years,
(24:23):
like you are consistentlyblogging and then, once you
launched, you stopped blogging.
So the relevance like all theseo work we did can only get so
far.
If your relevance isn't upthere, you're going to lose
ranking and you're going to losebusiness.
So, especially forphotographers, when you do have
so much fresh content coming atyou, it's very important to be
(24:44):
blogging that.
It's critical to keep yourselfup there, because photography is
such a low cost of entry typebusiness that you can really get
drowned out with the number ofphotographers in an area,
especially a big market like aChicago or LA, you really need
to be blogging and keeping thatrelevance up in order to stay on
top of the market.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Okay, well, I hope everybody who is listening to
this really hears that, becauseI've kind of been screaming that
for a while.
Here's that, because I've kindof been screaming that for a
while, like you know.
I mean, I know we talk a lotabout social media and SEO with
social media, but like it startswith your blog, and that's like
what my little mini courseteaches.
It's like you start with a blogand then you break that up into
(25:26):
smaller pieces because bloggingis still 100% effective.
But blogging is still 100%effective and so many
photographers that I know do notblog, or if they do, they don't
blog enough.
I just noticed and, look, I'msuper guilty of this too.
I'm throwing myself under thebus here too.
We get busy, right, and so it'sreally hard to do that.
(25:48):
I know that one of the servicesyou guys do is do you guys
offer copywriting and bloggingfor people too?
We do to a certain extent, yeah, okay.
So like just in general, if youcan't do it yourself, like
there are resources to help youget that done is basically what
I'm trying to get at, because itis really important that we do
it.
(26:08):
Um, and just, I mean, like Inoticed when I started my
podcast.
So I started the podcast lastyear and before that I had it
had right after I switched tothe show at platform and my new
site and everything Um, and ithad been a minute since I
blogged because I was kind oflike over my site and I wasn't
excited about it and I was busyand I didn't blog.
(26:30):
And then so I started bloggingmy podcast episodes and I
noticed just a huge I mean likehuge jump in impressions just
from blogging a weekly podcastfor like six weeks.
I was like whoa, so um, really,really important.
(26:51):
Um.
Mary has a question about.
She says does updating oldblogs count as a new piece of
content to Google?
Speaker 1 (26:59):
That's a very good question.
I would say not as important asnew pages and new content
Google does.
When they crawl a page theylook at the entire set of
content in there, so it willnotice updates, but it will not
have as significant of an impactas fresh content.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
So in that respect, maybe just redoing the post
right.
So just taking the old content,making it better, more relevant
, and just doing a new post isprobably the best thing, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
As long as it's completely rewritten.
It's got different photos in it.
It can be on the same topic,but if you've got some more to
add to it or things like that,that'll freshen it up and then
it'll have more of an impactthan just going back and
changing a couple of paragraphs.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
And then Jessica says and using different keywords
too- as I mean you're going tobe using different keywords
within the entire post.
So if you're just updating thekeywords in the post, um, that
will change how you're.
It'll change where you'reranking.
For sure.
Um and again, it's not likeit's going to boost your.
(28:07):
I don't think it'll boost yourentire site as much as it'll
affect that one page.
Yeah she says.
She said well, I mean, wouldthat compete with the blog post
on your own site?
Yeah, see, that's theinteresting thing when people
(28:28):
talk about pages or postscompeting with each other.
Yes, in a way they compete, butthat's a good thing.
When you're trying to getranked on the first page of
Google, having two pages thereis better than one.
So it's not.
One page is not going to act inthe detriment of another one
and knock it down.
They'll both rank as well asthey can rank.
(28:49):
And if you've got two on thatpage, pay on this first page.
It's fantastic.
The more you can be on thatfirst page, the better.
Um, so it's not really acompete as maybe an assist.
Okay, yeah, when somebody seesyou.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
So I know that um Google search console also can
help you, like it'll.
It'll help you identify, like,if you have duplicate content
issues right, it'll show you ifyou have duplicates of things.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah, it does, and that's in the indexing report
where it'll give you trying tosee if I can get the actual
terms here It'll have like analternate page with the
canonical index.
So basically what it's sayingis a lot of times you'll see
this with your domain slash home.
(29:41):
It'll show up in that reportand a lot of people say, well,
my homepage isn't right.
No, not really.
What it's saying is that itsees this slash home and it also
sees your just url in itselfand they are copies of each
other, and so it's saying thedash home is not the proper tag
(30:01):
for this.
Your actual domain, root domainis the one that should override
it, and so it'll ignore theduplicated page okay, you don't
have to get rid of any of thosethings, or like no and you can't
really Okay.
There's nothing you can do toget rid of that one.
It's okay, it's just in thereas the in the report to take a
(30:22):
look at, because sometimesanother page will get caught up
in there and say, well, why isthat happening?
Well, for some reason, google'sidentified that there's two
pages that are similar enoughthat they're duplicates and that
could be a problem.
So, for instance, one reasonthis may happen is if you've got
I have a pest control companythat has different locations,
and if you're using the samekind of copy on different
(30:44):
locations, then google canidentify them as duplicates and
ignore one of them.
So that's why it's important ifyou are doing even
photographers, destinations,that's, if you're using the same
copy on two pages, google isgoing to ignore one of them and
you're not going to be able todecide which one it ignores.
So it's very important to havedifferent copy on different
(31:08):
pages or different posts so thatyou don't lose one of them.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Oh, okay.
So that's really interesting.
It's like completely oppositethan what you do on social media
too, which is like regurgitatethe same messaging over and over
again.
You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
You want to try to rewrite that a little bit too.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But like you know what I mean,like you know, a lot of people
will say that you can justrepost some of the same stuff,
and you know the algorithm tendsto sort of like the sameness.
But, like with Google, that'snot necessarily the case Like
they-.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Yeah, brand indexing is not at all.
Yeah, and it has to be farapart enough that it won't
identify them as duplicatecontent, because Google doesn't
want to show duplicate contenttoo, because they're in a list,
whereas social media is not in alist.
You're seeing separate postsand they're far enough apart.
Google is a different beast anddefinitely does not like that.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Interesting.
What are some of the mostcommon, I guess, SEO mistakes
you see photographers making?
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Oh, the most common mistakes, I would say not
blogging is the biggest.
Without a doubt that has thebiggest impact on a
photographer's success success.
The other is I mean a lot ofthe things that we've talked
about with duplicate content ornot refreshing.
You know, when you do get somebeautiful new pictures in and
(32:41):
getting those in there A lot oftimes I also see one of the
things that I don't see isoptimizing your photos properly
for a website, for SEO.
Yeah, let's talk about that.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Because I have had people ask me about that and I'm
not an SEO expert, but I knowthat we have to be doing that,
oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Yeah, for photographers, you think, well,
I want it the best resolution, Iwant them to be crisp and clear
and to show up on the site.
I need big photos when, really,especially for show it, I like
to say 2,500 to 3,000 pixels onthe long side, make sure there's
72 DPI, make sure you run it.
(33:22):
Even though ShowIt says theyhave a compression tool built in
, I still like to compress itusing, you know, a blog stamp or
a tiny JPEG, something likethat.
And then, lastly, before yousubmit them, rename them.
And then, lastly, before yousubmit them, rename them and
rename them using keywords thatyou want for the page that you
are putting them on.
So if it's your homepage andyou're talking Chicago wedding
(33:43):
photographer, make sure youlabel it for that.
If you are going on a newbornphotography page, label it for
that and switch up those thingsso it'll be wedding photographer
in chicago, chicago weddingphotographer, chicago wedding
photography.
You know, change them up, don'tuse the same ones, and just put
a one, two or three on the backof it.
(34:03):
You can do that if you've got20 or 30 photos.
I mean you're going to run outof combinations.
Try to use differentcombinations of those keywords
in those photos and then, whenyou can, once you've submitted
them because, well, no, a lot ofphotographers within if you're
using Lightroom and stuff youcan add a description to it as
(34:24):
well.
Yeah, that's important as well.
It's not as important aseverything else, but Google does
see that Showit does providethat option within its platform.
If you're editing an image initself and that description,
it's not like a meta descriptionfor your website.
This is for the visuallyimpaired.
You want to describe what's inthat photo and it does not have
(34:48):
to include keywords.
All they want to see is thatyou are making your site user
accessible for the impaired.
So that's the important partwith that alt text or the
description on a photo.
So those are all the thingswith the photos that we always
do for our clients before weeven upload them, to make sure
that they are optimized forspeed and for SEO.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Yeah, yeah, I know, within show it.
Yes, they have the alt text andthen description, but even on
the blog too, like so on theWordPress side, you know, I know
that there is.
When I upload images, I can dothe alt text, and I think a lot
of people don't realize that.
Yeah, it's supposed to bedescribing the actual image,
like what is in that image, forthe alt text, but the
(35:34):
description you can.
I was told too a long time agothat you can put some keywords
in the description part of it inthe WordPress blog.
Do you know what I'm talkingabout?
Will that hurt you or is that?
Speaker 1 (35:48):
not necessary.
Yeah, I don't think it'll hurtyou.
It may help you.
I'm unsure, but all I know isthat alt text is pretty
important.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Alt text is really important and then also, like
you said, the naming of it.
You don't want to have, likeRene Bowen, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 100.
You know what I mean Like onevery single image on my site.
That wouldn't really be doingme any good be doing me any good
.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Not as much as altering it and changing it up,
cause you do want to key in ondifferent variations that people
may search for.
It gives you more options onwhat you can rank, whereas if
you just put Renee Bowen well,that's the only thing that it's
going to help.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Um, so Carol is asking if you can give an
example for alt text anddescription, so you know let's
say yeah and like if, if we tooka screenshot of your, of what
we're seeing right now on thescreen, I would say renee bowen
given a podcast in front of themicrophone, basically describing
(36:50):
what she, what they would seein the image that's in.
You know that they're lookingat that.
They can't see, um, and thenfor description, that's where
you can put in a keyword, ifyou'd like, and say you know,
renee Bowen podcast, um,something like that.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Right.
So like sometimes on mine, um,let's say, for like a senior
high school senior page on mysite, um, alt text, you know,
like if I've got a girl at thebeach with a surfboard, that's
literally what I'll say in thealt text is girl with long, dark
hair on a beach holding a bluesurfboard, wearing a bikini.
(37:28):
Yeah, and it's and it's yeah, soit's for the impaired, it's for
the um, the visually impaired,so that's why Google really does
like that and uh, yeah, sothat's a that's really important
.
So I'm glad that you guys hadquestions about that.
And then Tracy also wanted toknow um, she said so we
(37:49):
shouldn't be trusting our sitesimage compression tool that they
have.
I don't think she uses ShowIt.
I'm pretty sure, tracy, you useWix, but how do you know?
She says if the load time is anissue.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
That's a good question.
There's a site that Google hascalled PageSpeed Insights.
It's a great tool to see whatis slowing down your site and
how to fix it.
It gives you very detaileddescriptions of specifically
what photos, what you can do ifthere's code that's slowing
(38:24):
things down.
It's a fantastic tool to use inthis.
One caveat to that is a lot oftimes and we work with a lot of
photographers, so we get a lotof them saying, well, my site is
slow, this is what this pagespeed score is.
And I tell them, okay, well,you're not.
As a photographer, you have avisually rich website.
(38:45):
There's lots of photos that aregoing to take longer to load.
So if you compare it to alawyer, you're going to have
incredibly slow load speedscompared to that lawyer, who's
probably getting a 95 to 100score when you're sitting in the
70 to 80 range.
That's okay.
Most photographers are probablygoing to be in the 70s to 80s
(39:07):
and you're just not going to beable to get higher than that
because you have so much manyphotos and you need them there,
because that's what you do.
So it's it's getting an idea ofwhere are my competitors
ranking and I want to be on thehigher end of my competitors,
not Google wide, and so I don'tknow that.
We've had a photographer that'sgotten in the 90s.
(39:27):
That's okay.
It just all depends on whatcontent is on their site and
seeing that, one thing thatShowIt and I know they are
working on it is they don'tallow for new photo formats.
The WebP format that's come out, that's a lot faster loading
(39:51):
show.
It isn't capable of using thoseyet, so that will always show
up as the first reason why yoursite's slow.
You need next gen image formats, so that's okay.
You're just going to have toignore it if you're on show up
for now.
The other ones will be.
You know you've got a certainjavascript code that's slowing
it down.
If that's your lead captureform, okay, well, that's
(40:16):
acceptable.
The times when you are.
If it's telling you that yourfile size is too large for a
photo, well that might be aphoto you might want to take a
look at and run it through acompression or look at the
dimensions.
So it'll give you a lot oftools that you can use to raise
that speed score and all of thatplays into SEO.
So if you do have a 40 or 50,you definitely use to raise that
speed score and all of thatplays into SEO.
So if you do have a 40 or 50,you definitely want to dig into
it and see what it offers forresolutions on that.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Yeah, that's a good point.
And I see a lot of websitesbecause I coach a lot of
photographers and when we'relooking at their branding and
their messaging and theirwebsites, a lot of them.
Well, first of all, I see a lotof outdated sites, like a lot
of outdated sites, you know,just like things not really
(40:58):
where they're supposed to be andthe load time just really
really bad, especially on mobile, and that does that also tank.
Well, hurt your rankings.
Basically, if it's your mobilespeed, because Google Search
Console is going to tell youthat too, right.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Google Search Console will differentiate between
mobile and desktop.
The PageSpeed Insights will.
It'll give you a score for yourmobile and your desktop, so you
can dive into either one andmake changes.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Got it.
And then Tracy had had aquestion too about keywords.
She was asking how do youseparate the keywords?
And she was like, mainly like,is it Chicago dash photographer,
comma, chicago all capsphotographer or Chicago dot
photographer?
Like how should you bedifferentiating, I guess, and
(41:48):
does it matter, or does it justmatter that you are switching it
up?
Speaker 1 (41:59):
Yeah, I mean, I think the best way to separate them
when you are putting them intoyour titles and descriptions is
to either have a dash likeChicago dash photographer or
just Chicago space photographeris the best.
And then we usually, when we dothat, we'll add maybe a
vertical line separator beforethe next keywords.
So Chicago space photographer,space vertical separator, space
(42:20):
Chicago wedding photographer,things like that.
Unless we want to have thekeywords roll, that starts to
get into more towards keywordstuffing and that's not
necessarily looked at Really.
The other thing you have tothink about when you're writing
a title or description is thatthat is the only little bit of
(42:40):
information that somebody seesin the search results.
So that is not only where yourkeywords have to go, but you
also that's all you have to sellthem to click on your site.
So you want it to read clearly.
You want them to understandwhat they're getting if they
click on that link.
So it's kind of a balancebetween getting the right
(43:01):
keywords and actually sellingyour site in that tiny little
120 characters or site in thattiny little 120 characters,
whatever it is that shows up, um, so it's the balance there.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, um.
Is there a word minimum forblogs to be effective is another
question that's coming in.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Um, I don't know that there's a hard and fast rule
for it.
I don't know that there's ahard and fast rule for it.
We try to hit five to 600 whenwe're writing.
But I have seen I mean, as longas it's well-written and you
have good photos, good keywordusage, I don't know.
(43:40):
I would say if you can shootfor five to 600, you're going to
be in a good ballpark there.
Minimum, I would say get atleast two to 300 words so
there's enough actionablecontent on there for Google to
see.
But you also don't want to beon the two to 3000 word line
(44:00):
where people's attention span isnot going to go that far and
Google really.
They want to see your keywordsfour to five times within the
post.
So make sure that got themworked in there.
That's more the key than thanwords.
Um, make sure you're usingthose keywords within your
content and um, get that optimalsweet spot where you've got the
(44:22):
attention span and google likesit yeah, so so much to think
about.
Moving pieces are enormous.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Yes, absolutely.
I could, you know, obviously godown the rabbit hole with this,
but this has been super helpful.
I wanted to open it up to youguys.
If you guys have any morequestions in the chat, um,
either pop it in the chat orjust say I have a question in
the chat and so I can make surewe address that before we um we
(45:00):
wrap up in just a minute.
I feel like you know a lot ofphotographers, a lot of
creatives we get, we just get sooverwhelmed.
You know, like a lot ofphotographers, a lot of
creatives we get, we just get sooverwhelmed, you know, like,
when we look at even justanalytics and the Google search
console, and you know we justsort of sort of shut down when
it comes to that.
But hopefully you guys can takeaway from this that, you know,
(45:22):
kind of try and keep it assimple as possible.
You gave us a lot of reallygood tips about like what to
look for specifically withGoogle search console and not to
go like too crazy with it, atthe very beginning at least, and
that blogging at the end of theday is really, you know, a
fantastic way to stay relevantin your market and Google
(45:43):
obviously.
Oh wait, jessica has one more.
What else should we look at ifwe're getting traffic and
impressions?
What's the best thing to lookat for conversions?
As an example, a large blogpost that gets traffic from
other areas in the United States.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
So it sounds to me like you're looking at how do I
use my SEO to convert, do I?
How do I use my SEO to?
Speaker 2 (46:07):
convert.
You know, like, what should webe looking at?
If you know?
Cause, jessica, actually sheblogs a lot and she's a really
good writer and she has a lot ofreally, I think, great blog
posts, because they're likebrand adjacent, you know, and so
she's really good about doingthat kind of content.
(46:27):
So I think she's asking if youknow she's getting good traffic
and impressions.
What's the best thing to lookat for?
Speaker 1 (46:35):
conversions.
Yeah, I mean conversion.
I mean you write a good blogpost, it's got great content
getting good traffic, but by theend of that blog post you also
want to direct them somewhere.
So it comes down to yourcontent and being able to know
how to and a little bit on youranalytics figure out where your
(46:56):
users are coming from so thatyou know what to say at the end,
to be able to close the saleand to say, hey, okay.
Well, if you want to lookfurther, provide a call to
action at the bottom.
This is the next step.
And just continuously, and thatshould be site-wide.
Anytime we develop a site, wealways think about how do I get
person from where they land onthe page to contacting me or to
(47:19):
booking me and we've got to keepthat in mind through everything
and how do we close that at theend and say, boom, we need to
close that deal and have thatproper call to action.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
That's a really big one.
The CTA, yeah, For sure.
And then Mary kind of has afollow-up to that.
She says can we use the samefooter this is good, the same
footer and CTA at the end ofeach blog or does that count as
duplicate content?
Speaker 1 (47:50):
the end of each blog, or does that count as duplicate
content?
Google does understand thatthere's a header and footer and
within the code of your sitethose are differentiated.
It can see that this is afooter and it expects that
that's going to be the same onevery page, every post.
So don't worry about the footer.
I would change up the call toaction just to keep it different
.
I don't know that itnecessarily will impact your SEO
, it won't.
(48:11):
Something that small will notcause it to be duplicate pages.
But I would change the call toaction to be relevant to the
post and change that wording upjust slightly.
Every time, even on every page.
I mean every page and everybutton on a page should be a
different call to action.
It could be the same call toaction on different pages.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
Right, yeah, change that up.
Okay.
And then like, how often shouldwe be checking Google Search
Console?
Because, like, I get emailsfrom them and sometimes it's
like I'm like I can't look atthis right now.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
Right, there's a new problem.
I mean, the whole concern isthat something gets not indexed
and is no longer indexed, andthere is some problem there that
you want to identify.
But it could be that you'vejust added a blog post or added
a new tag and now there's a newerror because that tag page
(49:10):
isn't ranking.
A lot of times it's somethingas insignificant as that.
So I would say, if you even goin once a month and just check
it out, just see if there's anynew indexing problems and find
out if you need to work onanything, but yeah, you'll get
emails about it all the time andit'll be the end of the world
type of emails.
Yes, and I get a lot of clientssaying, hey, I got this, what's
(49:32):
going on?
I'm like calm down, it's okay.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
Yeah, yeah, it's not fun to be like what?
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
Why is this not working Right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
All right, well, thank you so much.
This has been awesome.
Super appreciate you for beinghere, and if anybody wants extra
help, tell them where they canfind you.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
Yeah, we're actually relaunching our website here in
the next day or two.
Avonleacom I do have right nowthe page is hidden but a tech
support page that offers allkinds of these things.
We're kind of like what you andI did the SEO consultation
where we can walk through itpersonally with your own site
and talk through different,different things that are going
(50:16):
on and fix things and maybe giveyou new directions that maybe
you haven't seen before.
So we offer all of that.
I mean anything you can thinkof that is techie.
That is not.
Photographers have enoughalready with what they're doing
with their business.
The tech side is definitelyoutside of a lot of their
comfort zones, um, and so that'swhere we offer that and I'm
(50:37):
even available for, um, justquestions.
Somebody has a quick question,always willing to answer it, so
they can reach out eitherthrough our site or I'm always
in the Facebook group.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
Right the.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
ShowIt group, or even send me a DM and I'm happy to
answer.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Tracy does have a question.
Do you only work with peoplewho have ShowIt sites?
Speaker 1 (51:04):
No, we develop only on ShowIt, but I can offer SEO
assistance in the different techthings across the spectrum.
I've worked in Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, Profoto, all of
those things.
We're pretty good at figuringthings out when things aren't
working right.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
Awesome, all right, well, thanks again for being
here and thanks everybody forhopping on.
Hopefully it was helpful foryou guys.
It was helpful for me.
I'm very selfish.
I'm like, oh, I need to learnmore about this too.
Thanks guys.
Have a good rest of your dayand thanks for being here, matt.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
Thanks, no problem.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
Okay, I hope that was as helpful for you as it was
for me and I think that one ofthe biggest takeaways probably
the biggest takeaway from thisepisode that I want you to get
is that you need to be blogging.
And again, like I've been kindof talking to you guys about
this for years, there's a lot ofnaysayers out there I see in a
lot of Facebook groups who arelike our clients don't read
(52:06):
blogs, but that is not whyyou're blogging.
You're not blogging necessarily, you know, for your clients to
be reading your blog every day.
It's SEO and, like Mattoutlined for us in this episode,
it's really, really impactful.
So you definitely should bedoing that.
I go over all of that in mylittle mini course repurpose.
(52:28):
I'll link that below for youguys.
It's only 37 bucks and I'mgoing to be updating it this
year because there's chat GPTnow and I made this.
I created this little minicourse right before it came out,
but it's very useful still tothis day.
All my one-on-one clients saythat it's worth way more than
that.
They get it as part of theireducational vault when they sign
(52:49):
up for one-on-one coaching withme, but it teaches you how to
start with a long form piece ofcontent a blog right and then
repurpose that into smallerpieces of content in unique and
new ways so that it doesn'tnecessarily look like you are
saying the same thing but you'realso not recreating the wheel.
(53:13):
You know what I mean.
So that's the biggest painpoint I hear from you guys all
the time is that you don't havetime for all this marketing.
You don't have time to beproducing all of this content.
But if you start with one postand you're organized about it,
even if that means just once amonth you're blogging, and then
from that blog you are producingsmaller pieces of content from
(53:34):
it for your social media sites,then just start with that
because it's better than nothing.
Ideally, you want to beblogging once a week, but if you
can't get there, maybe you canhire it out.
There's a lot of people outthere who are still doing this,
and it's not just AI doing yourcopywriting.
In fact, if you're just relyingon ChatGPT to do your
(53:56):
copywriting, please stop Becauseside note, just as a quick
little detour for us, real quickI see a lot of photography,
Instagrams right, A lot of youguys on your Instagrams in
particular, using the mostrobotic language ever, and you
can absolutely tell that you didnot write that.
(54:17):
Okay, A lot of y'all I know youas people and I read your
captions and I'm like that isnot how she sounds.
So you have to be reallycareful.
If you are like look, I'm a bigfan of using ChatGPT and I'm
working on some more resourcesfor you guys with respect to
that, because the value of yourprompt is what really matters.
(54:40):
How good of a prompt are yougiving ChatGPT?
That's going to determine thekind of answer you get.
So I am working on some otherstuff for you guys with respect
to that, especially in mycoaching.
So stay tuned.
But, just as a side note, youshould not be just using your
basic chat GPT and then justcopying and pasting that into a
(55:01):
blog post and your social mediacaptions, because it sounds like
a robot and not only is itgoing to be a deterrent for your
clients because you don't soundlike a person and it's weird to
read, but it's also not goingto be prioritized with Google or
with any algorithm.
So be really careful with that.
But bottom line, you need to beblogging.
(55:21):
So definitely find a way to dothat.
I am working on a list ofvetted people that I can send to
you like a matchmaker situation, and I'm going to blog about it
because I have so many coachingstudents who either need social
media help, content help orblogging help or all of the
above, and I want to help youguys find each other.
(55:45):
Okay, I don't really I'm notgoing to get anything from this.
I just I know that this is abig need and there's probably a
lot of really awesome serviceproviders out there who are
looking for clients.
So if you are a blogger or acontent creator, a social media
manager, and you're looking fornew clients, hit me up over on
Instagram at Renee Bowen, Let meknow, because I will add you to
(56:06):
that list.
And if you're a photographerand you want that, let me know.
But I'm pretty sure I know howmuch of a need this is within my
community because I hear fromyou guys all the time, and I'm a
big fan of outsourcing.
If you don't have to do ityourself, don't.
Okay.
What is going to move yourbusiness forward?
That's what you should befocusing on the most.
(56:27):
Okay, so that's it for thisweek.
I hope that you got a lot fromthis episode.
As always, I want to hear yourfeedback, leave a review, rate
us on whatever platform.
Just go to ratethispodcastcom,slash Renee Bowen and you can do
it all from there.
Thank you, guys so much.
Have a great rest of your week.
Love you, Bye.
Search Console is one of those tools that very few
people realize is even out there, but it is so vital because it
is the place where you submityour sitemaps to Google.
It's the spot where you canfind out are my pages even being
indexed?
Are they being found?
How are they being found?
What keywords are working,which ones are not?
(00:21):
So it's critical to a lot ofpeople focus on the analytics
side, that's, just telling youwhere your traffic's coming from
and how to get more traffic,but the keywords and the root
data for that is all held withinSearch Console.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Welcome to Tried and True with a dash of woo, where
we blend rock solid tips with alittle bit of magic.
I'm Renee Bowen, your host,life and business coach and
professional photographer atyour service.
We are all about gettingcreative, diving into your
business and playing withmanifestation over here.
So are you ready to getinspired and have some fun?
Let's dive in.
Hey, hey, this is Renee Bowen,your host.
(01:02):
Welcome back to Tried and Truewith the Dash of Woo.
Today we are diving into allthings.
Google Search Console I knowsuper fun but honestly, this is
something we need to know aboutas creatives and photographers.
And it's a question that comesup all the time in my coaching
and I'm not an SEO expert, nordo I want to be, but I know
(01:22):
enough to kind of get youstarted.
But we need to be talking toexperts in these fields because
it's a whole different ballgameand especially with Google
Search Console, I find that alot of you guys just don't
either know about it or knowwhat to look at when you open it
and like, why would I even wantto hook this up to my website?
(01:44):
That kind of thing.
But it's actually a really,really awesome tool, and so
today I have brought on someoneI have used for my own SEO
services.
Like he's helped me a lot withjust my own website and I want
to introduce you guys to himbecause he's a great resource
for you you guys to him becausehe's a great resource for you.
His name is Matt Dijkstra.
(02:05):
He and his wife, lisa, runavonleacom and together they
help build a solid foundationfor service-based businesses to
be the professional businessesthat you want to be, that you
strive to be.
They do brand and websitedesign.
They work a lot with the ShowItwebsite, but Matt is a tech
(02:27):
specialist and a ShowIt expert.
He also does know a lot aboutother platforms in terms of SEO,
so he does have some servicesthat you can reach out to him
for.
For instance, he helped me withmy Google Analytics, my G4
switchover, and then we did alittle SEO consult at the same
time and it was really superhelpful for me.
(02:48):
So today I am asking him someof your most asked questions,
and I also had members of mymembership Elevate hop on the
call and ask some questions aswell.
So this is going to be reallyuseful for you guys.
You're going to probably wantto take notes and listen a
couple of times, but let's getright to it.
(03:09):
Thanks for being here today.
I am really excited to talkabout Google Search Console.
I know that's like really kindof geeky and nerdy, but like a
lot of people don't reallyunderstand what it is or what
even to do with it, right, and Iknow that in what you do.
(03:33):
So you guys just so you guyshave a little bit of context,
matt, it's you and your wife,right, that run Avonlea.
Yes, it is, yep, yeah.
So he is like an expert at thewhole show it thing too, as a
side note, so let me just kindof like turn it over to you for
(03:53):
a second and give us like alittle pre-frame about who you
are, what you do, and then we'llget into some questions.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Sure, yeah, I mean my wife and I have been doing our
brand and web design businessfor 12 years now.
We came across ShowIt Gosh.
It's probably been six or sevenyears now we've been designing
with them.
I've shifted more towards thetechnical side, so I'm dealing
more back-end development.
(04:17):
I handle a lot of situationswhere people have questions
about Search Console, theiranalytics, their SEO, even as
much as connecting their website.
They can't figure out why acertain menu isn't working,
things like that.
So kind of a problem solver Inthe show group I like to say a
show at handyman.
(04:38):
So I can pretty much handle anysituation that anybody throws
at me and I'm always happy tohelp.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
So Awesome, yeah, Very cool, Okay, Awesome.
Um.
So let's just kind of um jumpinto some Google search console
stuff so give us like just kindof a basic understanding, just
to kind of get us started.
Um, why it's you know why it'simportant like what, at the very
(05:05):
like 30,000 foot view right,what it's going to do for us and
why it's kind of important topay attention to.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Sure, yeah, search console is one of those tools
that very few people realize iseven out there, but it is so
vital because it is the placewhere you submit your sitemaps
to Google.
It's the spot where you canfind out are my pages even being
indexed?
Are they being found?
How are they being found?
What keywords are working,which ones are not?
(05:37):
So it's a critical to a lot ofpeople focus on the analytics
side, that's, just telling youwhere your traffic's coming from
and how to get more traffic,but the keywords and the root
data for that is all held withinSearch Console.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Yeah, and that's kind of like one of the main issues
that I see is especially withkeywords, and this question
comes up a lot with my groupsespecially.
It's like you know, how do Ieven know what keywords to use,
and all of that.
So does Google search consolehelp with all of that and how?
Speaker 1 (06:12):
A little bit.
I mean, I like to say and I raninto this just with a client
just this week there are toolsout there like RFs and SEMrush
and things like that, where youcan pay a lot of money to get a
lot better data.
Search Console is for the basicperson to understand what's
going on.
What it won't do is it won'tprovide you with additional
(06:36):
keywords that maybe you're notusing.
It's going to tell you what ishappening right now.
There are other free tools Ilike to use.
Google ads Keyword planner is agood tool to use that can kind
of give you some information onwhat other keywords are similar
that are getting ad traffic.
But search console is what'shappening right now with your
(06:57):
keywords and how and your pages.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Okay, yeah.
So what is, I guess, like theone of the first steps?
If somebody doesn't have it yetthey've never like even logged
in or anything like that whatshould they do in particular?
Like is it easy to just kind ofjump on there and set up?
What do you suggest they kindof do first?
Speaker 1 (07:25):
is getting it connected.
Once you get logged in, you'lluse whatever you want as your
admin profile with Google.
Usually I try to tie it withanalytics.
Now they don't necessarilyspeak to each other, but just
for ease of use, use that sameprofile that you're using with
analytics.
So you got it in the same area.
But it is a bit technical toget connected.
It's not like analytics whereyou get a little code, stick it
(07:46):
on your website.
You do have to go into yourdomain host, you have to add a
TXT record into your DNS andthat allows Google to verify
that you own that domain andthen it will start collecting
data on that.
So there's a bit of a technicalstep to get that situated.
If you're comfortable with that, by all means, it's not hard to
(08:06):
do.
Um, if you're not, there'speople like me out there that
can set that up and get it goingfor you.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah, that's very cool.
Yeah, Um, and I know that youknow Matt had helped me with my
um G4, getting that all hookedup, so he is really good about
that kind of stuff.
So it's good that you alsooffer this kind of thing to
people as well if they needextra help getting this situated
.
But I did find it not too hardfor myself, like when I did get
(08:34):
my Google search console hookedup.
It wasn't too hard, you know,and I don't consider myself
super techie, but maybe techieenough and it's really just time
for me, like I, you know, likeI just don't have myself super
techie, but maybe techie enoughand it's really just time for me
, like I just don't have thetime or capacity to do a lot of
stuff like that.
But just as a side note, Ididn't find it super, super hard
.
But then, once you're in, it'skind of confusing.
(08:56):
And that's kind of where I wantto dig into is like what do we
do with this?
What should we be looking at?
Especially as photographers andI know that you probably work
with a lot of photographers Alot of photographers tend to be
drawn to the show at sites.
I know that I love my show atsite.
(09:17):
What do you think you know isthe most important, I guess,
report to look at?
Or the data that we're lookingat, like what should we even be
doing with this and how can wemake it not so overwhelming?
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yeah, I mean it's there's a lot of different
options on the left hand sidethat whenever I'm doing an SEO
call with somebody and kind ofdiving into this stuff, I don't
touch on about half of the stuffjust because they are next
level, advanced stuff that thegeneral person isn't going to
dive that deep into.
And I don't want toovercomplicate something that
(09:54):
really doesn't need to be thatcomplicated.
Really, the two things thatyou're going to be looking at is
your performance and yourindexing, which, when you load
Search Console, those are thetwo charts that show up first.
Starting out, you want to makesure, obviously, your sitemap
gets submitted and any time thatyou update your site or change
(10:16):
pages specifically URLs changeor anything like that resubmit
your sitemap so Google puts itinto their priority to crawl
your site again.
Resubmit your sitemaps, soGoogle puts it into their
priority to crawl your siteagain.
And then, once you've allowedthat to happen and it's indexed,
go into the indexing report andit's going to tell you all of
(10:36):
the pages that did get indexedand the ones that are not.
I do get a lot of people thatkind of get into a freakout mode
.
They say, well, I've got 150pages that aren't indexed.
Something's wrong, like no hangon, let's look into it.
It'll give you reasons whythey're not indexed and most of
them are perfectly normal.
You can ignore them.
The things like your tags.
Pages like WordPress willcreate a page for every single
(11:00):
tag you have.
Most people don't want thoseindexed, but Google is going to
find them and it's going to tellyou hey, there's something not
indexed here.
So it's things like that.
You just have to go through thereport and see if there's any
pages you do want indexed thatare not being indexed, and then
you can go from there to try toget them indexed.
But that's the first step ismake sure your pages are indexed
(11:22):
.
Once you've done that, then youcan start looking at the
performance data and starting tosee the list of keywords that
you are getting impressions andclicks, and it'll even show you
your average ranking for eachdifferent keyword, so you can
take a look at those and adjustaccordingly.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Okay, yeah, so that would be the most important and
I totally get like I'm glad thatit can be so overwhelming Um,
just to kind of, especially withthose non-indexed pages.
I know that when I switched overto show it, um, and like
everything kind of like wentover there and I was.
I was looking at Google searchconsole and I was like, oh my
(12:05):
God, over there, and I was.
I was looking at Google searchconsole and I was like, oh my
God, like there's so many thingsthat are not indexed.
But again, like one of thethings that I run up against and
I've heard from a lot ofphotographers, especially those
of us who have had sites andblogs for a long time, like I've
been, have had a WordPress blogsince like 2008.
So there's a lot of those blogposts, right, that I don't
(12:27):
necessarily even want out there,but is it going to hurt me if I
delete those?
Like that's kind of one of themain things that I do hear from
a lot of people, um, and do youhave like any sort of guidance
with that in particular, like ifit's like really old pages, and
is it going to hurt our ranking, that kind of stuff?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
The answer is it could.
That's where you want to startdiving into the analytics side
of things.
You want to find out how muchtraffic is actually coming from
one of those old posts.
If you're getting a decentamount of traffic, keep it.
Anything that provides thattraffic is going to help your
SEO.
If, if it's not, and it's justsomething old that you want to
get rid of and let go of, thengo ahead and do that, but, um,
(13:11):
the more content you have andmore importantly is fresh
content for Google.
So if it's something old thatis getting a little bit of
traffic but you really want tomove on from that, um, then make
that move.
Um, and keep up bringing thatfresh content, because that's
more important is being relevantthan having, you know, hundreds
of posts from years ago thatyou know maybe aren't actually
(13:34):
converting or helping, you know,drive your business forward.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Also, though, like, what aboutif we update a post right Like
so, if I go into, like you know,a old blog post and I'm like,
oh, I can actually this is agreat topic and I am getting a
decent amount of traffic, maybefrom Pinterest or whatever, what
if I update it?
Will that help or hurt?
Necessarily, it could be eitherone.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Yeah, depends on what you do to the post, and if you
are, anytime you're tinkeringwith the keywords that are in
there, it will have an impactone way or the other.
If your URL is the same, it'sgoing to impact.
However, that's ranking Right.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
So there's really not a way to predict that.
It just kind of depends on whatyou do to it.
You know specifically, right.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
I mean you can predict it in a little bit.
I mean, if you're going inthere specifically to help the
ranking for that particular post, then that's going to help.
That's something also that alot of people don't keep in mind
is that every post is a newchance to rank as well Every
page.
It's not your whole site as awhole that Google sees.
They see every individual page.
(14:48):
So you can go into that blogpost and say, all right, well,
this isn't ranking, but this isinformation that I feel could
really help sell my package.
So I want to work on this andyou can update that SEO, put
more keywords in there, maybe adifferent location, kind of play
with it a little bit to see howit impacts it.
So, yeah, I mean there's a lotyou can do with every single
thing in your site.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Yeah, okay, what about this latest Google update?
I have a friend of mine who isa blogger and she makes money
from her blog.
So she's been doing this for along time and she probably makes
about $25,000 a month just onad revenue just from her blog.
So you know, she's been doingthis for a long time and she
probably makes about $25,000 amonth just on ad revenue just
from her blog, and she said thislatest update tanked her
(15:32):
impressions like tanked, and soI'm wondering what you are
seeing with your clients and ifyou have any sort of like tips
and tricks for us as they startto like navigate this because
didn't they update this becauseof AI, or am I wrong about that?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Google is such a beast that you really can't tell
.
I do know that there is.
When is that kicking in?
I know that they are gettingrid of cookies and that is going
to be a massive impact on adrevenue for thousands and
thousands of people.
Interesting, so that's onethat's coming.
That's there.
(16:09):
Chrome is the only browser thatstill uses cookies and, yeah,
and google is the only companythat's generating ad revenue
from that information, so theyare getting rid of it.
I want to say it's coming upsoon.
I can't recall the date offhand, but that's something to be
aware of for people that aregenerating a lot of ad revenue.
(16:30):
The whole ad ecosystem withinChrome is going to change.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Okay, interesting.
I know that most of us don'treally have that going on.
I just didn't know if that,because they're kind of always
updating it, like you said, likethey're a beast and it's hard
to know what's coming, but Ijust didn't know if you had
heard any.
You know other murmurings oranything like that about it and
you know I think that we allsort of like expected it right
(16:59):
with all of the changes in AIand everything.
But I do know, like what youhad just said, just to piggyback
on, that is like updated,current, relevant, valuable
content still just like our bestcourse of action, basically
when it comes to SEO.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
I think that's always going to be just.
I mean sticking to the basicsof SEO, getting good keywords
getting out there.
I know they are the and maybethat's the update she's talking
about is the location aspect ofseo is going away.
That's where you know the, thesystem can understand where
you're coming from and willautomatically apply a location
(17:40):
so you don't necessarily have toput as much effort into.
You know chicago weddingphotographer.
It can just be weddingphotography or in the specific
niche that you are in, surepeople are know that they're in
(18:06):
the right spot for thephotographer they want um, but
the seo is is shifting a bitaway from that and not
necessarily needing that in thekeywords as much anymore oh,
that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah, that's.
That's definitely like a bigsort of shift right, because
we're kind of always we've beentold that for so long to having,
like you know, los angelessenior photographer or whatever.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Um, but for the meantime I would still keep that
in there and keep, keep goingwith it until they've phased it
out entirely.
But I think it's more importantnow for the user experience
than it is for seo okay.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Um, I'm seeing a comment coming in from Gretchen
in the chat and she wants to seeif you can define indexed Like.
Is that basically Google hasthat page in its system to show
when people search.
Is that what?
Like the whole idea of indexing?
Speaker 1 (19:07):
will identify every page on your site.
They'll know it exists.
If it's indexed, that meansthat it is available to be
searched.
So they cache it, they stick itaway.
They say, okay, people can findthis.
If you are not indexed,nobody's going to be able to
find that page.
Google knows that it's therebut they've decided for whatever
reason and, like I said, theydo explain the reason why but it
(19:27):
will not be found.
So it's vital If it's a pageyou want indexed and it's not in
there, you want to resolve thatas quick as you can.
Sometimes Google's kind of a Iguess it's kind of a crapshoot
at times when you look at someof these errors that they're
showing.
So Google runs through billionsand billions of pages on a
(19:52):
daily basis and so sometimesthey get it wrong.
So the first step in trying toget something indexed that isn't
is to go into Search Console,click on the non-indexed page
and then just request to have itre-indexed.
That'll tell Google to put itin their queue.
They'll take a closer look atit.
A lot of times that willresolve an indexing issue
(20:12):
without having to do anythingabout it.
If that doesn't work, then it'ssomething content related,
which then it gets a little bitmore gray area there on what's
going on.
But Google decided that thecontent wasn't good enough to
get it ranked in there withother pages, similar pages, so
(20:34):
that would be.
The next step is to look atyour site and figure out okay,
how do I improve this page toget it indexed?
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Okay, cool.
Mary wants to know, with them,moving away from using keywords
for location, what are theyusing to show where a business
is located?
Speaker 1 (20:52):
I guess, yeah, using to show where a business is
located, like how, I guess.
Yeah Well, they can identifywhere you are at by your IP
address.
So they already know whereyou're, where a customer is
logging in from.
So if they are in a Chicagosuburb, they know that.
Okay, we're going to show youChicago photographers first,
because that's where you're atand they know where you are as a
(21:13):
business owner.
By the same reason.
They know where you're loggingin, they know generally where
you're from, um, so it's it'skind of using that ai technology
to connect the two and put ittogether what about people who
shoot in other locations, though, like if they have multiple
locations?
Speaker 2 (21:33):
I know, mary, for instance, you work in like two
specific States, but like someof us even.
For instance, I have a lot ofclients who come and find me
right from all over the UnitedStates because they're coming
out to LA and they want theirsenior pictures done at the
beach.
Let's say so how does that workfor that situation?
(21:56):
Do you still recommend that wedo use the locations in that, or
will it?
Speaker 1 (22:01):
hurt us if we do that kind of thing.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Any kind of destinationphotographer definitely wants to
continue to key in on locations.
It's going away for those thatare local, that are looking for
photographers in their area.
But if you are a destinationphotographer, a local
photographer, things like that,then you definitely want to
continue to key in on thoselocations to try to, because
(22:24):
you're not necessarily lookingfor people at that location.
You may be looking for somebodyin New York that wants to shoot
at Lake Tahoe and you are inColorado.
You know you're, you're lookingat connecting pieces at a
distance, um, and so it's veryimportant that somebody that
looks for a Lake Tahoe, alow-move photographer, can find
(22:45):
you, um, even though they aren'tanywhere close to that and
neither are you Um.
So that would be an instancewhere location is still
important and it would stillhelp.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
So, like in that respect, maybe like with with
relation to blogs, you know,maybe creating content that is
still specific to, like you know, my favorite Los Angeles beach
photo shoots or something likethat, where it kind of showcases
, you know, valuable informationfor people but is still
(23:18):
location based in that respect,but anybody could find it.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Okay, yeah, that's reallyinteresting.
Yeah, I had no idea that theywere doing that.
So I do think that that isgoing to be.
You know, I wanted to make sure, sure, because there's a lot of
photographers who shoot in manydifferent locations, like you
said, like wedding, weddingdestinations and that kind of
(23:40):
stuff.
So, um, I feel, like I mean, Ireally feel like blogging is, um
, important and that's probablyone of the reasons why is
because you can create specific,like you said, like each page,
each post is a new opportunityto be found technically.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, and it's that relevance piece.
I have a particular Chicagoluxury wedding photographer who
was doing fantastic, was bookedup 18 months in advance and he
got his new website launched andeverything.
And he came back about ninemonths later and he said my
business is like I'm not evenbooked out 18 months in advance
and he got his new websitelaunched and everything.
And he came back about eight,nine months later and he said my
business is like I'm not evenbooked out three months.
We looked at him like youhaven't blogged in two years,
(24:23):
like you are consistentlyblogging and then, once you
launched, you stopped blogging.
So the relevance like all theseo work we did can only get so
far.
If your relevance isn't upthere, you're going to lose
ranking and you're going to losebusiness.
So, especially forphotographers, when you do have
so much fresh content coming atyou, it's very important to be
(24:44):
blogging that.
It's critical to keep yourselfup there, because photography is
such a low cost of entry typebusiness that you can really get
drowned out with the number ofphotographers in an area,
especially a big market like aChicago or LA, you really need
to be blogging and keeping thatrelevance up in order to stay on
top of the market.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Okay, well, I hope everybody who is listening to
this really hears that, becauseI've kind of been screaming that
for a while.
Here's that, because I've kindof been screaming that for a
while, like you know.
I mean, I know we talk a lotabout social media and SEO with
social media, but like it startswith your blog, and that's like
what my little mini courseteaches.
It's like you start with a blogand then you break that up into
(25:26):
smaller pieces because bloggingis still 100% effective.
But blogging is still 100%effective and so many
photographers that I know do notblog, or if they do, they don't
blog enough.
I just noticed and, look, I'msuper guilty of this too.
I'm throwing myself under thebus here too.
We get busy, right, and so it'sreally hard to do that.
(25:48):
I know that one of the servicesyou guys do is do you guys
offer copywriting and bloggingfor people too?
We do to a certain extent, yeah, okay.
So like just in general, if youcan't do it yourself, like
there are resources to help youget that done is basically what
I'm trying to get at, because itis really important that we do
it.
(26:08):
Um, and just, I mean, like Inoticed when I started my
podcast.
So I started the podcast lastyear and before that I had it
had right after I switched tothe show at platform and my new
site and everything Um, and ithad been a minute since I
blogged because I was kind oflike over my site and I wasn't
excited about it and I was busyand I didn't blog.
(26:30):
And then so I started bloggingmy podcast episodes and I
noticed just a huge I mean likehuge jump in impressions just
from blogging a weekly podcastfor like six weeks.
I was like whoa, so um, really,really important.
(26:51):
Um.
Mary has a question about.
She says does updating oldblogs count as a new piece of
content to Google?
Speaker 1 (26:59):
That's a very good question.
I would say not as important asnew pages and new content
Google does.
When they crawl a page theylook at the entire set of
content in there, so it willnotice updates, but it will not
have as significant of an impactas fresh content.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
So in that respect, maybe just redoing the post
right.
So just taking the old content,making it better, more relevant
, and just doing a new post isprobably the best thing, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
As long as it's completely rewritten.
It's got different photos in it.
It can be on the same topic,but if you've got some more to
add to it or things like that,that'll freshen it up and then
it'll have more of an impactthan just going back and
changing a couple of paragraphs.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
And then Jessica says and using different keywords
too- as I mean you're going tobe using different keywords
within the entire post.
So if you're just updating thekeywords in the post, um, that
will change how you're.
It'll change where you'reranking.
For sure.
Um and again, it's not likeit's going to boost your.
(28:07):
I don't think it'll boost yourentire site as much as it'll
affect that one page.
Yeah she says.
She said well, I mean, wouldthat compete with the blog post
on your own site?
Yeah, see, that's theinteresting thing when people
(28:28):
talk about pages or postscompeting with each other.
Yes, in a way they compete, butthat's a good thing.
When you're trying to getranked on the first page of
Google, having two pages thereis better than one.
So it's not.
One page is not going to act inthe detriment of another one
and knock it down.
They'll both rank as well asthey can rank.
(28:49):
And if you've got two on thatpage, pay on this first page.
It's fantastic.
The more you can be on thatfirst page, the better.
Um, so it's not really acompete as maybe an assist.
Okay, yeah, when somebody seesyou.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
So I know that um Google search console also can
help you, like it'll.
It'll help you identify, like,if you have duplicate content
issues right, it'll show you ifyou have duplicates of things.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah, it does, and that's in the indexing report
where it'll give you trying tosee if I can get the actual
terms here It'll have like analternate page with the
canonical index.
So basically what it's sayingis a lot of times you'll see
this with your domain slash home.
(29:41):
It'll show up in that reportand a lot of people say, well,
my homepage isn't right.
No, not really.
What it's saying is that itsees this slash home and it also
sees your just url in itselfand they are copies of each
other, and so it's saying thedash home is not the proper tag
(30:01):
for this.
Your actual domain, root domainis the one that should override
it, and so it'll ignore theduplicated page okay, you don't
have to get rid of any of thosethings, or like no and you can't
really Okay.
There's nothing you can do toget rid of that one.
It's okay, it's just in thereas the in the report to take a
(30:22):
look at, because sometimesanother page will get caught up
in there and say, well, why isthat happening?
Well, for some reason, google'sidentified that there's two
pages that are similar enoughthat they're duplicates and that
could be a problem.
So, for instance, one reasonthis may happen is if you've got
I have a pest control companythat has different locations,
and if you're using the samekind of copy on different
(30:44):
locations, then google canidentify them as duplicates and
ignore one of them.
So that's why it's important ifyou are doing even
photographers, destinations,that's, if you're using the same
copy on two pages, google isgoing to ignore one of them and
you're not going to be able todecide which one it ignores.
So it's very important to havedifferent copy on different
(31:08):
pages or different posts so thatyou don't lose one of them.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Oh, okay.
So that's really interesting.
It's like completely oppositethan what you do on social media
too, which is like regurgitatethe same messaging over and over
again.
You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
You want to try to rewrite that a little bit too.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But like you know what I mean,like you know, a lot of people
will say that you can justrepost some of the same stuff,
and you know the algorithm tendsto sort of like the sameness.
But, like with Google, that'snot necessarily the case Like
they-.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Yeah, brand indexing is not at all.
Yeah, and it has to be farapart enough that it won't
identify them as duplicatecontent, because Google doesn't
want to show duplicate contenttoo, because they're in a list,
whereas social media is not in alist.
You're seeing separate postsand they're far enough apart.
Google is a different beast anddefinitely does not like that.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Interesting.
What are some of the mostcommon, I guess, SEO mistakes
you see photographers making?
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Oh, the most common mistakes, I would say not
blogging is the biggest.
Without a doubt that has thebiggest impact on a
photographer's success success.
The other is I mean a lot ofthe things that we've talked
about with duplicate content ornot refreshing.
You know, when you do get somebeautiful new pictures in and
(32:41):
getting those in there A lot oftimes I also see one of the
things that I don't see isoptimizing your photos properly
for a website, for SEO.
Yeah, let's talk about that.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Because I have had people ask me about that and I'm
not an SEO expert, but I knowthat we have to be doing that,
oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Yeah, for photographers, you think, well,
I want it the best resolution, Iwant them to be crisp and clear
and to show up on the site.
I need big photos when, really,especially for show it, I like
to say 2,500 to 3,000 pixels onthe long side, make sure there's
72 DPI, make sure you run it.
(33:22):
Even though ShowIt says theyhave a compression tool built in
, I still like to compress itusing, you know, a blog stamp or
a tiny JPEG, something likethat.
And then, lastly, before yousubmit them, rename them.
And then, lastly, before yousubmit them, rename them and
rename them using keywords thatyou want for the page that you
are putting them on.
So if it's your homepage andyou're talking Chicago wedding
(33:43):
photographer, make sure youlabel it for that.
If you are going on a newbornphotography page, label it for
that and switch up those thingsso it'll be wedding photographer
in chicago, chicago weddingphotographer, chicago wedding
photography.
You know, change them up, don'tuse the same ones, and just put
a one, two or three on the backof it.
(34:03):
You can do that if you've got20 or 30 photos.
I mean you're going to run outof combinations.
Try to use differentcombinations of those keywords
in those photos and then, whenyou can, once you've submitted
them because, well, no, a lot ofphotographers within if you're
using Lightroom and stuff youcan add a description to it as
(34:24):
well.
Yeah, that's important as well.
It's not as important aseverything else, but Google does
see that Showit does providethat option within its platform.
If you're editing an image initself and that description,
it's not like a meta descriptionfor your website.
This is for the visuallyimpaired.
You want to describe what's inthat photo and it does not have
(34:48):
to include keywords.
All they want to see is thatyou are making your site user
accessible for the impaired.
So that's the important partwith that alt text or the
description on a photo.
So those are all the thingswith the photos that we always
do for our clients before weeven upload them, to make sure
that they are optimized forspeed and for SEO.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Yeah, yeah, I know, within show it.
Yes, they have the alt text andthen description, but even on
the blog too, like so on theWordPress side, you know, I know
that there is.
When I upload images, I can dothe alt text, and I think a lot
of people don't realize that.
Yeah, it's supposed to bedescribing the actual image,
like what is in that image, forthe alt text, but the
(35:34):
description you can.
I was told too a long time agothat you can put some keywords
in the description part of it inthe WordPress blog.
Do you know what I'm talkingabout?
Will that hurt you or is that?
Speaker 1 (35:48):
not necessary.
Yeah, I don't think it'll hurtyou.
It may help you.
I'm unsure, but all I know isthat alt text is pretty
important.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Alt text is really important and then also, like
you said, the naming of it.
You don't want to have, likeRene Bowen, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 100.
You know what I mean Like onevery single image on my site.
That wouldn't really be doingme any good be doing me any good
.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Not as much as altering it and changing it up,
cause you do want to key in ondifferent variations that people
may search for.
It gives you more options onwhat you can rank, whereas if
you just put Renee Bowen well,that's the only thing that it's
going to help.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Um, so Carol is asking if you can give an
example for alt text anddescription, so you know let's
say yeah and like if, if we tooka screenshot of your, of what
we're seeing right now on thescreen, I would say renee bowen
given a podcast in front of themicrophone, basically describing
(36:50):
what she, what they would seein the image that's in.
You know that they're lookingat that.
They can't see, um, and thenfor description, that's where
you can put in a keyword, ifyou'd like, and say you know,
renee Bowen podcast, um,something like that.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Right.
So like sometimes on mine, um,let's say, for like a senior
high school senior page on mysite, um, alt text, you know,
like if I've got a girl at thebeach with a surfboard, that's
literally what I'll say in thealt text is girl with long, dark
hair on a beach holding a bluesurfboard, wearing a bikini.
(37:28):
Yeah, and it's and it's yeah, soit's for the impaired, it's for
the um, the visually impaired,so that's why Google really does
like that and uh, yeah, sothat's a that's really important
.
So I'm glad that you guys hadquestions about that.
And then Tracy also wanted toknow um, she said so we
(37:49):
shouldn't be trusting our sitesimage compression tool that they
have.
I don't think she uses ShowIt.
I'm pretty sure, tracy, you useWix, but how do you know?
She says if the load time is anissue.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
That's a good question.
There's a site that Google hascalled PageSpeed Insights.
It's a great tool to see whatis slowing down your site and
how to fix it.
It gives you very detaileddescriptions of specifically
what photos, what you can do ifthere's code that's slowing
(38:24):
things down.
It's a fantastic tool to use inthis.
One caveat to that is a lot oftimes and we work with a lot of
photographers, so we get a lotof them saying, well, my site is
slow, this is what this pagespeed score is.
And I tell them, okay, well,you're not.
As a photographer, you have avisually rich website.
(38:45):
There's lots of photos that aregoing to take longer to load.
So if you compare it to alawyer, you're going to have
incredibly slow load speedscompared to that lawyer, who's
probably getting a 95 to 100score when you're sitting in the
70 to 80 range.
That's okay.
Most photographers are probablygoing to be in the 70s to 80s
(39:07):
and you're just not going to beable to get higher than that
because you have so much manyphotos and you need them there,
because that's what you do.
So it's it's getting an idea ofwhere are my competitors
ranking and I want to be on thehigher end of my competitors,
not Google wide, and so I don'tknow that.
We've had a photographer that'sgotten in the 90s.
(39:27):
That's okay.
It just all depends on whatcontent is on their site and
seeing that, one thing thatShowIt and I know they are
working on it is they don'tallow for new photo formats.
The WebP format that's come out, that's a lot faster loading
(39:51):
show.
It isn't capable of using thoseyet, so that will always show
up as the first reason why yoursite's slow.
You need next gen image formats, so that's okay.
You're just going to have toignore it if you're on show up
for now.
The other ones will be.
You know you've got a certainjavascript code that's slowing
it down.
If that's your lead captureform, okay, well, that's
(40:16):
acceptable.
The times when you are.
If it's telling you that yourfile size is too large for a
photo, well that might be aphoto you might want to take a
look at and run it through acompression or look at the
dimensions.
So it'll give you a lot oftools that you can use to raise
that speed score and all of thatplays into SEO.
So if you do have a 40 or 50,you definitely use to raise that
speed score and all of thatplays into SEO.
So if you do have a 40 or 50,you definitely want to dig into
it and see what it offers forresolutions on that.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Yeah, that's a good point.
And I see a lot of websitesbecause I coach a lot of
photographers and when we'relooking at their branding and
their messaging and theirwebsites, a lot of them.
Well, first of all, I see a lotof outdated sites, like a lot
of outdated sites, you know,just like things not really
(40:58):
where they're supposed to be andthe load time just really
really bad, especially on mobile, and that does that also tank.
Well, hurt your rankings.
Basically, if it's your mobilespeed, because Google Search
Console is going to tell youthat too, right.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Google Search Console will differentiate between
mobile and desktop.
The PageSpeed Insights will.
It'll give you a score for yourmobile and your desktop, so you
can dive into either one andmake changes.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Got it.
And then Tracy had had aquestion too about keywords.
She was asking how do youseparate the keywords?
And she was like, mainly like,is it Chicago dash photographer,
comma, chicago all capsphotographer or Chicago dot
photographer?
Like how should you bedifferentiating, I guess, and
(41:48):
does it matter, or does it justmatter that you are switching it
up?
Speaker 1 (41:59):
Yeah, I mean, I think the best way to separate them
when you are putting them intoyour titles and descriptions is
to either have a dash likeChicago dash photographer or
just Chicago space photographeris the best.
And then we usually, when we dothat, we'll add maybe a
vertical line separator beforethe next keywords.
So Chicago space photographer,space vertical separator, space
(42:20):
Chicago wedding photographer,things like that.
Unless we want to have thekeywords roll, that starts to
get into more towards keywordstuffing and that's not
necessarily looked at Really.
The other thing you have tothink about when you're writing
a title or description is thatthat is the only little bit of
(42:40):
information that somebody seesin the search results.
So that is not only where yourkeywords have to go, but you
also that's all you have to sellthem to click on your site.
So you want it to read clearly.
You want them to understandwhat they're getting if they
click on that link.
So it's kind of a balancebetween getting the right
(43:01):
keywords and actually sellingyour site in that tiny little
120 characters or site in thattiny little 120 characters,
whatever it is that shows up, um, so it's the balance there.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, um.
Is there a word minimum forblogs to be effective is another
question that's coming in.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Um, I don't know that there's a hard and fast rule
for it.
I don't know that there's ahard and fast rule for it.
We try to hit five to 600 whenwe're writing.
But I have seen I mean, as longas it's well-written and you
have good photos, good keywordusage, I don't know.
(43:40):
I would say if you can shootfor five to 600, you're going to
be in a good ballpark there.
Minimum, I would say get atleast two to 300 words so
there's enough actionablecontent on there for Google to
see.
But you also don't want to beon the two to 3000 word line
(44:00):
where people's attention span isnot going to go that far and
Google really.
They want to see your keywordsfour to five times within the
post.
So make sure that got themworked in there.
That's more the key than thanwords.
Um, make sure you're usingthose keywords within your
content and um, get that optimalsweet spot where you've got the
(44:22):
attention span and google likesit yeah, so so much to think
about.
Moving pieces are enormous.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Yes, absolutely.
I could, you know, obviously godown the rabbit hole with this,
but this has been super helpful.
I wanted to open it up to youguys.
If you guys have any morequestions in the chat, um,
either pop it in the chat orjust say I have a question in
the chat and so I can make surewe address that before we um we
(45:00):
wrap up in just a minute.
I feel like you know a lot ofphotographers, a lot of
creatives we get, we just get sooverwhelmed.
You know, like a lot ofphotographers, a lot of
creatives we get, we just get sooverwhelmed, you know, like,
when we look at even justanalytics and the Google search
console, and you know we justsort of sort of shut down when
it comes to that.
But hopefully you guys can takeaway from this that, you know,
(45:22):
kind of try and keep it assimple as possible.
You gave us a lot of reallygood tips about like what to
look for specifically withGoogle search console and not to
go like too crazy with it, atthe very beginning at least, and
that blogging at the end of theday is really, you know, a
fantastic way to stay relevantin your market and Google
(45:43):
obviously.
Oh wait, jessica has one more.
What else should we look at ifwe're getting traffic and
impressions?
What's the best thing to lookat for conversions?
As an example, a large blogpost that gets traffic from
other areas in the United States.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
So it sounds to me like you're looking at how do I
use my SEO to convert, do I?
How do I use my SEO to?
Speaker 2 (46:07):
convert.
You know, like, what should webe looking at?
If you know?
Cause, jessica, actually sheblogs a lot and she's a really
good writer and she has a lot ofreally, I think, great blog
posts, because they're likebrand adjacent, you know, and so
she's really good about doingthat kind of content.
(46:27):
So I think she's asking if youknow she's getting good traffic
and impressions.
What's the best thing to lookat for?
Speaker 1 (46:35):
conversions.
Yeah, I mean conversion.
I mean you write a good blogpost, it's got great content
getting good traffic, but by theend of that blog post you also
want to direct them somewhere.
So it comes down to yourcontent and being able to know
how to and a little bit on youranalytics figure out where your
(46:56):
users are coming from so thatyou know what to say at the end,
to be able to close the saleand to say, hey, okay.
Well, if you want to lookfurther, provide a call to
action at the bottom.
This is the next step.
And just continuously, and thatshould be site-wide.
Anytime we develop a site, wealways think about how do I get
person from where they land onthe page to contacting me or to
(47:19):
booking me and we've got to keepthat in mind through everything
and how do we close that at theend and say, boom, we need to
close that deal and have thatproper call to action.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
That's a really big one.
The CTA, yeah, For sure.
And then Mary kind of has afollow-up to that.
She says can we use the samefooter this is good, the same
footer and CTA at the end ofeach blog or does that count as
duplicate content?
Speaker 1 (47:50):
the end of each blog, or does that count as duplicate
content?
Google does understand thatthere's a header and footer and
within the code of your sitethose are differentiated.
It can see that this is afooter and it expects that
that's going to be the same onevery page, every post.
So don't worry about the footer.
I would change up the call toaction just to keep it different
.
I don't know that itnecessarily will impact your SEO
, it won't.
(48:11):
Something that small will notcause it to be duplicate pages.
But I would change the call toaction to be relevant to the
post and change that wording upjust slightly.
Every time, even on every page.
I mean every page and everybutton on a page should be a
different call to action.
It could be the same call toaction on different pages.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
Right, yeah, change that up.
Okay.
And then like, how often shouldwe be checking Google Search
Console?
Because, like, I get emailsfrom them and sometimes it's
like I'm like I can't look atthis right now.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
Right, there's a new problem.
I mean, the whole concern isthat something gets not indexed
and is no longer indexed, andthere is some problem there that
you want to identify.
But it could be that you'vejust added a blog post or added
a new tag and now there's a newerror because that tag page
(49:10):
isn't ranking.
A lot of times it's somethingas insignificant as that.
So I would say, if you even goin once a month and just check
it out, just see if there's anynew indexing problems and find
out if you need to work onanything, but yeah, you'll get
emails about it all the time andit'll be the end of the world
type of emails.
Yes, and I get a lot of clientssaying, hey, I got this, what's
(49:32):
going on?
I'm like calm down, it's okay.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
Yeah, yeah, it's not fun to be like what?
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
Why is this not working Right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
All right, well, thank you so much.
This has been awesome.
Super appreciate you for beinghere, and if anybody wants extra
help, tell them where they canfind you.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
Yeah, we're actually relaunching our website here in
the next day or two.
Avonleacom I do have right nowthe page is hidden but a tech
support page that offers allkinds of these things.
We're kind of like what you andI did the SEO consultation
where we can walk through itpersonally with your own site
and talk through different,different things that are going
(50:16):
on and fix things and maybe giveyou new directions that maybe
you haven't seen before.
So we offer all of that.
I mean anything you can thinkof that is techie.
That is not.
Photographers have enoughalready with what they're doing
with their business.
The tech side is definitelyoutside of a lot of their
comfort zones, um, and so that'swhere we offer that and I'm
(50:37):
even available for, um, justquestions.
Somebody has a quick question,always willing to answer it, so
they can reach out eitherthrough our site or I'm always
in the Facebook group.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
Right the.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
ShowIt group, or even send me a DM and I'm happy to
answer.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Tracy does have a question.
Do you only work with peoplewho have ShowIt sites?
Speaker 1 (51:04):
No, we develop only on ShowIt, but I can offer SEO
assistance in the different techthings across the spectrum.
I've worked in Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, Profoto, all of
those things.
We're pretty good at figuringthings out when things aren't
working right.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
Awesome, all right, well, thanks again for being
here and thanks everybody forhopping on.
Hopefully it was helpful foryou guys.
It was helpful for me.
I'm very selfish.
I'm like, oh, I need to learnmore about this too.
Thanks guys.
Have a good rest of your dayand thanks for being here, matt.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
Thanks, no problem.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
Okay, I hope that was as helpful for you as it was
for me and I think that one ofthe biggest takeaways probably
the biggest takeaway from thisepisode that I want you to get
is that you need to be blogging.
And again, like I've been kindof talking to you guys about
this for years, there's a lot ofnaysayers out there I see in a
lot of Facebook groups who arelike our clients don't read
(52:06):
blogs, but that is not whyyou're blogging.
You're not blogging necessarily, you know, for your clients to
be reading your blog every day.
It's SEO and, like Mattoutlined for us in this episode,
it's really, really impactful.
So you definitely should bedoing that.
I go over all of that in mylittle mini course repurpose.
(52:28):
I'll link that below for youguys.
It's only 37 bucks and I'mgoing to be updating it this
year because there's chat GPTnow and I made this.
I created this little minicourse right before it came out,
but it's very useful still tothis day.
All my one-on-one clients saythat it's worth way more than
that.
They get it as part of theireducational vault when they sign
(52:49):
up for one-on-one coaching withme, but it teaches you how to
start with a long form piece ofcontent a blog right and then
repurpose that into smallerpieces of content in unique and
new ways so that it doesn'tnecessarily look like you are
saying the same thing but you'realso not recreating the wheel.
(53:13):
You know what I mean.
So that's the biggest painpoint I hear from you guys all
the time is that you don't havetime for all this marketing.
You don't have time to beproducing all of this content.
But if you start with one postand you're organized about it,
even if that means just once amonth you're blogging, and then
from that blog you are producingsmaller pieces of content from
(53:34):
it for your social media sites,then just start with that
because it's better than nothing.
Ideally, you want to beblogging once a week, but if you
can't get there, maybe you canhire it out.
There's a lot of people outthere who are still doing this,
and it's not just AI doing yourcopywriting.
In fact, if you're just relyingon ChatGPT to do your
(53:56):
copywriting, please stop Becauseside note, just as a quick
little detour for us, real quickI see a lot of photography,
Instagrams right, A lot of youguys on your Instagrams in
particular, using the mostrobotic language ever, and you
can absolutely tell that you didnot write that.
(54:17):
Okay, A lot of y'all I know youas people and I read your
captions and I'm like that isnot how she sounds.
So you have to be reallycareful.
If you are like look, I'm a bigfan of using ChatGPT and I'm
working on some more resourcesfor you guys with respect to
that, because the value of yourprompt is what really matters.
(54:40):
How good of a prompt are yougiving ChatGPT?
That's going to determine thekind of answer you get.
So I am working on some otherstuff for you guys with respect
to that, especially in mycoaching.
So stay tuned.
But, just as a side note, youshould not be just using your
basic chat GPT and then justcopying and pasting that into a
(55:01):
blog post and your social mediacaptions, because it sounds like
a robot and not only is itgoing to be a deterrent for your
clients because you don't soundlike a person and it's weird to
read, but it's also not goingto be prioritized with Google or
with any algorithm.
So be really careful with that.
But bottom line, you need to beblogging.
(55:21):
So definitely find a way to dothat.
I am working on a list ofvetted people that I can send to
you like a matchmaker situation, and I'm going to blog about it
because I have so many coachingstudents who either need social
media help, content help orblogging help or all of the
above, and I want to help youguys find each other.
(55:45):
Okay, I don't really I'm notgoing to get anything from this.
I just I know that this is abig need and there's probably a
lot of really awesome serviceproviders out there who are
looking for clients.
So if you are a blogger or acontent creator, a social media
manager, and you're looking fornew clients, hit me up over on
Instagram at Renee Bowen, Let meknow, because I will add you to
(56:06):
that list.
And if you're a photographerand you want that, let me know.
But I'm pretty sure I know howmuch of a need this is within my
community because I hear fromyou guys all the time, and I'm a
big fan of outsourcing.
If you don't have to do ityourself, don't.
Okay.
What is going to move yourbusiness forward?
That's what you should befocusing on the most.
(56:27):
Okay, so that's it for thisweek.
I hope that you got a lot fromthis episode.
As always, I want to hear yourfeedback, leave a review, rate
us on whatever platform.
Just go to ratethispodcastcom,slash Renee Bowen and you can do
it all from there.
Thank you, guys so much.
Have a great rest of your week.
Love you, Bye.
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