Google Search Console for Photographers with Matt Dykstra

Speaker 1: 0:00

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 submit your sitemaps to Google. It's the spot where you can find out are my pages even being indexed? Are they being found? How are they being found? What keywords are working, which ones are not? So it's critical to a lot of people focus on the analytics side, that's, just telling you where your traffic's coming from and how to get more traffic, but the keywords and the root data for that is all held within Search Console.

Speaker 2: 0:35

Welcome to Tried and True with a dash of woo, where we blend rock solid tips with a little bit of magic. I'm Renee Bowen, your host, life and business coach and professional photographer at your service. We are all about getting creative, diving into your business and playing with manifestation over here. So are you ready to get inspired and have some fun? Let's dive in. Hey, hey, this is Renee Bowen, your host. Welcome back to Tried and True with the Dash of Woo. Today we are diving into all things.

Speaker 2: 1:06

Google Search Console I know super fun but honestly, this is something we need to know about as creatives and photographers. And it's a question that comes up all the time in my coaching and I'm not an SEO expert, nor do I want to be, but I know enough to kind of get you started. But we need to be talking to experts in these fields because it's a whole different ballgame and especially with Google Search Console, I find that a lot of you guys just don't either know about it or know what to look at when you open it and like, why would I even want to hook this up to my website? That kind of thing. But it's actually a really, really awesome tool, and so today I have brought on someone I have used for my own SEO services. Like he's helped me a lot with just my own website and I want to introduce you guys to him because he's a great resource for you you guys to him because he's a great resource for you. His name is Matt Dijkstra. He and his wife, lisa, run avonleacom and together they help build a solid foundation for service-based businesses to be the professional businesses that you want to be, that you strive to be. They do brand and website design. They work a lot with the ShowIt website, but Matt is a tech specialist and a ShowIt expert. He also does know a lot about other platforms in terms of SEO, so he does have some services that you can reach out to him for. For instance, he helped me with my Google Analytics, my G4 switchover, and then we did a little SEO consult at the same time and it was really super helpful for me. So today I am asking him some of your most asked questions, and I also had members of my membership Elevate hop on the call and ask some questions as well. So this is going to be really useful for you guys. You're going to probably want to take notes and listen a couple of times, but let's get right to it. Thanks for being here today.

Speaker 2: 3:11

I am really excited to talk about Google Search Console. I know that's like really kind of geeky and nerdy, but like a lot of people don't really understand what it is or what even to do with it, right, and I know that in what you do. So you guys just so you guys have 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 the whole show it thing too, as a side note, so let me just kind of like turn it over to you for a second and give us like a little pre-frame about who you are, what you do, and then we'll get into some questions.

Speaker 1: 3:57

Sure, yeah, I mean my wife and I have been doing our brand and web design business for 12 years now. We came across ShowIt Gosh. It's probably been six or seven years now we've been designing with them. I've shifted more towards the technical side, so I'm dealing more back-end development. I handle a lot of situations where people have questions about Search Console, their analytics, their SEO, even as much as connecting their website. They can't figure out why a certain menu isn't working, things like that. So kind of a problem solver In the show group I like to say a show at handyman. So I can pretty much handle any situation that anybody throws at me and I'm always happy to help.

Speaker 2: 4:45

So Awesome, yeah, Very cool, Okay, Awesome. Um. So let's just kind of um jump into some Google search console stuff so give us like just kind of a basic understanding, just to kind of get us started. Um, why it's you know why it's important like what, at the very like 30,000 foot view right, what it's going to do for us and why it's kind of important to pay attention to.

Speaker 1: 5:15

Sure, yeah, 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 submit your sitemaps to Google. It's the spot where you can find out are my pages even being indexed? Are they being found? How are they being found? What keywords are working, which ones are not? So it's a critical to a lot of people focus on the analytics side, that's, just telling you where your traffic's coming from and how to get more traffic, but the keywords and the root data for that is all held within Search Console.

Speaker 2: 5:52

Yeah, and that's kind of like one of the main issues that I see is especially with keywords, and this question comes up a lot with my groups especially. It's like you know, how do I even know what keywords to use, and all of that. So does Google search console help with all of that and how?

Speaker 1: 6:12

A little bit. I mean, I like to say and I ran into this just with a client just this week there are tools out there like RFs and SEMrush and things like that, where you can pay a lot of money to get a lot better data. Search Console is for the basic person to understand what's going on. What it won't do is it won't provide you with additional keywords that maybe you're not using. It's going to tell you what is happening right now. There are other free tools I like to use. Google ads Keyword planner is a good tool to use that can kind of give you some information on what other keywords are similar that are getting ad traffic. But search console is what's happening right now with your keywords and how and your pages.

Speaker 2: 7:00

Okay, yeah. So what is, I guess, like the one of the first steps? If somebody doesn't have it yet they've never like even logged in or anything like that what should they do in particular? Like is it easy to just kind of jump on there and set up? What do you suggest they kind of do first?

Speaker 1: 7:25

is getting it connected. Once you get logged in, you'll use whatever you want as your admin profile with Google. Usually I try to tie it with analytics. Now they don't necessarily speak to each other, but just for ease of use, use that same profile that you're using with analytics. So you got it in the same area. But it is a bit technical to get connected. It's not like analytics where you get a little code, stick it on your website. You do have to go into your domain host, you have to add a TXT record into your DNS and that allows Google to verify that you own that domain and then it will start collecting data on that. So there's a bit of a technical step to get that situated. If you're comfortable with that, by all means, it's not hard to do. Um, if you're not, there's people like me out there that can set that up and get it going for you.

Speaker 2: 8:12

Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah, Um, and I know that you know Matt had helped me with my um G4, getting that all hooked up, so he is really good about that kind of stuff. So it's good that you also offer this kind of thing to people as well if they need extra help getting this situated. But I did find it not too hard for myself, like when I did get my Google search console hooked up. It wasn't too hard, you know, and I don't consider myself super techie, but maybe techie enough and it's really just time for me, like I, you know, like I just don't have myself super techie, but maybe techie enough and it's really just time for me, like I just don't have the time or capacity to do a lot of stuff like that. But just as a side note, I didn't find it super, super hard. But then, once you're in, it's kind of confusing.

Speaker 2: 8:56

And that's kind of where I want to dig into is like what do we do with this? What should we be looking at? Especially as photographers and I know that you probably work with a lot of photographers A lot of photographers tend to be drawn to the show at sites. I know that I love my show at site. What do you think you know is the most important, I guess, report to look at? Or the data that we're looking at, like what should we even be doing with this and how can we make it not so overwhelming?

Speaker 1: 9:30

Yeah, I mean it's there's a lot of different options on the left hand side that whenever I'm doing an SEO call with somebody and kind of diving into this stuff, I don't touch on about half of the stuff just because they are next level, advanced stuff that the general person isn't going to dive that deep into. And I don't want to overcomplicate something that really doesn't need to be that complicated. Really, the two things that you're going to be looking at is your performance and your indexing, which, when you load Search Console, those are the two charts that show up first. Starting out, you want to make sure, obviously, your sitemap gets submitted and any time that you update your site or change pages specifically URLs change or anything like that resubmit your sitemap so Google puts it into their priority to crawl your site again. Resubmit your sitemaps, so Google puts it into their priority to crawl your site again. And then, once you've allowed that to happen and it's indexed, go into the indexing report and it's going to tell you all of the pages that did get indexed and the ones that are not.

Speaker 1: 10:37

I do get a lot of people that kind of get into a freakout mode. They say, well, I've got 150 pages that aren't indexed. Something's wrong, like no hang on, let's look into it. It'll give you reasons why they're not indexed and most of them are perfectly normal. You can ignore them.

Speaker 1: 10:55

The things like your tags. Pages like WordPress will create a page for every single tag you have. Most people don't want those indexed, but Google is going to find them and it's going to tell you hey, there's something not indexed here. So it's things like that. You just have to go through the report and see if there's any pages you do want indexed that are not being indexed, and then you can go from there to try to get them indexed. But that's the first step is make sure your pages are indexed. Once you've done that, then you can start looking at the performance data and starting to see the list of keywords that you are getting impressions and clicks, and it'll even show you your average ranking for each different keyword, so you can take a look at those and adjust accordingly.

Speaker 2: 11:44

Okay, yeah, so that would be the most important and I totally get like I'm glad that it can be so overwhelming Um, just to kind of, especially with those non-indexed pages.

Speaker 2: 11:55

I know that when I switched over to show it, um, and like everything kind of like went over there and I was. I was looking at Google search console and I was like, oh my God, over there, and I was. I was looking at Google search console and I was like, oh my God, like there's so many things that are not indexed. But again, like one of the things that I run up against and I've heard from a lot of photographers, especially those of us who have had sites and blogs for a long time, like I've been, have had a WordPress blog since like 2008. So there's a lot of those blog posts, right, that I don't necessarily even want out there, but is it going to hurt me if I delete those? Like that's kind of one of the main things that I do hear from a lot of people, um, and do you have like any sort of guidance with that in particular, like if it'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 start diving into the analytics side of things. You want to find out how much traffic is actually coming from one of those old posts. If you're getting a decent amount of traffic, keep it. Anything that provides that traffic is going to help your SEO. If, if it's not, and it's just something old that you want to get rid of and let go of, then go ahead and do that, but, um, the more content you have and more importantly is fresh content for Google. So if it's something old that is getting a little bit of traffic but you really want to move on from that, um, then make that move. Um, and keep up bringing that fresh content, because that's more important is being relevant than having, you know, hundreds of posts from years ago that you know maybe aren't actually converting or helping, you know, drive your business forward.

Speaker 2: 13:38

Yeah, that makes sense. Also, though, like, what about if 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 a great topic and I am getting a decent amount of traffic, maybe from Pinterest or whatever, what if I update it? Will that help or hurt? Necessarily, it could be either one.

Speaker 1: 13:59

Yeah, depends on what you do to the post, and if you are, anytime you're tinkering with the keywords that are in there, it will have an impact one way or the other. If your URL is the same, it's going 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 what you 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 in there specifically to help the ranking for that particular post, then that's going to help. That's something also that a lot of people don't keep in mind is that every post is a new chance to rank as well Every page. It's not your whole site as a whole that Google sees. They see every individual page. So you can go into that blog post and say, all right, well, this isn't ranking, but this is information that I feel could really help sell my package. So I want to work on this and you can update that SEO, put more keywords in there, maybe a different location, kind of play with it a little bit to see how it impacts it. So, yeah, I mean there's a lot you 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 is a blogger and she makes money from her blog. So she's been doing this for a long time and she probably makes about $25,000 a month just on ad revenue just from her blog. So you know, she's been doing this for a long time and she probably makes about $25,000 a month just on ad revenue just from her blog, and she said this latest update tanked her impressions like tanked, and so I'm wondering what you are seeing with your clients and if you have any sort of like tips and tricks for us as they start to like navigate this because didn't they update this because of 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 getting rid of cookies and that is going to be a massive impact on ad revenue for thousands and thousands of people. Interesting, so that's one that's coming. That's there. Chrome is the only browser that still uses cookies and, yeah, and google is the only company that's generating ad revenue from that information, so they are getting rid of it. I want to say it's coming up soon. I can't recall the date offhand, but that's something to be aware of for people that are generating a lot of ad revenue. The whole ad ecosystem within Chrome is going to change.

Speaker 2: 16:36

Okay, interesting. I know that most of us don't really have that going on. I just didn't know if that, because they're kind of always updating it, like you said, like they're a beast and it's hard to know what's coming, but I just didn't know if you had heard any. You know other murmurings or anything like that about it and you know I think that we all sort of like expected it right with all of the changes in AI and everything. But I do know, like what you had just said, just to piggyback on, that is like updated, current, relevant, valuable content still just like our best course 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 basics of SEO, getting good keywords getting out there. I know they are the and maybe that's the update she's talking about is the location aspect of seo is going away. That's where you know the, the system can understand where you're coming from and will automatically apply a location so you don't necessarily have to put as much effort into. You know chicago wedding photographer. It can just be wedding photography or in the specific niche that you are in, sure people are know that they're in the right spot for the photographer they want um, but the seo is is shifting a bit away from that and not necessarily needing that in the keywords as much anymore oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 2: 18:14

Yeah, that's. That's definitely like a big sort of shift right, because we're kind of always we've been told that for so long to having, like you know, los angeles senior photographer or whatever.

Speaker 1: 18:27

Um, but for the meantime I would still keep that in there and keep, keep going with it until they've phased it out entirely. But I think it's more important now 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 see if you can define indexed Like. Is that basically Google has that 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 means that it is available to be searched. So they cache it, they stick it away. They say, okay, people can find this. If you are not indexed, nobody's going to be able to find that page. Google knows that it's there but they've decided for whatever reason and, like I said, they do explain the reason why but it will not be found. So it's vital If it's a page you want indexed and it's not in there, you want to resolve that as quick as you can.

Speaker 1: 19:36

Sometimes Google's kind of a I guess it's kind of a crapshoot at times when you look at some of these errors that they're showing. So Google runs through billions and billions of pages on a daily basis and so sometimes they get it wrong. So the first step in trying to get something indexed that isn't is to go into Search Console, click on the non-indexed page and then just request to have it re-indexed. That'll tell Google to put it in their queue. They'll take a closer look at it. A lot of times that will resolve an indexing issue without having to do anything about it. If that doesn't work, then it's something content related, which then it gets a little bit more gray area there on what's going on. But Google decided that the content wasn't good enough to get it ranked in there with other pages, similar pages, so that would be. The next step is to look at your site and figure out okay, how do I improve this page to get it indexed?

Speaker 2: 20:40

Okay, cool. Mary wants to know, with them, moving away from using keywords for location, what are they using 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 identify where you are at by your IP address. So they already know where you're, where a customer is logging in from. So if they are in a Chicago suburb, they know that. Okay, we're going to show you Chicago photographers first, because that's where you're at and they know where you are as a business owner. By the same reason. They know where you're logging in, they know generally where you're from, um, so it's it's kind of using that ai technology to connect the two and put it together 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 some of us even. For instance, I have a lot of clients who come and find me right from all over the United States because they're coming out to LA and they want their senior pictures done at the beach. Let's say so how does that work for that situation? Do you still recommend that we do 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 destination photographer definitely wants to continue to key in on locations. It's going away for those that are local, that are looking for photographers in their area. But if you are a destination photographer, a local photographer, things like that, then you definitely want to continue to key in on those locations to try to, because you're not necessarily looking for people at that location. You may be looking for somebody in New York that wants to shoot at Lake Tahoe and you are in Colorado. You know you're, you're looking at connecting pieces at a distance, um, and so it's very important that somebody that looks for a Lake Tahoe, a low-move photographer, can find you, um, even though they aren't anywhere close to that and neither are you Um. So that would be an instance where location is still important and it would still help.

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 like that, where it kind of showcases, you know, valuable information for people but is still location based in that respect, but anybody could find it. Does that make sense? Yeah, definitely, definitely. Okay, yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, I had no idea that they were doing that. So I do think that that is going to be. You know, I wanted to make sure, sure, because there's a lot of photographers who shoot in many different locations, like you said, like wedding, wedding destinations and that kind of stuff. So, um, I feel, like I mean, I really feel like blogging is, um, important and that's probably one of the reasons why is because you can create specific, like you said, like each page, each post is a new opportunity to be found technically.

Speaker 1: 24:00

Yeah, and it's that relevance piece. I have a particular Chicago luxury wedding photographer who was doing fantastic, was booked up 18 months in advance and he got his new website launched and everything. And he came back about nine months later and he said my business is like I'm not even booked out 18 months in advance and he got his new website launched and everything. And he came back about eight, nine months later and he said my business is like I'm not even booked out three months.

Speaker 1: 24:19

We looked at him like you haven't blogged in two years, like you are consistently blogging and then, once you launched, you stopped blogging. So the relevance like all the seo work we did can only get so far. If your relevance isn't up there, you're going to lose ranking and you're going to lose business. So, especially for photographers, when you do have so much fresh content coming at you, it's very important to be blogging that. It's critical to keep yourself up there, because photography is such a low cost of entry type business that you can really get drowned out with the number of photographers in an area, especially a big market like a Chicago or LA, you really need to be blogging and keeping that relevance 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, because I've kind of been screaming that for a while. Here's that, because I've kind of been screaming that for a while, like you know. I mean, I know we talk a lot about social media and SEO with social media, but like it starts with your blog, and that's like what my little mini course teaches. It's like you start with a blog and then you break that up into smaller pieces because blogging is still 100% effective. But blogging is still 100% effective and so many photographers that I know do not blog, or if they do, they don't blog enough. I just noticed and, look, I'm super guilty of this too. I'm throwing myself under the bus here too. We get busy, right, and so it's really hard to do that. I know that one of the services you guys do is do you guys offer copywriting and blogging for people too? We do to a certain extent, yeah, okay. So like just in general, if you can't do it yourself, like there are resources to help you get that done is basically what I'm trying to get at, because it is really important that we do it.

Speaker 2: 26:08

Um, and just, I mean, like I noticed when I started my podcast. So I started the podcast last year and before that I had it had right after I switched to the show at platform and my new site and everything Um, and it had been a minute since I blogged because I was kind of like over my site and I wasn't excited about it and I was busy and I didn't blog. And then so I started blogging my podcast episodes and I noticed just a huge I mean like huge jump in impressions just from blogging a weekly podcast for like six weeks. I was like whoa, so um, really, really important. Um. Mary has a question about. She says does updating old blogs 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 as new pages and new content Google does. When they crawl a page they look at the entire set of content in there, so it will notice updates, but it will not have as significant of an impact as 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 is probably 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 impact than 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 to be using different keywords within the entire post. So if you're just updating the keywords in the post, um, that will change how you're. It'll change where you're ranking. For sure. Um and again, it's not like it's going to boost your. I don't think it'll boost your entire site as much as it'll affect that one page.

Speaker 1: 28:22

Yeah she says. She said well, I mean, would that compete with the blog post on your own site? Yeah, see, that's the interesting thing when people talk about pages or posts competing with each other. Yes, in a way they compete, but that's a good thing. When you're trying to get ranked on the first page of Google, having two pages there is better than one. So it's not. One page is not going to act in the detriment of another one and knock it down. They'll both rank as well as they can rank. And if you've got two on that page, pay on this first page. It's fantastic. The more you can be on that first page, the better. Um, so it's not really a compete as maybe an assist. Okay, yeah, when somebody sees you.

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 if you have duplicates of things.

Speaker 1: 29:20

Yeah, it does, and that's in the indexing report where it'll give you trying to see if I can get the actual terms here It'll have like an alternate page with the canonical index. So basically what it's saying is a lot of times you'll see this with your domain slash home. It'll show up in that report and a lot of people say, well, my homepage isn't right. No, not really. What it's saying is that it sees this slash home and it also sees your just url in itself and they are copies of each other, and so it's saying the dash home is not the proper tag for this. Your actual domain, root domain is the one that should override it, and so it'll ignore the duplicated page okay, you don't have to get rid of any of those things, or like no and you can't really Okay.

Speaker 1: 30:17

There's nothing you can do to get rid of that one. It's okay, it's just in there as the in the report to take a look at, because sometimes another page will get caught up in there and say, well, why is that happening? Well, for some reason, google's identified that there's two pages that are similar enough that they're duplicates and that could be a problem. So, for instance, one reason this may happen is if you've got I have a pest control company that has different locations, and if you're using the same kind of copy on different locations, then google can identify them as duplicates and ignore one of them. So that's why it's important if you are doing even photographers, destinations, that's, if you're using the same copy on two pages, google is going to ignore one of them and you're not going to be able to decide which one it ignores. So it's very important to have different copy on different pages or different posts so that you don't lose one of them.

Speaker 2: 31:12

Oh, okay. So that's really interesting. It's like completely opposite than what you do on social media too, which is like regurgitate the 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 just repost some of the same stuff, and you know the algorithm tends to sort of like the sameness. But, like with Google, that's not necessarily the case Like they-.

Speaker 1: 31:43

Yeah, brand indexing is not at all. Yeah, and it has to be far apart enough that it won't identify them as duplicate content, because Google doesn't want to show duplicate content too, because they're in a list, whereas social media is not in a list. You're seeing separate posts and they're far enough apart. Google is a different beast and definitely does not like that.

Speaker 2: 32:07

Interesting. What are some of the most common, 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 the biggest impact on a photographer's success success. The other is I mean a lot of the things that we've talked about with duplicate content or not refreshing. You know, when you do get some beautiful new pictures in and getting those in there A lot of times I also see one of the things that I don't see is optimizing 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 know that we have to be doing that, oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 33:02

Yeah, for photographers, you think, well, I want it the best resolution, I want 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 on the long side, make sure there's 72 DPI, make sure you run it. Even though ShowIt says they have a compression tool built in, I still like to compress it using, you know, a blog stamp or a tiny JPEG, something like that. And then, lastly, before you submit them, rename them. And then, lastly, before you submit them, rename them and rename them using keywords that you want for the page that you are putting them on. So if it's your homepage and you're talking Chicago wedding photographer, make sure you label it for that. If you are going on a newborn photography page, label it for that and switch up those things so it'll be wedding photographer in chicago, chicago wedding photographer, chicago wedding photography. You know, change them up, don't use the same ones, and just put a one, two or three on the back of it. You can do that if you've got 20 or 30 photos. I mean you're going to run out of combinations.

Speaker 1: 34:09

Try to use different combinations of those keywords in those photos and then, when you can, once you've submitted them because, well, no, a lot of photographers within if you're using Lightroom and stuff you can add a description to it as well. Yeah, that's important as well. It's not as important as everything else, but Google does see that Showit does provide that option within its platform. If you're editing an image in itself and that description, it's not like a meta description for your website. This is for the visually impaired. You want to describe what's in that photo and it does not have to include keywords. All they want to see is that you are making your site user accessible for the impaired. So that's the important part with that alt text or the description on a photo. So those are all the things with the photos that we always do for our clients before we even upload them, to make sure that they are optimized for speed and for SEO.

Speaker 2: 35:11

Yeah, yeah, I know, within show it. Yes, they have the alt text and then description, but even on the blog too, like so on the WordPress side, you know, I know that there is. When I upload images, I can do the alt text, and I think a lot of people don't realize that. Yeah, it's supposed to be describing the actual image, like what is in that image, for the alt text, but the description you can. I was told too a long time ago that you can put some keywords in the description part of it in the WordPress blog. Do you know what I'm talking about? Will that hurt you or is that?

Speaker 1: 35:48

not necessary. Yeah, I don't think it'll hurt you. It may help you. I'm unsure, but all I know is that 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, like Rene Bowen, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 100. You know what I mean Like on every single image on my site. That wouldn't really be doing me 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 on different variations that people may search for. It gives you more options on what 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 and description, so you know let's say yeah and like if, if we took a screenshot of your, of what we're seeing right now on the screen, I would say renee bowen given a podcast in front of the microphone, basically describing what she, what they would see in the image that's in. You know that they're looking at that. They can't see, um, and then for description, that's where you can put in a keyword, if you'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 my site, um, alt text, you know, like if I've got a girl at the beach with a surfboard, that's literally what I'll say in the alt text is girl with long, dark hair on a beach holding a blue surfboard, wearing a bikini.

Speaker 2: 37:28

Yeah, and it's and it's yeah, so it's for the impaired, it's for the um, the visually impaired, so that's why Google really does like that and uh, yeah, so that's a that's really important. So I'm glad that you guys had questions about that. And then Tracy also wanted to know um, she said so we shouldn't be trusting our sites image compression tool that they have. I don't think she uses ShowIt. I'm pretty sure, tracy, you use Wix, but how do you know? She says if the load time is an issue.

Speaker 1: 38:04

That's a good question. There's a site that Google has called PageSpeed Insights. It's a great tool to see what is slowing down your site and how to fix it. It gives you very detailed descriptions of specifically what photos, what you can do if there's code that's slowing things down. It's a fantastic tool to use in this.

Speaker 1: 38:29

One caveat to that is a lot of times and we work with a lot of photographers, so we get a lot of them saying, well, my site is slow, this is what this page speed score is. And I tell them, okay, well, you're not. As a photographer, you have a visually rich website. There's lots of photos that are going to take longer to load. So if you compare it to a lawyer, you're going to have incredibly slow load speeds compared to that lawyer, who's probably getting a 95 to 100 score when you're sitting in the 70 to 80 range. That's okay. Most photographers are probably going to be in the 70s to 80s and you're just not going to be able to get higher than that because you have so much many photos and you need them there, because that's what you do. So it's it's getting an idea of where are my competitors ranking and I want to be on the higher end of my competitors, not Google wide, and so I don't know that. We've had a photographer that's gotten in the 90s. That's okay.

Speaker 1: 39:30

It just all depends on what content is on their site and seeing that, one thing that ShowIt and I know they are working on it is they don't allow for new photo formats. The WebP format that's come out, that's a lot faster loading show. It isn't capable of using those yet, so that will always show up as the first reason why your site's slow. You need next gen image formats, so that's okay. You're just going to have to ignore it if you're on show up for now. The other ones will be.

Speaker 1: 40:02

You know you've got a certain javascript code that's slowing it down. If that's your lead capture form, okay, well, that's acceptable. The times when you are. If it's telling you that your file size is too large for a photo, well that might be a photo you might want to take a look at and run it through a compression or look at the dimensions. So it'll give you a lot of tools that you can use to raise that speed score and all of that plays into SEO. So if you do have a 40 or 50, you definitely use to raise that speed score and all of that plays into SEO. So if you do have a 40 or 50, you definitely want to dig into it and see what it offers for resolutions on that.

Speaker 2: 40:37

Yeah, that's a good point. And I see a lot of websites because I coach a lot of photographers and when we're looking at their branding and their messaging and their websites, a lot of them. Well, first of all, I see a lot of outdated sites, like a lot of outdated sites, you know, just like things not really where they're supposed to be and the load time just really really bad, especially on mobile, and that does that also tank. Well, hurt your rankings. Basically, if it's your mobile speed, because Google Search Console is going to tell you that 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 your mobile and your desktop, so you can dive into either one and make changes.

Speaker 2: 41:28

Got it. And then Tracy had had a question too about keywords. She was asking how do you separate the keywords? And she was like, mainly like, is it Chicago dash photographer, comma, chicago all caps photographer or Chicago dot photographer? Like how should you be differentiating, I guess, and does it matter, or does it just matter 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 into your titles and descriptions is to either have a dash like Chicago dash photographer or just Chicago space photographer is the best. And then we usually, when we do that, we'll add maybe a vertical line separator before the next keywords. So Chicago space photographer, space vertical separator, space Chicago wedding photographer, things like that. Unless we want to have the keywords roll, that starts to get into more towards keyword stuffing and that's not necessarily looked at Really.

Speaker 1: 42:35

The other thing you have to think about when you're writing a title or description is that that is the only little bit of information that somebody sees in the search results. So that is not only where your keywords have to go, but you also that's all you have to sell them to click on your site. So you want it to read clearly. You want them to understand what they're getting if they click on that link. So it's kind of a balance between getting the right keywords and actually selling your site in that tiny little 120 characters or site in that tiny 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 for blogs 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 a hard and fast rule for it. We try to hit five to 600 when we're writing. But I have seen I mean, as long as it's well-written and you have good photos, good keyword usage, I don't know. I would say if you can shoot for five to 600, you're going to be in a good ballpark there. Minimum, I would say get at least two to 300 words so there's enough actionable content on there for Google to see. But you also don't want to be on the two to 3000 word line where people's attention span is not going to go that far and Google really. They want to see your keywords four to five times within the post. So make sure that got them worked in there. That's more the key than than words. Um, make sure you're using those keywords within your content and um, get that optimal sweet spot where you've got the attention span and google likes it yeah, so so much to think about.

Speaker 1: 44:33

Moving pieces are enormous.

Speaker 2: 44:36

Yes, absolutely. I could, you know, obviously go down the rabbit hole with this, but this has been super helpful. I wanted to open it up to you guys. If you guys have any more questions in the chat, um, either pop it in the chat or just say I have a question in the chat and so I can make sure we address that before we um we wrap up in just a minute.

Speaker 2: 45:02

I feel like you know a lot of photographers, a lot of creatives we get, we just get so overwhelmed. You know, like a lot of photographers, a lot of creatives we get, we just get so overwhelmed, you know, like, when we look at even just analytics and the Google search console, and you know we just sort of sort of shut down when it comes to that. But hopefully you guys can take away from this that, you know, kind of try and keep it as simple as possible. You gave us a lot of really good tips about like what to look for specifically with Google search console and not to go like too crazy with it, at the very beginning at least, and that blogging at the end of the day is really, you know, a fantastic way to stay relevant in your market and Google obviously. Oh wait, jessica has one more. What else should we look at if we're getting traffic and impressions? What's the best thing to look at for conversions? As an example, a large blog post 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 we be looking at? If you know? Cause, jessica, actually she blogs a lot and she's a really good writer and she has a lot of really, I think, great blog posts, because they're like brand adjacent, you know, and so she's really good about doing that kind of content. So I think she's asking if you know she's getting good traffic and impressions. What's the best thing to look at for?

Speaker 1: 46:35

conversions. Yeah, I mean conversion. I mean you write a good blog post, it's got great content getting good traffic, but by the end of that blog post you also want to direct them somewhere. So it comes down to your content and being able to know how to and a little bit on your analytics figure out where your users are coming from so that you know what to say at the end, to be able to close the sale and to say, hey, okay. Well, if you want to look further, provide a call to action at the bottom. This is the next step. And just continuously, and that should be site-wide. Anytime we develop a site, we always think about how do I get person from where they land on the page to contacting me or to booking me and we've got to keep that in mind through everything and how do we close that at the end and say, boom, we need to close that deal and have that proper call to action.

Speaker 2: 47:31

That's a really big one. The CTA, yeah, For sure. And then Mary kind of has a follow-up to that. She says can we use the same footer this is good, the same footer and CTA at the end of each 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 that there's a header and footer and within the code of your site those are differentiated. It can see that this is a footer and it expects that that's going to be the same on every page, every post. So don't worry about the footer. I would change up the call to action just to keep it different. I don't know that it necessarily will impact your SEO, it won't. Something that small will not cause it to be duplicate pages. But I would change the call to action to be relevant to the post and change that wording up just slightly. Every time, even on every page. I mean every page and every button on a page should be a different call to action. It could be the same call to action on different pages.

Speaker 2: 48:34

Right, yeah, change that up. Okay. And then like, how often should we be checking Google Search Console? Because, like, I get emails from them and sometimes it's like I'm like I can't look at this right now.

Speaker 1: 48:49

Right, there's a new problem. I mean, the whole concern is that something gets not indexed and is no longer indexed, and there is some problem there that you want to identify. But it could be that you've just added a blog post or added a new tag and now there's a new error because that tag page isn't ranking. A lot of times it's something as insignificant as that. So I would say, if you even go in once a month and just check it out, just see if there's any new indexing problems and find out if you need to work on anything, but yeah, you'll get emails about it all the time and it'll be the end of the world type of emails. Yes, and I get a lot of clients saying, hey, I got this, what's 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 being here, and if anybody wants extra help, tell them where they can find you.

Speaker 1: 49:54

Yeah, we're actually relaunching our website here in the next day or two. Avonleacom I do have right now the page is hidden but a tech support page that offers all kinds of these things. We're kind of like what you and I did the SEO consultation where we can walk through it personally with your own site and talk through different, different things that are going on and fix things and maybe give you new directions that maybe you haven't seen before. So we offer all of that. I mean anything you can think of that is techie. That is not. Photographers have enough already with what they're doing with their business. The tech side is definitely outside of a lot of their comfort zones, um, and so that's where we offer that and I'm even available for, um, just questions. Somebody has a quick question, always willing to answer it, so they can reach out either through 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 people who have ShowIt sites?

Speaker 1: 51:04

No, we develop only on ShowIt, but I can offer SEO assistance in the different tech things across the spectrum. I've worked in Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, Profoto, all of those things. We're pretty good at figuring things out when things aren't working right.

Speaker 2: 51:25

Awesome, all right, well, thanks again for being here and thanks everybody for hopping on. Hopefully it was helpful for you guys. It was helpful for me. I'm very selfish. I'm like, oh, I need to learn more about this too. Thanks guys. Have a good rest of your day and 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 of the biggest takeaways probably the biggest takeaway from this episode that I want you to get is that you need to be blogging. And again, like I've been kind of talking to you guys about this for years, there's a lot of naysayers out there I see in a lot of Facebook groups who are like our clients don't read blogs, but that is not why you're blogging. You're not blogging necessarily, you know, for your clients to be reading your blog every day. It's SEO and, like Matt outlined for us in this episode, it's really, really impactful. So you definitely should be doing that.

Speaker 2: 52:25

I go over all of that in my little mini course repurpose. I'll link that below for you guys. It's only 37 bucks and I'm going to be updating it this year because there's chat GPT now and I made this. I created this little mini course right before it came out, but it's very useful still to this day. All my one-on-one clients say that it's worth way more than that. They get it as part of their educational vault when they sign up for one-on-one coaching with me, but it teaches you how to start with a long form piece of content a blog right and then repurpose that into smaller pieces of content in unique and new ways so that it doesn't necessarily look like you are saying the same thing but you're also not recreating the wheel. You know what I mean. So that's the biggest pain point I hear from you guys all the time is that you don't have time for all this marketing. You don't have time to be producing all of this content. But if you start with one post and you're organized about it, even if that means just once a month you're blogging, and then from that blog you are producing smaller pieces of content from it for your social media sites, then just start with that because it's better than nothing. Ideally, you want to be blogging once a week, but if you can't get there, maybe you can hire it out. There's a lot of people out there who are still doing this, and it's not just AI doing your copywriting. In fact, if you're just relying on ChatGPT to do your copywriting, please stop Because side note, just as a quick little detour for us, real quick I see a lot of photography, Instagrams right, A lot of you guys on your Instagrams in particular, using the most robotic language ever, and you can absolutely tell that you did not write that.

Speaker 2: 54:17

Okay, A lot of y'all I know you as people and I read your captions and I'm like that is not how she sounds. So you have to be really careful. If you are like look, I'm a big fan of using ChatGPT and I'm working on some more resources for you guys with respect to that, because the value of your prompt is what really matters. How good of a prompt are you giving ChatGPT? That's going to determine the kind of answer you get. So I am working on some other stuff for you guys with respect to that, especially in my coaching. So stay tuned.

Speaker 2: 54:54

But, just as a side note, you should not be just using your basic chat GPT and then just copying and pasting that into a blog post and your social media captions, because it sounds like a robot and not only is it going to be a deterrent for your clients because you don't sound like a person and it's weird to read, but it's also not going to be prioritized with Google or with any algorithm. So be really careful with that. But bottom line, you need to be blogging. So definitely find a way to do that. I am working on a list of vetted people that I can send to you like a matchmaker situation, and I'm going to blog about it because I have so many coaching students who either need social media help, content help or blogging help or all of the above, and I want to help you guys find each other.

Speaker 2: 55:45

Okay, I don't really I'm not going to get anything from this. I just I know that this is a big need and there's probably a lot of really awesome service providers out there who are looking for clients. So if you are a blogger or a content creator, a social media manager, and you're looking for new clients, hit me up over on Instagram at Renee Bowen, Let me know, because I will add you to that list. And if you're a photographer and you want that, let me know. But I'm pretty sure I know how much of a need this is within my community because I hear from you guys all the time, and I'm a big fan of outsourcing. If you don't have to do it yourself, don't.

Speaker 2: 56:22

Okay. What is going to move your business forward? That's what you should be focusing on the most. Okay, so that's it for this week. I hope that you got a lot from this episode. As always, I want to hear your feedback, 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.