Are you over playing the social media game where you’re constantly chasing the latest trends, posting all the time, and not seeing results? Today’s guests, Vic and Sasha were as well! That’s when they decided to optimize their website with a custom strategy! Through search engine optimization, Vic and Sasha are seeing consistent results that continue to provide inquiries over time. Now they help their own clients do the same.

The Branded by Bernel Podcast is brought to you by Bernel Westbrook, lead designer and founder of Branded by Bernel, a design studio dedicated to building strong brands and Showit websites for creative entrepreneurs.

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Optimizing Your Marketing with an SEO Strategy

As photographers, Sasha and Vic found that they were struggling to gain client from social media. They felt like they were posting every single day, yet not seeing results. They didn’t enjoy playing the social media game, so they decided to optimize their web pages to do the work for them for a much longer period of time.

Building a Search Engine Optimization Strategy for Photographers

While the traditional approach to optimizing for search didn’t fit all of their needs, they decided to create their own approach to search engine optimization strategy. So they began creating Showit web pages that essentially supported other pages and blog posts on their website.

For example, if there is a specific venue that they want to shoot at, that a couple could potentially be looking for, they’ll create an entire webpage about that venue with the venue name as the Header Title Tag. The content of this page would be supportive of information for the audience who landed there, but also supported by other blog posts on their website that were about that area. For each of these pages, the key is that it would need to be niche specific.

In each and every blog posts, they’re trying to include one inbound link to another page of their websites and one outbound link to a supporting website.

Getting Started in Your SEO Strategy as a New Photographer

If you’re just getting started in your search engine optimization strategy and don’t have a ton of content, here are a few things to consider:

• Optimize your homepage to include header tags that highlight your location and where you’re working. This could also include who you’re serving. You can see an example of this on Vic & Sasha’s photography website.
• Next, find a way to do a styled shoot in the locations you want to shoot at more so you have content to use in your SEO strategy.
• Once you’ve created content, allow it to gain speed over the next 6 months.

To get the most out of planning your SEO strategy, make sure you grab Vic & Sasha’s Website Rescue freebie! Inside this free downloadable, you’ll convert passive visitors into raving clients.

Common Hurdles to Overcome in SEO

While there is a lot to learn in search engine optimization, a few common hurdles that you may have to overcome include:

• Knowing how to tag things in your pages. You should only have one H1 Tag per page, then each of your H2s should be related to the H1 on that page. You can adjust these tags in your text properties inside of Showit.
• It’s also important that you’re not putting H1s in footers or site canvases. You don’t want each and every page to include the same H1.
• Casting a wide net in search engine optimization isn’t productive. Consider being specific and niching down in your optimizations. A great way to do this for photographers is using locations you work at or wish to work at.
• Make sure that you’re tagging images with text so that they’re optimized for Google as well. You can find this in the right side panel when your image is selected.

These tips and strategies aren’t just exclusive to photographers either. Search engine optimization is relevant to all industries and can be optimized and strategized to fit any need.

Benefits of Search Engine Optimization

The concept and outcome of search engine optimization is similar to passive income, in that the work you set up will continue to provide for you even if you’re not promoting it anymore. When you set up a page in your search engine optimization strategy, you’ll continue to get inquiries from pages created years ago.

While it may seem like it’s a lot of work up front, it will continue to pay off over time! You can find the success of it inside of your Google Analytics and the number of inquiries you receive. You can also continue to optimize your SEO strategy by reviewing your analytics to ensure that what you’ve set up is actually working by looking at the data to make improvements when it’s not.

THREE ACTIONABLE STEPS TO MOVE YOUR BUSINESS FORWARD

Now to my favorite question here on the show, I asked Vic & Sasha, what are three actionable steps that someone could take today to move their business forward with search engine optimization?

1. Optimize your web pages.
2. Tag your images.
3. Give it time.

Connect with Vic & Sasha

mariposadesignco.com

facebook.com/MariposaDesignCo2019

instagram.com/mariposadesign.co

vicandsasha.com

facebook.com/vicandsasha

instagram.com/vicandsasha

Connect with Bernel

brandedbybernel.com

instagram.com/brandedbybernel

Review the Transcript:

Bernel
Today on the podcast, I am joined by Mara posa. Design Co. Mariposa design co originated with an idea to help creative business owners in every stage of entrepreneurship to transform their website in all inspiring fashion. Mariposa is Spanish for butterfly. So just as a caterpillar transitions into a butterfly through metamorphosis, so will your business. From the start of your journey, understanding the why of your brand, to helping you find your true voice. We’re there every step of the way. Allow us to introduce ourselves. We’re Viken Sasha Pereira, a husband and wife team butterflies quite literally brought us together, we met a company we met at a company that raises caterpillars to butterflies. They also stand as a symbol of growth, transformation and the beauty of new life. Having launched our own successful full time wedding photography company, we have learned a thing or two about creative branding. Sasha has extensive background in the graphic art paired with Vic’s passion for writing are here to help equip you with everything you need to launch something simply beautiful and functional. Come launch day. Be ready for those inquiries to start flying in. Oh my goodness, Vic, and Vic and Sasha. I’m so excited to have you guys.

Sasha
Thank you. Thank you so much for having us.

Bernel
Yes. Oh my goodness. What an impressive bio. Literally, as I was reading that I was like, I feel like I’m learning all about like the science of butterflies.

Vic
That was the idea originally. Yeah, that was a big concept. There you go. That’s been there. But ya know, thank you so much.

Bernel
Yes, I’m so excited to connect with you guys. Again. For those of you listening at home I just had the pleasure of spending a week with Vic and zasha at the show it designer experience in Arizona and it was incredible when you guys say it was pretty great. It was

Sasha
it was phenomenal by far like my one of my top favorite trips ever. I feel Yeah, we learned we gotta learn we were

Vic
we legitimately summer camp that and it was amazing.

Bernel
Yes. Oh, my goodness. Oh, it’s a running joke. Because I’ve never been to summer camp before. So every activity was like, I was like camp. Oh, my goodness. But we actually met prior to that trip. We met at show United last year. Last United

Sasha
actually. Yeah.

Vic
And we were we’d follow brunellos work. And we would follow your work funny.

Sasha
We had actually followed your work already. Like on Instagram. We were just Yeah, through the social. I think you followed us or we followed you or something. And we just kind of started commenting on each other’s stuff. Yeah.

Vic
So we got to share with you at the United designers dinner. It was just immediately like just friendship like we knew it. Like we’re like, yep. We bond with.

Bernel
Yes. Oh, my goodness, the feeling was mutual. That’s why it’s interesting. As I was preparing the notes for today’s show, I’m like, we had to have met before then. Because it feels like I’ve known you guys for a while. But I think that was the first time.

Vic
It was the first official introduction if I’m, I mean, yeah, it feels like it was much earlier than that, though.

Bernel
Yeah. Well, sometimes you just meet great people. And you click right. All right, well, I’m excited to hear your story. And then also to dive into learning a little bit more about simplifying SEO, because you guys taught us some things as designers last week that I just am so excited for my audience to hear. But before we get into that, because you guys know I go off on tangents. So before we get into that, tell me how long have you guys been in business?

Sasha
So with our photography, business, we’ve been in business for about 10 years, 10 years this year, actually. And then our web design, we started in 2019. It was right before the pandemic hit. So we that was another crazy story. We didn’t know that everything was going to shut down. And luckily, we had started the web design stuff already. And that’s kind of what helped sustain us during the pandemic. Absolutely.

Bernel
Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, talk about good timing. So with photography and design, what would you say like your business purpose is like what purpose does it serve in the creative community?

Vic
So when we first created, you know, multi poster design CO we had this belief that we could use our our tools for helping other creatives To fulfill what their brand, like the vision they had for their brand, and just get it bring it to life, the way that we were able to Fortunately, you know, such as history and the graphic arts and, and then just my love for writing, it came together in a way that allowed us to play off of one another to create something that we were, you know, thoroughly proud of and, and enjoyed doing on a day to day basis as far as making little alterations to the site or just making adjustments to it. So whenever we started getting questions about our website, like who, you know, basically, who helped you build it, or, you know, who’d you go through, it was like, Well, we did it. And then that led in, you know, organically to well, can you help us? Or can you help me with my brand. And so that just kind of opened the floodgates, and we started helping other creatives tell their story in a way that they had only otherwise been able to visualize in their head. But now we were able to get it on, you know, online.

Bernel
Yes. Oh, my goodness, yes. I love that. I feel like so many people have all these big ideas in their head. And they, not only can they not create it, they can’t articulate it a lot of times. So I definitely can see where that writing background comes in handy. For sure,

Sasha
because with like, say, when we’re writing a blog post, it doesn’t, they don’t care about how eloquent it sounds, it has to just be simplified, as simplified as possible. So that’s kind of where that that our background in photography literally helped us Carry, carry over to the Web design stuff, because we understand personally, what photographers go through because we’re photographers ourselves. So

Vic
yeah. Better off with a lot of photographers, for sure.

Bernel
Yeah. And I think you guys have a unique position too, because, I mean, there’s no doubt a bunch of show it designers who were once photographers, and then they became web designers, but you guys are still in the photography industry, you’re still in it. So it’s interesting, because it’s like you’re building something for an industry that you’re also inside of. So like you just have a different perspective.

Vic
Yeah. And actually, we also we come across that a lot where people will just ask us, like, isn’t that difficult, because these are your, this is your competition. And we’ve never felt that way, when it comes to helping other brands. Because as we discussed this, you know, like, clientele is different for every single brand, what’s good, what what client, what audience is good for one brand isn’t necessarily the same as the other. So, I mean, there’s plenty of, you know, love to go around. So we’ve never seen that as an issue to even consider really. So. We absolutely love helping everybody. Again, it started off with helping photographers and because it was kind of a niche thing. But then it led into doing, you know, we help brands or garages for caterers, all types of this. It’s a while. Our architects, not architects, but the builders, builders, yeah, contractors. So it’s just, it’s been amazing. And it’s all started with just trying to help people get their creative juices flowing and get it on their web page.

Bernel
Yes. Oh, my goodness. I love it. I love it. You guys are just adorable. Um, okay. So, with Mariposa design, I know that you guys offer branding and web design. I’ve seen it. I love it. It’s great. I feel like we comment on each other’s stuff all the time on social media. But there’s a service that you offer that I personally feel like sets you apart. I mean, it’s not something that I offer. And it’s not something that I see a lot of others show a designer’s offering. And it’s actually your SEO packages.

Sasha
Yes. So what kind of helped us get our foot into the door of SEO, the SEO world, if you will. Our web is our photography business. We were struggling to find clients and we felt like we were always competing online. Not even competing is the right word. But I felt like the whole social media game. Like everything, everything that social media entails is a whole nother beast that, frankly, we we were starting to like we didn’t want to play that social media game. We didn’t want to have to keep searching digging for clients on social media. So what we did was we found a way to optimize our web pages. And instead of writing a blog post, we create kind of back back pages, backlinks pages that live on our website. They’re not blog posts, they’re actually pages on our show at site.

Vic
And they were meant to work hand in hand with blog posts and other content that we might feature. But the intent was that if something lived on our website, it would not only help build an audience but allow that traffic to you know, continually come rolling through the The website and eventually lead to conversion like to

Sasha
increase legitimate. That’s our measure of success is that we’re getting inquiries. It’s not necessarily the amount of followers we have on social media. Now we measure it. Other ways we measure it through,

Vic
we use it to analyze

Sasha
inquiries. Analytics, that’s a whole nother thing.

Bernel
Yeah, the real metrics, not the vanity metrics.

Sasha
Exactly. So I don’t know if I explained that correctly, but with the whole, the actual pages that are built out for SEO, so like I said, they’re not actually blog posts. So we kind of we optimize them with different tags. And I wish I wish we could show in a way, like where they understand your audience understands. But basically, we have one heading, right? What do we want to be found for, say, our clientele, we’re looking for a specific, a specific venue we want to work out. So we’ll we’ll tag out that venue. Like we’ll make that our head title. Say we want to target a Los Angeles couple, right? We’ll put on their Los Angeles wedding photographer. And we’ll have that as our heading for the whole page. And that’ll be our h1 setting. Yeah, maybe, maybe if I can simplify that. Yeah.

Bernel
Yeah. So you, good job, Sasha, honestly, because I was like, oh my goodness, how she going to explain this. So you guys, if you’re listening to this at home, I’ve seen it like I’ve seen it. Um, so I’m gonna try to maybe describe this. Um, as she said, the title is basically what you want to be found for. So that’s gonna be the location, that’s gonna be the topic, that’s going to be the couple, whatever, specifically, but it’s very niche specific, I think that was the thing that really caught my attention. Like, it’s very specific. So, um, you know, if you were in LA, like, or, if you were in San Francisco, you put like, Golden Gate Bridge, um, engagement shoot, like, like, very location specific. And then the page had so much value, like you were giving tips on like, the location tips on, you know, how they should style themselves there. So it wasn’t just filling the page with titles and subheadings. And paragraphs, like you actually gave content Yeah,

Sasha
found a way to make it valuable for the user, because they’re not going to read a bunch of mumbo jumbo. It’s just, they want actual value. And I think with SEO pages, we get to do that we get to go in depth, and it keeps them on the page longer. I know that sounds kind of I

Vic
mean, I think the way the way I tried to explain it well to myself anyways, is that there’s the old school way of doing it, and the new school way of doing it, and then there’s the way we decided to do it. So the old school way to do it is just creating a page that just blast specific keywords, right. So Golden Gate Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, and it’s just overused. Google sees that and it just knows that’s very spammy. It’s not really, there’s certain there’s certain things that are not authentic. Yeah, it’s not. Yeah. And then the new way of doing it is to not even have that on your website. Right. Again, we talked about having it on your socials. It’s just hashtag and everything. And that works to an extent as well. Well, we kind of paired it with, you know, we’ll hit certain keywords and certain target areas and audiences and demographics that we want, you know, that we really enjoy working out or that we want to showcase. And then we’ll hit on those keywords. And it’s just been, from our experience, just incredible. As far as the amount of traffic they return,

Sasha
the return has been amazing. Yeah, we,

Vic
the, I’m sorry to interrupt, but like, it’s it’s so hard to explain. And I know most people that are listening, you’re gonna have some sort of experience with SEO. And it’s basically trying to sum up all of the internet in a 40 minute conversation, which is super difficult. But there’s a lot of, there’s just main key things, there’s just key points that we want to hit on that that’ll help you boost that efficiency of your of your web pages and your blog post.

Bernel
For sure. So question, um, when you write your blog posts, because you probably write about photography, right, like you blog sessions, do you link them back to the pages in your website? Like, are there a lot of backlinks internally, or have you not found much success with that?

Vic
We try to incorporate at least one out link and one end link right inbound link. So I mean, we don’t necessarily bounce them around from within our site, but we do we do recall at least one time, like blog and every single blog post where it does bounce back to our website.

Sasha
So so the idea is that the blog post is so of supplementing the web pages that are already there. Because the web pages are, I mean, Google will still find both of them, but you’re gonna have more success with the web pages, because they live on your website, whereas the blog posts are kind of more, kick them out. It’s like, blog posts are meant for those specific topics. I feel like the web pages are more long term. Right? Definitely,

Bernel
for sure. Um, and so with these SEO pages, you link them in your menu, though, like you have like a sub menu on your site. Yeah. So once you link to

Sasha
your, on our website, we have a little section that says on the map, right. And then we have the different locations. So we have, say, for example, Pasadena City Hall, we have Sequoia National Park, and users can click on each location. And each location will literally bring up a whole webpage on that specific topic. And when the idea is, you know, like, like what we were saying with the whole social media, we didn’t want to play into the whole Oh, like, row, I feel like we’re always like, trying to find clients on there. And it’s not working like it’s just it’s frustrating, right? Social media is frustrating, because it requires you to post every day, where as this one you, you can have it live on your site. It’s one a one and done type of deal. And say if something were to happen to social media where we didn’t have access to it one day, well, it didn’t really affect us, because a lot of our traffic is already coming from Google anyway. Yeah.

Bernel
Yeah, that that is awesome. That really is that you guys have like, figured out what people are googling because I’m sure what they’re typing in the search bar is corresponding to some of the content on your website. Like that’s how they’re finding you

Vic
quite a bit of it. Yeah, yeah, we

Sasha
just we figured out a way to promote the work we were already doing anyway, say we were always, I mean, Santa Barbara is basically our second home, we’re always working there. And people are constantly searching Santa Barbara, wedding photographer, or carousel house wedding photographer, it’s, it’s a venue at Santa Barbara. And we’re always coming up on the search results. And we know that because we’re always getting inquiries for that venue. So that’s how we know it’s kind of it’s it’s working. Working, it is where you

Vic
want to start. So the biggest hill to climb, whenever it comes to SEO is allowing the pages that you’ve built out and allowing your SEO time to, to gain speed. So we typically say at least six months. So if you’re creating a page, and you don’t see inquiries for the first five months, I mean, it’s easy to throw in the towel. But if you if you hang in there, you’ll start seeing very specific inquiries, and there’ll be, you know, consistent. So it’ll be you know, again, back to the Golden Gate Bridge, it’d be golden gate bridge engagement and Golden Gate Bridge family portraits, or that’s just for photography instances. But yeah, it’d be very specific. And that’s how you can you know, kind of get an idea. Okay, well, that page must be working. And then once you pull up the analytics of it all it would most likely it’s pretty Yeah, proof that it is yeah,

Sasha
the proof is in the pudding. There you go.

Bernel
Yes, the wedding. No, perfect timing for that. I love I love a good saying. Okay, so question because my mind is rolling over here. Um, obviously, this is a little bit of Techie Talk. So if you’re listening to this at home, you’re a web designer, or you’ve made your own website, or you just know anything about SEO? This all is making sense to you. I’m sure like you’re nodding your head, you’re taking notes. But if you’re just getting started, um, you may have some questions. So I want to take a step back with you guys. If somebody is launching their first photography website, let’s say they don’t have a large body of work at these venues, they want to be at what are some of the tips or some of the content that they should have on those pages?

Sasha
That’s such a good question. I feel like we get asked that a lot too. And we always tell the client, hey, if you have no work there, and you really want to work at that venue, find a way to do like, some kind of styled shoot there. That way at least you have content going. And if it’s not the specific venues, try out other venues and see, see which one which one sticks. Yeah.

Vic
And I’ll even take it a step back and say, at bare minimum, whenever somebody opens your website, your homepage should automatically display and they should automatically know where you’re located and what you specialize in. If that’s missing from your header, then you need to go back in and make some changes because that’s one of the reasons why you’re not being found as much as you would love to be found.

Bernel
Excellent. Okay, guys, you heard it. I hope y’all wrote that now. Um, that’s really good. I always remind people like put where you’re located. But I think it should clearly state to who you serve. Um, yes, absolutely. Because sometimes people want to serve areas that they’re not located in. Like you said, Santa Barbara is probably like your second home because you shoot there all the time. But that’s not necessarily where your business is based.

Sasha
And this allows us to work wherever we want, basically. And I love that SEO is everything we’re telling your audience about, it’s free, you don’t have to spend money on ads or anything like that. It’s all free.

Bernel
Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome. Um, one thing, this is a shameless plug, because I love freebies guys. I’m on Mariposa design code.com. on their homepage, if you scroll toward the bottom, there’s actually a free download that Vic and Sasha has put together for you, as well, for the general public. But you guys specifically, because you’re hearing it right now. And you can, you can thank us later. But that free download is entitled website rescue. And it talks about 11 steps that you can take today that will help convert passive website visitors into raving clients. So, if you haven’t downloaded it, you should go do that. It’s in the show notes. Um, if you download it, because you heard it on this podcast tagged us, like once you download it, take a picture of it, take a screenshot, take a screenshot of your new website. Now wait six months to make sure this works. Don’t take a screenshot day one. But yeah, we would love to be tagged because I mean, this has really like drummed up a lot of business in your photography, or in the photography side of your business for you guys.

Sasha
And I’m not trying to plug our photography out there. But if you want to see an example of a live page, just go to Vic and sasha.com. And you’ll see the actual pages that they can reference off of if they if they

Bernel
would like, Oh, for sure. And we can definitely plug your photography. It’s great guys, like totally different topic, you’ll see it featured in one of many show website templates. Um, but that’s that’s a little sidebar. Now. Their photography is incredible. Um, but there’s so many of you who have incredible photography, and nobody sees it because your SEO isn’t good. So, um, you definitely want to put some of these things into practice. Okay. On the topic of SEO, I did have a question about, like roadblocks or is there anything that people should look out for because, you know, it’s easy in hindsight to say, just do X y&z But are there any hurdles that you guys have seen or had to overcome?

Sasha
The only thing I can think of is knowing which tags where tags go where, right, so that the number one thing that you should focus on is one h1 per page. And h1 is basically your top header, right? That’s what Google is going to pull up first is the h1. And then followed by h2, right? We want to make sure that they all kind of fall in line with each other. So say, for example, h1 is Los Angeles wedding photographer. Let’s go a little more specific, let me say, Pasadena City Hall wedding photographer. And then you can take a step further, your h2 should be Pasadena City Hall wedding photos, they kind of still have to be all related to one another.

Vic
Yeah. And if there’s anybody listening, that is completely lost, as far as h1 and h2 is go and, and just the headings themselves. Basically, Google has a way of organizing your information on a website, on from your web page. And in a manner that’s legible, if you will, to the general public. So that way, it’s stacked in nice and neatly, and then people can make sense of it. So that’s what Sasha’s talking about. So whenever somebody searches for those keywords, say, South Pasadena City Hall photographer, it’ll pull up according to which ones basically make sense and which ones are the most popular. So if you’re, if you’re hitting all those key points, as far as the key words, and your your headings are correct, it’s going to be a lot easier for Google to pull you up higher in the ranking.

Bernel
Yes, okay. That might have been like the simplest explanation I’ve ever heard for that. Yes, it’s a stack, in essence. So we’re talking from the top down. And Google is going to index it like that. So they’re going to search through your site, and they’re going to read all of your headings first, and then they’re going to read all your subheadings or your h2 is next, and so on, and so forth. So you want to make sure that, you know, when we talk about catchy page headings, or when we talk about like, you know, fun titles of things, you want to make sure it really is describing what you offer, because that’s the first content that Google is going to look at. Also, if you are a show user, and you’re a little confused about where to find that. Just real quick, I’m I mean, obviously, you can’t see my screen. So I’m gonna come to you through your headphones. But when you’re on the back side editing, show it and you click on a text box. On that right hand panel, you’ll see tech style, which I’m sure you’re familiar with changing your colors and your fonts and your sizes, all the pretty stuff. But that right below that there’s something called Text Properties. And in once you click on text properties inside there, you’ll see where there’s text tag, so you can so when Sasha and they refer to tags, how you’re tagging this content, that’s what they’re talking about. So right under Text Properties, go to Text tag, and you can assign things in h1 tag, or h2, or h3, but remember, it’s like a stack. So most important, the one at the top is what you tag h1. Um, I just kind of wanted to interject that because Sasha told you guys earlier that great tip about only having one h1 Tag per page, which is an excellent, excellent tip, like, I mean, yes, I’m friends with them. But seriously, from a business standpoint, I could not applaud them more for telling people that because I have worked on websites, and there’s like four h1 tags on Oh, on the back end, and I’m like, What are you guys doing? I’m like, if you had four business names, like if I told y’all I was branded by Bernel and not other names, like you wouldn’t, you’d be like, which one is your title, though? And so it’s the same concept with your h one, oh, only one gets to be the title. So I hope you guys combine that and show it If you can’t, you know, our DMS are always open. And they have a whole downloadable PDF about this. And I’m gonna ask you, if you DM me about SEO? I’m gonna be like, did you check Vic and slashes website first?

Sasha
There was another tip I had. So another, you know, you could you could take this with a grain of salt. But we heard never to put h ones in your footers? Because that’s way too easy. You don’t want to make it too easy, right? You kind of you have to, there’s certain ways to do things. And you just can’t put h ones in footers or site canvases?

Bernel
Yes. So you don’t want the same h1 on every single page is what I’m hearing.

Vic
Exactly. I just wanted to double back on the question about hurdles. I mean, I think it’s kind of already been addressed. But casting too wide of a net could also be very counterproductive. So if you’re a Los Angeles photographer, and you want to work more, and let’s say San Diego, you can’t just start tagging your web page that’s dedicated for San Diego photography, as San Diego photographer, because that’s there’s a million of them in San Diego, you that’s whenever it helps to be very specific, and tagging and labeling those pages. So that way you will start working if you’re more specific as to the content within that page.

Bernel
Yes. Would you recommend like landmarks or neighborhoods venues? What are your thoughts there?

Vic
That’s where it gets kind of tricky, because it can be anything you want. Right? How do you narrow it down? I would I mean, we would recommend, I would say showcasing locations that you’ve worked at before, and or locations that you wish to work at, you know and keep it really specific. And then that way, whenever you allow that to build traction and to gain speed, you’ll start working there more frequently, which opened the door for other opportunities in the surrounding area.

Sasha
And just a little also another little tip is become friends with a lot of wedding planners, because they’re the ones that have the foot in the door and the venues you want to work out.

Bernel
Yes. Oh my goodness. I think we’ve mentioned that at least probably 10 times on the show before, but here you heard it again from some very successful wedding photographers. Befriend wedding planners, guys. Um, there are a good amount of my audience who are wedding planners. So one of the things I wanted to interject here is this is not photography exclusive, like SEO works across any industry. So if you are a wedding planner, you can do the same thing with wedding things. I’m also there’s a good amount of designers who listen to this one of the ways or one of the takeaways that I gained. The first time I heard Vic and Sasha tell me about this because I mean, my mind was blown. I was just like, You mean to tell me I don’t have to blog nine times a day. But anyway. One of the takeaways or one of the ways that I plan on using this in my business is by industry. So I’m a web designer. I have interior design clients, I have wedding photography clients, I’ve lived eternity photography clients, um, realtor clients, and so on and so forth. And so I can definitely build out SEO pages that are geared to what my packages look like for each one of those industries. And then once again, giving away that valuable content, what do they need to know for their respective industry before they rebrand? And having that on, like a static page could definitely increase SEO? I mean, I’ll tell you guys how it worked in six months, we’ll see if there’s something

Sasha
Yeah. So Brunel, you can literally do a page on Oh, web design for maternity photographers or, you know, build it that way. Yeah. That’s it, make sure you link them on the homepage to like, Oh, these are the industries I service and then have each of those pages you want to make sure they’re visible to on the homepage. But that’s the beauty of, of SEO is, is it’s, it’s free. And the return is, it’s a beautiful thing, because you get connected to clients that you otherwise wouldn’t have found through Google. Because there still are people searching on Google these terms. There’s, I’m not saying like one way, the whole social media thing, we’re not totally against it, we still use social media. It’s just another it’s a supplementation. That’s the social media. That is that should be a supplementation of, you know, your, your kind of feed your you’re still using social media, but it’s not your entirely or it’s not the whole deal. The whole package. Absolutely. There’s other ways to do it.

Vic
And it’s also kind of funny, I just, I guess the language is so directed at photographers, because it’s ingrained in us as photographers. These same rules can be applied across any kind of industry. Yeah, like you were mentioning. So that’s fantastic. Yeah,

Sasha
you can, you can really, planners say

Vic
slice in a billion different ways. Yeah. If your

Bernel
relatives could do about neighborhood, I’m their favorite things about certain neighborhoods in their city or style of style of homes. Yeah. Oh, these are so good. Like, I really hope you guys are writing these down at home, like, um, these, these are really good SEO tips. And there are three things that you can implement in your business today. Um, it’s not something that you have to wait to do. So I have to ask you as what is the coolest benefit that you’ve seen from doing your SEO this launch?

Vic
You know, I mean, once we build out this page for a specific region, or a specific kind of service, it’s fun. Seeing the amount of traffic that comes in from it. And

Sasha
the inquiries, we get inquiries, they fall in line with our ideal client, because our website’s already like, you know, we we printed it up already. It’s we don’t have to work on that too much, I don’t think but the content

Vic
Yeah, in a way, it’s, it’s interesting to see how it’s, it’s almost set up in a way that it’s passive income, because we’ve set some of these pages up a couple of years ago, but we just go in there, refresh it every so often, but

Sasha
we’re still going to increase from those pages that we did years ago. It’s it’s nuts to me.

Vic
So again, and jumping back to one of the biggest hurdles is just giving it time. So if you’re not seeing those inquiries rolling in right away, just give it more time, and then maybe go through and and definitely without a doubt Google, what you’re trying to be found in and see what else is, you know, what, how low Are you ranking? Or how how are you ranking and accordance to where you want to be? And then maybe give those other pages a couple of views and just see what what’s working for them? And what can be changed in and in comparison to your site? What’s What are some things that you’re not hitting on as far as keywords or, or tags or anything like that. Another big thing we haven’t discussed yet is image tagging. So tagging the images, because that’s going to be huge. I mean, you could have all the all the warping, warping, all the wording and verbiage down. But if you want to be found in these, again, taking the back to photography, if you want to be found in these certain locations, those images within your blog post or within that web page should be tagged for that specific region as well. So that way it pulls up whenever someone looks through the images on Google.

Bernel
Yes, for sure. For sure. That was a good one too. Um,

Vic
those are often overlooked for sure. Yeah.

Bernel
Because it’s normally like picture number one. Picture number two. Yeah. So that’s a good that’s

Sasha
show it If you show it there’s on the right side, right side panel. Once you click on a photo, it pulls up, like the SEO like where you can change the SEO for that picture.

Bernel
Yes, um, do you guys recommend changing them all specifically, or just kind of using you Your generic, you know, Santa Barbara photographer or Santa Barbara wedding photographer. Yeah, so

Sasha
those were just examples we listed, but we actually we go further in depth and we do wedding venues.

Bernel
Wow. Okay. All right guys, write that down.

Sasha
Um, again, there’s there’s a lot of flexibility in that you don’t have to do venues, you can also target like different, like you said, was the other one?

Vic
Well, industries are different.

Sasha
There’s venues there’s, I was going on this wild

Vic
train of thought in my head there. And

Bernel
there’s neighborhoods, I mean, you could

Sasha
have a specific client, like you could say, like, wedding photographer for adventurous couples or

Vic
something. And there’s really any, you don’t have to put it in a box, there’s so much that can be honed that you can hone in on. But I think, again, casting too wide of a net is always the one of those hurdles, so make sure that it’s specific enough to be found. And next thing, you know, you might actually be creating little sub like categories within those categories that you hadn’t initially thought of,

Sasha
oh, you should see the back end of our show, it’s like, we have like over 70 pages on the left hand side where it shows like it has the homepage, the about page. But then if you keep scrolling down, you start seeing all the different pages that we have built out for those venues or locations. Yeah,

Vic
and just it’s a lot of work up front, but it will pay off. I mean, like all great things, just just sit down and dedicate your time and attention to creating one of those pages, and really get it down and then move on to the next and continue to you know, once that that steam gets building, it’s, it’s going to be great.

Bernel
That’s awesome. Okay, well, I guess we all have some homework to do this week to work on the SEO. So I’m assuming this goes very closely, hand in hand with Google Analytics. So the Google Analytics kind of show you? Which which keywords or which titles are working, right, exactly,

Sasha
yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s been really great. For us a great tool we use in our business is Google Analytics. If

Vic
you haven’t integrated it yet, you definitely we would recommend it, you know, it’s, it’s one way for us to know which pages are are working as they should and which pages need to be updated. And to take it even further. It also shows us which demographics are searching within those those pages and clicking on links, so that way we can, you know, capitalize on on those industries or those locations, or whatever the page is built out for. But um, it’s been, it’s been fantastic to see that and to, to put into practice, like the stuff that we’ve

Sasha
we’ve met so many clients from all over the United States just by using these keywords. So it definitely works.

Bernel
That’s awesome. Yeah, they’re literally like a plane ticket. I’ve never thought about that. But titles and tags are your plane ticket to go into different places. That’s awesome. Um, so I digress. Do you offer SEO as a standalone service? Or is it only available to your custom web design clients?

Vic
Good question. That’s, that’s kind of we’ve, we do offer it. It’s typically best paired with our custom builds. But we do offer it I mean, it’s just a different process. And we would really, I would say, primarily feel comfortable with doing it on a show at platform you know, it’s just something that we’ve, we’ve come to love and we know we

Sasha
won’t use any other platform.

Bernel
Oh, yeah. I was like no, the people listening at home No, they know on this show, we only you show it you can sit with us, but only for show a website. Yeah, no, that’s completely fine.

Vic
Yeah, we absolutely that. I mean, that’s something that we’ve offered in the past. Again, we’ve just been so we’ve dedicated much of our time to doing the custom build, so we kind of pair it with that but um, we always we never turn anything down without giving it legitimate consideration,

Sasha
or SEO package does include the five pages and we do it for them so and we can show them how to duplicate them if they ever wanted to add on venues or we could do it for them if they don’t if they prefer not to touch any any design work. So we can do that for them. It’s just It does take a while like we said for it to start kicking in. Yeah. And there’s a

Vic
lot of variables there too. So like, if you’re moving or you’re new to a market, right, let’s say you’re going from different coasts, right? You’re really going to want to see, you’re really gonna want to start getting those pages built out ahead of time. So that way, within that six month mark, you’ll already have made some headway as far as reaching that, that target audience. Because if you wait until you actually move into that new location, you’re gonna have to wait another an additional six months or so in order to see that, then that could always, you know, be a little discouraging. So we recommend doing it as soon as possible if there’s if there’s a market or if there’s an area that you’re trying to, to really tap into, that you started as soon as possible.

Bernel
That’s very good advice. Yeah, that’s, that’s really good. I’ve had a lot of clients reach out to me in the past, and they’re like, we’re getting ready to move, is there anything we need to change on our website, obviously, other than location, and so that will be a good time to really look at those h1 tags, um, and even just what your titling your photography as well. Yes. That is really good. Well, we have reached my favorite part of the show, where you guys are going to give the audience three actionable steps that they could take today, in order to help move their business forward. Um, it can be a recap of what you’ve already talked about. But what are those three actionable steps, if they don’t write down anything they need to write down this?

Vic
You want to go? Yeah,

Sasha
I’ll start this. So number one, optimize those web pages, make sure like we said, One h1 per page, not to put it, dump it in the footer, don’t put it in the menu just somewhere where it’s going to, you’re able to come back to it if you change it if you need to. And then

Vic
those were in those pages, it’s okay to be redundant. As far as your wording goes. If you’re trying to get found in a certain region, make sure you hit on those keywords. But do it in a natural kind of way. Don’t just blast them a million times, but do it where it’s it’s truly organic. And the next thing, number two, tag those images. So whenever you’re building these pages out, or even if you’re just writing a blog post, make sure you tag your images with the specific with very specific information. If it’s going to be a wedding, or an event or anything of the sort you want to put you want to include all of that information, as far as the keywords, go in those image tags. And honestly, and lastly, give it time, give it time. Yeah, for sure. And that, like we’ve mentioned it quite a bit, it’s, it’s easy to get discouraged, don’t allow that to happen. Give it time, use that time that you’re you’re waiting, if you will to build out other pages. So that way you start seeing more traction. Roll in as time goes on.

Sasha
If something isn’t working, try recording some things. Yeah, like maybe it could be that your tag, something’s off with the tags. But it does work. So just give it time. And be patient because at the end, you get the reward. So

Vic
that’s a lot of lot of work up front, but it’ll be so worth it.

Bernel
Yes, indeed. Well, you have me sold on this new way of honestly simplifying your SEO and, and really using SEO pages. So thank you, I love this. Where can people find you? Because I know they want to go to your friend now. Definitely.

Sasha
We usually we hang out a lot on our Vic and Sasha page

Vic
for Marty posted on Instagram, Instagram, everything Facebook, we, you know, on our website, if you just want to send us a message there, you can send a little note we’ll be happy to help out. And then we will we will be I don’t know it’s a little too early to tell. But I believe we will be at Spark. So you can find us there, you know, pull us aside and say what’s up?

Bernel
Doesn’t have to Yes.

Vic
Doesn’t have to be SEO related. We live all things from SEO to tacos to some of the most. Right?

Bernel
All of the above? Yes. in no specific order of which one I love. Yes, look, thank you guys so much for being on the show today. I really appreciate it. Um, and I will link Yes, as always, lots of laughs I will link to your website and to all the places to find you in the show notes.

Vic
Cool. Thank you so much for now. It’s been a pleasure. We Yeah, we enjoyed our time with you.

Bernel
Thank you