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SEO Simplified
130 Plays2 years ago
If you are a business owner, your website needs to be reaching potential customers! We made this quick episode to give you our top 3 tips to improve your website's SEO (Search Engine Optimization)! If SEO scares or confuses you, I can guaruntee that this will be the most simple explanation you've ever heard. If you can give us 20 minutes of your time, and then take a single hour to implement the tips we give you, you will find that SEO is not intimidating AND you will see improved traffic to your website!
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Transcript
Introduction: Podcast and SEO Focus
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Art of Intention podcast with Beth and Ayla. Two best friends turn creative entrepreneurs. This is a place for us to discuss everything business, friendships, and faith and occasionally more. We're so excited for today's episode. We think you're going to love it. Stay tuned.
00:00:22
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome back or welcome to the art of intention. We are so excited to be here and today we are sharing three simple steps to improving your SEO. This will extend the reach of your business presence online and if SEO scares you, we promise this will be one of the simplest, if not the simplest way you've ever heard it explained.
00:00:43
Speaker
Yes, we're so excited for that.
Community News: Photography Updates
00:00:45
Speaker
But before we jump into that, we're going to go really quickly into a new segment we're doing. It's called Community News, where we're going to keep you informed on the most relevant going ons in our photo editing little world. So it's just going to be a short thing. Let us know what you think of it if you like this, if you have any ideas for this. So we'll go into this really quickly.
00:01:05
Speaker
So today I just wanted to share, it's kind of more for photographers today. So one, we're going to talk about the shoot and share contest is starting up again for any photographers who want to enter that this year. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a really, really big photography contest. And I believe it's just now come under new ownership. They had a little bit of a delay with it or it wasn't going on in previous years for a couple of years.
00:01:27
Speaker
but it's back again it's supposed to be bigger and better than ever you can win actual cash prizes with this and it doesn't matter what kind of photographer you are yeah they have every category they have everything from wedding couples to food lifestyle you know pets landscape everything go over to shootandshare.com if you want to learn more about it
00:01:45
Speaker
But that whatever kind of photographer you are, whether you're new, whether you're experienced, you should really be going and trying to do things like that. It just extends your reach and kind of gets you out there and you can win cash, which, you know, everyone loves that, right? Oh, absolutely. And then, right. And then actually a little bit more sad topic today.
00:02:03
Speaker
in the community news so for some of you this might be new information and some of you though I keep talking to people and some people still don't know about this but in San Francisco it's having kind of a weird string of robberies specifically of photographers recently right so maybe you've seen stuff about this recently
00:02:20
Speaker
But a lot of people, criminals targeting photographers because they know that they have expensive gear that they're carrying with them. So we just want to remind you to practice self defense, practice self awareness as you're going out to these photo shoots in the San Francisco area. Be aware of suspicious people, suspicious vehicles, you know, aware of what's going on, maybe look into a couple of these stories to see
00:02:40
Speaker
how it's happening and how you can prepare yourself. Don't leave valuables in your vehicle. Just always be looking around. Make sure that you are protecting yourself and you're aware of what's going on around you. Don't flaunt your gear everywhere. Try to keep everything in an inconspicuous backpack. Just stuff like this. Also, if you can, maybe choose other areas to do your sessions.
00:03:01
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I've been watching, it popped up in my newsfeed on YouTube a few days ago, so I'm really excited that we're covering it. There's lots of places outside of San Francisco that you can still get a beautiful view of like the Golden Gate Bridge, you can get into the redwoods, just some other areas. And if you are going into the city for Cityscape, just be aware, do your research on a good area to go to. I happened to notice in the news, a lot of it was getting robbed from like the back of people's vehicles. So like the back
00:03:31
Speaker
window of their car was usually getting smashed in and sometimes while people were in traffic in their own vehicles so it wouldn't be a bad idea to keep your gear like on your lap or right in the back seat close to you if possible of course keep your doors locked driving and yeah just practice self-awareness just like Beth said it's unfortunate that we have to think about stuff like that but really anywhere you go especially if you're taking clients there if you're not feeling good and you're not feeling comfortable give yourself permission to leave and go find somewhere better
Understanding and Improving SEO
00:04:02
Speaker
Exactly. If this makes you uncomfortable, make sure that you talk to your clients about other options and allow yourself, like Ayla was saying, to go and choose other areas outside of the city. But yeah, that is it for our community news. Excited to be bringing that segment in and just keeping everyone updated on the photo and photo editing world. On to today's topic. Like I said, we are talking about three things you can do today to improve your SEO and how that will help your business. So
00:04:30
Speaker
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It can seem really scary and complicated and you can get super deep into it like beyond what even Beth and I might use for our business, but there's a really easy side to it and that's what we're going to focus on today.
00:04:46
Speaker
So firstly, instead of giving you a technical definition of SEO, you know, like Ayla said, SEO stands for search engine optimization, but that might just go right over your head. So we're going to give you a more of a practical definition. So in my own head, I think of SEO as the information you give the internet so it knows who to send your way.
00:05:06
Speaker
So you speak to Google by adjusting the phrasing on your website text and the text you put on your photos. Right. You'll understand this so much better as we talk through our three tips today and we'll explain exactly why it is this way. So let's get right into it.
00:05:21
Speaker
Right. We know this is a lot of technical talk and we want to keep it simple. And we even want you to make these changes today. It's just a few hours of dedication that you need that will really help out your business. And for the visual learners, Beth and I included, for the visual learners who are listening, we included some graphics on our Instagram stories that are live now. And we will be saving those as a highlight as well. So you can follow along to see exactly what we mean as we talk through this.
00:05:50
Speaker
So first, first tip is changing the alt text on the images of your website. This is one of our favorite ways to really simply just start driving some traffic to our websites, okay? So think about this. Every single image that you have on your website is now floating out there through the internet somewhere and every single one of those images needs to be pointing anyone who sees it back to you and your services, okay? The internet can't see pictures.
00:06:17
Speaker
Like I was saying before, it can only read the text you put in the alt text setting of images and also the text you have just on general pages in your website. This is really simple. Okay. It's basically like captioning your photos. Nothing complicated about it. Time consuming. Yes. Especially if you haven't been doing this and you have to go back and do it for all your photos, but it's not hard. Okay. You got this.
00:06:37
Speaker
So I'll take a couple of seconds here and walk you through how I do it on my website. I have the paid program through Wix, so I have all of the abilities to do these settings. And I'll tell you some of the actual phrasing that I use on my images as well. So really simply, really quickly, so if you go onto your website and you go to edit it,
00:06:58
Speaker
Click on any image, and again this is through Wix, so I'll show you how I do it through Wix, and you're gonna click on the image, click on settings, and you'll see right there it's gonna pop up and it's gonna say, what's this image? Tell Google. And in this little square, you can put in whatever you want. This is how you tell the internet what this picture is, what your services are. So I just try to relate it to the actual photo. So on my homepage, I have a picture of myself, and I say destination wedding photographer.
00:07:27
Speaker
And you just go through and you type in different things for every single image on your website. I just, again, I make it relate to those images. So I have Hawaii wedding photographer and I have like wedding cake on a picture of a wedding cake. I have a picture of bridesmaids and I put like bridesmaid dress inspo. So whatever you think will kind of
00:07:45
Speaker
reach people who are looking for wedding stuff and will drive them back to you. Or if someone's looking for photo editing, what will drive them back to your website for that? So whatever relates to your business and whatever you think people most commonly type in related to your business. So it will take them back to your page. Right. So you're saying like essentially every image we put on the internet is just out there and can pop up regardless of our site. So if people are seeing it, you want it to take them back to.
00:08:12
Speaker
your website, whatever your business might be, correct? Right, correct. And the more likely, or the better you caption those images with alt text, the more likely they are to be found on Google. They'll kind of be hidden really far down if you don't put this relevant alt text. And we'll also go through other tips today that improve how quickly your images are found on Google as well.
00:08:33
Speaker
Right. Like, um, mine's a little pretty much the same idea, but a little different. I worked through show it again, the paid program through show it. And I played around with this the other day as we were putting these notes together. But if you use show it, um, you click on any image on your website and immediately over to the right of your image, it has all your image settings and it'll say SEO title and description. And then, yeah, I just go one by one through my photos over there. Um,
00:09:02
Speaker
Again, like Beth said, making sure it all leads back to my website. And why is this important? Like Beth says, it tells Google who to show your photos to. If someone, say in my case, were to search for a photo editor in Canada, you're more likely to show up because your photos are labeled with instructions telling Google to advertise for you.
00:09:23
Speaker
So I personally change all the alt text on my photos, I title them private photo editing services or something along those lines, and then I'll fill in the description to be something like, I'm Ayla, private photo editor based in Canada servicing photographers worldwide. That way someone searches photo editor in Canada, private photo editing services, and I am more likely to show up in their search through my images and
00:09:47
Speaker
This kind of takes us right into our second step. But the second step you can take today, it's a similar idea to the first, but you're going to go into the overall SEO settings of your website. This applies to show it, Wix, Squarespace. If you're paying for your website service at all, there's going to always be a tab labeled SEO settings or something like that. And it's the same idea as captioning all of your photos. You're going to go through page by page.
00:10:16
Speaker
and give each page your website a title, a description, and a share image. So same idea is going photo by photo, going page by page, and making sure you're titling and labeling each applicable page in your website, your home page, your about page. This is key because you can add a page description that says, okay, I'll talk about photographers. I'm an Atlanta based photographer specializing in luxury destination photography.
00:10:44
Speaker
and a potential client searches Atlanta photographer or destination photographer, your chances of coming in contact with them have just skyrocketed because of these simple steps you've taken. Exactly. And just so you know, if you do find this a little bit confusing, if you go into that SEO tab on your website on your dashboard, there will more than likely be video tutorials
00:11:06
Speaker
That walk you through this given by your website Especially if you've never done this before as soon as you open that for the first time There's gonna be so many resources that your website is giving you and then okay So kind of on that note if your website platform does have this SEO tab Then there's also going to be an area where you can change what's called your share image. I
00:11:24
Speaker
And Ayla mentioned this before, we'll go a little bit deeper into this. So for each page of your website, you can change what's called your share image. This is the image that shows up when you post your website link somewhere. So like if you're responding to somebody on Facebook, they make a post and you want to advertise your business in the comment section and you link your page. If you don't fill this in with what photo you want to show, when you share that link, it's going to be some random photo.
00:11:51
Speaker
that is shown when you post your link. So it's a good idea to go through each page of your website, your homepage, your about page, whatever, and make sure that your share photo that's displayed is what you want it to be. That's just a little thing for your own personal advertising. It doesn't necessarily help your SEO. That's just important to kind of make you look more professional.
00:12:11
Speaker
right exactly yeah that's a good point to make is it doesn't necessarily affect your reach but if you are often sending links to your website it's just good to know what image is going to be associated with it when i first launched my website i didn't know about that and i was sharing my link to like my portfolio but it would be a picture of me like my headshot and that's not quite what i wanted to like convey to clients i was trying to get uh so for example i link my website and facebook groups
00:12:38
Speaker
all the time to get editing jobs. Side note to editors, if you're not advertising yourself in Facebook groups, what is you doing? Like, get on top of that, a great way to get jobs. But anyway, I usually leave a link to my portfolio page or my pricing page. And I'm usually trying to convey my editing style while I'm doing this. Of course, I match it to whoever the photographer is, but usually it's in that warm and kind of moody category. And I want my share photo to reflect that.
00:13:05
Speaker
So I'll pick kind of the best of the best of images that I use for my advertising. If you were a photographer, you'd want the same. You'd want the best of your photos to show up when sharing your website. For any other businesses like a boutique or a home goods store, you can imagine matching up your products with its matching page online. Just always making sure when you're sharing your website and your link that you have hand chosen each photo that shows up.
00:13:26
Speaker
That's going to be people's first impression when they look at your link, when they're scrolling through all their options. Okay, so we're on to our one last tip. This one is a little bit different. It's not quite as technical or complicated, but it's just as important. And that is that you need to be blogging regularly on your website. All right. And I know this might sound so overwhelming.
00:13:46
Speaker
Like if you are like, I already have a hard time posting. I already have a hard time posting on social media. Like how am I going to keep up with blogging every week? Okay. But maybe this will motivate you. The more you update your website with new photos, with new wording, like new stories and new texts, the more it tells search engines like Google that your site is relevant. And on top of that, it also gives the bots that search your website more information about what your services are. And it can more accurately direct people to you.
00:14:16
Speaker
Okay, so in case you didn't know how Google figures out all the information on your page, it has bots. Any search engine does this, but like Google, for example, has little bots that it sends out to scan every page of every website that exists. So the more you're updating those, the more you're getting scanned and the more those bots can tell
00:14:34
Speaker
Google who needs this information.
Driving Traffic with Social Media and Blogging
00:14:36
Speaker
Who can I send this to? Okay. So this is why you see so many businesses and we're talking editors, photographers, anybody else who blog regularly. It's not just because they love it, although some of them might like it and they may find it easy, but they force themselves to keep up with it because they know how incredibly vital it is to their SEO and their discoverability online.
00:14:55
Speaker
That's crazy. I've, that's like brand new information to me as we're sitting here. Cause I've always refused to blog. My website platform always offers me like a blogging like extension. I'm like, no, but okay. No, no, take it. It can be so simple though. It can be so simple. It can literally just be you throwing.
00:15:11
Speaker
Like 10 images from a gallery and then saying, you know, this was this week's, you know Editing and it can just be so simple. The consistency is key. I think I mean, I'm not even the best at it I say this but I think I end up being more of the batch Blogging rather than regular which is so bad. We're speaking to ourselves right now guys Exactly. Exactly. This isn't you. Okay, it's us at least but so I'm trying to get better about that because I do notice a difference in the clicks on my page and
00:15:41
Speaker
and the activity on my page, the more I do that. Really? That's so cool. The more consistently I do that, exactly. And actually, you know what? Side note, too. We all love Pinterest, right? Everybody loves Pinterest. It's the best thing ever. But it's often overlooked. You should also always be posting on Pinterest. Like, you know, you can add your own posts from your camera roll. You need to be posting on Pinterest and linking back to your website. I've actually gotten quite a handful of clients from Pinterest.
00:16:09
Speaker
Really? Oh my gosh. It's really overlooked. Yeah. It's usually really overlooked, but it's kind of like a little secret. Cause you know, we all, cause think about it. Who do you know that doesn't go to Pinterest? I don't know a single person who doesn't go to Pinterest for inspiration for anything, for photo shoots, for weddings, for DIY projects. Like you should be posting everything you're proud of on Pinterest.
00:16:27
Speaker
That was how I found my editing course was on Pinterest actually, which is funny because I've never tried to advertise on Pinterest. I recently just got a PDF guide on how to do that from the heart and hustle. They gave me one and it's been sitting, I requested it because it was free and it's been sitting in my inbox for like two months and I haven't even opened it.
00:16:48
Speaker
Because I heard that recently, the same deal, like advertising on Pinterest. And I was like, there's no way, there's no way. But I've been hearing that a lot lately. So I don't have anything up on there. But I definitely want to look into it. But yeah, it's how I completely got into editing. So it can be a super good tool, I've been told.
00:17:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's true. It's true. And then we we linked videos, didn't we? Oh, yes, we did. So we thank you for the reminder. So we actually linked YouTube videos like Alo Singh before in our bio on Instagram. So we linked YouTube videos, I believe, for Wix show it in Squarespace that walk you through how to get started on changing the similar settings that we talked about today. So I know us talking about it is all great, but this is again for the visual learners or if you want to sit down
00:17:33
Speaker
and have that to watch while you go through your website so you can be really confident in what you're doing. Okay. Absolutely. So we'll have that linked in our Instagram bio by the time this goes up then. Yes. Okay. Great. Great. And we know this, yeah, we know this is a trickier side of business that might not always be fun to do, but it can definitely up level your business presence online so much.
00:17:54
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. When I learned about having to do SEO, speaking of the the editing course I took, it was towards the end of my course that we learned about SEO. So at this point, I've learned about editing, I've learned about marketing online, like I've learned about client relationships. And I was about to finish the course. And I was like, let's go ready to start my business. And then it was like SEO settings. And I was like, I don't think I'm gonna do that. Like, I just
00:18:18
Speaker
could not be bothered in the beginning but it's kind of like what we talked about with our taxes episode last week like once i sat down and could really grasp what i was doing it kind of just became fun to do i threw on a podcast threw on some music and just like
00:18:32
Speaker
I typed my little, hi, I'm Ayla, blah, blah, blah, over and over in my website, anywhere that it applied, whatever information applied. And just took like maybe two hours to go through everything and get it all done. And it was actually
Reflections and Next Episode Teaser
00:18:43
Speaker
kind of fun. So not as scary as I thought it was by any means. And I did notice a significant difference as well with my reach. I agree. I had a very similar experience, I think.
00:18:54
Speaker
Well, that wraps up our episode for today. Short and sweet. Exactly. Some clarity. Um, hopefully to our fellow small business owners, hopefully you can take these simple steps and, uh, you know, update your SEO settings. So yeah, uh, for next week's episode, we're so excited about that one too. We're going to be sharing our friendship story. We're talking about how we met some lighthearted childhood stories and how we dealt with some of the harder stuff, you know, like bullying, long distance friendship.
00:19:24
Speaker
and all of that. So really diving into like how we met and how we make our friendship work. Yeah. So excited. That's going to be such a fun one after all these information packed episodes. So definitely tune in next week to check it out. You can find us on Instagram at art of intention podcast, where you can find all of our resources about today's episode and where you can send us your questions, ideas, or just say hello. We hope you have the best week, whatever that looks like. And we can't wait to hang out with you all again next week.
00:19:56
Speaker
Bye!