SEO for Photographers by Fuel Your Photos

We often get asked, "Which website platform do you recommend for SEO?"  In this podcast, we don't really answer that question.. but we do walk you through our process of evaluating a website platform, what we look for, why, and how. 

We talk about blocking, or not blocking, AI bots from crawling your photography website. We also go into creating Custom GPTs to better handle individual tasks.

In today's episode, we discuss common reasons that people end up on a photographers website. This is part one of a two part series on optimizng your website for its users.  In the next episode, we'll use the answers from this exercise to create better content, a better user experience, and hopefully better conversions for our goals! 

Flothemes announced this week that they would be shutting down their WordPress theme operation in one year. The flex builder / flex block will not work after September 24, 2024. We talk about alternative solutions and where to go from here! We also talk to Melissa Love from Style Cloud. We take a look at Kadence themes from Sightsee as well!

We share our current WordPress stack. The domain registrars, hosting, themes, pagebuilders, and plugins that we use and recommend for photography sites.

We discuss ChatGPT (3.5 & 4.0), Google Bard / Google SGE, Github Co-Pilot,  the new Bing, and their effect on search and SEO. We then speculate on what could change in the future!

Steph ranks #1 for "Iceland Elopement Photographer", but her marketing and digital marketing is so much more than that! She's a Master Coach, Sales Expert, Photographer, and Podcast Host. Check out her free guide "25 Ways to Market Your Business As An Introvert, without relying on social media" https://www.stephzakas.com/25-introvert-marketing-freebie and more info about her Iceland Retreat https://www.stephzakas.com/iceland-retreat It's a 2-month experience starting with a group coaching micromind on June 1st to shift your money confidence and ending in a 3-day Adventure Retreat in Iceland July 17-19.  It's a metamorphosis of shedding the layers holding you down, finding clarity on your next level, and becoming radically confident it will happen. The experience will transform the top 3 reasons blocking you from your next level:  Deepening your self-confidence & what's possible for you  Shifting your relationship to money coming into your life And elevating your brand, packages, and sales skills to convey the value to the dreamy aligned clients you want to work with.   The doors to join close May 31st and the ticket includes accommodation, food during the Retreat, VIP Excursion, Planning help & coaching from Steph, and a 5-week Group Coaching Micromind. Steph's Podcast: Alchemize Your Weird

Automated testing tools can be helpful in certain circumstances, but there are also downsides. The recommendations can be inaccurate, outdated, or simply incorrect. Further, they can miss actual issues impacting your rankings! We chat about them today on the podcast.

When we do SEO consultations, we often start off by asking “what are your goals when it comes to SEO?” The response is almost *always* some form of: “I want to rank on the first page!” While it's an understandable aspiration, this type of goal is not specific or action-oriented. SEO is a broad field, with thousands of factors impacting search rankings. In reality, there is no one thing that can easily be identified as “doing SEO.” Instead, you need to identify specific tasks that can help you accomplish your goals. Knowing your objectives will enable you to select the most effective strategies and ultimately achieve better results. Having specific goals allows you to: Prioritize tasks that contribute directly to your desired outcomes Monitor your progress more effectively Refine your approach over time Communicate clearly with team members or external partners (like an SEO consultant or copywriter) With this in mind, let's dive into some specific SEO goals for photographers! While this isn't an exhaustive list of SEO strategies for photographers, it should give you some great examples of how to set specific SEO goals. Blog Post: https://www.fuelyourphotos.com/seo-goals/

Should you put your main keyword in your H1 heading? What about a secondary specialty in your H2? We talk keywords, on-page, SEO, and how to navigate these questions!

We've released our membership. The SEO course + online community. A new model for our education that will push engagement and long term results.  More info: https://fuelyourphotos.com/membership/

We spend over an hour on the hottest topic of the week, ChatGPT. We talk about how you should be using this tool, how not to use it, and how it changes the game.  See more on our blog.

We recap the history of blogging for photographers, talk about what we've recommended over the past few years, and what we might be changing going forward! 

Dylan and Corey talk about the new SEO plugin that they've both switched to for their own sites, SEOPress. They also dive into how it compares to the other popular SEO plugins, Yoast and Rank Math.

We just finished a major overhaul of the SEO for Photographers Guide over on our website. This episode takes you step by step through the entire process! 

We share five different ways you can use the site: search operator to help your SEO efforts!

In this episode, we chat about our favorite SEO browser extensions! 

We talk about typical industry benchmarks, traffic levels, metrics, and other ways to know when you've reached a good point with your SEO efforts and can scale back your work load.

We talk all things guest posting.. and have a challenge for both us and the listeners at the end!

Should you be mad if a directory or blog uses a nofollow attribute on the backlink to your site? We dive deep into the real world impact of those attributes and when/where they should be used. 

In this episode we break down Kadence WP, or current favorite lineup of WordPress theme (free), blocks (free+premium), and pro plugins. We talk about why we like it, what problems it solved, what can be improved, and the possible future path we see for it. We also link to a sizeable selection of example Kadence sites from our SEO course group members and talk about new templates available from professional designers.

First off, what is blogging? How is content marketing different?  We chat about these fun topics, what is working for photographers in 2021, and what we think the future of blogging is. 

We have monthly Q+A calls with our SEO course members and decided to record this call for our podcast! We hope they're helpful for you as well. 

We chat about our thoughts on Keyword Research for being successful with your SEO. What types of research are important and what is a complete waste of time. 

Why should you care about making money with your website? You’re a photographer after all. Is monetizing your traffic worth the time and effort? Affiliate marketing What is affiliate income?  Examples: Education promotion (courses, guides, ebooks, etc) Preset reviews/promotion Camera gear reviews/promotion Website services reviews / promotion (themes, plugins, hosting, galleries) CRM reviews/promotion (honeybook, etc) AirBNB Amazon Etsy Private affiliates with many companies (search brand + affiliate) Ad Networks Share A Sale CJ Affiliate Sell your own products Presets/Luts Templates (Instagram stories, etc) Style guides Sell your own education Consumer facing (How to take better photos with your iPhone) Industry facing- other photographers, other vendors Monetize your traffic Ad Networks (typically 10k hits /mo min) Featured spots on high traffic roundup pages (venues, vendors etc) Paid referrals to other photographers

We discuss the main factors that we check when we see that a site has been affected by an algorithm change (or seen a ranking drop).  How to use Google Search Console to see which pages / queries were affected.  How to identify changes to the search engine results pages and the underlying intent being displayed.  How to look at the data, make a hypothesis, and test it. We also included a few of our favorite algorithm tracking tools:  https://algoroo.com/ https://www.semrush.com/sensor/?db=US&category= https://moz.com/mozcast/ A few twitter accounts worth following for algorithm related news and analysis:  https://twitter.com/JohnMu https://twitter.com/sistrix https://twitter.com/searchliaison https://twitter.com/lilyraynyc A great article by Google Search Central: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/08/core-updates

Cornerstone content is a topic full of grey area, misunderstanding, and confusion. We attempt to clarify the meanings and strategies based on this idea.  We also introduce a new content type, the Hero Post. This can be a helpful way to differentiate between Cornerstone, Supporting, and Hero posts in your content strategy. 

We interview Nick Edmundson from Wandering Weddings, the directory for elopement photographers and vendors.  We get his story behind creating the site, why he continues to push forward in the space, and get more details about his recent rebrand and website redesign.  We have a great SEO discussion about the value of a backlink from directories like Wandering Weddings. Definitely listen to this episode if you're considering joining a directory.

We wanted to talk about our favorite keyword research tools and why we chose them. We originally sat down to record this episode a few weeks ago, but quickly realized that we were making claims based on our own anecdotal evidence, and not on real data.  So, we scrapped the recording, collected the data, and made this episode. The results of testing hundreds of dollars in keyword research tools will definitely surprise you. 

In this episode we discuss the options, strategies, and downsides to trying to rank in multiple markets. We also talk about how to spot locations that you can target from afar. 

Our first interview episode of the podcast is live now, and it may be the best episode yet! In this episode, we talk to Nina Larsen Reed about her success with SEO, and specifically dig into her thinking about cornerstone content. We talk about her venue guides, and not only the significant traffic that they drive, but how she used them to build real-life relationships with venue directors (and ended up on several preferred vendor lists). If you want to get a real look at how SEO pairs with smart business... this episode is for you! Nina's website: https://larsenphoto.co/ Her Boulder wedding venues guide: https://larsenphoto.co/boulder-wedding-venues/ More of her resources: https://larsenphoto.co/resources/

We break down different strategies for both improving your image search traffic and leveraging images to improve your web search rankings. 

We talk about improving performance for your photography website. What metrics to look at, which to disregard, and what tools to use.  Testing Tools Mentioned: GT Metrix https://gtmetrix.com/ Pingdom http://tools.pingdom.com/ Pagespeed Insights https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ Webpagetest https://www.webpagetest.org/ Links Mentioned: WP Speed Fix (pagespeed improvement services)https://www.fuelyourphotos.com/wpspeedfix Wordpress Hosting Recommendationshttps://www.fuelyourphotos.com/hosting Perf Matters (Wordpress plugin) https://www.fuelyourphotos.com/perfmatters Short Pixel (Image Compression Tool +plugin) https://www.fuelyourphotos.com/sp WP Rocket (Wordpress caching plugin) https://www.fuelyourphotos.com/wprocket

Today we answer three of the most asked questions from our Facebook Group.  Should I buy an exact match domain? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E98J6r9Zq0I What is the difference between a Page and a Post? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdiAHIkpwj0 What are these Blue Links and how do I get them?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40aVZ2h2Bok Don't forget to join our free 7 day SEO challenge:  https://www.fuelyourphotos.com/challenge/

We talk about the major website platforms used by photographers. Our theory is that the most beneficial information isn't what is possible on each platform, but what isn't. If you know the cons for each platform, you'll know if you can live without those features.. or what workarounds you'll need to find. We review: Squarespace Wordpress Wix Photobiz Good Gallery Pixieset If we missed a platform, let us know in the comments!

We talk about the regular tasks we do on our own SEO projects and how we organize those.  Rank Tracking Analytics Content Creation  Link Building and more.

This episode details the best situations for hiring out your blog content or other copywriting. It also covers our suggestions on when to not hire out this writing. We show examples of content that was written by different levels of copywriter, from $5-20 articles to $500+ content pieces. It should help you make the decision on how to best grow your organic traffic through great content. Tools Mentioned: https://www.ineedarticles.com/ https://www.spinmenot.io/ https://www.copyscape.com/ Examples:  https://dylanmhowell.com/big-sur-elopement/ https://www.ablazephoto.com/wedding-planners-in-columbia-sc/ SEO Course: https://www.fuelyourphotos.com/seo-course/

We talk about the differences in generic SEO advice and techniques and the specific situations and platforms photographers are typically in. 

Backlinks are the force multiplier in SEO. We show 30 different links to our photography sites and talk about what steps we took to attain them. Stay until the end for a "bonus" backlink technique that we haven't really talked about publicly. 

We talk about more advanced strategies to start trying out once you've implemented the basic optimizations on your site.