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Beginning and Advanced SEO

What I want to do is before we dig back into this as I want to continue a conversation you and I were having over lunch I don't know if you realize that was going to pick on you for this but share your story because I think it's what everyone out there is thinking right? So I was sharing this story during lunch where I said we increased our prices well I'm sorry let me take it up right yeah it was in the context off you felt like we hit the nail on the head when we said everybody does have money for what they want to have money for right and finding your client it was that grandmother and yes our star the the grid I had a grandma ahhh iris for a photo shoot for her daughter and her son in law and their kids and big money well grandma didn't actually have a lot of money but she was going to spend money on this on dh we walk into the daughter's house and it's big money I mean is multi million dollar house in this exclusive neighborhood where you have to go past two manned gates? I mean j...

ust ridiculous like searching my client's money we're in the rich absolutely and do the shoot we do more time than normal and come teo the perch preview and purchase session and she said now zero over nothing, she said we don't spend that kind of money on photos but grandma who liked our photos ah love photography she spent she actually dipped into her savings account to spend like seven or eight hundred dollars that's an amazing story so and I want to I didn't want to talk to you about that because we're sitting over lunch and you said this to me and I'm like, I'm trying to continuously drive this point home and I keep saying the same thing, right? People have money for what they want to have money for, and I always follow that with finding your client and I think all too often when you guys hear the phrase finding your client, you think I'm talking about people with money just because they have money does not mean they are your client here's a perfect case in point they don't appreciate what we do, they do not appreciate the value of art, right? It's good enough, they're indifferent, okay, so that just drives that point home and that's what I've been saying all along, we've all had an experience like that. We have to understand that our clients are the people who appreciate what we do and that can come in the form of somebody who's mid to low income let's say this doesn't matter what their income is right? That is the point it's all about perception and how they value what we're bringing to the table so great story I just wanted to build on that because I thought it was a great great story to share all right let's get back into this because we have a ton of data to continue to cover before we left we were covering a tool called joost for your search engine optimization on your web site this is a free plug in there's no reason for you not to have it on your block but we are going to continue so some of the things I'm gonna go back here for seo that we need to keep in mind we want to modify our permit links we already covered that keywords in your post title we covered that and what I want to jump to now is with all those seo pieces in mind I want to jump to the text that needs to be on the bottom of your main page this is what I'm referring to when I say that not all block sites are in fact created equally because they're not and jules new template that we showed earlier this morning there was room on the bottom of the word press site for this copy to be there this is an sio goldmine on your main page has to be on your main page not four pages deep main page who are you now? You go out to my site you could take a look at this I don't want to read all this to you I just want you to understand that on the bottom of my main page on my site below the fold right? So when you get to a web page you're scrolling up you're scrolling down before you ever have to scroll below all that you will see this copy there right it's not visually appealing don't get me wrong but from an sdo perspective it's a gold mine and what's in there are a ton off key words so all the key words from my sight and daniel I believe you're the one who asked me in here it says serving st louis the same louis metro east chicago new york city right and those are other they're not it's not keyword rich st louis wedding photography is what's keyword rich in there. Okay, so whatever your key words are, they have to be part of this copy blurb right? Is this programming no is easy to do yep. And it's gonna immediately improve your rank now, not only does it need to be on the bottom of your main page, but as you dig into your posts every post this is in a text document so I remember you guys I talked about that workflow document that I have oh at the bottom of every post there's copy there as well that is generic to my key words so you can go to some of my post and you'll see it don't overdo it, but in the bottom it's going to say st louis wedding photographer enjoy the st louis wedding for tired feet provided by salvator cincotti photography offering st louis wedding photography in the st louis metro area so danielle to your point, if I wanted to go after st louis chicago, new york, some post would have that tweet and instead of saying st louis they would say in new york city, right? So I would swap out those keywords saying for families and babies this is in a text document that every time I have a post I copy and paste it. I am not re inventing the wheel every time I have to have a post because why it would throw my work flow into a tizzy and then it would never get done right? We sit there and we were just I'll do it tomorrow do it tomorrow. Yes, how do you? So what I just say daniel mcneely photography seattle but seattle photographer and new york for I'm just confused on what words to use really one keyword right? You're not going you're not going to be ableto seo your sight on one post that is for both seattle and new york city, so you'd have to have separate posts is that making sense? Can you overdo your words? Yes, you can have too much keyword density and if you have too much keyword density ok, then what's google's going to do is think you're trying to trick it it's gonna blacklist you so yes, there is a fine line, but right now you're not doing anything right, so get started start doing something and then you'll see so I at one point my sight got blacklisted, so my sight went from showing up on page two. This was in the beginning google changed his algorithms, right, which they're inclined to do just like facebook, they change it overnight we went from page to to non existent you couldn't find us on page twenty, and then my developer had to do some research for me. It turned out it was too keyword heavy, I had to prove some of that boom we showed right back up after about two weeks, right back up on page two and then eventually we moved up to the number one slot, so just start because I have nothing right now, right? And then see where I land on google search that is right tweaking it these the best advice I can give you is it is a journey, not a destination you do not think I'm going to do this and I'm done right? And then I just follow this it's a constant nurturing off the process and seeing what's working what's not working, so I hope that makes sense cause that's very important. So do you put that at the bottom of every post? We're starting to put this at the bottom of every post, so a year ago you go look at a post from a year ago, no, now we're starting to put that at the bottom of every post don't think you have to go back and make everything retroactive just started moving forward making these changes and you'll start seeing all of a sudden if you google those keywords, you'll see. Whoa, this this one post, not even my sight. The post is coming back on page three that's kind of cool because now if I go type scene lewis wedding photographer, I'm showing up number one, but maybe I'm on page number two page number five for various posts, so the main site might be coming back on page one, but then some of the posts are coming back in subsequent pages and mix it up right? Throwing engagement photos, switch up keywords when you're posting so that you don't become too keyword heavy and then you're not showing up, you know you're only showing up for one thing great questions, right? So seo next steps these become a little bit more advanced topic, so the topics like to write your first, not necessarily harder there just a little bit more advanced, a bit more involved, and I think you need to be aware of them because that will in fact, impact your, uh, your next steps here. Content pages. We're going to talk about this content pages are a great way I don't want to say trick this system, but it's definitely way to manipulate the system. How about we go with that? I'm not sure one words better than the other, but you get the point. I'll drill into that in a second. You want to verify your local listings on both being and google? This actually does matter. You know, if you go to google places you guys all have glazed look over your rv arise if you type in your studio name, okay, if you don't come up on google maps, you don't have your place your local listing identified yet you need to do that, yes, so we office out of our home and we don't want our address to show up. That's a great objection by that you don't get around it there's nothing you can do if you don't you know if you don't have like a uh appeal box isn't gonna do you any good but if you don't have a physical location that you can use which I would guess a lot of people out there in this boat you don't and you don't want to put sent him to your house that's fine, but you're not gonna be able to claim your google places therefore that's going to impact you a little bit on the part it's not I don't want to believe like if you don't do this you're ranking is going to be horrible ah it's just this helps you well we had the same issue and so what we did is we used ups they have p o boxes but they don't list it as a p o box well that's good so there's your cereal that so you're using the actual physical ups store location they say sweet one twenty four but that's actually that she'll walk on google places yes okay, perfect right cause you can't cause what'll happen is google objecting go wait a minute it can't be both ups and you so it's the sweet it's a suite number number that allows you separated so there you go did you claim your your place on google places yes, we did. Okay, so that's gonna help you? So make sure you have that, uh, set up for you. Same for being you need what's called a three. Oh, one redirect and this sounds a little bit more complicated than it is, so if you go toe dub dub, dub dot south and kata dot com or dub dub dub dot x y z dot com that's your girl, what happens if I type in south and kata dot com? Is that a separate page or is it a separate is it a redirect? Hope everybody understands what I'm asking you. You cannot have two versions of the same pages on your site and if your developer, you that's why I said there's a little more advanced, we have to talk to your developer or you're hosting company to understand what's going on you if you don't have a redirect, that means google start seeing right two posts or two pages for every single post you make and it's going to start deeming them redundant pages and it's gonna impact your ranking. This is very, very important. You don't want to duplicate pages you want what's called the three oh one redirect talk to you're hosting company talk to your developer, right, so if you're hosting, just ask them backto I have two sets of pages or to have what's called the three oh one redirect right so understand that two things happen when I go to dub dub dub dot si dot com or just goto asi dot com they should both resolve on your site right if I just type in your website name right jeff and jules dot com will I end up at your website? Ah jewels I should but my ending up to a separate version of your site that's being handled on the back end that's very important so look into that make sure all your key words have what's called an h one or h to tag this is in your wordpress blawg you highlight your thing just like you're in a word document and you make it bold right? So for sake of simplicity by making your keywords bold you are in fact telling the search engines this is important text and you want your key words to be bold id it's a very simple thing to do but if you're not doing it consistently you're telling you're sending the wrong message into your search engines add unique content all the time static content it starts peeling off on the ranking you've got to keep your pages fresh hence why in jewels your new version of the site that justin created and even on the south's and kata dot com website if you go to arm each main page there's sections that say recent post and that's keeping the page fresh and those post have my key words in them that's the key so it'll say lynch st louis wedding photography and that's key because now again the search engines are constantly coming your sight and I got all this page was updated again it's updated again there's relevant content we're going to rank it higher and higher hence why when you have a flash website that's not happening everybody with me try to get links from reputable sites using keywords I showed that earlier we want sites out there whether it's local flores local dress shops local beauticians that have an established website try and get them find a way to link back to your site that's gonna help your ranking it gives you credibility it's like a referral right let's say you're looking for somebody like hey, I'm looking for somebody to do my hair okay, great who would you recommend? I'm looking for a dentist? Who would you recommend? Same concept for google if google sees an established site linking back to your site it's telling google this site is a trusted site and that helps your ranking again all these little things start to add up keywords in your u u r l right jules we pointed that out in my earl I want city so st louis dash wedding dash photography I'm sorry we were talking about your block post I'm actually talking about buying the earl right now for your sight now, about a year ago I was on tour and I was on my wedding tour and I talked about this and a bunch of people went out for ten bucks bought their city if you own the earl with your city hence I own st louis wedding photography you own that that girl is keyword rich your girl is in the keyword you guys with me so denver wedding photography is it available? I don't know, but if it is, you need to go buy it like on the next break. It's ten bucks. Okay, so go by this that is gonna help with your ceo is well, having that key words in there, right? So hopefully your husband's watching and he goes and buys it yeah, jeff she's making eyes at you go buy it. Okay, so, um, that because that's easy enough to do okay? And it doesn't have to be that it could be any variation of it right it's about what the key words are so it could be saint dash louis dash wedding dash r v dot com or photos dot com right? Just get your key words in there, be creative with your city on dh what you're going to add in there for your key words ok so baby photography boudoir photography start thinking that way glamour photography how your client searching does you no good to own st louis glamour photography if nobody searches that way so I understand that right sue is started this just revival of what's glamour photography but our clients in sync with that yet is that how they're searching we have to figure that out we have to start asking those questions because I gotta buy the key words based on what they're searching for not what we think it should be called that's my point quick question about the keywords in the earl would you then do a three on redirect her would you have a mini site with that you could have a mini side thing about what you can start doing here that's a great question so you by let's say we buy uh were you out of orange county california orange county california let's just say we bought california uh what's what's the closest city though is it l a yeah irvine irvine's so let's just say you bought irvine wedding photography let's just stick with that for a second okay dot com that is going to start ranking on that page on irvine wedding photography on that site I would expect you to create what's called the content paige and I will show you that in a second you're basically creating dummy content on that page and on that page gets what you're gonna do link back to your main sign so orange s o uh irvine wedding photography dot com is yours you build content you put legit content out there like how to select a wet an irvine wedding photographer and you give ten steps on how to select in irvine wedding photographer that's legit content yet it's dummy content okay, and on there as that page starts ranking you're gonna link back to your very own site to find are you looking for in irvine wedding photographer question mark if you're looking for an irvine wedding guitar for click this link for an irvine wedding photographer and that link is back to you okay you with me? Yes quick questions of course dot coms really tough to come by for example, both ofyou denver wedding photography and irvine wedding photography are taking somebody's out there taking sales advice previously however, nowadays of course you could buy dot co dot info dot us etcetera. Would you recommend picking up some of those dot info as well or know that dot com dot coms will rank higher based on google's algorithms dot coms will rank higher if they're not available though, but you still say, you know I would find some variation of it that is available right so put a dash somewhere something like that because ultimately even though somebody owns st louis another variation of st louis wedding photography. They're not optimizing that site, so mine is still going trend higher than theirs. So, yes, the dotcom according to google algorithms, will trend and rank higher than if you buy a dot code up is or dot info. Okay, so keep that in mind. Um, keep ages is close to the root directory is you can that's very important. Remember we talked about that earlier? We don't want south and conta dot com slash two thousand thirteen slash your four slash fifteen slash slash slash you're telling google this page is in the basement it's not that important. And so these air simple things again that you can do if you just follow this formula, this recipe that are going to help you start trending now I want to come all the way back to the very first thing I started with which was this content page. If you go to south and kata dot com, you will see this and right across the top here you see south and co dot com information slash I built this page just on my main site, so I didn't even create a sub site and it's st dash louis dash wedding photographer this is a dummy page, so the speak the header is saying loose wedding photographer um seeing those wedding photographer salvador cicada offer st louis brides the very best in st louis wedding photography you probably heard me talk about this before are you getting married in st louis who will be your st louis wedding photographer and this goes on on five to ten ways to select a st louis wedding photog so I'm creating educational content and then linking back this is all my main site but I can also put a link there and went back to the home page what I'm suggesting you do is buy irvine wedding photography or for seniors dot com some variant thereof get that page too right because it will rank quicker and then link back to your own sites you've got this very nice circle going on for you and all it cost his ten bucks and maybe some extra hosting is that making sense you ever think of doing something mike she said no not really but yes yeah so this is an easy thing to do again it's all gonna help this is a game search engine optimization is a game it's a never ending game we want trained highly I get seven to ten wedding requests a week not seven to ten bookings a week seven to ten wedding requests per week I'm ok if they don't all book I'm ok if they don't all come in for a meeting but I'm generating all these new leads just from ceo so how much money is that? Ultimately saving me on other marketing and advertising so it's well worth the investment yeah, quite a quest coming infront online and you touched on it briefly but but lala and tear into real photography says about how long after you implement all of these depths al, do you start to see results in the beginning? When you started doing this you daughter seeing results? How soon? That is a great question, actually. And there's a multifaceted answer that's tied to it google actually age your sight so for example, if I buy a new girl right now okay, bye de facto it's probably going to sit in limbo for six months to a year before it'll start moving up if it's a brand new girl because it has no history tied to it. Now if you have your existing site and you start making these changes and your sight has been aged, you will start seeing this stuff happened near immediately. I've made post on behind the shutter dot com and south and kata dot com and within a week it's already trending on page two or three of google because google's looking for current new content that ranks higher but your sight has to be aged your girl has to be aged that's a good question let's take a few more questions before I go on pickle questions from social media on twitter rafael sotomayor uh asked do you recommend having a website and a blonde or just a block and use it as a website? Uh so yes to both I have a website that the foundation of the website is in fact ah blog's so if you go to south and kata dot com, it might look like a website, but the engine underneath is wordpress and I'm a big fan google being are big fans of ah wordpress so I would recommend getting a wordpress site but having it customized in tweet to look like not look like a blawg but look like a website with a block back end so yes to both and depiction by amy says the stuff he's talking about works I have a dummy page exactly like this on my side I started drinking my page one on google search just a few days after posting that so makes a big difference that's awesome! So she pride saw us talk about this once before actually went out and did it and does work so that that's the key that's why I said, you know when we started off this session earliest morning stop making excuses man like get out there this stuff works I'm telling you how we were in our business there's no reason for you to fail it works go do it well what else let's take one more monster wants to know if google looks for made it at it in their image is google uh so some of that stuff the metadata in the images some of it's going to be looked at some of it's going to be ignored your best better what's called all tags for your imagery that's what's gonna matter most facebook is going to strip some of that metadata but ultimately what you want to know his name your image name with your key words and add all tags for the imagery so that it has er limited the tags in there as well your key words I should say so very good question question after you I'm sure a lot of people watching this again whether it's a photography business or something else a lot of people are saying I didn't sign up for all of this I just want to take photos well you did sign up for this when you started a business correct yeah that's absolutely right that's a funny story you are in fact business people welcome to reality so if you want to be a weekend warrior and you want to work a lot to make a little bit of money have at it but if you want to make real money this is why you're here so if you want to make money you have to be ten percent fifteen percent photographer eighty percent business person that's it that's reality you can sit there and argue with me all you want. Tell me how it can't work can't be done and then we're just gonna keep handing you your ass day in and day out because we're competitors ultimately. So I love you as my fellow photographer. I want you to be successful, but at the end of the day, we are still competitors. So we have to run a real business. And in order to be successful, you ar fifteen percent guitar for twenty percent photographer, eighty percent business person and that's that's the world we live in, man. So let's, keep going. All right, mauricio, don't link to a lot of outbound sites. You will actually be penalized for this, so don't go out and start connecting to all these sights. For example, you get this list of vendors now. You got ten vendors from a wedding on your side. Who did the dress? Who did the hair? Who did the make up? And you start shooting all these outbound links to all these other sites. You are going to be punished from an sio perspective. Okay? Because google's gonna look at your side and think it's a dummy site just selling links. Okay, so that's something that people do they sell inbound links decides to get google ranking up google's figured this out don't put that on your site try and try and not link out as much as you can don't host with ah hosting company that has a reputation for hosting spammer's so for example if there's ah hosting company out there that has a bad reputation and just google you know blacklist hosting providers something like that you might find it a list of names if you have ah name of some low in hosting company because you're trying to save ten dollars a month you are going to get blacklisted because every domain that sits at this hosting company looks like it's coming from them and you're going to get blacklisted because of something someone else did on that domain so I hope that that really does make sense avoid more than ten words in your earl oh right so we can have a million keywords in the earl I know we talked about this rage and jewels earlier on we can't have all these key words there because that's also not going it's gonna hurt your ranking not help it so be very focused don't try and optimize for more than two to three key words per page so danielle we were talking about this I want to do miami I want to do new york wherever it is you want to do two to three key words per page on your block and you're fine okay don't go nuts trying to keyword all these different phrases I do want to take a slight pause here before we drill into this anymore because I want to talk about blog's I'm about to drill into facebook blog's block questions we covered a lot both before and after launch girls, gentlemen, how we doing internet? How we doing? Let's take some questions here, questions over here in the audience has grabbed the microphone anytime I think we have a question here online. All right? We always have questions for self from the internet. All right? So, uh, k g b s ask should you combine categories in the same domain such a cz seniors and family and one domain or get separate domains for each? This is something we see a lot here, a similar question that creative live you know it, it might come down to just personal preference. I don't think you have to create new domains for each like seniors, families, babies. I like the idea of categories create category, so if you go to our site, you'll see under information we'll have a slide show for seniors, a slideshow for engagements and one for weddings again our core business, then you can create categories on your blawg that are tied to seniors baby's families whatever your niches are so that in your girl it'll read something to the effect of south and kata dot com slash weddings slash boom right storm or keywords there in fact you could take it to a whole new level make your category your key word so now your category is st louis weddings new york weddings and now under that so your girl is gonna have your key word in there twice that camp that's not gonna be a bad I think that was a good question. We have another question here and I think is a really relevant one something we're talking about actually when the cameras were not rolling in that topic coming from our spirit time management, eh? So you are the director of business development sales customer manager, product development, etcetera not to mention the photographer under their function sow how do you manage your time? And if you guys know if you look behind the scenes right here sal has an awesome team but let's talk about the days before there was ah massive team massive okay, but a team behind you yeah that's actually a great question and so let's let's talk about that a little bit again let's rewind we had very humble beginnings just like many of you two thousand seven it was just it actually started off just me myself on then quickly I got busy and I wrote to my wife into this. So she was in corporate america to she graduated with a marketing degree, rope turin. Then then, very quickly. After that business continued to grow, we had either outsource or add staff, and we decided to outsource a big part of the business. And then we decided to add staff where it needed to be. So you look at two thousand seven gross sales, just photography, not for all the other businesses we have. Fifty k you fast forward. Last year, the photography part just salvador cincotti photography crossed the million dollar mark in sales from photography on lee and video. That being said, how the hell do we do it? It is not me doing all the work. It would be impossible for me to do it alone. I have a team of amazing, talented people behind me. So there has to be a point when you're growing your business where you when you realize you're hitting a wall. It's, time to outsource what you outsource he's totally up to you. I could care less. And if you think about it, you do a sense of outsourcing today, don't we? You don't make your own prints, do you? You outsource that to a lab some people do I know there's people out there to find artwork and they want to do that part themselves more power to you but you can't do it all yourself so you have to start picking as we look at your growth plan and on sunday we're going to do that we're gonna start talking about what is your thirty, sixty, ninety year plan and how the hell you going to get there? Because if I had to shoot, edit market, have sales presentations, take customer phone calls, handle my finances right the banking and the tax returns and do all this stuff myself I'd probably get like ten weddings a year done and have no time to do anything else especially be here so it is a team of people behind me that makes it happen, you know? And on sunday I think I'm gonna bring those guys out here because everybody sees me and I'm like, you know, the dancing monkey and I'm doing my thing but ultimately right? I've got five or six strong people behind me that make all of this possible and someday each of you will need a team behind you to hit the goals and targets that you set for yourself, so I'd love to follow up on that question because you spend so much time today talking about workflow and getting great systems in place for our studio audience well, one of you are two of you volunteer talk a little bit how you would describe how you are when it comes to time management is successful for you d do you struggle with it any of you? I think they're afraid to talk about it more than anything else is a reach um well, I have a full time day job so time management and my husband and I are in the business together and I have we have two kids together so time management is a big part of how we were able to run our business that's a perfect what you're saying is perfect because I guarantee you a majority of the audience all of us have been there where we're working one job, right? So back in oh seven I was working a full time job at microsoft doing this on the side but there comes this point where you go I got to jump if I want to do this full time, I have to take the lead because there's no other way to do it what's your plan to get there right? I'm assuming you're sitting here right now and from your video this is ultimately what you want that's your dream this your passion? How the hell do we get you there, right, right and it can't happen the way it is today how are you editing news sure does all the editing on dh he does all the photo shoots and I do all the a sales and marketing um so during lunch breaks and ah, bathroom breaks I go and I'm going to make a move on your laptop that work on your clients want to know that no, no, no well, there's well, I say bathroom breaks, but really I'm going outside making phone calls and things like that and we're by an airport so they can hear like, airplanes going by and things like that, but yeah, I'm just whenever there's a break whenever there's an opportunity I'm using it I'm not just taking a break, I'm working toward our goal and we have to and that's fine right in the beginning you know, I called sweat equity these are the things you have to do to build your business. It's not easy if it was easy, everyone would be doing it right that's why we're here today it's not easy it's hard work but the blueprint if you well isn't complicated, I hope that makes sense, right? The blueprint is simple the blueprint to your building I'm giving to you in this course the implementation of that blueprint is hard, it is a lot of work and at some point you're gonna have to figure out that work life balance how much time you spend with your kids? What party of business makes sense to outsource? Can you save a thousand dollars by not outsourcing your taxes to an accountant? You short ken, you don't have the time to do that, right? That's where that workflow question comes into play, we've gotta have a scale ability plan for you and your business, you know, uh, you know what about you, man? Talk to me. Well, I'm on the same boat as she just said I'm paying cars full time, really hoping to quit that this summer, but yeah, I get home enough time to breathe for about ten seconds go right down the studios are editing usually down there till ten eleven o'clock at night um sleep for a few hours and get up do it again that's where we have to that's where we have to figure out what is the scalability plan, not only for you, but for all of you out there what's the plan when because you are right now you're spending your time, all of you, I guarantee it doing things that are not geared towards growing the business, you're doing things that are geared just to keeping the business above water, right? You're trying to float post production work, it is not something that's gonna help you grow the business you are not going to grow your business because you're an amazing white balance person. That is not gonna happen like dude, you are the master of the yet no that's not what's gonna grow your business right? What's gonna grow your business is taking that time you do have and focusing on the marketing on things like this, right? So seo comes up all the marketing tips and tricks we're going to talk about here over the next two and a half days that's where I got to get you to go your time that's the long answer to that question. Great. Well, guess you think about a lot of people here, not just with this course, other creative. Of course people have nine to fives, but they also have the five two nines which could be the photography business that's. Why it's so important right now to get those systems and his work flows in place. So when you do decide to leave and go on one hundred percent those things already in place with those processes that's a great point. Antonio, if those processes air not in place when you punch out, you're going to drown, I guarantee it. We worked really hard at making sure we had all these processes in place. All this stuff was nailed down before I punched out