Ashley Freehan  0:00  
You're good. Okay, awesome. Hey there, Kyle, welcome to the show. I am so excited to have you here with us today, and cannot wait to talk to you about SEO. I know this is such a loaded topic, and there is so much information out there. And so I'm just so excited to get your perspective on it. But before we get started, please go ahead and introduce yourself. Let our listeners know who you are, who you live with and what you do.

Kyle Goldie  0:27  
Yeah, so my name is Kyle Goldy. The nutshell about me is I can ramble. It's one thing I'm good at. I've been a photographer myself for 15 years, got my business degree and quickly realized after I graduated that I just wanted to work for myself. Because the very first job I had out of university was working for a Google Ads management company. They specialized in the automotive industry. And that's where I learned to live and die by data. And I'm very thankful for that part of my initial job because I quit, I think after only four or five months, because I hated working for them. But then when I really wanted to identify, hey, I want to work for myself, I picked up my dad's camera. And that was how I got going because I couldn't afford my own at the time. And I started to photograph landscapes. And just because I enjoyed the wilderness, I'm from the Pacific Northwest. And that brought me into the world of photographing color contrast, textures, and just kind of brought me out into really different types of light that existed depending on where I was traveling. Over time, I got kind of bored with it. And I wanted to challenge and so that was now photographing people in those landscapes. And I eventually, I'm saying this in the fastest way possible, because I know it's a huge story. But I ended up in the fashion industry, because I didn't know how to go work with people. I didn't know how to go market myself. And what existed at the time was something called model man. And I pulled from people that were calling themselves models, let's say because I'm not professional ones. But I was able to essentially just say, Hey, let's go, you know, go shoot this really cool idea that I have at this particular location. This particular time, built my name and that industry over the course of about six years, ended up working for some pretty cool companies, Esquire, Amazon, Adidas Gold's Gym, Aveda. And they're working for publications like Harper's Bazaar, Esquire, hospitality companies like Hilton Hyatt, Marriott, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Eventually, through the fashion industry, I met a woman who's now my wife. So in terms of who I live with, I live with my adorable wife. Her name is Hayley. We've been married since 2016. And we got two little cute Yorkie poos. They're about six pounds each. And I don't have any kids. I know we're on a podcast here that, you know, talks to a lot of parents. But we tried to get pregnant for quite some time. And just were not able to. And so eventually, we're like, alright, well, sands, kids, let's go have some fun in life. So then we started just traveling around more. And that got us more interested in the wedding space, the elopement space, because then we were able to go destinations and whatnot too. And because of my former career as the Google Ads Manager, I lived and died by data. And now I know to go look at the data and then go optimize things for SEO. So then people are gonna go find me for free instead of paying into Google ads. So that went down a huge rabbit hole there for the next six or seven years or so until this point here, where now I'm shooting far less, almost no clients at this point, out of health reasons, like I'm nearly six, three, and like six, two and a half. And I've worked with over 2000 clients now in my career. And so when I'm in that position to get like the right angle, and the client, especially long days, I've destroyed my back. So just out of health and pain and recycled to I really want to go photograph stuff as much as I used to. Because I'm 38 at this stage of my life, and I'm just like, hey, let's go do some different stuff. So that's me in a nutshell. There's obviously huge, long stories I can ramble on about but yeah, that's me. I

Ashley Freehan  4:27  
love it. Well, thank you so much for sharing all that. That is so nice for our listeners to be able to know just a little bit about you. A lot of them may already have heard of you might already know who you are, but may have not heard the backstory there. So thanks for sharing that. I think the topic that we're about to dive into is just, it's really loaded. And I think for our listeners here today, a lot of them really know the basics of SEO. They're kind of familiar with it. They maybe know why it's important, but in case they need a refresher in case they're really You're totally brand new. Can you just give us your take on what SEO is and why it's important?

Speaker 1  5:05  
Yeah, so I'll, on this podcast episode here, I'll do my best to speak to people who are both beginners as well as people that are a bit more advanced with it to kind of help out both kind of segments of who's gonna be tuning in. Seo, in short is for search engine optimization. The plain English is are you wanting to be found on Google and you get more people finding you through a free resource where people can just type in your area, your job title, ideally, you pop up, they love your website, they want to go inquire. I love it, because we're getting in front of people 24 hours a day, seven days a week for free. The common things that most people know is that, hey, I live in this town. This is my job title. So let's say hypothetically, like you're a Kansas City newborn photographer, then great, then you're going to probably know already, I should probably try to rank for that. So I'm going to go write my homepage SEO title is meeting a Kansas City newborn photographer. But that's where a lot of photographers just like well, I did that. Why am I not on page one now? And then it becomes this huge rabbit hole of what's next? What else do I have to go do to build trust in the eyes of Google to help me rank higher for my target keywords and what other keywords exist that I should be creating to get in front of again, that target market? And that's a huge conversation. But in short, let's go get on Google to get more free leads for your business.

Ashley Freehan  6:30  
Yes, I love it. I love the like recap and the shortness because that's super helpful. And SEO can feel really overwhelming as you kind of just alluded to the fact that hold on, are we still recording? Okay, good. Something just popped up on my computer and it went blank for a second. So what happened? Okay, so a lot of people feel overwhelmed with SEO, as you just alluded to the fact that people sometimes think it's sort of like a one and done situation where they SEO for a certain page, and then they're done with their website. And we know that it goes deeper than that, right? There is more SEO that needs to happen to kind of help keep their rankings higher. So what can you recommend? Or where would someone start when they are first thinking of like, what is proper SEO strategy? Where do they even begin?

Kyle Goldie  7:30  
For most people, because it will be different depending on the individual. And but most people I recommend to start out with SEO keyword research. Because we need to know what your ideal client is googling for if we don't want to guess what needs to get done. So as an example, if your stick with the same examples we use before of a Kansas City newborn photographer, well, if that's what we're trying to think of what people are googling for, let's go double check. There's some cheap tools that exist out there. The professional grade ones are things like SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz, et cetera. But for most photographers, they're expensive tools, they don't want to pay for them. Because they're typically over $100 a month for a lot of times, depending on the tool. That said, what I recommend for most photographers, especially when they're just getting going with their SEO, grabbed the Keywords Everywhere, Google Chrome extension, it's only $10 for the whole year. And you only need the baseline, I think it's called bronze at the moment, they've been known to change the naming of their subscription periodically provide now it's called bronze, it's 10 bucks, it's cheap, get the tool, it's worthwhile. That way, when you go into Google, and you're using the Google Chrome extension, you can just type into Google, Kansas City newborn photographer, or whatever your target keyword is, right below the search bar in Google, it'll tell you the search volume, the average cost per click if you to run a Google ad campaign based on the algorithm, as well as the competition. So now let's say you're typing in Kansas City newborn photographer and pulls up with like 200 people per month that look for a thing. That's awesome. Most photographers are not trying to book 200 clients per month. But it's at least telling us that's how many people roughly that are Googling for that keyword in that in that given month, on average. What I want you to do beyond it is look up all the different variants. So look up Kansas City, newborn photography, Kansas City, newborn photos, Kansas City, newborn pictures Kansas City newborn, and that's it or just go que si, newborn photographer, Casey, newborn photography, or whatever other variants you can come up with that you just think I wish that there was like a golden magical tool that we can, you know, go to your competitors website, click a button and just spits out this is exactly what to go do. But that does not exist. Believe me, I wish that it did. So we have to get in the mindset of your ideal client avatar. What do you think that they're Googling for? You test out those theories with that tool that I just mentioned, any goal down the rabbit hole, where a lot of photographers get stuck with their keyword research is when they don't live in a major city. And now that say they live in a suburb just outside of one. And now let's say, on top of that, that the city that they live in or suburb that they live in is a bit more, let's say filled with wealthy people, it's higher income area, and they're gonna think, Oh, well, the wealthy people live here, they might be Googling for that area, because they grew and think it's a better experience here compared to the biggest city that's near me, that might not be as well to do. But that's all we got to go use the tool. Because most often, when you're living in a suburb near a major market, the people even in the wealthier areas, they don't google for stuff in that wealthier area all the time. It's most often with just the user behavior. When people search around on Google, hey, the best thing is gonna be in the biggest city that's near me. So we gotta just double check with key research at the foundation to understand what they're Googling for, for the transactional keywords. Transactional keywords is your area plus your job title, we then also have to be identifying what I call, don't google for this because this does not exist in the internet. I just call it this. But your brand awareness, keywords, brand awareness, keywords have nothing to do with you being a photographer, but has everything to do with your ideal client avatar who's living in that area. So as an example, let's stick with the same example of this Kansas City newborn photographer thing. So your target market is going to be a pregnant woman who's living around Greater Kansas City. With all that, we then have to really think about this person in this area who is pregnant, what are the googling for as part of their life journey that they're currently on? So they might be looking around for Kansas City midwives, Kansas City, doulas, Kansas City birthing centers, Kansas City, X y&z whatever other thing that's tied to their pregnancy journey. So those become blog posts, but depending on again, keyword research, we got identify at the foundation, what people are googling for, so we can get in front of the people googling for that stuff for free. This is where photographers get stuck. And this is where some educators out there equally say, Why the hell would you blog about shit that has nothing to do with you being a photographer? Well, it's brand awareness. That's why I call it brand awareness. Keywords, has nothing to do with you being a photographer in the title. But if they happen to go click on the article, now they know that you exist. And then within the article, you damn well sure talk about you being a photographer, and you have calls to action to go visit your portfolio still to go inquire still, if they don't want to go acquire nurture them somehow lead magnet of whatever is in alignment with you. But it all starts to answer your question simply with keyword research. And using that tool, it's a cheap tool. There's no reason why anybody can't use it.

Ashley Freehan  12:58  
Yes, that's all such great information and the Keywords Everywhere. I'll be sure to link that in the show notes so that people can just easily go find it. But you mentioned like so many amazing things that I just kind of want to like circle back on. And I do have a question. But I like that you say to use the keyword variants of how other people might search it. Because I think as photographers, we think, Oh, this is what people would search for. But even when you searched on Google or you ask other people like what would you search for? If you were looking for a photographer in Kansas City, for example, right? Like, they might have a completely different way to look at that and a way to search that. So I think that's really important that you mentioned the variance, and the brand awareness keywords is gold. That is so important, too. I talk about that a lot in my program as well. And how it's important to have blog posts that necessarily aren't about photography, but that reach that ideal market. But circling back to the Keywords Everywhere you mentioned, like volume of like how many people are searching? Do you have sort of like a rule of thumb of like, which to what to look for? Does volume matter?

Speaker 1  14:08  
Good question. Glad you asked that. So with volume, the way that I want to go look at this is one keyword research a batch of the effort, figure out all the different keyword options, and then look at the Google Sheet of data after you have this big long list so that we don't get stuck in the weeds here. Once you have this big long list, ideally, let's say inside of the Google Sheet, or however you want to track the data. Ideally, we want to look at the stuff that has this highest search volume first, right because we're getting in front of the most amount of people with a singular keyword, one topical page or post or whatever you want to create the content around. After we have the target keywords figured out what the highest search volume, well, where do we keep going and where do we stop? Like is the one that has the 10 search volume per month is not even worth it? Well, the way that I really kind of answer that question to let's say, a photographer who averages hypothetically just for easy math here $1,000 per session, if you go book 10 of those 10, how much money you just make per month made $10,000? So do you still want to go create the article course you do, is that lower priority? Biggest variable there is in the transactional versus the brand awareness. Because if it's transactional, and let's say it's Kansas City milestone photographer, hypothetically, and there's not many people googling for it, specifically, it's still more likely to turn into business, compared to you writing an article, all about Jane Smith, a midwife that happens to live in the area. And those people have no intention of looking for a photographer with that, that keyword. So that would become much lower priority, compared to the transactional keyword that still has the same amount of search volume. So there's variables that exist there. But yeah, eventually, all of it.

Ashley Freehan  15:58  
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think too, you might, I don't know if you would agree with this. But I would say that you might want to stay away from like keywords that have a lot of competition, maybe because there's probably other people creating that same content. And so if there's maybe a lower market, maybe peak or like a lower volume, maybe people aren't creating that content. So maybe you have a better opportunity of reaching those, what would you say about

Speaker 1  16:23  
that, there is a better opportunity to have your content get towards page one faster if you do find the lower competition keywords 100%. That said, the higher competition stuff is typically higher competition for a reason, not all the time. But a lot of times, as an example, the transactional keyword of Kansas City newborn photographer, will all the newborn photographers in that area, they're gonna try to gun after that keyword, because that's what people are googling for to find them. So I still put that as top number one priority. It's just, it usually doesn't, you know, get towards page one quickly, because it's so competitive. And because in addition to that, a lot of photographers when they're getting going with their SEO, they typically don't have a lot of trust built in the eyes of Google. And so in terms of, let's say, backlinks, number one, topical and relevant content across their website, number two, internal link structure number three, and the quality of their on page SEO, it's like the Titles and Meta descriptions, the alt text, heading tags, structure, etc, all stuff, technical bits that overwhelm photographers. But we want to start high priority with the transactional keywords. Beneath that is your brand awareness keywords. Even though we're not getting towards page one, let's say within the first 30 days, because that's almost instant in the world of SEO, with the transactional content, you still want to go optimize for it. And we still want to go build those backlinks. But while we're waiting to get towards page one for those big primary, highly competitive transactional keywords, we want to be cranking out the blog posts to get in front of that lower hanging fruit, the less competition, so we can still be building the brand awareness, still having people find the content, find the website, and ideally, still go inquire. If they don't inquire. That's why we want that lead magnet. So we can get people on the email list or into your social media somewhere, whatever kind of workflow that you choose for your so called funnel here to get people in your world.

Ashley Freehan  18:31  
Okay, I think that makes sense. So, if I'm understanding what you said correctly, we still want people to be looking for those higher volume, keywords. And they that should be a priority for them

Speaker 1  18:46  
transactional. So you can imagine, like, there's two different pyramids, just to kind of a visual way of saying this in one little pyramid, one bucket, whatever you want to use, you got transactional, so the area plus job title, we start with all the transactional stuff first area plus job title, brand awareness stuff that would become secondary to the transactional. Because if we have, let's say, just for math here, let's say we got 500 people per month searching for something transactional, and 500 people per month searching for something that's brand awareness. They're not treated with equal priority. We go after the transactional stuff first, just because they're looking for a photographer in the area within those niches, and then the brand awareness stuff in that secondary bucket, a secondary pyramid of content. That's where we go after that stuff later. And by later I don't mean necessarily months later, or even weeks later, I just mean, after the transactional stuff is optimized, and the content is being pushed out.

Ashley Freehan  19:46  
Okay, and then when you say the transactional stuff, the location plus job description, is that are we talking just simply on the website optimizing or are we talking about blogging now? Did we cross it off? Question.

Kyle Goldie  20:02  
This is such a common thing as well, because a lot of times, photographers and I don't even mean just photographers. And now I'm kind of talking about just entrepreneurs in general who are kind of working on their SEO, they don't really think of their blog being a part of the website, they almost think of it as the secondary entity. But you really gotta consider that everything blog verse page, it's just content. And it's living on the domain, the singular domain. So blog verse page, how I want you to think about this in terms of your SEO is that it's no different. The only real difference is in the conversion of the traffic. Because us as photographers, we need to get our portfolio there in this beautiful presentation, kind of like you're walking to a fine art gallery, but it's a website instead of a brick and mortar location. So a lot of times, not every time, there's lots of variables attached to this. A lot of times I'm recommending that your your transactional keywords, be the pages on the website. So you can kind of control the design a bit more. So feels more sophisticated, more high end. Whereas most often brand awareness, content, brand awareness, keywords exist within the blog. But again, not all the time. It's not a hard and fast exclusive rule. Because sometimes when you have certain brand awareness content that exists out there, you can get really creative with the design make it feel really polished. By having it on a page, compared to a blog, that's going to feel like a blog, and you can't really control the aesthetic too much.

Ashley Freehan  21:37  
Okay, that definitely helps a lot. Thank you. I'm like taking notes, because I also want to like circle back and yeah, and keep track of what we're talking about here. So on that note, when we're talking about your actual website versus your blog, is blogging, like how does blogging really fit in to ranking higher on Google? Because I think a lot of photographers, they understand the importance of blogging, but especially like our listeners, right now, they either might have a blog that they're not consistent with, or they know they need one, but they're really overwhelmed with starting one. So can you share with us a little bit about do does the blog necessary? How does it work with rankings? And do these photographers need one?

Kyle Goldie  22:23  
Yeah, this is for some reason, controversial, and I don't even know why it's so weird. Like, with you. It's such this thing inside of especially Facebook groups of you know, sell and sell says I don't need to go blog to go rank higher, but so and so different person says they absolutely need to and other person says oh, you could but doesn't really matter and doesn't have to be that often? Like what the hell is the right answer? Yeah. So after all, the data that I've tested over the years, do you absolutely need to go blog? No, is the answer period, you don't need to if you're trying to rank for your transactional content, but then you really need to lean into building trust in the eyes of Google for your overall what's called Domain Authority, which is kind of a useless metric. It's a metric created by Moz. But in short, I want you to think of your domain authority, this number range from zero to 100 100, being like this really well, a trusted website in the eyes of Google zero being like a brand new website, no content, nothing out that exists on the internet, I want you to have a higher number compared to your competitors. Right at the absolute baseline. Again, you can use a tool like Moz, free tool, if you don't want to pay for anything still Moz. But it's called link explorer. If you go to Moz, Link explorer, get the free account, you're able to analyze your competitors websites, as well as yours 10 times total per month right now for free. So you'd look at the domain authority, and you'd look at what's called linking domains. Linking domains in plain English is just how many different websites link back to you that that particular algorithm is finding. So these are all private companies, it's not going to find every single last link just as a friendly heads up because that's the next common question that I get asked. With the overall domain authority and blogging. If you have a higher domain authority compared to your competitors, and you have some blog posts that are tied to your niche in your area, you're building what's called topical relevance and topical authority over time. So can the blog posts help you? Yes, but the blog posts have to be strategic. They can't just be over like random sessions that you're shooting, and I'm just gonna go blog about those that does not help you. In terms of SEO, and the kind of question here is, should I go blog to help rank higher, but if we do have relevant content, niche specific content that's especially location specific for your service area, again, topical relevant as topical authority does go up, which is then attached to the domain. And so once we have this more robust website filled with amazing content, Google's gonna think, oh my gosh, they're really valuable to people in general. It's helpful content. And when people ask me questions that are tied to your question over like, Well, how about all the different algorithm changes, and Panda and Penguin and all these different updates that have happened over the years, the baseline that does not change is being helpful to people. So as long as we're being helpful to people that are Googling around for things, you don't have to worry so much about the algorithms going up and down and up and down. It does not matter as long as you being helpful period. In my personal opinion, that's never going to change as long as you're helpful. likeable brand, Google's gonna recover award you. So in short, so I like to ramble with your blog posts. You do not need, quote, unquote, to go blog to rank higher? Can it help you? Yes, the biggest benefit that you're going to be getting is by getting in front of additional keywords, if you do choose to go blog, because now you're getting in front of keywords that you would not have otherwise, if you did not blog. So if anyone says you don't have to go blog, they're not lying to you. You don't have to, but it's a benefit to you if you do and that's the part that they're not saying, because I'm not gonna name any names. But there's some people who are pandering to you by saying you don't need to, because they know that you don't want to, because a lot of photographers are like, I don't know what to go blog about. Just yet another task, I'm already overwhelmed, I don't want to go outsource it. I don't have the money to go do that thing. So man, this other person says I don't have to. So I'm gonna go follow them. Okay, but they're not saying it can help you if you do. And then I want you paying attention by doing your own due diligence. Do they blog themselves? A lot of times those same people that say you don't need to go blog, they're blogging. So pay attention to what they're doing, not what they're saying all the time. Oh,

Ashley Freehan  27:07  
that's great advice. I love that so much. And I think too, like one of the other things that I like to share with my students and with podcast listeners in general is that blogging gives you anchor content. So even right, even if it didn't help you rank what you're saying it does. It gives you stuff to talk about on social media, and it really helps you learn or earn the know, like trust factor with your audience. And that is important in and of itself, whether or not it helps you rank, which it does. So there's so many other benefits to blogging than just SEO, in my opinion. Would you agree with that? Yeah. 100%.

Kyle Goldie  27:42  
Like, even at the absolute foundation, let's say that some people are like, You know what, I really get stuck on my keyword research. It's kind of overwhelming for me, which is fair, it can be, especially for people that are neurodivergent, or have ADHD or anything like this. They go into that rabbit hole, and they're like, Oh, my God, what the hell did I just open? And I'm like, This is terrifying. What is all this stuff. And if they can't outsource it, they do a lot of times get stuck there. Because it is an overwhelming, long, daunting sort of process. My team and they're doing it for my clients, it's traditionally taking them eight hours a day, times five days to work on one area. And that's knowing what they're doing. So if you don't know what you're doing, and you got a learning curve on top of this, it gets really, really confusing. Because we analyze 1000s of lines of data in one service area. Because this is where some photographers like well, I got my 30 I got my 40. So I'm good. Yeah, I promise you that you're not, you're on the right path. But you gotta keep going down that rabbit hole. So yeah, it's incredibly beneficial. Even if you're just writing for like brand value type blog posts, where it's not service area, it's not, you know about this transactional content, it's just, hey, here's tips on how to prepare for the session or here's my recommendations over artwork versus leaving your your your Digital's on your phone kind of shit. It's, it's still helpful, because it's still positioning you as an expert, but we want to get in touch on terms of priority and not just cranking up brand value content. If your SEO is not optimized, you're not getting the number of leads that you want.

Ashley Freehan  29:20  
Yeah. And just to clarify, when you say 30 or 40. Are you talking about domain authority? Or what was that number you just mentioned?

Kyle Goldie  29:28  
Oh, my God, where did I even mention 30? Or 40? You were saying?

Ashley Freehan  29:32  
Like, once they get their SEO down, and they only have like 30 or 40? Then they feel like confident and you're like, No, you shouldn't stop there. I can't remember like exactly where you were going. But

Kyle Goldie  29:42  
so I can't remember either. But regarding the 30 or 40, but let's not use that number for the common FAQs that I get. So let's say domain authority, number one. So let's say you're kind of researching through Moz link Explorer again, the free tool and you find that At your your competitors have a domain authority da for short of 2030, whatever it might be, your benchmark is by going 21. If they have 20, or 31, if they have 30, right? Like we just want to do a little bit better than your competition, if we can stretch the gap even further, and you're well above him, great. You're more trusted in the eyes of Google by using that, that that name, again, Domain Authority, by short, the useless metric, if you Google for like, is Domain Authority important? Overall? No, cuz it's made up metric in terms of Moz, that company, but I still use it as a benchmark, because are we doing better for backlinks compared to the competitors, period? That's where Google starts to care about that. With the 30 to 40, in terms of another FAQ of what how many blog posts should I write? And where do I start to really kind of see my benefit, and my result on that side? Again, the biggest variable for most photographers is going to be what your competitors are doing. And that's where you can either slowly and manually just go to the website, individually, look through the blog posts, how many do they have? How many are location specific? And what are they writing about? If it's even feeling like it's targeted, let's go through the same damn thing as them. Let's just go do more. If you want to make it a little bit faster, what you could do, this is not applicable to every website on the planet. But what you could do is you can look at your competitors websites, look at the URLs, and then just up top and the URL search bar within your, let's say, a Google Chrome browser, you're going to type in their domain.com. And then forward slash sitemap dot XML. When you look up there, sitemap dot XML, traditionally, it'll pull up with the different Sitemaps that they have as part of that website. On the back end. One common one is going to be the posts sitemap. The post sitemap is then going to be giving you just a blanket number, as well as the individual links to all the posts that they've created over over their entire career within that domain. And so now you're going to be able to see in this clear list, what keywords do they go after, and how many different articles have they pushed out. Because now if we see this common trait, hypothetically, but that your top, let's say, four or five people that are on page one in your area, have 300 articles, on average, you've got some work ahead of you. Because now we're seeing a Google is rewarding people in that area that are cranking out really valuable, helpful content. And if you've got one blog post, compared to their average of 300, you've got work, we can go leverage AI, if you want it to the huge conversation there that that deserves its own podcast episode. But outside of that, yeah, outsource it if you don't want to write it yourself, or just chip away at it when you control your time. Not by finding the time but by creating it. So anyways, I know that was a big, long answer as well. But these are huge conversations. Oh, I

Ashley Freehan  33:06  
know. I'm like thinking of so many questions, too. As we go, I try to also put myself just in the listener seat and be like, what questions would they have for Kyle? So one thing that popped up for me was, I'm hearing them ask like, how do I know who my competitors are? Like, are these people who are just local in my area? Do they charge a similar price? Like how would you recommend people understand who they're who are? Who should they be looking at as their competitor? Yeah,

Speaker 1  33:32  
great question as well. In short, the way that I look at this, and this can be different depending on who you ask that question to because people have different advice and different opinions. But the way I look at it is your competition is not necessarily just someone who shoots your niche in your lighting style, your editing style, the same way you style your clients at the same approach. Because what's happening in terms of a conversation, let's say centered around SEO, someone out there is googling for hypothetically, but Kansas City newborn photographer, if they're Googling for that thing, now your competition is no longer the people who shoot in your style edit in your style blotted out it up. It's who's on page one. That's my competition in terms of SEO, that one kind of conversation. Because the people that are popping up in spots, one, two, and three traditionally are getting roughly about 75% of the clicks for that keyword. Just kind of split amongst those top three. So because of that, that's your competition for your SEO, what are they doing for the rest of you? What kind of backlinks do they have? What type of authority of those links are pulling over to that person's website? What type of blog posts are they pushing out? What's the strength of their on page SEO? What are their SEO titles look look like their meta descriptions, their SEO heading tag structure, the body paragraph content? Does the website feel really good when I'm On the website, so now talking about user experience for conversion, because part of the SEO rankings are also going to be determined by the website user experience, if it feels good, if it's easy for me to go around the website, I'm gonna want to stick around longer. But if the content, quite frankly, is bad, like lighting is not good editing is not good outfits suck, etcetera, then, traditionally speaking, we're gonna see someone spent a fewer amount of time, so like a shorter amount of time on that website. And so if that shorter amount of time is then reflected to Google, of, hey, they're spending, let's say, 30 seconds on the website, or 20 seconds on the website and bounce away. Google's not gonna want to reward that website. And this is where photographers get stuck up in terms of their competition, you know, page one, spots, one through three, or one through five? Because they're like, Oh, well, I have a higher domain authority than them. Why are they ranking above me? Or I have more blog posts than them? Why are they ranking above me? What do people like their website more? Are there? Is their internal link structure better? Do they have better on page SEO in terms of the keywords that they're using within the h1? h2, h3 is? What's the actual Google Analytics data telling us over the actually, what's called engagement time with GA for Google Analytics for versus the GA three, the Universal Analytics stuff, sorry, from making anyone's mind explode. With the data within your Google Analytics, you'd then be able to identify engagement time was the was just the average engagement that someone spends on the website, and the benchmark for me is over a minute. If it's less than a minute on your reports, dashboard, on again, Google Analytics, then there's a problem on the website that needs to get addressed. If it's over a minute, your website's performing quite well, if it's far above a minute, you're absolutely crushing it. But a minute is the benchmark that I use of determining the overall user experience. On the left hand side of Google Analytics dashboard, you're then able to identify through the pages and screens area. How are people liking per page of the website, because most often a lot of to keep on the same example, a lot of motherhood photographers that shoot maternity, newborn families, milestone seniors, etc. A lot of times, they're like, alright, well, what keywords I use per page of the website, am I supposed to be using my primary key phrase on my homepage? Am I supposed to use my primary key phrase on every page? Am I supposed to cram it everywhere. And this is where all these variables exist. And there's, unfortunately, no way for me to cover every little last ounce of ground, because it's going to be different. For every photographer, depending on the niche, depending on the area, depending on the keywords, we'd have to kind of do an audit over the competition, as well as what you're doing, stack it up against each other, identify if you're doing anything correctly at the foundation compared to them. And then how long have you had your domain compared to them? Like are your brand new photographer with an age of domain that's like a year compared to their agent domain of eight years? Well, that's one ranking factor. There's over 200 ranking factors. And if I try to talk about even 10 of them, on one call, people on this podcast would be like, I hate SEO already. So get someone's help to look at your content, do an audit, if you want to have them, look at your competitors as well. That's what we're really talking about getting more of an agency level, a help or a coach, and not just DIY courses over SEO.

Ashley Freehan  38:41  
Yeah, this is definitely something that I have experienced myself. And I have students that experienced that as well, trying to DIY their own SEO. And I know that you probably have a lot to say about this. But can you tell us some mistakes that you see people making when they are DIY in their SEO and maybe some tips for how they can? How can they work with someone that can help them? Yeah,

Kyle Goldie  39:08  
so in short, biggest common mistakes, confusion at the absolute foundation is taking advice from people that they think that they can trust, but it's bad advice, because they're not they're not doing their due diligence. So as an example, one big thing that I see all the time is that someone's thinking, oh, I want to try to rank for this primary keyword. So let's say Kansas City newborn photographer, so I'm going to put that inside my SEO homepage title great, um, plug it over there. And then I want my now about page to be ranking for the same thing I think because that's what they told me to to go do and some educators in today's market are saying to go do this. They're gonna say use an SEO title it says about me, and at the end of it, Kansas City newborn photographer, and on the portfolio page, it says portfolio Oh, Kansas City newborn photographer, oh God. Because then what we're doing is we're keyword cannibalizing, keyword cannibalizing in plain English is just competing against yourself. Because now we're telling to Google, we don't know what pages for what thing. So Google's like, well, what page? Should I rank for? That Google's not going to know. Because you haven't all the different titles, the same exact thing. So what we want to go do is one page per target keyword. So one page would be for Kansas City newborn photographer, another page would be for whatever your keyword research comes back with, because again, that's why the step one was keyword research, and a different target keyword for that other page. And the biggest variables or what should the other page be, well guide, do keyword research to identify it, I literally can't even tell you right now, with the next biggest issue that I see is in not knowing what to blog about. Because they're told a variety of different things from a variety of different educators, or different people inside of Facebook groups, and just other photographers trying to support each other. And sometimes the advice is great inside those groups, sometimes the advice is terrible in those groups, but photographers when they're learning, they don't know how to decipher between what's good and what's bad. So they just pick and they go with it, and they run with it. And they're like, I'm blogging, I'm doing I'm told to go do. And then six months later, or a year later, oh, man, you know, I blogged and I blogged and I blog, and it's not working for me. So I guess SEO is not for me, then they just give up because they think SEO sucks. But was it just because you didn't do it correctly. But you're not having anyone look at it for you, especially with someone who does that kind of stuff for a living. So the next biggest mistake is saying I give up. I hate this. I don't like DIY courses. It's not working for me. So I'm just going to outsource it because I still know it's important. And then what they do is they find an SEO agency, someone to do it for him. They get charged. On average, I would say $500 a month to $1,500 a month. Sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less, but you're typically in that range. But then when they hire the SEO agency, they're like, well, they're an SEO agency. They've got clients, they know what they're doing. Otherwise, why would they be an SEO agency? Well, it's the same thing with photographers, while you're a photographer, you must know what you're doing. Know, as we all know, there's good photographers, and there's bad photographers, SEO agencies are no different. There's a lot of SEO agencies and I use that term very loosely because I don't even want to call them that, that just charge people money. And they don't really do much outside of that. Because there's a lot of people that I've helped over the years, I've like, I don't really need SEO Help. I'm like, Alright, I'm gonna challenge you on that. Let's go look at the data, not my opinion. Let's go look at the Google Search Console, the Google Analytics, let's identify what's really going on. And then when we see it, their SEO titles don't look like anything in terms of SEO, like the homepage SEO titles home still. I'm like, What the hell is this shit? This is Seo one on one. I don't I don't get it. And then a lot of times SEO agencies don't have photography backgrounds. So they don't know how to convert cold traffic to a photography audience. They just do the absolute basics, sometimes even of SEO titles, meta descriptions, they don't even normally touch the SEO heading tag structure. They don't talk to you about blog posts. They don't do keyword research for brand awareness stuff because that's not something they even know about. So now it's just like, alright, well, I'm paying someone all this pile of money. I'm getting half assed results. SEO must suck still. Because they don't know who to trust. And then they get frustrated. And then they've just bitch about it inside of some sort of Facebook group of SEO sucks. What's the next thing? How do I go learn tick tock? How do I go learn Facebook ads? How would I go learn Google ads? What I gotta do different on my Instagram? How do I go create reels and they get overwhelmed. And then some people are like, I hate being a photographer. Now I just want to go photograph my clients. So trust. Is that the foundation of all of this? Who do I ask questions to who can actually help me? And that's why people like you and me. Create free podcast episode content and try to get messages out there. Like someone can actually help you. But do your due diligence at the foundation recommendation there. Sorry for rambling again. But don't look at the results of the educator. Right? Do not do that. Look at the results of the people that they help. If the people that they help get the result, great. Pay attention to that don't pay attention to the results of the educator don't pay attention to like how many followers does the educator half who gives a shit? I don't care if they have one person or a million people to follow them. Because sometimes influencers hate the word by itself. Sometimes those influencers just Know how to market themselves. And they are very entertaining to go follow. But sometimes that's where they end in terms of their marketing power. They know how to get people in and hooked. But then do they really help their students to the best way possible? A lot of times No. So then again, it's just who the hell do we ask questions to?

Ashley Freehan  45:25  
Yes. And I love that you bring up the trust factor, because this is the first time that I've ever had someone on this podcast talking about SEO, because I cannot find anybody that I would trust to learn SEO from. And so I'm not going to bring anyone on the podcast that I don't think would be helpful or credible. And so it has taken me I mean, I've had my podcast for four years of finding someone who I thought was worth coming on the show. So I appreciate you being here. I appreciate you sharing all of this incredible knowledge. So now, I would love for you to share with people a little bit about your coaching program, and how long that your members are typically seeing results, getting their own SEO, in tip top shape here.

Speaker 1  46:13  
Yeah, great question. Again, in short, I have a coaching program. It's primarily centered around SEO, that's like the big meat of the program. That said, when people come into the program for the SEO Help, I don't just help them with SEO, because they also need the traffic to convert. So that's why there's a big website conversion element to the program as well. And then I want that lead, because now they're on the website converting, I want that lead to turn into a booking. And now I want that booking part of the client experience, part of the client experience is going to be automated in a very strategic way to help you guys spend more time with your family, and not just be filmed like working, working, working, actually burning yourself out. The program is very much lifestyle centered. So in short, SEO is a big part. But it also covers again, website conversion, pricing, sales systems, client communication, automation, blogging, time management, mindset, social media, and relationship building Google business profile that gets your busy your whole business top to bottom. In short, what a doesn't cover is ads, because people come to me for the organic side. And it does not cover sales processes. So as an example to that, I don't coach on IPs or non IPs, I help on everything else, until you're actually like delivering that gallery or having an ordering appointment. The big thing I want everybody to know in terms of the return on investment and the speed of which, because I get to ask that past me all the time. The big variable here is how fast you're going to do I tell you to go do because the people that bust their butt, and they're going in order of what I recommend, because most people I say, alright, keyword research, first, I do that for you as part of the program that I have, because I know it's a big overwhelming thing. So it's a done for you service. The next biggest thing that most of my clients have to go do themselves, following advice I give them is updating the website for conversion. Because to get a faster result for your business to get money back in your pocket, we need to convert your current audience better and faster. So not SEO stuff first, it's in conversion first. So that way, when we build the SEO and get additional people to the website, it's ideally converting better. It's not just let's get people to what already exists, people are falling through because the conversion stuffs not really there. And now let's happen to go fix conversion. It's conversion first, which is why we're able to get a faster result. So as fast as the websites updated, if you already have some people that know that you exist, some people get the return on investment within a week or two. Whereas other people, they're like, Haha, website design sucks, I get really stuck there. And then I'm going to optimize it for SEO and get more people seeing me on average, I would say ballpark 45 to 60 days is where people get their return on investment. Some people it's never, never ever, ever, because some people don't log into the program don't come to coaching calls, they buy something and then just like Alright, see you later. Okay, that happens about 1% of the time, because they just don't want to go do it. The average is 45 to 60 days, I would say 90% of people do that, that that range, so to speak, in terms of the SEO because again, it's a coaching program about your entire business. I would say some people are getting to page one for the lower competition keywords I think you mentioned to me earlier within the first 30 days, and that's if they're cranking out the content The more competitive key phrases, depending on the exact area, so New York City versus London versus, you know, tiny or towns that happen to live around them for their primary, because those are, again, lower competition stuff, most often, I would say ballpark, getting towards page one, three months to six months for the primaries typically does not happen within the first three months. It's rare. The only times where I've seen that happen is when they have an existing domain authority. It's already fairly high. They've already had some blog posts pushed out they have an older domain. And they're kind of just polishing. Yeah. But the newer photographers, yeah, or not necessarily newer photographers, but newer into SEO, it typically takes them a little bit longer, on average. Yeah.

Ashley Freehan  50:50  
That's still such incredible results, though, Kyle getting that much of a difference in three to six months. I mean, that would take people years and years, like with their DIY approach, or never, like you mentioned,

Kyle Goldie  51:04  
yeah, that's really hard. Like most people, they pop into the program, mid level career, like they're, they're typically, I'd say, on average, three to five years into their career throughout a glass ceiling, traditionally, around 30k to 60k per year. And a lot of them are trying to get to six figures, not all of them, but quite a few of them. And I would say a lot of people within the first 12 months, they would have a 50% 200% bump on income, and a 50% 200% return on investment in terms of the time they spend with their family. So as an example, if they were working 20 hours a week before, kind of like a part time timeframe of being a photographer, they would now spend 10 hours a week instead of 20. And still benefiting the business by having more clients or raising income or both. But because it's a lifestyle centered, it's not just let's go get more bookings, and raise our rankings and everything. It's less that's identify first how much time you want spend with your family. And then let's identify how many sessions or how many weddings or how many loved ones that you want to book in this given timeframe. So for portrait photographers, I say, how many do you want per week on average? Because I know there's gonna be ups and downs of the seasons. Most people they're like, Oh, I just want to, like, Alright, so 46 weeks out of the year, because we're taking time off or on birthdays and holidays and vacations. We got 92 sessions, right? So 46 times 292. I'm like, alright, you want to make $100,000 per year? And some people can say, oh, yeah, sure, that sounds fine. And so we'll get 100 grand divided by 92. Great, we got to go average $1,100 per client, roughly speaking, being fully booked out and 92 sessions. All right. But that's still not smart. Because no one really ever books out at 100%. So we want to aim for 80% being booked out of your availability, which means that you're what average income per client would need to be about roughly $1,400 per session, at minimum on average. So then we have to identify Well, are you booking at that price point right now? And if not, why? And then what's going on? And that's where people come to me for, again, the SEO Help, but they need to go hit those goals that they have. And if it's not converting at the specific dollar number, then we got to go figure out why and go put some plan of action together there. So it's a lot of shit, but the comfort what they want, but to get what they need.

Ashley Freehan  53:32  
I love that. Yes, they come for what they want, but they get what they need. That is so good. So one thing, Kyle that I forgot to talk about, but I really I want to put it in here because I know it's important. Like I feel like a lot of people are when when it comes to SEO, we didn't really talk about like, what platforms are best for SEO and we didn't talk about like plugins. And I know that like pre interview, we talked about the Yoast plugin, and you had some thoughts you wanted to share with everyone about that. So yeah, can you share with that before we before we close up here?

Kyle Goldie  54:11  
Alright, I'll try not to ramble here promise, because it's huge conversation. But in short, regarding the platforms that start with that, first, I prefer something that's WordPress based or WordPress, at least integrated. So a lot of times when you Google around for like, hey, what's the best platform for SEO countless times over you're gonna see WordPress, WordPress WordPress. That said, if you have a native based WordPress platform, you're then going to have to go look for you know, some sort of either page builder that's still native to it like cadence blocks in this kind of realm. Or you're talking about page builders like Elementor Pro Photo flow themes, which is now I think, being bought out by pixie set. And then we've got show it, which is not a word Wordpress website, but it integrates with WordPress. So you can still turn the page design into a WordPress page, but the content is going to live within the page builder. But you're still in the blogging natively within WordPress dashboard. So show it integrates with WordPress, the biggest variable here of what platform to choose cannot be solely tied in with what's the best platform for purely simply SEO? Because 100% of the time, I'm going to say for that one short question is WordPress, WordPress, WordPress, but we need that traffic to again, convert, and a lot of photographers are not I'm gonna stereotype are not great website designers. Because there are photographers nothing bad about that. But because they're not great with website design, I recommend the show it platform as my primary recommendation because it's drag and drop. It's nice and simple. It integrates with WordPress still, and we have good access to customer support on the back end. So the blend of the two between SEO and conversion, I recommend show it for just SEO, Wordpress, sure. Stuff like wicks, and Squarespace and pixie set, et cetera, very popular platforms that exist out there. I'm not wanting to slander anybody, but I'm not a big fan of those three. I prefer show it integrates with WordPress, it's awesome. It's tradition and give me a little bit faster in terms of the SEO performance. And again, I come back to the to the design. So that way photographers when they're having to update their portfolio or customize the branding a little bit or build out this custom thing for many sessions they want to go do or whatever else, it's a lot faster and easier for them to get that done on show it. Now, in terms of SEO plugins, the SEO plugins that I know of because there's obviously some out there that I'm just not going to be aware of. But the ones that I know of that I have played around with the best ones integrate best with WordPress. I've never found great SEO plugins that integrate with things like Squarespace or Wix or pixie set just as an examples. If those exist out there, they might exist. I'm just not aware of them. The ones that I really love to use, especially when it's a WordPress site or something integrates with WordPress, again, like show it. Yoast is a popular one, I use it, but in conjunction with a company called Text metrics. Text metrics is kind of like Yoast, but 10x the capability and it's looking at 10x The amount of stuff, Yoast when people use that, it's just like, Oh, I got a green light. And for me, it must be optimized. No, it's not. You just have the absolute basics that are plugged in there. And you think that it's good, which is a negative to you, because now you think he I did the best job possible because it's green. If it's text metrics, with a combination of Yoast, it's gonna be looking at more of the SEO heading tag structure, the right number of tags to use within that length of an article is going to be looking at the the bolts versus the italics that are used within the content, external outbound links versus internal links, if you get the right number. For, again, the length of the content, it's going to be looking at the alt text that you're using, in short is going to be keeping you accountable of knowing is this closer to truly being optimized for my SEO content, compared to Yoast? Yoast, I would say gets you 10 to 15, maybe 20% the way there. Whereas text metrics, I would say gets you 90% There. There's no tool that exists on the planet, in my opinion, based on what I know, because again, there might be stuff out there that I'm just not aware of. But there's no tool that exists that gets you 100% There, at some point, you're gonna have to use your best educated gut feeling. Is this optimized for people, not just for Google? Because a big ranking factor again, is that helpful content? Or is people going to really love this? Are people gonna love this? And if so, great, push it out. Because there's big variables that are now attached to that and huge conversations, apologies, but there's huge things out there called entities, these keyword variants that we need to be to kind of take into into play but again, no big, cool SEO plugin that says exactly what keyword variants to then go use. That's where I want a lot of photographers to kind of trust their gut. Because if they're writing some sort of brand awareness content piece over whatever topic, well, then what are the variants that are similar to that? So as an example, for reading a content piece about midwives, well, then maybe within the article, we talk about pregnancy, or we talk about motherhood, or we talk about expecting to have a child like all these related keywords to that phase of life. And the more that we have these entities, these keyword variants in there, the more that Google picks up on that, and like, hey, this really is all about the pregnancy journey. And the overarching topic is about the midwife. And how helpful to that person is for this this time of life here. So, again, massive, massive, massive, massive, massive topics. That's why there's, you know, SEO conferences, where they ramble on for days into time to talk about these things that make most people's minds melt. But that's also where I don't recommend DIY courses over SEO. Because even for the most intelligent people out there, it's like, What the hell did you just tell me? I'm so confused. Please tell me specifically, what's my baby step? Right now? Keyword Research, great. Use the keywords. Go right, this for your homepage title? What should I do? This? Yep, that one. Great, move on to the next thing. Like it's got to be that handheld process. Otherwise, a lot of people in any industry, you get very overwhelmed with this kind of stuff. So baby steps are incredibly important. So people don't get overwhelmed through the process. And that's why podcast episodes where it's like, here's all the stuff guys go do it. Like, what the hell? Yeah, like they feel the value, but they're still like confused,

Ashley Freehan  1:01:44  
right. And it's so overwhelming. And I think especially for our specific listeners, they are moms, they are busy. A lot of the moms are staying at home, they're raising the little ones while also doing this as a business. And they might be hearing this right now. And being like, wow, like, this sounds amazing. This sounds great. But yes, I need more support. And so that is where your coaching program comes in. And so we will be sure to obviously link that up in the show notes as well. Thank you so much, Kyle, this has been so good. I feel like I could keep talking. And we could go on and on. Like I have questions for you. So. But before we end, can you please share with everyone where they can connect with you, and how else they can work with you.

Kyle Goldie  1:02:33  
The best way to connect and this was say to everybody all the time, connect with me for free. Don't pop into my paid stuff right away. I don't I don't encourage people to do that. I want you to do your due diligence, I say that in the most authentic way possible. The Facebook group that I have is the best way for you to connect with me. I don't spend time on Instagram. I personally hate social media in general. But But Facebook group, I have a free one highly encourage you to request to go join that I'll get you in. And then once you're inside of there, start asking questions. So that way you can actually challenge me on whatever question you have. If you're not even sure what question to go ask, just say I don't know what question to ask. But I want to be found more often on Google. Here's a link to my website. Can you please give me some quick feedback? Sure, no problem. And then I can list out probably a few steps right away within 30 seconds. And then once you go down the rabbit hole, keep asking more questions. The coaching program, I don't hide anything behind a webinar, all the price points are right on my website, just go to Kyle goldy.com, you'll find everything super transparent. The next best way to get in touch with me is just a DM again, on Facebook, just people can chat with me one on one. I have my own podcast as well. Right now it's under a different name I'm about to change. I also don't have many recent episodes, because I spent a lot of time again on Facebook. But either way, Facebook group Facebook group, best way till the start building that connection with me. That's

Ashley Freehan  1:04:05  
awesome. And I will be sure to put all those links in the show notes, we can get the link for your podcast also. But thank you so much, Kyle, you are such a wealth of knowledge. And I just want all of our listeners to know who you are, and that you are a trusted source in the photography industry. Specifically, I mean, I know you have a lot of knowledge but specifically in the SEO realm and you can help us all with and stay on the right track. So thank you so much for being here.

Kyle Goldie  1:04:31  
Yeah, I really appreciate it. I know you're a busy person as well. So just wanted to say thank you for your time. I know the holidays are around us and I do appreciate you very much. And I'd love to get you on my podcast episode as well sometime. Yes, that'd

Ashley Freehan  1:04:43  
be so great. I would love that.

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