Meredith's Husband: 0:42

Hey, this is Meredith husband, I've got some SEO advice for you. But I'm gonna keep it really simple so that you can understand it. So make sense. And most importantly, so you can actually use thought we would do a little demo today? Oh, okay. kind of demonstrate something. Yes. That's what that was do. Yeah. Clever. So what I wanted to do was gonna take something that that you do every day, maybe not every day, but it's something that you do as part of your work. And we're going to convert that into a resource block. Oh, okay. So do you know the guy? Have you ever heard of Gary Vee Gary Vaynerchuk. He's a very prolific social media marketing guy has a huge social media marketing company. One of the things that he says very often is document don't create when you're talking about content for social media. But that also applies to your blog. And what that means is, don't try to create something new. Every time you want to create a piece of content, whether it's on social media or a blog post, doing that is going to be very time consuming, right and difficult and stressful. Yeah, I have to come up with something. I mean, that's very overwhelming. Yeah. So it's much easier to take what you are doing already, and somehow document that. And then there's your content. That makes it for me that it does for me that that was still tricky. How do I document what I'm they took me a long time to figure out to kind of wrap my head around that and, and get to a place where I understood what that meant, and how to do it for myself for my own business. I have a feeling a lot of other people may feel the same way. If I said to you, instead of when you let's say you need to create a blog post, instead of creating something new, I want you to document what you're doing. Like, that's not entirely clear, is it? To me, it is like what would you do?

Meredith: 2:41

If you said document I would? Well, currently I'm looking, I just started using a new framer. And so document that and take photos of it and share that on my blog.

Meredith's Husband: 2:55

Now, would that be a resource for people? No. Yeah, so what we want, what we want to do is we want to, you know, it also has to be valued, but people have to either enjoy it just for the sake of entertainment, or it has to be valuable for them for some reason. All right. So I thought we would just take your your recent shoot, you just had a shoot. I don't know. Was it last weekend in Prospect Park? Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So let's let's find a way to die, because this is one of your first shoots of the of the year. Your winter. You know, your January, February, slow. So now that weather is getting warmer people are back outside?

Meredith: 3:30

Yeah. Weddings, right doing, right. Yes. This was a unique shoot for me.

Meredith's Husband: 3:38

Right. So how can we take that shoot, and create something useful for people? Yeah, because I get I guarantee you, people are searching for something like best places to take photos in Prospect Park. I guarantee you, you walk you went to Prospect Park, and you didn't just walk into the park and start taking photos, right. You thought of some places first?

Meredith: 3:59

Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, yesterday, when I was walking the dogs, I saw another photographer photographing a couple. And I thought, oh, yeah, that does look like a great place. I never thought

Meredith's Husband: 4:10

of that. Yeah, yeah. So and here's the here's a little secret for for like some super easy, quick keyword research. This is and I use this quite frequently, I then take it, I take what I find here, and then go do deeper research. But if you want to do like very simple, fast keyword research, go to Google, type in what you're thinking of, in this case, I would type in Prospect Park photographs, scroll down a little bit, you're gonna see a section, maybe midway down the page or so that say people also ask, and then there will be four to five questions. And those four to five questions are going to be the four to five most popular questions that people are asking in relation to what you just did a search for. So I bet that one or two or maybe three or four of those are going to have something to do with what are the best places in Prospect Park to take photographs. That's right. You're right. Yes. So if that's the case, then then yes, this would be a good blog. If there if nobody is doing a search then okay. You know what, maybe it wasn't was not a good idea that happens. But in this case, okay. So that is a valid, I think, a valid blog that people are actually looking, it would be a resource, it would be valuable to people. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So what do we need to make that happen? To me this sounds like it would probably be The list. Yeah, a list format, not just a list, like a whole, like a big list of 100 different places, but a list in a sense of like, maybe your top three places, when and then for each of those, we'll do like a photograph. And we'll or a few photographs and a little bit of a description and a little bit of explanation. I for something like this, just personally, I would start with three places. Yeah. Because you can't. Yeah, you can't say one. You can't say this is the best. That's a very subjective people are going to read it and be just, they're going to be very eager to disagree with you. You can't say, too, that's not really I mean, that just seems very, it's an either or, yeah, three starts to be a list. And it's not five or 10. It's not, you don't have to go out and photograph 10 places, you don't have to talk about 10 places. It's it's three, it's doable. And here's another secret if you want to add to it, you can add a fourth later, just change the change the title of the top four, replace it you can you can grow over time, the most successful blogs in terms of SEO, are are updated frequently. It's not it's not a it's not a right at once, and then just forget it. But I've seen business blogs that oh, yeah, you go back every week, and something has changed.

Meredith: 6:50

Now, does that affect ranking? Or does that affect anything? It's

Meredith's Husband: 6:53

gonna help it's going to help ranking if Google knows that a page? Yeah, you're keeping it up to date. Cool, does like to see up to date things. Google knows a page as a certain blog post or page is being updated every week? Well, it's gonna be pretty current, right? The only thing if you do that, and you change, you started off and it's the top three places and you change it to four. Don't name the blog, don't use the URL, the URL slug you know, in WordPress, we can you can you can choose what the you don't put top three in the URL slug. Top three is the name of the blog, but that's the the slug for the URL would just be like, you know, best places best photograph spots. Prospect Park? Don't put a number. Okay, yeah. So, next, what else do we need? So we know that we this is gonna be kind of a list format. What else do we need? I can't imagine you would do this without having a map of Prospect Park. Yeah, right. That's true. Yeah. So I would say go to the Prospect Park website, grab whatever map they have their or map include that you're going to want to have some other details too. Because remember, this is a resource for people. This should be informative and useful. So things like where are the closest train stations? What train stations are around Prospect Park? What are the hours of Prospect Park? I know they're essentially no hours because it's open till like midnight, right?

Meredith: 8:19

It's open till like three or something?

Meredith's Husband: 8:22

Oh, yeah. Put that on there. You know, it's not going to hurt people. No. Okay. Go in. And obviously, people are not going to be going at midnight to photograph. I wouldn't think

Meredith: 8:33

there are some night owl?

Meredith's Husband: 8:36

Sure. I guess it depends on what you want to photograph. Yeah. I would definitely link to the there's got to be some sort of official prospect. Alliance. Yeah, the website or a page on a website, probably probably part of a bigger NYC parks website. Link to that. Google is going to want us if it's if you're writing about something, and there is an official website linked to it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't I would say the only thing you need to be careful of when you're linking out to other sites other than your own. Don't link to like, you know, websites that are not well known. kind of shady, like link to quality authority websites. Google is going to recognize that and be like, Okay, this is legit stuff. Yeah. Trust. Exactly. It's, it's has authority and relevancy. So now we have so we know we're gonna do a list. We know kind of what we're gonna include some of the details, the map, what else? What else are we going to need? I would imagine you're gonna want some sort of intro. Yeah, just kind of basic stuff. Just keep it very casual and simple. Don't try to create perfect prose here. Like, remember that you're talking to, you know, somebody who just wants some tips from a photographer. It's a very casual conversation. Yeah. You might want to mention, I would imagine things like, hey, it makes a difference the time of the year. You know, or time of the day, like

Meredith: 10:05

that don't type of weather

Meredith's Husband: 10:07

and weather. Yeah, is it cloudy? You know, some simple tips like this, don't go during the middle of the day. You want to aim towards more early day or late day. basic tips here. Remember, most likely the people reading us are going to be very beginning photographers they're not you're gonna have to create a master class and how to use and everything

Meredith: 10:29

will use their iPhones. Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 10:31

Oh, I would imagine a lot at In fact, I would, I would be willing to bet that a lot of people doing this search are probably looking for something that a selfie they can put on social media or something like that. They're not creating a photography book, right? Or a portfolio, or maybe they are, who knows. But this is this is like, this is the type of advice that you would give out. If you saw, like, let's say you went to the park with a friend, or we're walking our dogs with a friend. And they start taking posing, Oh, you want to make sure you do this, like, don't photograph straight into the light like that you want to, you know, if they're, you know, don't backlight your subject, you know, basic stuff, but stuff that's that's going to be that you know, is going to help people make create a better photograph. That's what you want to do. If you can help somebody create better photographs, when that person is ready to hire a photographer, if and when that happens, they're going to hire you trust me. They're not, you know, don't be don't be scared of sharing your secrets. Don't think this is this is a very common misconception among Me, myself, businesses, entrepreneur, everybody. I don't want to share my secrets, because then people won't hire me. Right? That we don't live in that world anymore. Oh, yeah, you gotta you gotta share your secrets. And if you know, the person who is going to go out and take some photographs on their own, is is not as this is not going to be the case there. You're looking to hire a foot of photographer, and they see your blog, and they go, Oh, wait, I can do this on my own, I'm gonna do that. Instead, that's not gonna happen. So don't worry, don't worry about

Meredith: 12:08

that. Or they do instead doesn't quite look the same.

Meredith's Husband: 12:12

They might or they might say, you know, hopefully, they will say, they'll they'll realize, Oh, that was, that was a good tip. But these are good photographs. Meredith knows what she's talking about. Oh, I

Meredith: 12:23

see, I see. I

Meredith's Husband: 12:24

see. And you might even when you go and take photographs of these of these three places, maybe, you know, say do this, you know, and give some advice, and then take a take a photo of how not to do it. Like, this is what it looks like, if you don't do XYZ. This is what it looks like. If you do do XYZ, right? Put a crappy photograph next to a good photograph,

Meredith: 12:47

right? One thing I will say about blog posts providing the answer to what you're looking for. So we're going to the Galapagos soon Galapagos Islands, and I'm looking at wetsuits, and I typed in best wetsuits to go to Galapagos in May. And there's, you know, it says, And they pretty much that just directs me to the number one search, and it talks all about snorkeling and wetsuits, and it doesn't give any advice. It doesn't tell you any links to any sites. And, yes,

Meredith's Husband: 13:32

what that is, is that's just somebody that's an affiliate site, that's people creating content. And they know that you're searching for, you know, something very specific like that. And they list five items with links to where you can buy those five items. And then they get a they get a commission. Yeah, but they didn't list anything. They didn't list links.

Meredith: 13:51

No links, no, no links.

Meredith's Husband: 13:54

There were no links. Nope. Okay. I'd be curious to see that site. Okay, I'll send it to you. But yeah, normally not and this is very much the trend right now on Google if you do is almost any search you're going to find the top 10 This the top 10 that the best way to do this the best way to do it, and you'll go there and there'll be links to what Amazon or some retailer where they're gonna get a commission it's just a list and who the people creating those lists are are not are not usually not pros. They're like Junior writers oversee like, it's, it's, it's somebody saying to a blogger, this is Yeah, somebody saying to a blogger, we need an article about this because there's search and then link to these. It's it's not like a professional snorkeling instructor saying, or it might be you know, some of them will be those are the articles. Yeah, that's what we want to do. That's what that's what we want to do here. You are a professional photographer, you're giving some some professional photography tips to people

Meredith: 14:56

make sense. I ended up having to call a store. Oh my god with the phone. Can you believe that? Somebody? I had a conversation with another human.

Meredith's Husband: 15:07

Oh my gosh, did you shower afterwards? That's it. Anyway, so we have so now so we have our our blog, we have the format and we have the intro. We know kind of what we're gonna do. I would say start with three for each of those three places. Probably take a few photos. Yeah, maybe different. You know, you we go to Prospect Park all the time. Yeah. So it's not so yeah, so we can eat do this, you could take photos with your phone. And in the blog say I took these with my iPhone. So you so this is what you're aiming for. Don't take photos with a $8,000. camera and tell somebody who's going out with the iPhone six. Just make your photos look like that, you know, say, Hey, I took these with my iPhone. Yeah, this is what you do. And this is how I did it. Yeah. You can also then you can take images from your from the shoot that you just did in Prospect Park. And you can include those too. Yeah, you know, this, this, this blog would take the place of what a lot of photographers do when they blog is they just put up their most recent shoot, and they just put a bunch of photos, we're kind of doing the same thing, we're giving you the ability to show off your most recent work. Here's what I just did, along with something that makes it a lot more valuable for people. Yeah. And then with E in each of those places, just get you know, just give some tips, some description, you need some words on the page, say, here's here's the area, this is why I like it. This is what I like to do. Remember, this is you do this, because you like this, this is what you'd like to do share why you like it. This is your passion. Yeah. All right. So yeah, I hope that helps that help that helps to clarify the process of how, number one how you document and don't create, hopefully, that's going to take some stress off some anxiety of like, what do I create, because that's a real, that's, I don't like that feeling myself, and at the same time, create something that people are actually looking for and gonna want to use. Because this is not, once you get the hang of this, it's really easy. I just created a so I just did my latest blog I just created a few days ago. And it was something a client asked me to do is something that takes 30 minutes. And so I said, Oh, you know what, people are going to want to see this. I just pressed record on my screen, and just spoke into the mic of what I was doing. At the end, put it up, put it on my own blog and put a transcript beneath it, making that blog, it took me less than 10 minutes to actually do the blog part. It's just what I do. I just documented it. And later if I find that, you know, is it the greatest blog in the world? No. But I know people are going to probably be looking for that information down the road. If I see in my Google Analytics that a lot of people are visiting that I can just redo it, I can make it better, right? It's not set in stone. You know, you can change it, you can fix it, you can remove it, you can do whatever you want with

Meredith: 18:05

it. That's the magic of blogs, ladies and gentlemen.

Meredith's Husband: 18:09

I hope that helps. See you next time. Okay, I hope that helped. I hope that helped your website. I hope that helped your business. I hope that helped give you a little bit of confidence that SEO is not this convoluted, cryptic, crazy thing that nobody can understand. If you did like it and you found it helpful. Please share it with a couple of your colleagues. Tell them what you like or more importantly, tell me what you liked. Let me know interview. leave a review on Apple. Tell me what parts you like. And I'll try to do more of those parts. And again, thanks for listening