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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everybody, it's Dana. This month we're talking all about marketing. And I think that one of the marketing channels that has been the most overwhelming and confusing to people lately is SEO, or, you know, Google searching. Right? Because AI has come on the scene and really changed the way that we not only consume the information that we are given when we search, but also actually the way we are searching ourselves. People are turning not just to Google, but are turning to AI services like Claude or searching on social media platforms as well. And the landscape for this has completely changed. The rules are very different than they were even two or three years ago. So I knew I wanted to talk to somebody that really specializes in this, that is up to date on everything that's happening. And so one of you guys recommended Corey Potter from Fuel your Photos. Corey is a former wedding photographer who now teaches other photographers how to make their websites more discoverable. And today he is going to break down for us what SEO actually looks like in 2026. We're going to talk about what's changed, what hasn't changed, what you should be doing, and also maybe just as importantly, what you shouldn't be doing. So, without further ado, let's cue the music and get into it.
- [01:26]
B
Welcome to this Can't Be that Hard. My name is Anna Mi Tonkin, and I help photographers run profitable, sustainable businesses that they love. Each week on the podcast, I cover simple, actionable strategies and systems that photographers at every level of experience can use to earn more money in a more sustainable way. Running a photography business doesn't have to be that hard. You can do it, and I can show you how.
- [01:57]
A
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. This is Dana. I am your guest host for this month of Marketing Madness. And today I am so excited to have this conversation with Corey Potter from Fuel youl Photos, who's going to talk to us all about SEO in the age of AI. So, Corey, welcome to the podcast.
- [02:20]
C
Hey, thanks for having me.
- [02:21]
A
Yeah, we're really excited to have you here. One of our students sent us your name and I just sort of like, fell down the rabbit hole of your website. Well done. It's almost like you're a professional at that. And, yeah, I just knew you were going to be a great guest on this podcast. I'm really excited to pick your brain about everything that you know. So why don't you start by telling us a little bit about your story, how you got into this world.
- [02:44]
C
Yeah, it's funny, right in. I guess it was. I was in high school. I started Getting into website development, I took this class and went to a computer competition and it was really interesting to me and I decided I was going to try to start a web development business. I'm like, I guess maybe this is what I'm going to try to like turn into a career. And I, I started going down that path a little bit and I made my personal website. But then my now wife and I then got engaged and she said, I think we need to do some engagement photos. And I was like, that's, I don't think I've ever heard of anyone doing that before. What are you even talking about? She's no, it's a real thing, you should look it up. So like I go and I'm searching for engagement photographers in our area and I find several websites where I'm like, wow, these are, this is really cool. I like what they're doing with these, with these pictures. I emailed one of the photographers and I just like told them I really love their work and I was kind of interested in photography a little bit. And she emails back and she's like, I need an assistant, would you come help me? I'm like, I don't have any gear or anything. She's like, you just, just use my stuff. This is like a different time. This is 2007. So like it wasn't like it is right now or like everyone's trying to be someone's assistant. But anyway, I, I started working with her at weddings and just, I fell in love with it and I was like, it quickly became something that I was very interested in pursuing more. So ended up buying my camera gear. But the thing is, I built, I turned my website into photography website. I'm like, okay, well I'm a photographer now. And so I put my information there. I was using WordPress and this was, these are pretty early days of WordPress and most of the other people around me were still using Flash websites or just like really outdated websites. And because of that I was able to rank on Google, you know, within the first few months. I was coming up when people were searching for Columbia wedding photographers. Between that and doing some wedding shows and a few other things, we were able to get pretty booked pretty fast and just went down this path of being a wedding photographer. And my wife and I did that together for about 10 years and then we started having kids and kind of deciding whether we wanted to keep being full time wedding photographers forever. And I was like, you know what, I really think I want to spend some time going back into web Development. And I started Feel youl Photos too. Yeah, really, I wanted to help other photographers because at the time especially this was like 2015, 2016, I felt like a lot of the information that was being given about SEO online was just not very good. And so I wanted to create something that would really give some reliable information. I wrote at first, the first free SEO guide I wrote was like 12,000 words. I spent like a whole week not sleeping, just writing this whole thing. And I think that kind of put me on the map. It was like, wow, this is really good for like a free guide that's out there. And I started speaking at some conventions and build a course later. It's been through a lot, but basically the idea is now I work with photographers and help them make their websites more found. Basically.
- [05:39]
A
Yeah. Amazing. I mean, I know. I'm sure our listeners are all like, yes, please, this is what I want. We've been spending this whole month talking about marketing. And I think, you know, you and I talked about this a little bit before we hit record. And it's like there is something a little bit different about the. When somebody is just trolling around on Instagram, you know, getting inspired, pinning things, that's very different than when they are going to Google, being like, I need this photographer in this area right now. Right. Like, that's a very different mindset. And so how are we able to set up our websites, do our blogging in a way that those results are pointing people to. To us, to our website? So I think that's the first thing. And then I also think everybody's feeling like, how is this changing with AI? Like, what is changing? What isn't? There is so much information out there. So what, like, what's your take on that?
- [06:39]
C
Yeah, it's. It's been really interesting to watch. As soon as ChatGPT hit the scene, I had an article up within like two weeks on my blog that was like, how photographers should be using ChatGPT. And man, it has changed drastically since then. But I was definitely watching from the very beginning. And I've heavily used AI tools as a. A way to keep up with them. I have lots of feelings about AI. I can go either way some days on whether I think you should or shouldn't be using it. I think there's some specific applications where I like it more than others, but what I have done is really keep up with how are most people using it and what does it look like whenever you use this, what kind of results are you going to get? Are there Any things we can learn are there, patterns we can find. One of the things that I think I've seen more and more people are complaining about the quality of Google search results versus what they're getting when they ask ChatGPT or Claude. So I think some people, maybe it's still a small subsection of the audience. You'll still have a lot of SEO people tell you no, Google still has 90% of market share or whatever. I'm like, okay, but a lot of regular people that I know are asking ChatGPT instead of going to Google, especially for certain types of queries where they want a specific kind of result. And you kind of get an intuition for that when you start using the tool. You're like, I know when ChatGPT is going to be able to answer this for me versus I know that I'm probably going to have to do some digging in Google and like, I want to see multiple perspectives and have a specific kind of expert. I think people are getting better at understanding when, not when to use each tool. Yeah, maybe, maybe I'm over, maybe I overestimate people's like, ability to do that. But I think over time that will continue to be better.
- [08:24]
A
I agree. I think that's true. You know, like when Claude and Chat came on the scene, everybody was like, ooh, new shiny object syndrome. Right? And I think you're right that now, you know, we are learning a little bit more. Hey, here's the nuance of, you know, when I should be using an AI search based tool or versus when I should be using Google. But then like, also, I mean, this is a genuine question I have for you. If I am searching on Google and I get that AI summary, like, where's that coming from? Like, where does that fit in the between those two worlds?
- [08:57]
C
Yeah. And one of the things that is sort of a big, big question mark for most people who are studying SEO right now is even if I rank in the top, top few positions in the organic search results, will I even get clicks? Are people looking at the AI overview instead and just clicking there and not even clicking any of the organic? I have some people who are ranking positions 1 through 3 for like keywords that have volume and have noticed a steep decline in clicks because people are just kind of getting the AI answer and that's good enough for them. Or sometimes they may click the links that are in the AI overview and certainly we can kind of talk about how to get into those. But I do think that it's, you know, an important distinction here. That where you show up matters. And when there is an AI overview, which by the way is not all the time. And for many photography related keywords, like if I just typed in Houston newborn photographer, I'm probably not going to see an AI overview on that, but I can adjust the query just a little bit and I could say like best Houston Newborn Photographers 4. And then like, you know, whatever, I put in some modifier there and I almost always will get an AI overview. And so that's one thing to note is that certain types of queries are more likely to generate those overviews. I think that the, a lot of the studies that I've seen are saying that even though the AI overviews are taking more of that search market share and that people who are showing up organically are getting fewer clicks, the people who are getting clicks from the AI overview are theoretically getting more conversions from those clicks. I think it's because they consider it to be like a strong recommendation, right? They're kind of trusting that this AI is like actually giving them the best answer instead of them having to do the digging. And so when they say that when, when the AI gives the answer it's like, well, I guess it's already done the summary for me, I should just trust this. And they'll click it and they're much, much warmer of a click. So even if you're getting fewer clicks, you might be still better off in some situations.
- [10:59]
A
Yeah, that's so interesting because I think about like back when really Google first came on the scene dating myself here, but like, you know, the very first thing that came up in search, I was like, oh, that's clearly the best one because Google says so. Right. And I do think that same mentality is proving true now. I'm like, oh, the AI Claude says that, you know, this is the best, so that must be true. And you're right, it does feel like a recommendation that is interesting. I'd heard the same thing about clicks being down, but conversions from clicks being up and it being a bit of a warmer, you know, a warmer click, so to speak. So what do we have to do to be in that AI? Do we want to be in the AI overview? I guess yes. And like what do we need to be doing to be ranking either in Google or on these AI overviews in 2026?
- [11:52]
C
Yeah, it's funny, it's a good question. Do I want to be. That's something that Google is actually playing with right now. The some people are complaining about being in the AI reviews and they're trying to see if they can come up with a way to allow people to opt out. That's not even an option right now. So you could kind of. Anyway, we won't get into it, but basically most of the time you do want to be in the AI overview and we'll talk about a few things here. So first of all, I will say that the, the standard things, if you've ever done any research about SEO or learned anything about SEO or tried to optimize your website for Google, the same things almost always apply for, for showing up in AI overviews as a starting point. So you probably will find that most of the time the people who show up in photography related queries in AI overviews, they probably also had an organic ranking in the top two or three pages of Google. And so Google is referencing the things that they have already indexed and potentially ranked for those keywords as the source material. That's not a hundred percent true all the time, but as a general rule of thumb, if you're already ranking well, you have a better chance of showing up in the AI overview. I think that it is important to. There's a couple of things. Again, the query types that generate AI overviews are usually more nuanced. They're more specific. And so whenever you can really understand what might be a common nuanced query, something where people are looking for something a little bit more specific. Let's say instead of searching for family photographers, they search for family photographers with pets. Like something like that. Right? They want to bring their pets.
- [13:33]
A
Or like best family photographer for families with children with special needs. Or like very specific. Yeah, yeah.
- [13:41]
C
That is probably going to generate an AI overview. And the way that you're likely to, to get into that AI overview is if Google understands from your website that you serve that specific query very well. And so understanding what those queries are going to be, what are the searches going to be that generate the overviews is going to be your first step. You have to kind of have an idea of when might an AI overview be shown and what exactly do they want to find. So I guess an action item here is you need to do more searches where you can figure out exactly what kind of things are showing up in AI overviews and pay attention to what words they're using. Are they using bullet points to summarize why a photographer is a good fit? Are they just giving random facts that maybe you just need to include those facts on your website? Like you, you have to pay attention to these patterns to be able to figure out what's going to get you there.
- [14:36]
A
So you're saying put on your client hat, act like you're a client. If you are a pet photographer. I live in Phoenix, Arizona and I have dogs. So if you're a pet photographer in Phoenix, Arizona. Okay, let's get specific. I have French bulldogs, so best pet photographers for French bulldogs in Phoenix, Arizona. I should be going and Googling that and asking Claude and chat and see what's coming up. And if I am not coming up in those, look at what is and then take that as my context clues for what I need to be including in my websites and blogs. Is that what you're saying?
- [15:11]
C
Yes. Maybe this is a good time to talk about building a, a searcher avatar, because I think this is kind of, this really is. How are you going to reach the right searcher? First of all, you need to know who that searcher is. And so in this case, when we know that someone is really specifically going to want a photographer that has lots of experience with handling pets, then you know it does. Maybe the best option is a pet photographer. Maybe the best option is a family photographer. Maybe it's a family photographer with experience with pets or vice versa. Like, there's a lot of different things that could be, that could be true here. But. Okay, let's just, let's back up and talk about a searcher avatar for a second. Because, you know, I know you talk about marketing all the time, so I'm sure you probably talk to people about like client avatars or ideal clients or whatever. And I think that is a very common thing to do in sort of exercises that are business development related. And I love that. But whenever I talk about a searcher avatar, I really am specifically talking about understanding searcher behavior. And you mentioned this earlier, but search is a specific type of activity. It's something where you are going to do a specific thing right now. You want to complete a task, you want to gather certain information, you want to find something and you don't know where it is. It's a certain mindset. Right. And so instead of just a lot of times, whenever you read SEO information, it'll have searcher intent grouped into some really broad categories, whether it's transactional or informational or something like this. But I want you to get more specific and think about the most important thing is what's happening in that person's life that prompted the search. Why did they open up Google? Why did they open up ChatGPT? Something happened right before that. What is that? Thing. If you can identify that thing, you're on a really good track to defining this person. I want you to think about what, what is it that they are hoping to find? Maybe they don't know exactly what they're going to find, but they have some idea. They're like, I hope that I find someone who has what. If you can answer that question, I think you're gonna be on a good path to defining this. You can think through how urgent this is. So in some cases you'll have someone who's planning months and months ahead. Right. Like they might be trying to inquire with a photographer, even though they're not gonna be doing a session for six months. It could be someone who just found out they're pregnant and they want to hire a maternity photographer six months from now. Or it could be someone who is like, you know what? I forgot that I needed to hire a maternity photographer and I am 38 weeks pregnant. I wonder if it's too late. Right.
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A
Right now.
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C
Exactly. You'll find both of those can be. And by the way, either of those things can be a really strong searcher avatar. You could make a business where you serve last minute searchers who really just need someone who's going to. That can be your whole thing being available and thinking through what is it that would make that specific person click? What would make them trust you enough to reach out? So when we're talking about the, the search for the French bulldogs, if the person has multiple sessions that they have blogged or in their portfolio, they literally have French bulldogs, that's going to go a long way for you. It's better than if they only had, you know, a few pictures of Chihuahuas. Like that's a different thing. Right. And so whenever you can get specific about, I know that this person is going to have this specific need and I'm going to make sure that my website really specifically addresses that. This is how you show up in search. I mean like this having that information available for Google to find, for AI to be trained on, for them to be able to be confident in answering those things. That's really important. So anyway, all of that to say we need to know exactly who we're trying to reach so that we can get that information on the site.
- [19:11]
A
Yeah, I. Okay, everybody, that is definitely one of your homeworks this week, I think, creating your avatar. Searching searcher avatar. What do you call it?
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C
Yeah, search.
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A
Searching avatar. Yeah, I love that. I think that is a great marketing exercise, not just for this stuff, but in general. To think about. I loved what you said about what happened right before they, they did that, that query, like what was happening? Did they see something on social media? Were they just out in the, like what was happening right before? And that is really going to inform what they're actually searching for. Okay, so now we've thought about that. What do we got to do on the other side? Corey, what's the magic sauce on our websites, on our blogs? Like, how are we reaching those people when they are googling or querying?
- [20:04]
C
Yeah. Okay, so let me think. What's the best place for us to start here? Because like I said, we have a few different things. We have one, the sort of fundamentals of SEO. You have to get the core things right anyway, which maybe we should talk a little bit about a couple of those. That should be a good idea. Let me talk about two or three things that I think if you haven't done these, that they probably are the strongest levers that you can pull to like get, get results. So love that.
- [20:32]
A
Let's do it.
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C
So one of the things is that you should be creating pages on your site that are intentionally designed to serve specific searchers. Okay, so we talked about who those searchers are. But what I want to say is you can't just go into a homepage that you got this beautiful template and it's like already all written. Maybe you even worked with a copywriter and you've got like this really great message that can be really good and sometimes that works really well. But if you're talking about how to go in and optimize for a specific searcher after you've done all that, it's too late. You need to be thinking about the searcher before you write the copy, before you set up the page. So these pages, there's a lot of different types of pages that might work here. So for example, let's say we are a family maternity newborn photographer. But I also have, I will do pets instead of just like mentioning pets on one of my pages or putting a few pets in my portfolio. If I really want to attract people who are searching for someone who will work with pets, I should probably make mysite.com phoenix petphotographer and this is what I call a specialty landing page. So every one of your specialties should have its own page, not one portfolio that has like all of your specialties listed on it. I don't really like sites necessarily that have separate portfolio from like pricing and information on different pages. Everything that you want the searcher to Know should be on the page that you want to rank for that term.
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A
Okay.
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C
So if a searcher wants to know, they want to see a little bit of your portfolio, they want to know a little bit about you, they want to have a few frequently asked questions answered about what's included and how long does it take to get their photos and how much is it going to cost. All of those things should be on this specialty landing page. These could also be location landing pages. You might the same specialty but have different locations that you serve. Each of those can have a separate page. And then obviously getting into blog posts, there's lots of different topics that you can go after where each one covers one specific intent. So one page per intent, not one page per keyword. But some people will like say, I've got Phoenix family photographer. And then my other page is going to target family photography, Phoenix. Those are the same intent. Okay. So the same people need to find that information, needs to go to the same page. I think that's the first core pillar here is that we have intentional design of our site so that the pages match with the searchers that we want to land on those pages.
- [23:08]
A
Love that. That is definitely actionable and really specific advice.
- [23:13]
C
Yep. And so once you have those sort of pages mapped, you have this sort of structure, then we can focus on two more like structural elements. One is your page titles. I think page titles are extremely important when it comes to SEO, mostly because they do have some influence on ranking as far as we can tell. But also they have a very large impact on click through rate because generally Google will try to use your page title as the snippet preview title. So when you go and do a Google search and you see that blue link, usually they're trying to use, excuse me, the page title there, sometimes they will use something different. But by default, if you use a good page title, Google will often use that page title there. And so that page title needs to likely have the main keyword that you're targeting. So in the very beginning, I don't want you to overthink keyword research, but I do want you to use some sort of keyword in your page title but also make that title compelling to click. That is the main thing that I want you to do. I want you to make sure that it's not, it's not just Family photographer, Phoenix Dash, my. My business name. That is okay as a starting point, but I'd rather it be something that like I just some, some. One of my students recently rewrote one that Was like they had like Dallas Senior photographer as their keyword and that was like their only their whole page title. I was like let's you have extra room here, what else can you put? And I think she ended up writing showcasing your authentic self or I don't know, something like that. It was just something where it's like it got right message across to the people. There's a lot of different things you can experiment with here. But all of this to say page titles are really a great place to experiment and you could actually get higher click through rates even if your ranking hasn't improved. So even if you're position 5, I've had sub cases where I'm like position 5 through 7 and I'm still getting 30% of the clicks for a keyword because my titles were so compelling that it was like oh, that's what I'm looking for. And so people click on that. Okay, so page titles really important.
- [25:15]
A
Yeah, I, I really like that giving like because you're right when I'm googling I'm like if somebody puts something compelling. And I think this goes back to what you were saying about like think about what your search avatar is thinking about right before they search. And so putting, you know, changing those titles to be the things like you said, your authentic self or whatever is definitely would definitely compel me to click on a certain link versus something that's just like a little more like basic and informative.
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C
Yep, yep. We've got page titles and then I would say your headings, page headings. So these are like H1 through H6.
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A
Okay.
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C
And most people are gonna be using H1 through H3 and I don't wanna overemphasize this to the point where I think a lot of people talk about this like it's the most important thing. If you don't get this right, you can't rank. I see websites ranking all the time that have really, really bad heading structure. But it is an opportunity for you to show the relationship of the content on your page to a crawler, to something like Googlebot or the, the ChatGPT bot that's going to crawl your site. If you can show the relationship of the content, your heading structure can do that. So for example, an H1 is the main topic of the page. In most cases there should only be one H1. There can sometimes be multiple H1s, but only if the page contains very separate topics that are each unique. And it's not a very good practice. We want to one H1 on the page, it's your main topic, and then every H2 belongs to that H1. Okay? So there's subtopics of the H1. And if there's going to be an H3, it needs to belong to an H2. So these are nested in a way that there's a tool that you can use to visualize this. It's called Headings Map, and it's a Chrome extension. If you install that and then go to a website and then click on that extension, it will show you, like, the tree of headings and how they're nested and if they're out of order. But basically, if I were to have Columbia Family photographer as my H1, my H2s would be things like services, pricing, about contact. Like, these are the things that are sections of the page. And like, under services, I might have H3s that are family newborn, maternity, because those are. They belong to that service's H2. So getting the hierarchy right is. It's not all about, like, did I get keywords into an H1 or an H2? You might be using Yoast or some SEO tool that's going to just try to push you to put keywords in them. I'm not as concerned about that as I am concerned about. Are you setting up a clear hierarchy of data so that people, so that Google can understand how does the content on this page relate to the other content on this page? Which sections belong to which topic? That can be a really a big deal in, like, making sure that it's presentable and easy to understand.
- [28:03]
A
Hey, this has got me thinking about something else that I've been hearing a lot lately, which is like, okay, as I'm hearing you talk about this, I'm thinking about how, you know, AI tools or Google are reading quote these pages right, in order to, you know, serve up the search results or whatever. Kind of been hearing this buzz about, like, what about. Do you need to, like, be writing pages on your website or blog posts specifically for AI? Like, are we doing that? Are we talking. Hey, Claude, you know, there's a lot
- [28:38]
C
of experimentation going on here right now, and there are a few different things that are proposed standards. For example, there's something called LLMs Txt, and this is a proposed standard that would be like robots Txt or like your sitemap, sitemap xml, something like that. The idea would be that if people. If enough people adopted this, that you make this sort of standard format, LLMs Txt file, and you can find. I think it's LLMs if you just search LLMs Txt on Google, you'll find there's, like, a specific organization that's sort of laid out. Here's what this should look like.
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A
Okay?
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C
The idea is, if enough people adopted it, then maybe the AI tools could use it as a standard thing that they could go to a website and know that it's going to have a. An LLMs txt, and then they could use that to understand information about the business. Everything I've seen so far says that none of these tools are using LLMs Txt yet. So it's just a proposed standard that's like, maybe one day it could be a thing. Like, for example, Yoast adopted it and has made it so that you can just click a button and you can generate LLMs txt. That's a big step. I mean, millions and millions of websites have Yoast installed. Now all they have to do is press a button to have this file. Eventually there may be tools that use these sort of standards. And another thing that I see people experimenting with is this idea of creating a page specifically for LLMs. And it might not be LLMs Txt, but it's a page that they've intentionally made so that the AI bots can find it, and they'll be able to get the key information about the website to hopefully be able to answer it the way that they want to be answered in AI. And I've seen some interesting results there. Like, sometimes people are getting those pages to be found and cited by AI, but quite honestly, I don't. I don't love it, because what happens is AI will cite that link to the individual page that was written for AI. People will go land on it. It's like, that's not a good place for regular. Right.
- [30:38]
A
Okay, so, like, keep our eye on this. But we're feeling like it's not. Like I said, it's not the secret sauce. Keep our eye on this. But it's not, like, perfect yet.
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C
Exactly. Yeah. And there's a few other things that I think people are saying right now that they have a lot of confidence in. Like, this is what you should do to rank for AI searches. And I don't. I just. I'm not convinced on a lot of it. You know, there's some things that people say that are. Are really technical and they sound smart. And it's like, maybe that's what robots want, like adding schema, for example.
- [31:10]
A
And I'm just like, what is. What's schema? I don't even know what that is.
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C
Yeah, schema is, that's the whole thing is like most people don't know what it is and you have to pretty much. I mean there are really specific cases where it does make sense to use schema. And that's the point. It is a specific format of presenting information so that machines can digest it and then return it in a very specific format. For, for very specific instances. Schema does help, but usually on photography websites these things don't even apply. You might like, for. I'll give you one example you might have seen before. If you search for some, something or someone and underneath the snippet that Google shows in the search results, there will be like little stars and it'll say rating or review and it'll have like the actual aggregate review number there. You can include schema markup that lets it format that very specifically. But like adding regular schema to your pages, it's not really helping AI understand your site better. In any case that I've been able to determine so far.
- [32:12]
A
Okay.
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C
I just don't think that's super important.
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A
Great. I love it. We're like, cross it off, don't do this.
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C
Exactly. If you know about it where it's like you, you get to that point. I'm not telling people they should never use schema, but it's not one of those things that's like, if you, if you do this, it's going to definitely make a difference.
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A
Okay.
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C
FAQ sections are an interesting topic. I see this come up almost every time that someone talks about AI. They're like, you should add FAQ sections. And it's like, recently I've been to more photography websites where I've seen a dedicated FAQ section than ever before. I think lots of people are just like, let me add this.
- [32:45]
A
But they didn't have them before. I feel like that having an FAQ page is like, has been around for a while, but you feel like now people are doing it more because it's helpful to AI.
- [32:56]
C
I think so. I've seen it more. Like I said recently, it's, it's just been everywhere people ask, should I have an FAQ page? Should I have an FAQ section on every page? And you know, it's, it's a great point. Like, I don't think that FAQ sections are bad. I think it can be a really good way for a user to skim and see, oh, look, here's questions, let me get my answers. But I think that those answers should also be answered pretty. They should be naturally answered in Your content. Right. If you have a page that doesn't mention pricing anywhere until the faq, and then it's like, how much does a session cost? And that's the first place that they've seen pricing. Yeah, I don't know that that's the perfect place to answer it. I'm also not convinced that Google or AI will trust information that they only find in that FAQ section if you can't find it anywhere else.
- [33:44]
A
Well, okay. I feel like everything you're saying is making me think like, okay, we've trained AI to think like humans, but now we, the humans are like trying to out robot AI and give it. And it's like it just wants you to. If you just be a human, it'll figure it out because that's how it was trained to be.
- [34:04]
C
Right, exactly. That's a great way of putting it. I love that. And I think, you know, imagine that something that you can do in an FAQ section is give a short answer, but link to more. Let's say you do write an entire blog post about what to wear, how, why my sessions cost a certain amount, or what's included in my sessions. You can always link out to more information, but at least, you know, give a short answer in an FAQ section. That's a good idea. But just don't make that like the only way that you're optimizing your page.
- [34:34]
A
Yeah, because I do like that. I mean, as a, as like a user, I very often go to an FAQ page. But you're right, I don't want that to be the only place that I can find that information. And we often recommend that people are blogging about their most frequently asked questions. That's a goldmine for blog topics. So like, if you can think about having an FAQ page, it's always almost like a table of contents for your blog post, if everything's linking back to that page and you can sort of build that out over time, but it's more. Think about it from a user perspective. When people land on this page, it's going to be easy for them to get all of the information they need. Therefore, it will also be easy for AI to get all of the information it needs because it is mimicking a human's behavior.
- [35:19]
C
Yes, Yes, I like that.
- [35:20]
A
Okay, love.
- [35:21]
C
Yeah. One other thing that I'll, I'll talk about that I consider to be a little bit of a myth or bad advice that I see sometimes. I see this a lot in Facebook groups and people ask, how should I optimize for AI. And then inevitably several people will chime in and say, I just asked Claude, I just asked ChatGPT or the secret one, I just asked Gemini and it's a Google product so it probably knows exactly what Google wants. So just ask Gemini. And you know, I will say some of these models are better at answering these questions than others and it's not a terrible practice. Like I do think you can go and ask AI, what should I improve about this page? Give them a link, let it crawl it even, then give it some of your competitors links and say how could I improve compared to this other content? It's a good practice, but I have done this probably hundreds of times at this point and man, 75% of the time I feel like I'm getting at least one piece of advice back in there where I'm like, oh, I don't know, maybe it either completely made it up or you know, it's just not very good advice.
- [36:22]
A
Yeah, okay, so we're not trusting AI to like tell us, here's how to redo your whole website instead. Maybe a very specific ask on like one page. Maybe.
- [36:37]
C
Yeah, and use your intuition. I mean if it seems like, oh wow, that actually is a really good point. I like that. Maybe go ahead and try implementing that. But don't just take it blindly as it tells you there's these three things you can do and that's going to get you to rank. Usually that's not going to be a key.
- [36:53]
A
All right, so I feel like you've gone over a lot of great myths and things that we can just say these are not super helpful. But what are the things on the flip side that you would say people should be focusing on? What should we be doing to be ranking better and showing up on queries?
- [37:10]
C
Yeah, there's three big categories for me. One is that you need to be everywhere. Two is that you need to be consistent, especially in your message. And three is that you need to make sure there's proof. So we can definitely go through all of these. I think be everywhere is the most important one.
- [37:25]
A
Yeah. What do you mean by that?
- [37:28]
C
Well, the thing is anybody can say anything that they want about themselves on their website and any sort of modern search engine or AI tool is going to only take that. They're going to take it with a grain of salt because they're going to say, well this person can say whatever they want. A lot of people are trying to deceive people. We need to back this up with what we're hearing about this business in other places. And so it can be found anywhere around the web, anything that is indexable or crawlable. So if Google can access it, and if AI can access it, then they're going to probably save information that they find about you from other places. And the more times that your name shows up in those places, the more confidence that these tools can have that those things about you are true.
- [38:22]
A
Okay, so like obviously your website, but then you're also talking like social media or Yelp. How are we feeling about Yelp?
- [38:32]
C
Yeah. So, okay, I think the best place to start is on the, the profiles that you can control that will be a, a main part of your business. So if you're going to actively use that platform, absolutely make sure that you are on those. I mean, whether that's Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, like whatever the big ones are that you're going to use, making sure that those profiles are complete, that your name is consistent across those places. Again, that your message is consistent across those, those places. Organizations that you can join that are really relevant to your business, where it shows that you are a professional photographer in a specific area or that belongs to a specific type of photography, those can be really good.
- [39:18]
A
When I hired my wedding photographer, I wanted like documentary style photography and that wasn't like really a thing back then. And I feel like they belong to this like directory of like documentary photographers. I'm not sure if that's still a thing, but that is good. That's a good like little research thing to do. Can you belong to a certain organization that is like your niche of photography?
- [39:43]
C
Yeah, like one directory that I've worked with is called Wondering Weddings and it's for elopement photographers. And if you are an elopement photographer, it really makes sense to be on a directory that's specifically for, you know, a curated source of the best elopement photographers in the world. Your name being associated with that shows Google and other tools that you are an elopement photographer, that you specialize in this, that you've taken the time to maybe even pay money to be associated with this. It shows a level of professionalism that people who are just like hobbyist or do this on the side, they wouldn't join something like that because why would they spend money on it or why would they take the time to fill
- [40:19]
A
out a profile or even know about it? And you're right, I would absolutely as a consumer do that research and, and go see that you're on there. I just want to circle Back to what you said at the top of this, because I think this, we kind of, like, glossed over it, and I think this is something that is easy, easy for people to do. But often I see a disconnect. Here is making sure that your name and your messaging is the same across everywhere that you appear online, like on Yelp, on Instagram, on Pinterest, on Facebook, if your business name has changed over the years. Or sometimes you go by your name, but sometimes you go by your name photography, or if you have a different name for your photography business, making sure that that stuff is all the same again, that's a really easy action step that you guys can take this week to just make sure that maybe you've updated your Instagram profile recently to, like, talk about, you know, your new direction of your business, but you forgot to do that over on Facebook or on Yelp. Just making sure that's easy to forget. Making sure that all of that stuff is, is the same not only is going to make it look more professional again when actual clients are looking, but is going to help, you know, Google and AI to be like, yep, this is the same person.
- [41:31]
C
You'd be surprised how often I find that these things are not consistent. I've. I mean, just last week I came across someone who, I looked at their Google business profile and in the description, it said that I am a family, maternity and newborn photographer. You go to their website and it says couples and boudoir. And then on like one of their other places, it said only family. It's like if you're saying you're all of these things in one place, but only one of these things in another place, that can be really confusing not only for. For AI and Google, but also for users where they're like, wait a second, I know this is the same brand. What actually do they do? And it can be hard whenever you have multiple specialties to get that right. But just being. Being clear, don't use those places to try to optimize. Just try to tell what you actually do in a natural way. And usually the people will understand that, especially once they get to your website. And the tools will understand that. If you're clear about it.
- [42:26]
A
Yeah. Okay, cool. So online, like social organizations, Yelp, places like that. What else? Any other ideas for everywhere? Oh, okay, tell us.
- [42:39]
C
Another thing is. Yeah, you'll see these, like, top lists in a lot of situations. For example, there's one that I have a client in the San Francisco Bay area, and they have this thing called 510 families it's like a, you know, a family blog, and they have a list of the best Bay Area photographers. And for a long time, that list was ranking number one. If you search for Bay Area photographers or Bay Area family photographers, and there's a list there, and it's 20 or 30 photographers that this blog has set up and kind of went through their market, they're trying to rank for this topic, and they wanted to list the best photographers. Sometimes it can be really hard to get on these if they've already been written. Getting in touch with the editor and saying, hey, add me to your list. As someone who works on many websites, I get these kinds of requests sometimes, and some of them are really bad. They'll be like, why didn't you include me on this list? My work is better than the people who are there. I actually see stuff like that. Don't be that person. But you can sometimes, like, set up a really strong personal connection with an editor of something like that. In this case, the client that I'm talking about actually reached out and they said, well, we have an opportunity coming up where you can sponsor this post, and they could pay a certain amount and they could be at the very top of the list with a. A whole featured paragraph and like a special coupon code. And. And it was relatively affordable, and it was a really good investment for that person to get on that list, even if they had to pay. So I'm not saying you always pay for these things, but sometimes that is a way to get in, and sometimes it's much more affordable than you would think to get on these lists. If you reach out and just say, what do I need to do to get mentioned on this? Or next time you update this, would you be willing to consider me? Yeah, I think that's a really good idea.
- [44:20]
A
Okay.
- [44:21]
C
A big one that is showing up in search almost all the time now is there's. There's a SERP feature. So SERP is Search Engine Results Page. So just basically anytime you go to Google and you. You get a page that's a serp. And there's a SERP feature that's called Discussions and Forums. So it's a whole little section that has like forum discussions in it. Most of the time these are dominated by Reddit, but I will say they can also include public Facebook groups are all. All indexable at this point. So posts that are made within a public Facebook group, Google will index those posts and be able to see in all the answers that
- [45:00]
A
I've seen both of these come up in just like organic searches I've done recently. Yeah, yeah.
- [45:06]
C
And I, I think Reddit is probably, it's one of the trickiest, but it is maybe the most, there's the most opportunity there. Yeah.
- [45:17]
A
I feel like Reddit has this. Okay, like again, maybe I'm totally wrong, but as a consumer, if I see like a Facebook group, I'm like, eh. But if I go to Reddit, for some reason I'm like, people like, isn't there like a rule about you can't promote yourself on Reddit? Like, for some reason I feel like it holds more weight for me.
- [45:36]
C
And that's probably exactly what it is. They're, that's part of their entire ethos is like, you cannot self promote on Reddit.
- [45:42]
A
And so is it okay? Yeah.
- [45:43]
C
Because of that, a lot of times people do take the discussions there to be from real third party users who have actual experience. And you do find that quite often. I mean, sometimes you'll find some spammy stuff on Reddit for sure, but there's a lot of real advice given there and I think that's why they're so trusted by Google. I wrote an entire article about this. It's called Google Reddit Sitting in a Tree, something like that. I made this observation whenever a lot of people were talking about like, what is this a partnership between Google and Reddit? Why is Reddit everywhere? And that was over a year ago and it had stuck. I mean, I still see Reddit in almost every search for photography terms. In that article I talk about a tool called Reddit Post Notifier, and it's a Chrome extension that you can use to set notifications on certain subreddits or for certain keywords so that you'll get a little notification in your, in your browser anytime that someone starts a post that has a certain topic or a certain keyword or within a certain subreddit.
- [46:43]
A
Wow.
- [46:44]
C
Yeah. And in that case, the, the goal is for you to be helpful, to not just go and promote yourself, but to go actually answer questions that people are asking.
- [46:53]
A
I was gonna say because like, okay, you have to like, kind of think a little bit, you know, from a different place. Like it's, you're not coming in there to be like, please hire me. You're coming in to be like, hey, I'm actually an expert in this area. So like, you know, let's say somebody's asking a question about, like, I'd love to have my dogs photographed or like, I'd love to include my dogs in our session. But like, My dog hates other dogs. Like, is that crazy? And you could come in and be like, hey, I get that. I'm a photographer in this area. I get this question a lot. Here's how we work with people who have reactive dogs. You could actually act as like an expert being really helpful. And I love that mindset shift to Corey. Like, this is obviously very strategic as well, but it's really like a good karma thing, you know? Like, I, I really like to think about marketing in that way too. It's like you put good energy out into the world. Like, you're a good person, you're being helpful. You're leaving reviews on other people's businesses, they leave reviews back. You go onto Reddit and like, give some helpful information, and that's like a, a really powerful but also genuinely helpful thing that you can do for your community.
- [48:03]
C
Yeah, it's ironic because Reddit actually calls them karma points whenever people. I didn't even know that. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I think that's a great idea. I also think that there's, there's ways to get creative here. I mean, you know, several things. One, in your situation, what you just mentioned, it's probably a good idea for you to have a blog post that's about, like, best locations for photos with dogs or something about including your pets. And sometimes in certain subreddits you might be able to get away with. If you go ahead and write out some advice, you could also link to your post. But even if you don't remember what I said earlier, we're trying to get AI and Google to see that I give consistent information in multiple places. So I have a blog post where I talk about this, and then maybe I pull out two or three of those points and put them in a Reddit post as an answer to someone's question. It's reaffirming that I'm an expert on that particular topic. But also, you could incorporate Reddit into your review strategy. Whenever you ask for reviews, maybe you send people a link to your Google business profile, but also you say, here's two or three Reddit threads. If you're a Reddit user, I would love to have your review as a response to one of these threads and just ask them to go to that specific place and leave you a review.
- [49:16]
A
I love that as an alternative to leaving, like a Google review. Especially, you know, if you're, you have repeat clients, maybe they've already left you a review on Google. You could be like, you know, here's a, here's a Reddit thread. I love that. That's so smart.
- [49:29]
C
I think that an often overlooked thing when it comes to SEO, and you probably talk about this all the time when it comes to marketing, but I think people need to be considering what kind of collaborations they can have with other local entities, other businesses, vendors. How can I work together with someone else who also has this goal of growing their business and doing their, their marketing? And what can I bring to the table there as a photographer and someone who has a website that I know how to blog on, I know how to do this work on, what can I do to collaborate with them to make something that's actually valuable for both of us? And maybe it leads to them linking to you because you allow them to use some of the photos on their website or you each do an interview with each other and blog about that. So many opportunities for collaborations.
- [50:20]
A
I love collaboration. I mean, we just did a whole episode on like kind of in person marketing. But I think this is like sort of the, the step down from in person where it's still a really interactive type of collaboration, but maybe it's not necessarily like an event, so to speak. And yeah, I agree. I think again, if you guys can shift your mindset to be. How can I be helpful? Now just remember, I know you live and breathe photography. Most people cannot take a photo, okay? And really, most businesses really value photography. Like they. Everybody needs photos of what they do or sell in order to promote their own business. You have something super valuable that everybody wants if you can put yourself in the shoes of like, okay, what other businesses? Like, I like to think about this as a Venn diagram, like overlap with my ideal client. Where else are your clients spending their time and money? Like, where are they shopping? What are they doing every single day? Think about those businesses and how you might do a natural sort of collaboration with them. The opportunities here are sort of endless. But thinking about how you can come to that conversation from a place of being of service. And then I think my other tip here would be, and you do the ideation, like, don't reach out to them and just be like, do you want to do a collaboration that is too vague. You need to be like, this is what I'm thinking. Here's what I'm offering. I would want, like, I'll do this, you do that. What do you think? Be really clear because every business owner is busy, including you. So if you wanted do this collaboration, make it easy for them to say yes by having done the work behind the scenes about this is exactly how it would work.
- [52:14]
C
Yeah. And I think that the key element from my perspective as someone who thinks about SEO and websites all the time, is that yes, this is a form of in person marketing, but you back it up with proof on your website. You show that you did this collaboration by blogging about it, by mentioning it on these different channels that you run online. You can't just do it in a vacuum and expect people to know about it. You have to such a good point, having some sort of like publication strategy for we're going to do this thing and here's what I'm going to bring to the table. I have so many students who will do this once for, let's say they partner with a clothing boutique and they're like, I'm going to, I'm going to do a photo shoot, a model shoot for a family and I'm going to make sure that they use clothing that they buy specifically from your boutique. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to write a blog post where the entire focus is your boutique. And I think if I write that post, it will probably also rank for your boutique's name and places to buy family clothing in my city. And my goal as a photographer is to get that ranking for those terms. But it's also going to make you look really good. It's going to help you. And I want to get your. So we're talking to the boutique, I want to get your feedback. Like, how would you like your business to be presented? When I write this, can you give me a couple of quotes? Can you give me any insider information about how you're, why you're the best for the certain person. Put that stuff into your blog post and suddenly you've got this, this asset that works both for you and for that other business. And once you've done one or two, next time you go into a collaboration, you can say, look what I did for this person. I could also do something like this for you.
- [53:54]
A
Okay, Corey, I just had such a good idea. I'm going back to your thing about the 510 families. Okay? You, as the photographer could write one of these rankings or you know, the top 10 dog parks in your city and, or maybe dog parks is not a good one because nobody owns those. But like, you could make the top 10 list of clothing boutiques or whatever and have that on your website. Now you have all of these businesses who are like, hey, I'd like to be on that list. Right. And all of these ideal clients who might be Searching for where do I buy secondhand newborn clothing? For example, they're landing on your website to find their newborn clothing and then they're like, oh yeah, I should probably schedule my newborn photos. Who's this person? Right? That's a. That's a brilliant idea. You guys all been there.
- [54:48]
C
That's how you cast a wide net with your blog. I mean, like, that's the idea is we're trying to not only find people whenever they are actively searching for a photographer, but how, how can I get in front of people whenever they didn't even think about hiring a photographer, but they were thinking about something else? That's something that happens before hiring a photographer and I can show up there. Yes. That is one of the best ways that you can utilize SEO because it's not easily as competitive. I mean, like, you can often rank for these things much easier than you can rank for your city, your specialty photography. Those are going to be very competitive in most markets. And some of these other ideas, you can write something pretty easily that starts ranking and you will get traffic to those. The thing is that most of the terms that you're trying to rank for as a photographer are going to be quite competitive. But if you are trying to rank for prenatal massage in your area, sometimes those businesses don't have anything ranking. It can be much easier to rank there. And so you writing that article is just a way for you to expand the net. There is search volume for those terms and it's just not very competitive. You can pick it up often.
- [55:56]
A
Genius. I love this idea. I hope you guys are all like furiously taking notes because these are some excellent ideas for how you can improve your ranking. Show up everywhere. Wow, Corey, you have shared so much with us. I feel like, honestly though, we're just like, like scratching the the tip here. If people want to really like get into this work and learn more about what you do or even learn to work with you, what's the best way for them to get in touch, Keep in touch, all of that.
- [56:31]
C
Yeah, I would say the best thing is just go to the Fuel youl photos website, fuelyourphotos.com I have recent blog posts on there and I have a free SEO guide on there.
- [56:41]
B
Well, that's it for this week's episode of this Can't Be that Hard. I'll be back same time, same place next week. In the meantime, you can find more information about this episode along with all the relevant links, notes and downloads@thiscantbethard.com learn if you like the podcast, be sure to hit the subscribe button. Even better, share the love by leaving a review in itunes. And as always, thanks so much for joining me. I hope you have a fantastic week.
- [57:11]
A
Yeah, definitely. Head on over to It's Fuel your photos dot com.
- [57:15]
C
That's it.
- [57:16]
A
Yeah. And grab that SEO guide. I. I took a peek at that, too. That looks really awesome. Corey, thanks so much for being on the podcast. You were a gold mine of information and I know our listeners are really going to learn a lot from this episode. So thank you so much.
- [57:32]
C
Thanks for having me. It was fun.
- [57:33]
A
All right, you guys, we will see you next week.