0:00:00 - Connor Walberg

If you're just at the start of your beginning in your career, it's a time that's filled with stress and all kinds of like. I hope this works. Oh, days that are ups and downs. You get a couple clients, then you don't get any for three weeks and then you're stressed again and it's a roller coaster. But it's good to remember this is Justine Dupont. She's a big wave surfer and it says it's the best in the beginning, when you know nothing, then it's all unknown. So it's kind of you don't know where it's going to go. You don't know what's going to happen. That's why it's scary. But then don't let that fear to bilitate you. So I'm going to combine them and turn it around and concrete head on.

0:00:40 - Natalie Jennings

This is the Photo Business Help podcast, a resource for photographers of all levels, from brand new to burnt out, who believe that business growth starts with personal growth. I'm your host, natalie Jennings. I created Jennings Photo back in 2010 and have been happily full time since, but not without some mistakes along the way. Those lessons, plus what's really helped me thrive financially and personally, are what I want to share with you so you can grow with your photo business too. You'll also hear stories from other photographers and industry folks, as well as my favorite ways to be more mindful and happier on this journey.

Okay, I know this is something we've talked about before here, but this is a really great approach to SEO. Connor Wahlberg is here, and one of his main themes as he tries to make this accessible to photographers is to keep things simple, so if you're like there's so much I don't want to go into it, then that's okay. He has a really great course and a really great set of tools for you to just really sharpen up your SEO presence I guess would be the best way to say it and in a simple way, so you're not having to do a lot of unnecessary stuff, which is something we talk about today. It's like what's necessary and what's unnecessary and where should you put your attention first when it comes to the big SEO thing. So you may want to have a listen if you're not getting the kind of traffic that you want.

Two things happen I don't hit record and there's great lead up conversation to the interview, or I turn off the recording button and then at the end there's all these awesome things that people say as soon as they think that they're not being recorded anymore or as soon as they know. Not think I'm not like sneaky, but there's like that weird relaxation that happens. But anyway. So you were just saying how your first podcast interview was like high pressure because it was like in person and lights and people watching and all that stuff.

0:02:50 - Connor Walberg

Yes, it was way too much all at once. And I was like right outside of my office, in the middle of the co-working space, so I was like, oh, this would be nice and casual. And then I walk out and see this whole setup they have and I was like, and they didn't prep me, I didn't even know what I was going to talk about. I was just like what is this?

0:03:08 - Natalie Jennings

Oh my gosh. Well, hopefully this is a little bit more laid back in terms of not having a whole bunch of people watching you.

0:03:17 - Connor Walberg

We are certainly feels that way, since I'm standing in my own house.

0:03:21 - Natalie Jennings

Yeah, that's true. That's true, I have the zoom out for Don. I've got a very comfortable pair of sweatpants on, so a different experience altogether. Yeah Well, thanks for coming on, and so I've done this. This show has been going gosh four and a half years now.

It's been a long time and we've done a lot of SEO stuff sprinkled in over the years, but it never seems to get old. First of all, it's always important, and one of the things that I coach about in my coaching program is that blogging is not dead and that SEO is real. And I've been doing Jennings photo for 14 years and I have like a little form that says how did you find out about me? And I would say I mean, it's definitely the majority. It kind of varies depending on the season actually, but for the most part, I'd say eight or nine out of 10 people find me on Google, so I think that's a testament to SEO.

And I also should say that I haven't been really diligently working on my SEO in the past year or two because of that, because I'm actually quite busy, but the amount of dedication I put in in those first like five, six, seven, eight years was pretty intense, and so there's a lot of stuff that I think is just still floating to the top and that has really been working for me.

But even when I do something new like post a family session, for example, like I go to Hawaii every now and then because I used to live there, so I have a number of family sessions that I've shot there, and I started blogging about them one year and it took about six months, but all of a sudden I started getting all these inquiries from Hawaii, which was really interesting. So I think just yeah, having the patience to let it work is key, and I'm just rambling here. But I'd love to just hear a little bit about what you do to help photographers with the SEO stuff, since this can be kind of a complicated thing and you say right on your website like this doesn't have to be.

0:05:12 - Connor Walberg

Yes, I'm a firm believer in that, and you said a lot of interesting things just now, and a few of the reasons why I think people avoid SEO maybe or they never follow up with it is they go in and they learn some SEO stuff, they make the adjustments, maybe they make a great piece of content and there's no instant gratification.

It's not like running a Facebook ad where you like turn it on and then you see that you got a sale and you're like cool, it's working. Seo is like you do all this work and then you're just kind of sitting there and then you're like well, it's not working, I'm going to go do something else. And nine months later, a year later or something like that, all of a sudden you're getting all these inquiries from Google and you don't even really remember why, and maybe you see that it was your SEO and that's when you go in for a second wave, you're super motivated and then this is what I see all the time you kind of stop. I do this too. I'm like so amped on SEO, on my own business, and I go in on it, and then I'm like well, I got to work on other things for a while.

0:06:14 - Natalie Jennings

Yeah, well, the patience aspect is real and I think we're so conditioned to post something and see how many likes it gets immediately. And then, because the cycle of something like Instagram is so short, we're constantly having to post. But SEO is kind of the opposite of that, right.

0:06:29 - Connor Walberg

It is, and we all want our business to skyrocket right out of the gate. So I actually mentor an eighth grader at my kid's school, where they do a business at their school. Every year Each kid creates their own business and actually sells things and I was just telling him this morning that you don't want it to skyrocket right out of the gate because you aren't equipped to handle the problems and the things that come up with. Business that goes too quick at the beginning to ramp into it. So as you're building up, let it take time. It's going to take time to really get to where it's sustainable and it makes sense and you're able to manage it. But someone who's way down the line can handle big problems very easily and it doesn't keep them up at night, but someone at the start even a minor problem can throw them off completely.

0:07:14 - Natalie Jennings

Yeah, totally. That's a really good piece of advice and something really interesting to think about. I do a little. I used to do a mini workshop on starting an email list and just having like an opt-in and a welcome sequence and stuff like that. And I was very surprised by how many people don't have any of that infrastructure set up. And I would say to people so let's just imagine that your wildest dreams came true and you were on a stage where everyone in the audience was looking for what you do. Like everyone was like ready to buy a photo package or whatever it was, and there was 10,000 people there or something like you don't want that or you would. What would you do? Where would you send those people? Like what are you going to do right now? And they're like, uh, I don't know. Because you know there's no system set up. And I think I think that's good advice in terms of can be relatively soon after you start, but you really do have to get the foundation pieces figured out.

0:08:11 - Connor Walberg

You do, yeah, yeah. So back to what you were saying about my website and my approach. The whole idea is SEO can be simple, and I think there's this skew in the industry towards making it complicated. And I used to be servicing clients as an SEO, so I would work with clients one on one and it's very easy to just kind of write some text that's true and everything but that's a little more complicated sounding than what it actually is. It's very easy to make it like, wow, I do this and this and this and make yourself seem even more valuable or more skilled or more technical than maybe you even are.

And what's amazing is some of these people out there are these SEOs are pulling reports reports from Samrush, it's popular SEO tool, or age. They just type in the domain, run the report and they send it to you as an audit and they're like these are the things that are wrong with your site. And this is a tool that like automated it and it's not really identifying anything that specific or that important. But when you see it, you're like, oh, all these things are wrong. You can help me fix those right.

0:09:15 - Natalie Jennings

So right, and it might not be necessary or urgent, I guess, right.

0:09:21 - Connor Walberg

No, a lot of the things aren't necessary or urgent. It's really easy to get in the weeds with SEO and like do a bunch of stuff that maybe has little to no impact. I talk in my group a lot about the technical side of SEO and this is the thing that most people get into. They're like I got to focus on the technical side. I need to get my page speed faster. My score on Google page speed is at a 65 and it's not at 100. How do I get it to 100? Once I'm at 100, I'll get more traffic and it's like no, that's probably going to have no impact on your site at all.

0:09:53 - Natalie Jennings

Great. That's really a great point. Well, just full disclosure. I may have great SEO in terms of people finding me on Google, but I don't know what the heck's going on in the last few years as far as, like, best practices and stuff, because, as I said, I haven't done a lot with it. I probably should have someone like you help me out, but I am getting what I need out of it, which is kind of to your point. So like I don't have a sophisticated, in-depth approach to it. Back in the day, I was really diligent with certain things when I was blogging or alt-taking or whatever was big at the time, 10 years ago, and it's worked. But I think I guess I'm just trying to confirm that point that like if you're listening to this and feeling like, oh my God, seo is so overwhelming, there's so many things there actually aren't that many things that you need to do correctly to get the traffic that you want, is that kind of on point.

0:10:49 - Connor Walberg

Yeah. So if I break down SEO, I say there's like kind of like three channels you could focus on, but it's content, links and technical. And the technical one to me is the very last one. You don't need to focus on that, but it's the one people go to and, like I was saying, with Google PageSpeed Score, people see that score and they're like it's a metric, it's a measurement and it's something that you can improve in five minutes if you do the right things. And then you look at it and you're like I have an A plus. It's like going back to school. The other stuff isn't nearly as measurable gaining links. You're like, yeah, I got a good link. What did it do for my site? I don't know yet. Maybe in a month it'll impact my ranks and they'll go better, they'll go higher. But it's focusing on things that actually matter to the people who visit your site is the angle that most SEOs kind of forget about. It's like if it's going to actually help the people visiting your site, then Google probably thinks it's good too.

0:11:45 - Natalie Jennings

Yeah, that makes perfect sense, right? Can we talk a little bit about content then, since that's the first little pillar that you mentioned, and just sort of what that means and what, maybe, if you have just a couple of basic tips that folks can keep in mind or focus on?

0:12:00 - Connor Walberg

Yeah, so I'd like to start that part off with just a little bit of a backstory here. Yeah, go ahead. I got into SEO because I was running a t-shirt company where I designed t-shirts. I also designed long boards and made custom pocket teas. I started doing SEO without knowing I was doing SEO and I didn't know what it was at all.

But I had read this book and it was by Marcus Sheridan. It's called they Ask you Answer. That's as simple as the whole book. Like a lot of business books, it's a very simple principle that you can learn in the first chapter and then it's reiterated. It was a great read and I ended up building one article, very in-depth article, about different types of long boards.

My site went from like zero to two visits a day to over 200 visits a day with one article and it took a little time. But then it just started happening and I was kind of blown away by these results and I did nothing technical. I didn't do any link building. I didn't do any of the other stuff. I just made some good content. It's something that I knew my audience needed.

It was like the people visiting my site, they don't understand different types of longboards. I didn't understand them. I'm like, how are there different types, dance longboards, that's all genre. I didn't know that and then I started diving into it. I was like, well, I should make a guide about all of this. And then I kind of did a little light keyword research. I was like it could actually work and I built this guide and I think initially I probably forgot about that effort for a few weeks because I was trying every single marketing method known to man. And next thing, I knew I was getting traffic and it was like okay, so the content moved the needle there. So content is anything that's on your site, anything that you're building that's helpful to your audience. It's the text, it's the images you put up. It can be within the code for Google as well, like your title and made a description, but it's the stuff that people will actually see.

0:13:57 - Natalie Jennings

Sure yeah, the stuff they're looking for, which makes way too much sense.

0:14:02 - Connor Walberg

Yes, and so a lot of photographers will go into SEO and their big focus will be just continuing to get their homepage dialed, and this stuff can help, but and once you have that one keyword, so you want one keyword on every page that your page targets, and people get that wrong too, because they'll change it and adjust it and they'll have six different things they want to target. So, which reminds me, after this I want to talk about, like niches and getting specific on your homepage, but a great place to start is to build a content guide on your site, like if you're a wedding photographer, build a guide for different venues in your area, talking about the different venues with links to their pages that are helpful, something as like simple and useful to your audience, something that people would find and be like wow, oh, cool, this would be a great wedding venue, I like this one.

0:14:55 - Natalie Jennings

And then they realize they're on your photography site or something and next thing, you know, yeah, and it's almost like I think what happens with a lot of photographers is at least the folks I've worked with over the years, myself included as you finish a session and it's beautiful and you love it, and you're trying to figure out. You have these photos you want to share and you're trying to figure out what to say about that particular session. That's valid just to your point if you're talking about a session that took place in a specific venue and you really want to get some cred around your familiarity with that venue. But ultimately, the stuff that I think drives traffic and moves the needle is can just be complimented with any of your photos. So you know, like you're saying, if you're doing a wedding, photographer is doing a venue post.

You know talking about different venues in the area. You know you don't have to include any particular one shoot. You can just sprinkle in photos that you love in your portfolio and you're still showing your audience that you're a great photographer. But it doesn't have to be about this one shoot all the time, not saying that it's not great to show a single collection, because people, once they get more in depth, they want to see that. But I think, just thinking about what are people looking for, what do they want to know, and then sprinkling in photos around that can work really well.

0:16:19 - Connor Walberg

Yeah, absolutely, and the idea here is that we're just creating helpful content. So and it's content that is closely related to what we do, so it's intent based. So there's something called search intent. When people are on Google, when you type in a search, if you type in like top wedding venues in Denver, then there's a good chance that you're looking for a wedding venue, so you might need a photographer. But in every industry there's these kind of side things that people can do, that you can write about side topics that are well connected to what you're doing, and if you provide the best piece of content on this, then there's a good chance that you will outrank your competition. And so that's the other part of SEO is it's all a competition. We're all competing for those top spots, for top keywords. So the way you want to approach it is, when you identify your topic, whatever you want to write about, search it on Google. So see what's already there, what are people doing?

And sometimes I go in and I think everybody's going to write a guide about this and I look at it and it's a roundup of different blog posts. That's ranking and I'm like so Google is saying that this is what people are actually looking for and it's giving them that result because that's what they're clicking on. So what I need to create here is a roundup that's better than the other roundups Better quality, more readable. It doesn't have to be longer, that's a misconception and SEO length it's not about making things as long as possible and boring as possible, and that's been changing over the last few years, because when I started, maybe 10 years ago, you could really get away with just making something as long as possible and hitting as many keywords as possible and it would rank well. And now Google seems to be getting a little smarter about that. They're like well, yeah, but people are going to this page and they're bouncing right away. They have no interest in this. It's too much.

0:18:12 - Natalie Jennings

Totally Well. I have a great example, and I apologize for those of you who have heard me share this before, because I think I've brought it up a couple of times. But many years ago I would say nine-ish years ago there was the wave of preset craze and there was a company they're still around called VSCO or VSCO, and they came out with these really solid film-like presets. And so it was. Everyone was using them and it was such a fun way to make your digital images really have some character and vibe. And so I first was finding myself making certain Google searches like best presets for whatever I was searching at the time, because I wanted to find out how I could get my hands on these.

And then the same thing happened as you just said, as I noticed what was kind of going on at the top of the Google list, and so I made a series of VSCO review posts showing my photography before and after with all of the different presets, and to this day I still get at least half a dozen hits on those posts every single day, if not more than that. And this is like 10 years ago. They're still. They're not even relevant anymore to the industry, but they're still popping as far as SEO goes. So just another example of like how you can do like. I guess that wasn't a roundup, but it was certainly like oh, someone's doing review of the presets, I'll do that too, because it's my take, it's not their take, it's not like I'm copying them.

0:19:39 - Connor Walberg

Yeah, you saw it was there, and then you made a better version.

0:19:43 - Natalie Jennings

Sure, yep exactly.

0:19:44 - Connor Walberg

Yeah, so anyway, we can improve the way we're answering people's questions by looking at what's already there, but then giving them a better result should eventually outrank.

0:19:55 - Natalie Jennings

Yeah well, I don't wanna lose your thread. You wanted to bring up niche stuff as well, so let's go down that road.

0:20:00 - Connor Walberg

Thank you for the reminder. You're welcome, niche stuff. So this is a very common one, and a lot of photographers are I do everything type of photographers when they're starting out. I did this when I was shooting. I was an extreme sports photographer, so I'm mostly shooting skiing for magazines, mountain biking, skateboarding, that sort of stuff, but I also shot architectural and I also shot random events and I also shot whatever else came my way, and so I thought I need a gallery for each one of those on my website so people can see that I do everything.

The problem with this is that everybody starts seeing you as not really a specialist at anything. What? Why would I go to this site? So the connection here is Google feels the same way. If your homepage says that you do everything, google's not gonna feature you for everything. They're not gonna say that this general list is going to be the portrait photographer they recommend over a specific family portrait photographer. They're not gonna say, oh well, your site looks so great though, I'm gonna feature you.

Even though you also shoot architectural, you also do this, you also do that. You gotta get really specific. So your homepage yes, it can be kind of a hub of what you do, but you really want it to target your main thing. So if your main thing is family portraits, your homepage needs to be your family portraits page. That's the page that you want Google to send people to, because it's your strongest thing, it's your main focus and you gotta make it clear to Google that that's the case.

Now you can make additional pages for each of your other ones, and these we call I've heard them called Silo, cornerstone, hubs there's different names for these pages, but if you make a second page, you can literally make a copy of the first page of your homepage and have a second page that's linked to in your menus or linked to somewhere on your homepage even that features your other type of photography, and that way Google sees that second page as okay. This is a specialist page for this type of photography, for this person in this location. I'm gonna send people to that page now because they know exactly what that page is about and that fits that one keyword per page thing like Denver Family Portrait Photographer and then Denver Architectural Photographer is the other page.

0:22:23 - Natalie Jennings

That makes sense.

And I think what I found myself doing and again, this is 14 years in is I started out really strong in weddings and it was just all about weddings and that really helped things to grow.

And I was specifically a sort of most like a vintagey film-like style, so like that was. It was a very, very specific style of photography as well, as you know, a very specific market. And then this is something I talk to people about a lot, but like it's not bad to, as you said, like try out architectural photography or food photography or newborn, like, if you want, if you're starting out, you don't know what you might like first of all, so there's nothing wrong with that. But you don't have to show everyone every gig you've ever shot to build your credibility, and I think that's where people, especially when your portfolio is small, have the tendency to want to have a really large portfolio, like I do food and I do architecture and I do weddings and I also do newborns and I do seniors and you know, and it's like that gets very convoluted and not very friendly to like not only Google but just like your customer.

0:23:29 - Connor Walberg

Yeah, they're on your site and they're like, oh okay, like I don't understand. I see this regularly like galleries links to like a recent experimental shoot or something at the top and it just doesn't really fit anything on the site and I'm like I don't really think people are gonna be looking at this. So I usually advise people to try to avoid doing that. Have like nice curated portfolios. Maybe you could put that in a blog post if you wanted to just talk about a recent shoot. That's not connected.

0:23:57 - Natalie Jennings

Exactly.

0:23:58 - Connor Walberg

I think people are afraid of pigeonholing themselves with a niche. They're like if I say that I'm this, then I can't be anything else. It's like well, you can still be all these other things, your friends will still. If you're a family portrait photographer, your friends will still reach out to you to shoot weddings. The random people will still reach out to you and be like hey, can you shoot this wedding? And if you wanna do it, you can do it. If you don't, you don't have to.

0:24:19 - Natalie Jennings

but yeah, so in my case I do like headshots and portraits and Families and that's. They're all kind of in the same. So whether it's a senior, that's a portrait, whether it's like a, but it's. The Stylistic thing has come together in a way where I describe it to people, where I like to capture Movement and emotion as much as possible, and so no matter which type of portrait I'm doing, nowadays my style is so like you can tell what my work is.

It's not like my headshots look like clean in studio and then I have these like dreamy Family sessions that look totally different, like it all fits under the umbrella of my style after years and years and years and years of honing that and then trimming stuff off. But to that point it's scary to tell people what you don't do, but it is so freeing at the same time. There's something if you go to the front page of my website right now, I say I try to highlight movement and emotion, something like that, and then I say I try my best to avoid like large family groups and Perfect poses. If that's what you want, that's not what you're gonna find here, and I think like that can be scary because you don't want to turn away work, you're gonna make more room for what you really like to do, so that was well put.

0:25:33 - Connor Walberg

I like that. It's like you turn down what you don't want to make room for what you do want, because if you're spending all your time doing what you don't want, it's only gonna lead to more of what you don't want.

0:25:45 - Natalie Jennings

Yeah, it's such a hard one to learn. When you're starting out it's like but I, I want money, or I want experience, or, and it's great if you want experience, just take stuff, but you don't have to share it. Oh, and if you know, show what you want to sell. That's really that old. Why is that it?

0:26:00 - Connor Walberg

Yes.

0:26:01 - Natalie Jennings

Yeah, totally Well. Do you have any actionable things that folks can do? I guess we've covered kind of a big one, like if you're wondering what you should talk about today on your blog, like Talk about something relevant to your, your clients, maybe something else that a photographer could do right now, whether it's auditing their own site and looking for Something they shouldn't be doing or should be doing, or whatever. Whatever pops into your head.

0:26:23 - Connor Walberg

Yeah, probably the number one biggest thing you can do right out of the gate, especially if you haven't done much for SEO, is your Google my Business and just Getting it dialed in. And I like to think of that as a little bit separate from your website. Google views both of them, but Google my Business is like that's where they recommend businesses, and I've seen some huge changes here lately where it used to be that people would, if they're shooting from their house and they didn't want to list their house, they're getting mail sent to, like a co-working space or something like that to validate their Google my Business profile. I don't think you need to do that anymore and Google actually says don't do that sort of stuff, but now they let you like, if you have a studio and you also travel to shoot, they let you have a physical location and an area and they say it needs to be within two hours but of drive time, but really your area.

The more specific you can get on Google my Business, the smaller you can get. Think of it like if the area is this big, you have a hundred other Photographers in your niche that you're competing with. If it's this big, now you only have 15. So, like, your chances of ranking high in that area will be much greater if you narrow that down on Google. So narrow your location down, depending on where you live. Some people a lot of photographers are between two cities and they're in the middle of farmland and it's kind of like, well, you kind of need to have it open, but not too open. So, just like, try to find that balance and experiment with it, but really getting your Google my Business profile just as dialed in as possible. Fill in every word of your description, every character you fill in and make it enticing and interesting, because this is a lot of people's first time Seeing your business or hearing about you and if they happen to read that not that a lot of people do, but if they happen to read it, you want to be like oh yeah, I should check this person out, they're a good fit for me.

0:28:13 - Natalie Jennings

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, that Google my Business thing, I mean I, we could go down a whole other episode about that, but that's a big one. I mean, people are checking up on the validity of sites and I think it's just Almost like a subconscious like thing that happens and it's like whoa, they have like a bunch of Google reviews and they're like a real person. And those sorts of things, I think do matter a lot more than we think if we're just focusing on our website.

0:28:38 - Connor Walberg

Oh, the trust factors are huge, because now you have other people saying that they trust you so and it's not on your website, so it's not like it's curated by you. When you see testimonials on people's own sites, you're like, well, they could have written that themselves and put someone else's photo and name there. But through Google, like, these are actual people leaving reviews, and Google Maps results generally come up first, so really hoping to rank. Well, like Google, my Business is the place to focus and hone in on right from the start and Make sure you're getting reviews, and not all at once either. That's another quick tip, like, if you so, that's it.

0:29:18 - Natalie Jennings

That's a great tip.

0:29:19 - Connor Walberg

Yes, if you have had a Google my Business for a while now and you're like I need reviews and you email every past client you had today and you get 25 reviews or 30 reviews, google could see that, as you're paying people to review you, you're Doing something spammy to get reviews. Let them email out Infrequently, like every week, every other week, send a few emails and follow up with those people and gather the reviews at like a natural pace.

0:29:46 - Natalie Jennings

Exactly. Here's a quick tip for those of you listening like you can grab the link for where to leave the reviews on your bit Once you get your Google my Business set up. There's a link that goes directly to the review box so you can grab that. You can shorten it I have mine as a pretty link, because it's a weird jorbly long thing. Then just write up a quick email template it can be in Gmail and just say, hey, it was great working with you, like when you have a couple minutes could you leave a review, blah, blah, blah, and then Gmail has send later built right in so you can just you could write up a dozen of these and have them sprinkled out throughout the month and there's a link directly to the the review box and Likely not everyone's gonna respond, but I think you'll be surprised if you make a habit of doing that after every shoot, which I got really bad about for a while and I started getting a lot better about it recently and you know it works.

People that are happy want to help you. So that's just for listeners, if you're like. Well, how do I do this? So set up your Google my Business, just like Hunter says, and then just share that review link with people in a measured kind of Strategic way.

0:30:51 - Connor Walberg

Yes and respond to the reviews. So anytime you get a review, so reply, let people know, and when you're reaching out for these reviews, be as as like, personal as possible. Reference their actual shoot and something you really enjoyed about it in the email. They're like a hundred times more likely to respond to that than just an email that comes in. It seems very generic and boilerplate absolutely, and I know it's longer, which is what most people, most of us, try to avoid. Anything like that. It's always like let's batch it out.

0:31:20 - Natalie Jennings

I think you're totally right. You can't batch out stuff. If you're just cold reaching out to people, I would say my asking for review email is quite short because I have it set to go. I think it's a day or two after people get their portfolio, so for me it's like one more thing. It was great working with you. I hope you've enjoyed looking at your photos so far. If you have a quick second, it's very short, but that's because we just had an email. But if you're reaching out to someone from like six months ago, you you got to have some warmth there or else they're gonna be like this is annoying.

0:31:47 - Connor Walberg

Yeah, when you have the recency and the relevancy it's, it makes a whole lot more sense and people are like, okay, yeah, cool, I'll leave you a review, this great. But yeah, sometimes it's months later if you send them a generic email it's like, hey, please leave me a review, and they're like what, I have a room.

0:32:02 - Natalie Jennings

Well, so for folks that are like I just don't want to do this and I need help. What can you help photographers with?

0:32:09 - Connor Walberg

With just for SEO in general. So I run a Ship that where I teach photographers how to do SEO. So I have a course called the simple SEO course. Everything simple that I'm trying to do and the idea, the way I've structured this course, the first parts, just to familiarize you with why we're doing this, because you, in my experience, if people don't know why they're doing something, they have no desire to do it. So learning the why of SEO and why it works to Makes it much easier to do. My course is all bite-sized, so it's all three to five minute videos as you go through it so you can just check them off and I try to make them as actionable as possible.

And go, do this thing now. Go, make sure you only have one h1 tag on every page right now. I try to keep it as simple as possible and then, but still being comprehensive, because there are Hundreds of things you can do in SEO, but you don't have to do all of them. Focus on the few that move the needle the most, and really it's Building good content and getting links from other websites and and good content. In SEO, the best content is going to be keyword researched, where you're actually finding an opportunity that people are searching. That's not super competitive with other great articles, so you can write an article and you're more likely to rank.

0:33:29 - Natalie Jennings

Yeah, that's great advice. Yeah, well, and where can people find you?

0:33:39 - Connor Walberg

You can find me on my website. It's Connor Walbergcom, that's. Do I need to spell that out?

0:33:44 - Natalie Jennings

if you want to go for it.

0:33:46 - Connor Walberg

See oh and and oh our WAL ver gcom and I also run the successful SEO Photographers Facebook group, which is free, so that's a good place to get connected and start asking questions and letting me know when I can help you and what you're up to. And then also in the membership I have a community where I answer questions and I do group calls a couple times a month.

0:34:08 - Natalie Jennings

So beautiful, awesome. So check that out if you want a little help with this stuff and you want to keep it simple. I think that's brilliant because people just their brains don't have room for like complicated stuff.

0:34:20 - Connor Walberg

Yes, having an approach and a strategy that walks you through this, knowing what to do, when to do it and why to do it that is huge because it won't leave you second guessing. A lot of SEO is like I do this thing and I hope it worked. So, like, four months later we'll find out but the idea with this course is I'm following all the best practices and the proven things that I've done that have worked and I'm sharing them with you so that you can go ahead and implement them right away and Rest assured that this is making progress towards the end result. I think of it like filling up a bucket, because you just keep putting more into it. Maybe one day that bucket starts to overflow and that's when all of a sudden, people are coming to your site. But all those days till then it's like is anything actually happening? I can't see what's going on here, but you are improving it. That's what it's cool about SEO is the stay power. Once it's working, it works and it keeps working.

0:35:15 - Natalie Jennings

It's so bonkers that part of it. Like I said, I just, as the years roll on, I Just can't believe how many things just keep popping up that I published years and years ago and I'm blown away. So be patient, people, be patient.

0:35:30 - Connor Walberg

Patient yeah, that's a good one.

0:35:32 - Natalie Jennings

Yeah, well, one final thing. This might put you on the spot a little bit, but we can edit out the time you need to think. I always like to ask people any kind of advice, just a little like quote you love, or just a life advice, or business advice, or anything that pops into your head that you want to share with people, or sort of leave people with that's helped you just general advice.

Yeah, or just anything. Sometimes people share quotes, sometimes people just you know anything that like helps you Stay focused or you know whatever.

0:36:02 - Connor Walberg

I had a great quote recently I want to share.

0:36:06 - Natalie Jennings

It's why we have the audio edited do you do all that yourself? I don't, I used to. I started, I did a lot of it myself for a long time and now I have full cast. Full cast. Shout out to full cast if you need your podcast produced.

0:36:21 - Connor Walberg

That's awesome.

0:36:23 - Natalie Jennings

Yeah, it becomes a lot. It's like it's just there's a point where it was really hard for me and I think, because I just like to do things myself. But just handing things off to people, I think, is always really hard for people in their business because they've worked so hard to like do their own thing and build the way they want to. But, man, if there's something that starts to just feel like walking through mud for you in your business whether it's, you know, responding to emails or whatever it is like, get some help. Like there's definitely affordable ways to do it. So that's my advice for everyone today. What's yours, connor?

0:36:58 - Connor Walberg

Great advice. So I have two quotes that I wrote recently that are both from surfers. I was watching surfing videos. One was Kai Lenny and he said with fear, you can either let it debilitate you or let it be your superpower.

0:37:11 - Natalie Jennings

Yeah, Nice like that thought.

0:37:13 - Connor Walberg

It's a twist on fear. It's like Turn it around, be like yeah, I'm afraid this thing gonna work out, so I'm gonna make it work. I'm gonna make it happen.

0:37:22 - Natalie Jennings

Yeah, that's good, that's great. And then another one.

0:37:24 - Connor Walberg

If you're just at the start of your beginning in your career, it's a time that's like, filled with stress and all kinds of like. I hope this works. Oh, like days that are ups and downs get a couple clients, then you don't get any for three weeks and then you're stressed again and it's a roller coaster. But it's good to remember this is Justine Dupont. She's a big wavesurfer and it says it's the best in the beginning. When you know nothing, then it's all unknown. So it's kind of like you don't know where it's gonna go. You don't know what's gonna happen. That's why it's scary. But then don't let that fear debilitate you. So I'm gonna combine them and Turn it around and concrete head-on and make it. You'll figure it out along the way.

0:38:05 - Natalie Jennings

Yeah, I really like that. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, I think the unknown is tricky for many people and just trusting that can be tough, but I really really liked I like the combo of those. So thank you for sharing that and thank you for your time today and We'll link to all of your stuff in the show notes. And, yeah, we'll have to do this again sometime. I could talk about there's a lot of SEO stuff we could talk about, I'm sure, but I think this was a good primer for people.

0:38:32 - Connor Walberg

Yes, this is good. Thank you so much for having me.

0:38:35 - Natalie Jennings

Yeah, you're welcome, thank you.