PODCAST TRANSCRIPT - EPISODE 088

SEO STRATEGIES WITH SARAH LANDA

Please note: This transcript was created with the assistance of AI technology. While we strive for accuracy, the text may contain errors and should be verified against the original source for critical uses.

Annemie Tonken  00:01

I've had SEO on my list of things to talk about on the podcast since pretty much the beginning. But it's kind of one of those eat your vegetables situations, right? Talking about SEO doesn't really spark a lot of excitement. At least it doesn't for me. Well, at least it didn't for me before I had my conversation with Sara Landa. Sara Landa is a photographer in the Pacific Northwest, I found her through my friend Posey quarterman. And then it turns out, we know a whole bunch of other people in common. But in addition to running a family photography, business, Sara offers SEO work specifically for photographers. And so I figured she might be the perfect person to give us the lowdown on SEO and what it can do for our businesses in a way that was less jargony. And a little more tailored specifically to family photographers, and photographers in general. And this can conversation, you guys, it did not disappoint. By the time that we turned the microphones off and stopped recording. I actually asked Sarah, if she would do some work for me. It was that sort of energizing about the whole concept of SEO. And I know marketing is a huge topic of conversation among this community. I hear questions all the time. It's constantly on the Facebook group. And, and I want those of you who are interested in getting more leads into your business to pay particular note to today's conversation, because Sarah gives some extremely actionable tips for how you can improve your site's ranking on Google, which is certainly a major way that people will find you. So go grab a pen and a notebook, pull up a chair and enjoy.

Intro:

Welcome to this can't be that hard. My name is Annemie Tonken. 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. Sarah, welcome to this can't be that hard. It's so lovely to have you here. How are you today?

Sarah Landa  02:27

I'm good. It's so nice to meet you. Likewise,

Annemie Tonken  02:30

nice to meet you here on the interwebs I am. I'm also very excited to get back to meeting people in real life. I have been hearing your name in like closer and closer friends circles for years now. I think I first sort of heard about you through Posey quarterman. But now you're working with some other friends of mine. And so yeah, it's nice to finally put a face to a name and get to chat with you about SEO, which is a topic that I have gotten many requests to, to bring here on the podcast for a while now. So this should be a great conversation. I would love to start out by just having you give us a little introduction to you and your business and where you are and all that good stuff.

Sarah Landa  03:16

All right, well, I am in Washington State. I'm about an hour south of Seattle. And I am a high finot I am a photographer, and VA I do virtual assistants. And I've recently become more of an SEO specialist. I'm shifting my business away from VA work and more into specifically working in SEO. And I'm also a mom of twins who are upstairs doing their virtual learning. Hopefully they won't interrupt, interrupt us.

Annemie Tonken  03:48

Always a question mark.

Sarah Landa  03:49

I'm Yeah, so I'm a busy lady, as

Annemie Tonken  03:51

we all are, yeah, sounds like it. And I love the sort of hybrid nature of your business. And I'm excited to dive into that a little bit more because I think that as creatives and as photographers, not only can it be helpful to broaden, you know, the different ways that we bring income into our businesses, but also I think that the creative mind is always looking for new ways to express itself, whether that's, you know, something sort of traditionally creative, like photography, or, you know, the, the, the technical arts, but I also think that things like when you learn about SEO or something along those lines, you know, being able to turn that into a line of revenue is is its own creative pursuit. So I'm super excited to get more into your story. So yeah, why don't you actually take us a little bit through that story, starting with your photography business and then how it has led you to SEO.

Sarah Landa  04:50

All right, well, I am a little bit like all the other moms stories and that I started my business after I had my kids, but a little different because I did did actually get a bachelor's degree in fine art, and my focus was on photography. But back then it was all black and white film. In the darkroom. I never took a digital class, I never I took one color class. And all I wanted to do was black and white fine art. So I remember back then thinking, well, it's very unlikely that I'm going to make it as a fine artist, you know, total like one in a million kind of thing. But I always had jobs around photography. And I remember thinking back then, well, I feel it'd be fun to be a photographer, but only if I could shoot people in their, you know, their space in their environment and representing who they are. Well, that was basically lifestyle or a lifestyle photography. But that didn't really exist yet.

Annemie Tonken  05:50

name for it. Yeah, there

Sarah Landa  05:51

was no name for it yet. And so I always dabbled, did a little bit of portrait work on the side. But I always had a job. So but then when I had my twins, and I stopped working, I sort of took the opportunity to do that portrait business I'd always wanted to do. So I don't think I picked up a camera for their first two years, I was just busy wrangling twins. But then I slowly started getting into the photography world, getting into the Facebook groups, and just kind of honing my style. So I spent the first three years just taking pictures, really focusing on the art side of things, kind of dabbling in working for profit, but it was, you know, mini sessions, charging $75, like, not even worth, you know, but it was all about learning at the time, and really honing my style. So and then when they started school was when i det started diving into the business side of photography. But even then, you know, make a website, put a note on Facebook, the, the work wasn't exactly rolling in. So that's when I said, Okay, I really need to learn something like SEO like something that's going to get me ranking. So that's what I did.

Annemie Tonken  07:10

Excellent. And so tell me a little bit about, you know, as you started to get into that, what your what was it that grabbed you about SEO? Like, why was that such a fascinating subject that it has now turned into what it has turned into for you?

Sarah Landa  07:27

Well, to be totally honest, I did not want to learn this. I didn't know what it was, every time somebody would talk about it, it would just like, turn me off. I'm like, No, I don't want to do this. And so it was more of a kind of taking myself by the shoulders and shaking myself and saying, if you're going to take this seriously, and you're going to make money at this, you have to learn this stuff. So I just to be frank, I told myself January of one year, I'm like, I'm gonna make SEO my bitch, this is my thing. I'm just gonna dive in. So I like I had been focusing on business, you know, I'm doing air quotes business side of photography. But that's all the things that's all the different kinds of marketing newsletters, you know, you got to find a focus at some point, right. So I just started finding any free sources of information I could, listening to podcasts, joining Facebook groups, and just slowly starting to implement things on my own website. And also, I was I was DJing at the time. So I convinced some of my wedding photographer friends to hire me and let me work from home. To help them out with things like blogging. So they were teaching me they were teaching me how to blog, they were saying you need to use longtail keywords, you need to use alt text. So I was not the expert at that time, I was definitely taking the cues from my clients. But once the spark hit me and interest me, it kind of turned around where then I started educating them. So it's been a really wonderful evolution and relationship with my clients where I say it's like, I'm in photography, business school all the time. It's a give and take for, you know, we're educating and we're learning and we're teaching each other all the time. So, yeah,

Annemie Tonken  09:18

and there's always new stuff to learn. But I want to back up to one of the things that you said that I just want to take the opportunity to underline this for everyone that's listening, which is that like need to focus and really go deep on at least one thing, right? So yes, there are a million things out there that we could all be focusing on. Whether it's a newsletter or you know this that in the other end, you can do some things to a certain degree, but like, but to have that consistency and to say, you know, this is the thing that I want to focus on to really make this part of my you know, marketing or the law getting my name out there to focus on one thing I think ends up really giving you returns that a little bit of everything just doesn't do. Would you agree with that?

Sarah Landa  10:12

Definitely. Yeah. And I find that, although I'm pretty good at writing Instagram captions for my clients, and not so great at writing them for myself, and selling myself, yeah, it's like, and then you hear all the things you should be doing, get out from behind your computer, get out in your community market. So I really have nobody to blame, but myself, if I'm not doing those things, there's definitely accountability in that. But you also have to find your strengths and do what works for you. So

Annemie Tonken  10:42

yeah. And your realities. I mean, you're here you are, you're Yeah, momming Twins, right, exactly. And there's only so much I mean, in some ways, or in some circumstances that opens doors for things like in person networking. But in other ways, you know, we have to work with the constraints that we are given. And right now all of us are dealing with the constraint, the added constraint of COVID. And not being able to go out and be like in the community as much. So something like SEO, is, it's actually a really good time to focus.

Sarah Landa  11:15

Exactly. And like, Don't you find that all those acquaintances you have through school and kids sports and activities have sort of fallen by the wayside? Those are not the friends we've kept up with generally, in these times, we maybe have those one or two friends that we call regularly. Yeah, but I'm not seeing those people day to day and reminding them what I do and all that. So

Annemie Tonken  11:40

sure, yeah, it is, I often wonder when the like acquaintance thing will happen. I run into people when I'm out, like walking my dog or whatever, you know, neighbors, people who I would call acquaintances. And I feel like my interpersonal skills have taken a hit and exactly, oh, my goodness. So what were your like, Aha moments along the way, as you were sort of building this business and learning more about SEO? Yeah,

Sarah Landa  12:10

so I definitely had a few of those lightbulb moments. And I can tell you my personal website rankings story. So I had a portfolio site, like many people where you think my work will speak for itself. And the problem with that theory is if no one is able to find your site, they will not hear the voice that your work is speaking. So I had my couple of lightbulb moments were listening to podcasts and joining Facebook groups. And the first one was, you know, if you don't haven't done anything else, the first thing you need to do is sign up with the free Google services. And I hadn't at the time, I maybe had signed up for the Google My Business, but I didn't really know what it was or why to do it. But the there's a couple of those free services, analytics Search Console, make sure you're basically saying, hey, Google, I'm legit, I want you to acknowledge me come on in and crawl my site. And let's communicate. So just getting into the game with Google and saying, you know, you are a legitimate business is a good key first step. And then the second lightbulb moment was when I started learning about homepage, SEO. And I can get into that in great detail as much as you like. But finding out that my portfolio homepage was doing absolutely nothing for me. There was zero copy on my homepage, right? So learning how to structure a homepage, what should the elements should go into it? What you're saying, and just having a certain amount of text and key wording and, you know, h1 tags, and I can explain that all too. So what I did when I learned about this is I'm like, Well, nobody's looking at my site anyway. So I'm going to slap up a new page, on my on my site, call it my homepage, and put in all of these elements. And I went from not ranking at all to page four, like overnight. Wow. So some of the previous stuff I had been doing, I think was helping me like blogging, keywording, Image, Image, SEO, all that good stuff. But that was like a huge thing. And then I'm like, oh my god, now people might see it, I better make it pretty.

Annemie Tonken  14:39

So I got a

Sarah Landa  14:41

new template. I spent the next couple of months redesigning my site and but within those couple of months, I was on page one, and I've been there since like 2018. So and I haven't blogged in two years now at this point. And I'm I'm not recommending that I'm not saying don't log but Once you get certain elements in place, it works. So, yeah, so I've proven it on myself basically.

Annemie Tonken  15:10

Well, and you know, it was funny when we were going back and forth about having you on the podcast, you then pointed out that my photography site was on page, one around here. And I had to laugh, because, you know, I have no explanation for that other than that years ago, well, that I have been in business for years. That certainly I'm sure helps. But also that years ago, when I was really trying to ramp up my efforts to get found and all that sort of stuff, I did spend some time learning about SEO. And for a brief period of time, I really spend some time like putting keywords on my site and making sure, and I am a wordy person, just by nature. So I probably had that going for me. But I haven't done any blogging in a long time. I don't do super frequent site updates these days. And the fact that I'm still ranked like that, I think is a testament to what you're saying, which is that those like concentrated efforts for some Yes, even relatively short period of time can have very lasting results. Awesome. Plus,

Sarah Landa  16:16

you may have certain blogs that still get searched to this day, if you've written good blogs, and you may have backlinks out there where people have linked to you. And all of those things give you authority in the eyes of Google.

Annemie Tonken  16:32

Yeah, in the eyes of Google, I love it. So talk to me a little bit about how you went from learning about SEO and, you know, using it to benefit your own website to then starting to offer that service to other photographers,

Sarah Landa  16:52

right. So like I say, I'm a VA, and I was sort of doing that in conjunction. So I kind of wanted to, I had proven it on my own site, I wanted to try it on out on some other people. So I started just testing out my theories on my clients and offering them the service for just my regular VA rate. But that's what you got to do when you're learning. So I, I was getting my clients to start ranking. So I had some friends in the photography industry, who I would just talk to these talk to about these things. And so I started doing it for them. And then you know, where it just started kind of picking up slowly word of mouth. And I would even say, you know, because I do the VA work. I also do a portrait work. And I have my kids, I haven't really put it out there sure in any big capacity. I did another thing somewhat recently, which was, oh, well, if I'm going to do this legitimately, I guess I better have a page on my own site that says I do SEO, and I should be ranking for that. Yeah, I have put some work into that. But I have no designs at this point about starting my own Facebook group or my own podcast and putting it out there. Like I'm the expert. Sure. There's still a little bit of that impostor syndrome and coming up against others in the industry, who can be a little bit negative at times, but really, the word of mouth thing has worked for me and then you guys you and Posey spreading my name around has been really wonderful so well that Posey

Annemie Tonken  18:31

talks a big game about the difference between before she when she worked with you. And after when she worked with you. I feel like with SEO, you know, it's one of those, like, the proof is in the pudding. And it's not always an instant effect. I do like the fact that overnight, you went from nothing to page four. But you know, I feel like it can be hard. Like if somebody decides that they are interested in getting help with SEO, you know, I get, I don't know, 10 emails a week from somebody who hardly can string sentence together telling you they're gonna get me to rank on page one. What should people look for in a professional SEO consultant? Yeah,

Sarah Landa  19:15

so I can see what you mean about it. It's a daunting thing when you're first getting into it. And you're like, well, where should I focus and you just sort of cherry pick information. And that's what I did, too. But just like running a business, you could probably tell somebody in 10 steps. This is how you would start a business. This is where I would start. This is what I would do next. Doesn't mean you did them in that order. Oh, gosh, I did them in that order. But if I were to mentor somebody today, I would say these are the things you should do. Right and these steps so

Annemie Tonken  19:46

20 Yeah, so so that's

Sarah Landa  19:47

why I'm marketing myself as a basics expert. I'm not saying I know everything about SEO, but I do know how to get your local photography, business ranking. And that is very specific. Next thing. So and if you do these five things, or let me do these five things for you, or more, I mean, it's more than five things, then it will work. And yeah. So excellent.

Annemie Tonken  20:13

We'll talk to me about those five things, what are these things we should be doing?

Sarah Landa  20:17

So the first I mentioned already, and that is the big Google three, I call them the big Google three. So sign up today. Like if you're somebody who's been thinking about SEO, the moment you're done listening to this podcast, go sign up for Google My Business, Google Analytics and Google Search Console. And the latter two, you do need to connect to your website. So find a YouTube video and learn it's gonna travel really easy. Yeah, I'm a professional Googler. That's what I do for a living. If I somebody comes to me with a question, sure, I can figure that out. There's a Google search somewhere, or YouTube video, so And so basically, just kind of to tell you what those things do the Google My Business. It's like your storefront. It's like your yellow page ad. And it's telling people, your hours, your services, your locations, the thing I find the most important in there, though, is the maps. So you're telling them where you're willing to work that bubble on the map of where you're, you're willing to work, and you want to show up in a map search, if somebody's in your area. So that's where you're putting that information. So you may live in Durham, but you also want to shoot in Raleigh, or Chapel Hill. So you're going to have that bubble. And you will show up in the map search for those things. Yeah. And then analytics is the one that is really for you to be tracking, what is working, what is not working. And they will give you reports, you can look at things like demographics, and who's searching my site, and how long are people staying on pages. And it's kind of geeky. But again, if you just want to set it and forget it, fine. But sign up for it. Sure, then, and then search console is the one that's saying, hey, Google come and play, you can come look at my site. And we'll be partners in this together. And then they will tell you when you've done things wrong when you have problems with your mobile site. Or, you know, you could also tell them, hey, I want these pages indexed in my listings. So it's, it's a give and take

Annemie Tonken  22:31

with them on that. Yeah. Back to analytics, just for a second, do you have a recommendation for when you're first starting out, I like to track data. Okay, so I should backup. I don't like to track data. However, I have learned that if I track data, at least for you know, during a period of time where I'm trying to implement something, or I'm changing something, if I sort of, let's say keep track for three months, commit to myself, Okay, for three months, once a week, I'm gonna go check in and check these things. What, you know, if I were to make a spreadsheet to watch my SEO, what should things like the metrics that I'm watching the Hang on, guys, I have a quick message for you. Did you know that this can't be that hard isn't the only podcast I host. Each month, my marketing director Dana and I team up to bring you a fresh injection of marketing ideas and inspiration on our other podcast called the consistency club. The podcast is free and available to any photographer looking to uplevel their marketing game. Or you can take it one step further and join the consistency Club, where you get the extended version of the podcast along with monthly email and social media templates, bonus trainings, and special access to the live marketing events we host twice a year. If you're interested in tuning in, you can search for and subscribe to the consistency club. Wherever you listen to podcasts. If you'd like to join us in the membership, you can visit go dot this can't be that hard.com/club to sign up.

Sarah Landa  24:15

Well, I think it's it's personal for everybody. So you're going to watch certain keywords, you're going to watch demographics, locations, you're going to watch. Like how things are ranking. So it's it's one of those things. It's very specific for everybody. Like even when you say I'm ranking on page one. Well, what does that mean? What did what search term did you put in for that

Annemie Tonken  24:41

to happen? Right?

Sarah Landa  24:43

So like we were talking before we started filming, you always get those emails saying i You're not I looked and you're not ranking and I can get you ranking. You know, it's like well, you don't know what I'm trying to rank for. Right? So everybody it's like designing your own business and in do doing your own research to figure out what you want to be ranking for. And then really focusing in on those things. Cool. So that actually, yeah, so go ahead.

Annemie Tonken  25:10

No, sorry, I was gonna say so the, you know, you sort of put all these different pieces into play. And then you determine a few keywords that you're aiming for, for those kinds of things. And you watch those over the course of a yes, definitely a good plan. Yeah,

Sarah Landa  25:27

yeah. And this, this, actually, the second thing I was going to talk about was keyword research. Oh, perfect. So that is very specific to every business short, and it's going to be different for, obviously, from a national business to a local business, but what we're talking about is local SEO. So when you're starting out, the the easiest way to do it is to just list all your photography styles, and you know, newborn maternity, whatever, whatever it is you do. And then all of your locations, so we put them in all those different search terms, all those different variations. Type photographer type photographers type the word best in front of it. But there is a great free search tool, I'm all about the free stuff. Yeah. And there's obviously tons of tools out there and some you can pay for and others not. But one great free one is called Moz. Keyword Explorer, it's MOC. And it's free, you do have to sign up for an account, but they will let you do two free searches a day. So you can have your list, make your kind of brain dump organic list that you've come up with, and then put two of those in a day. And they will tell you alternate search terms that are being searched and the frequency which which with those are being searched. So you can add those to your list. Because sometimes we as photographers think we know the terms, well, we talked about lifestyle, we talked photography, we talked about family films, the general public does not even know those terms. They just want to know, family pictures, or photographers near me. I mean, they are not always looking specifically. So you kind of want to talk to your clients say, Hey, what did you What did you type in? What would you type in and do some of that research as well. But it's going to be specific to your market, some places you're going to put in your city and your state in other places you're not. So kind of mix it up and make a really beefy list. Cool. So

Annemie Tonken  27:40

first thing is the Google big three second thing is keyword research.

Sarah Landa  27:45

Yes. So then, the third thing, and this is how I learned SEO backwards, I went into image SEO, that was one of the first things I learned about. So once you have that keyword list, you can go through and rename all of the images. So if you have an image on your site that's named either the client's name, or just a number that is not going to help you in any way, shape or form. So you want to go in and rename all of your images. The keyword rich title. So for me, Seattle, family photographer, em claw, maternity photographer, Maple Valley, newborn, I mean, all my combos of all my cities, and all my styles and all throw in lifestyle, and other things, because some people might know those terms. But image SEO is going to help you. So some people are when they do the Google search, they're gonna look at the maps, some people are going to look at the listings, and some people are going to just go straight to images. And they want to they want you to wow them. So you want to show up in those image searches. So cute. keywording, your images is going to help you. Excellent that. Yeah. And it'll also help you if you get into Pinterest, but we won't talk about Pinterest today. That's another topic for another educator.

Annemie Tonken  29:01

But those I mean, given how many images live on our websites, if you were to go through even if you were to, if you were like I can't deal with Google, I can't deal with keyword research. If but if you were to just name all of your images, something that you figure someone might search locally, it'll

Sarah Landa  29:19

help you don't have to do them all though. I mean, and you could spend all week doing that. But just do like the 30 in each gallery, start there. But speaking of that, you probably shouldn't have too many more than 30 in each gallery to begin with. You can definitely I mean, we were like we just want to show all of our work but your clients just want to see your best 30 so

Annemie Tonken  29:43

well. And that also raises a good point. If someone's doing an image search and you have it sort of like when you send someone a gallery of more images than you should if you're not smart enough, they always buy the one that you're like really that Not one. And of course, I'm sure the same is true for Google, you know, somebody searches Durham family photographer, my least favorite image on the website is going to pop up,

Sarah Landa  30:09

well, then it shouldn't be on your website. Exactly. Call it,

Annemie Tonken  30:13

pull it off, pull it off, make sure they're all images on your website, you should only have stuff you're super proud of exam, there

Sarah Landa  30:20

is one other element of image SEO, which is alt text. So you should give your the title, keyword rich title, you don't necessarily even need to put your brand name in there. Because if they, they haven't heard of you, you know, you're, you're speaking to your future clients, so and then the alt text was designed for the blind. So you want to describe the image there. And I think a lot of people want to put keywords into their alt text, and you can actually get dinged for that. So do not Yeah, don't use your alt text as a place to, to beef up your keywords, that's called keyword stuffing. And you will get in trouble for that. So really use the alt text for what it was designed for. And be as descriptive as you want, like go crazy with some descriptive words. So because again, you never know what people are going to search for, they might be searching for a dress, and you'd have described that dress and then they've now they've they've landed on your website, and they're in love with your photography. So you're kind of reaching people from from all

Annemie Tonken  31:26

sides. Excellent. So anything else that you would add to that basics list? Well,

Sarah Landa  31:34

I do have two more things on my list, but they're kind of big. And this, this can be kind of where I lose people, sometimes when they kind of glaze over and they're like, oh, maybe I'll just hire you to do this for me. But if we're going to talk about SEO, we kind of have to get into the geeky stuff. So. So I mentioned homepage SEO earlier. And really briefly, what your homepage should be is a preview or a summary of your entire website. So if you have all of these pages on your website, you have your about page, you have your portfolio page, you have your blog, you know, for example, your homepage should have a little kind of detailed detail about each one of those things. So if you scroll down a homepage, you're gonna learn all these things about a photographer without having to click on all of their other pages. So when you're designing your homepage, remember that you don't just want to show on a Google search, you want them to hire you. So remember that ugly page I've that I had to overhaul. So I really had to at that point, and this is not this is part of SEO because it is what I say SEO is good customer service. You are you're speaking to your ideal client, you are talking about your why you're doing all of those things that you should be learning and telling your client about. And that should all be in the copy of your website. So that's not exactly what I teach. But it's definitely an important element of SEO, if you want to if you want to you want to rank but then you want them to hire you. So make sure you put the work into a good solid homepage, and just have it be one of those things that you're always coming back to and revising until you get it to a place where you're really happy with. Excellent. But then, okay, so this is the last thing. But it's probably one of the most important, which is that each page on your website needs three things. And those are one h1, which is a header tag, they need a page title, and they need a meta description. So this is all the backend stuff. When you're designing your homepage, you're probably looking at those header tags as the design elements, which is like the size of the font, but they are also communicating to Google. So make sure it's very tempting to put like an h1 tag at the beginning of each section. But you should really only have one h1 Tag per page. And that h1 tag should pack a punch and it should tell you what that page is about. So on your home page that's going to be your your keyword, you know me Seattle family photographer, but on every other page, it should be something like about your photographer or you know, not just gallery but lifestyle gallery or family gallery, you know, put some put it as a keyword in there. We're gonna ask a question.

Annemie Tonken  34:52

Well, I was so this is new to me. I've not heard this before. And so that's really interesting. How do you balance I mean, this is like an overarching question about SEO. But in specifically, when it comes to those titles, how do you then make them Google friendly and sort of keyword rich without sounding like you're trying to build a

Sarah Landa  35:18

website, and that's the dance, right? So you kind of have to take his Zen approach. Sound like a human do not sound like a computer. And just, it doesn't have to be perfect. You know, it's like, if you have a WordPress site, and you're using Yoast, and you're always trying to get those green dots, you don't always have to get the green dots, you can get an orange dot here. And again, it's fine. Like, as long as you're putting enough content into your website, it's fine. You don't have to be perfect. And there's no one perfect way to do it. And I there are definitely pages on page, one that do not follow this rule. But again, they're like you there are people who have been in business for many years and have page authority for other reasons. But if you're just getting started, and you want to start ranking today, this is a great way to do it. Yeah. So that's great. But by the way, you can have as many h tos and H threes as you want. And you can redesign your font and make the h1 smaller than the h2 so Right, right, right. Right. Yeah, that's, that's a question for a designer.

Annemie Tonken  36:21

Fair enough. Are there website hosts that you prefer over others in terms of like, you know, Wordpress, Squarespace. I know, a lot of SEO people have strong feelings about this.

Sarah Landa  36:34

I love Squarespace. And I can tell you that three out of the five at least pages on our websites on page one for Seattle family photographer, our Squarespace sites. So I mean, I'm not gonna say Squarespace is better than WordPress, I'm definitely not going to say one is better than the other. I'm just saying it works. And it can work. And you don't have to do WordPress. That being said, I worked about 50% in Squarespace and 50% and worked in WordPress. So whatever my clients use, I will use it's just a lot of time, there's new themes, and I've never seen them before. And I have to learn them. So Cornell can tell you I would be like, how do I get into this? We were like working on it together and trying to figure it out. So but in the end, we figured it out. So

Annemie Tonken  37:25

excellent. Yeah, I mean, that I think you know, Squarespace when I first switched over to Squarespace from WordPress, and this is now at least six years ago, and Squarespace was still pretty, I won't say new, but it was relatively new. And I was switching because it was just so much easier. I felt like with WordPress, I was constantly having to learn everything there was to know about building a website. But at that point, every you know, everybody was decrying Squarespace as this like a bit of SEO horribleness. And, yeah, it has certainly, it's

Sarah Landa  38:02

definitely come a long way. And I would say there's definitely there's, if you're not going to be a person who's going to geek out and learn all the things, do Squarespace because they're going to do a lot of it for you. They're going to do your Sitemap for you. They're going to get your SSL certificate for you and make sure your pages secure. You don't ever have to learn that. And you can host through them. It's just so it's one stop shopping. And it's easy. So if if you're not a super techy person, I would say do that. But the the super geeky techie SEO people will say, do WordPress, but that's because they know how to do all the things over there. Yeah, not. And not every photographer is going to be able to hire everybody to do everything for them. So if you want to do it yourself, it will work for you. But yeah, there are two more things, though, that I didn't get to. Which is requirements for each page. The other two things are paid a unique page title for each page and a unique meta description for each page. So I can describe what those are or people can Google them. But they are essential to have unique, you don't want to cut and paste the same thing on every page. You want to distinguish each page as its own. And I

Annemie Tonken  39:20

think it's you know, it's kind of an interesting thing, because in many ways, SEO comes down to you we're talking about all text is was designed to be a tool for blind people to be able to navigate the web, which is in many ways a visual place. And as visual artists, I think, you know, it can be it's almost like we have to think like we are describing the whole website for a blind person because Google doesn't have eyeballs. Yes. So yeah, that's kind of an interesting way to think about it. And as photographers if we can take our visual artist hat off and put on our like, Okay, how We describe all this to someone who couldn't read and couldn't see if we were using our words. Exactly. Excellent. Well, I wanted to also just ask you a little bit about, you know, you're describing some really good tools and ways for people to do this themselves. But who should be getting help with this? Or, you know, if you're sitting here listening to this, and you're like, yes, SEO, I'm gonna focus on that, like, where's the balance between doing it yourself and working with a professional? Well,

Sarah Landa  40:30

I think it's, it's that whole idea of outsourcing. And there are things that you're going to outsource because you absolutely can't stand them. And then there's the things you should definitely keep doing yourself, because you like doing them. So it's for each person, you have to do that sort of inner checklist of what are all the tasks that I have to do? I'm overwhelmed. I can't do them all, what should I outsource? So this is one that if you know, you're you're just not into that techy side of things, it's definitely a good one to outsource. But if you're a person who is a self starter, and you want to educate yourself and say, Hey, going forward, I'm going to need to know how to do this, then maybe learn about at all, but part of my service includes education. So I do try to bring you along with me on the journey and say, Hey, I'm going to do this for you. But then I'm going to tell you what I did. So the next time you can do it for yourself.

Annemie Tonken  41:25

Yeah. And that leads me to my next question, which is like, so you kind of get a big chunk of work done for people. You tell them the next time that you update your portfolio, this is what I want you to do with your images, or this is exactly the way it works.

Sarah Landa  41:41

Yes, definitely. So I'm, I'm with you for the journey. And usually my service, we spread it out over about a month, because we want to see if it's working, we want to come back next week and see if it's working. But usually, within the month, we can tell if things are working. But then we will do a follow up call at the end where a lot of times I just give them a big blogging lesson, but or just answer any questions that they have. And then let them know that I'm their friend. And they can come to me anytime for advice. But they shouldn't. Unless they design a whole entire new website and they need to start from scratch. They shouldn't need to hire me for my full services. Unfortunately, what happens is people end up wanting to hire me as a VA, and I just can't take any more clients for that. So I need a network of other bas to refer people to

Annemie Tonken  42:28

Yeah, well, that I think that that would be an extremely appreciated service. I feel like there VAs in general are great, but you know, the more specialized the knowledge, the better. And I feel like there is a pretty significant lack of photography focused VAs out

Sarah Landa  42:48

there. Yes. Because usually there are other photographers and then their businesses take off, and then they stopped doing it. But

Annemie Tonken  42:53

yeah, well, Sarah, this has been extremely interesting and, and like full of great information, I am gonna go check some stuff on my own sites after we get off the phone here. But tell people where they can find you and how they can hire you. Because I am guessing that they're going to be clamoring for your services. Well, that'd be

Sarah Landa  43:17

lovely. So I'm Sarah lana.com. And Sara Landa photography on all the social medias. And I

Annemie Tonken  43:23

will of course be linking all of that in the show notes along with some of the links to these other tools and resources that you have pointed out. But it is such a pleasure to chat with you and I will have to get you back on the show for a follow up call sometime soon.

Sarah Landa  43:39

That would be great. It was really great chatting with you. All right. Wonderful. Have

Annemie Tonken  43:43

a great day. All right, thanks.

Outro:

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 at this can't be that hard.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.