Does the term “SEO” give you the heebie jeebies? If so, you’re not alone! Tons of photographers neglect to optimize their websites because they aren’t sure where to start. But when you get down to it, SEO is more simple than you might think. Plus, with the right tools and resources, even the most SEO-averse photographers can get their sites ranking on Google.

In this episode, I’m chatting about SEO specifically for photographers with Corey Potter of Fuel Your Photos. 

Corey is explaining why SEO is so important for photography businesses and how to get started. He’s shedding some light on the best assets you can use to market your business and where you should devote your marketing energy. We’re also talking about the future of the internet and how it might affect all of us, both professionally and personally.

What’s in this episode:

• How Corey found his passion for writing and sharing content in the online space [2:17]
• Why Corey is a bit nervous about the turn that Facebook and other sites are taking [2:55]
• What SEO is, why it’s so important for photographers, and how to get started [4:48]
• Whether or not photographers should be blogging [8:26]
• Which platforms you should invest your time and energy in for marketing [12:29]
• The first steps towards making your website SEO-friendly and easily searchable [18:03]
• Which website platform is best for SEO [20:55]
• Other assets you can use to gain clients, and why it’s important to own your data [26:24]
• Why you might not want to hire someone to do your SEO for you [28:23]
• Why AI writing is sometimes more harmful than helpful, but how you can still use it to generate ideas [31:06]
• Corey’s advice for anyone just starting out in professional photography [36:34]

If you want to optimize your website using SEO and start attracting more clients, tune into this episode.

SUBSCRIBE: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher

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Resources Mentioned

Meet Corey Potter

Corey Potter is a content creator, SEO expert, and co-founder of Fuel Your Photos, a site devoted to educating photographers on all things SEO. After years as a wedding photographer, Corey pivoted to the online education world and has since helped hundreds of photographers improve their website rankings and grow their businesses.

Connect with Corey

Visit Fuel Your Photos

Find Fuel Your Photos on Instagram

Join the Fuel Your Photos Facebook Group

Did hearing from Corey about optimizing your website get you excited to amp up your marketing? Check out these other episodes

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Corey Potter I think blogging has to evolve into just I don’t even really call it blogging so much anymore, just writing online, creating content and the content needs to have the aim of serving your potential clients, like what are their problems, what are the things that they’re trying to solve when they use Google? What kind of things do you know about because you’re an expert that they don’t know? Maybe they don’t even know the right questions to ask. But you know the questions they’re probably going to ask, and you can kind of take it from there and answer the other questions that they should be asking. That kind of content, if done well, I think it’s still very powerful. 

[00:00:41] Lisa DiGeso Welcome to the Art & Soul show, where we dove into heart opening chats on photography, business life and that messy in between. I’m your host, Lisa DiGeso, a mom, a photographer and entrepreneur, and I’ll be sharing honest conversations and advice for photographers with insight on mindset, entrepreneurship and creativity. The goal of this podcast is for you to be able to gain insights and strategies that will get you real results. Because let’s face it, having a photography business can be lonely, but it doesn’t have to be. This is the place you can go when you need a boost of encouragement, a kick in the pants and inspiration to pick up your camera. This is the art and soul show. Hello, my beautiful friend. Welcome back to the show! So today I’m hanging out with Corey Potter from fuel your photos and we’re going to be talking about website tech stuff echo. And if you’re anything like me, those may be topics that kind of make you want to put your head in the sand or just avoid altogether. So I had a ton of questions because I’ve been going through a recent website hack and trying to figure out how and what I’m going to do just to restart my website and where I’m going to be going from there. This, I thought, was a perfect opportunity to be able to talk to someone who is an expert in website design on SEO and just dig into some really juicy questions about authenticity, online blogging, all that kind of stuff. So without further ado, here is Corey Potter from a steal your photos. Welcome, Corey. 

[00:02:16] Corey Potter Hey, thanks for having me. 

[00:02:17] Lisa DiGeso So tell us who you are and what you’re passionate about. 

[00:02:20] Corey Potter Well, I’m Corey, and I’m passionate about a lot of things and one of those people who like, I get intensely interested in something and then I like, put all of my energy into it for a while. And then sometimes those kind of fade into my library of passions. But I guess as it pertains to this conversation, I’m really interested in web technology and the future of the internet and and writing, writing from like the perspective of trying to put your your voice out there to make new connections in the world. Those are two things that I think are really relevant to search engine optimization. 

[00:02:55] Lisa DiGeso I love that. So how do you feel about meta and everything that’s happening right now with Facebook and and all that? 

[00:03:00] Corey Potter I don’t really know. It’s yeah, I used to be a big defender of Facebook like I was on Facebook in the very early days when it was invite only. And I’ve been on it ever since and I’ve loved some of the things that they’ve been trying to do. But recently, like in September, October or something like that, my wife’s account just randomly got suspended. I thought that she just I couldn’t get into it at all, and there was nothing we could do. I mean, like I reached out to every possible contact I could get a hold of which was not very many. And they’re just like, whatever. And I just feel like it’s it. It doesn’t sit right with me that they have the ability to do that without any repercussion available. No way for me to do anything to stop it. And so that scares me. I like as the metaverse grows and as we start to look into what it might be like to live as digital beings in this kind of VR space. I don’t want a company to be able to say you’re deleted. You can’t interact with any of these other billions of users anymore, because we think so. So I don’t know. That kind of scares me a little bit. 

[00:04:06] Lisa DiGeso It’s so true even. And you know, it’s funny. I like the self-driving. I’m 45. I mean, the self-driving cars scared the bejesus out of me. Like, honestly, like, I don’t even use cruise control. Like, it’s funny. I’m like, I don’t want my car taking me somewhere. I don’t want to go. Yeah. 

[00:04:21] Corey Potter But that being said, I do think that like some of the things happening with Web3 and what could be possible for the internet, it gives me hope. Like, I think that there are good people working on the future of the internet right now and that we’re kind of at a pivotal moment where we had to decide which direction we’re going to go. And it looks like maybe there’s enough enough pushing on the current model to maybe lead us in a different direction. So I’m optimistic, hopefully that hopefully it’ll go that way. 

[00:04:48] Lisa DiGeso I hope so, too. Now can we talk a little bit about fuel your photos and SEO and dove into a little bit about that because I think SEO and as soon as you hear it, pornographers, typically their eyes will start to glaze over and they’re like, Did you just tell me that I have to do open heart surgery? So can you kind of dial into what SEO is and why it’s beneficial for photographers? 

[00:05:12] Corey Potter Yes. So SEO stands for search engine optimization, and really, it’s just about making your online presence more optimized for a search engine to be able to process and then display it to the right people wherever they’re searching. So all of these search engines use algorithms and all kinds of processes to try to understand the internet and then classify it and then serve it back in an ordered. List whenever someone does a search and as an issue, my job is to try to figure out what are the factors that go into that decision making and how can I influence those factors? And it can be on my website or it could be with a variety of other things. Google is going to look at a lot of things these days to try to understand an entity or a business in this case, maybe a person and author. And it’s not just from your website, so SEO does have more to do than just like putting some keywords in your title of your website. That’s a big part of it for most photographers. When I talk about SEO, I’m generally referring to making your website more likely to be found in Google searches, right? 

[00:06:22] Lisa DiGeso And I think many photographers, including myself, I may have stayed away a little bit from SEO because it feels overwhelming and complicated. So how can we start to make it start feeling a little bit more user friendly so we can dove into it so we’re not so overwhelmed? 

[00:06:37] Corey Potter Yeah. Well, I think it’s actually you asked, why is why is that so important to photographers? And I think having that in your mind is is something that can help guide you. For me, I think the important part of SEO that’s different than a lot of other methods of marketing is that it becomes or has the potential to become a passive source of lead generation over time. I think that in general, a lot of people get overwhelmed by SEO because they think I’m just starting and I need to get to the first page of Google, and that looks like a lot of steps that’s going to be complicated. I have no idea how to do it, but I will say that what Google is trying to do is to understand what are the actual best results. So if someone searches for, you know, let’s say, family photographer Columbia, South Carolina, Google says, OK, what factors can we look at to determine who are the actual best family photographers who are most likely to be able to serve this person right now? And I think that if you can, if you can align your business goals with that, like how can I actually become the best? How can I have the best reputation? How can I have the best services? How can I have the best reviews? How can I become an authority who maybe even teaches other people, how can I make sure that I’m always practicing my craft? And how can I prove it? If you’re thinking like that, that’s going to drive your business in the right direction anyway. And in general, the consequence it will be positive rankings on Google. So I think that it’s something that you shouldn’t think of as like, I need to do all of this right now, but that you should try to be intentional about SEO over time. And, you know, start simple, start with the simplest things that you can and then build on that as you go and know that it’s going to take a while. 

[00:08:26] Lisa DiGeso Love that. Now what’s your opinion on blogging? Like, is this still an effective use of photographers time? I know, like back in the day, like 20, 12, 13, 14 like blogging was like the be all to end all. So is that like an area that photographers should be spending their time when it comes to FCO? Yeah, it’s 

[00:08:42] Corey Potter it’s tough because to talk about blogging, we almost need to define blogging because I think blogging. I still think of it when I hear the word. I still think of what you’re talking about in 2012 or, you know, 2005, whatever, like it started to become a thing where before social networks, before all of these different platforms where people could publish their thoughts, they published them on their websites, and that was a blog. And so it was it was a different world. Then, as you know, things changed. I think there was kind of that weird middle spot in like 20 and let’s say, eight to 2012, where especially in the photography space, blogging was generally just like, let’s post every session, put some keywords in the title and hopefully we’re going to show up on Google for this. And that actually worked for a very long time. Like the thing is, Google didn’t have a lot of content that would be like, you know, this family session in this park, whatever, like if you just use those words, you’re likely to show up if someone’s searching for anything related to that. Of course, over time, as more photographers started blogging and kind of following the same patterns and Google started to get more and more content from content marketers who are trying to, you know, to target those terms that have search volume, it just doesn’t work as well to just poster sessions, put some keywords in the title and hope that you’re going to write. That being said, that still can work in a lot of places in some markets, in some specialties. I’m still seeing that for photographers. All it could take to rank on the first page is to use some specific keywords that talk about, especially location based sessions. If you’re doing on location photography work and you’re working in parks and venues and things that that don’t have good, good online presence. Sometimes just put, you know, putting your session up and putting that name of that location in the title is enough to write. I would say, though, the overwhelming majority of times, that’s not it. And so at this? Point, I think blogging has has to evolve into just I don’t even really call it blogging so much anymore, just writing online, creating content and the content needs to to have the aim of of serving your potential clients, like what are their problems, what are the things that they’re trying to solve when they use Google? What kind of questions do they have? What kind of what kind of things can you do you know about because you’re an expert that they don’t know? Maybe they don’t even know the right questions to ask, but you know the questions they’re probably going to ask, and you can kind of take it from there and answer the other questions that they should be asking that kind of content. If, if done well, I think it’s still very powerful. I think if we can write something like one of the pieces of content that does really well on my photography site and I’m I’m not doing photography actively anymore, but I still have my website up to kind of do some experiments and I still have an article that is engagement session locations in my city. And it was like 19 different locations. And I had photos from each and, you know, a paragraph explaining why I liked that location. And and it was not just me like taking a paragraph from that website’s about page and pasting it in. It was specifically as a photographer who has worked here. Here’s why I would consider that location and that kind of guide that that list of locations that lets people get exactly what they’re looking for. It does extremely well, and it drives a lot of traffic from Google. 

[00:12:08] Lisa DiGeso I think that’s so fascinating. I hadn’t ever thought of that. But there’s like I primarily our audience is like family photographers and newborn photographers, so I can see that like something like that, creating content like that, that’s answering those questions. Maybe it’s like, what do we wear to our session and having that actually as a blog post, not just something that you would send in your client communication? Yeah, exactly. Super interesting. So what’s your thought on diversifying your marketing through different platforms? We’ve got TikTok that’s happening, starting to happen right now. Facebook is kind of dropping off the face of the planet somehow, and Instagram’s channel, that weird middle child that no one still knows what they’re doing on it. So what are your thoughts on where should photographers be and your advice on that? 

[00:12:49] Corey Potter Yeah. So that’s it’s a really good point and especially for a lot of the family and newborn photographers that I have worked with on Scott, who especially if they have a central location, if you have a studio space or you know, you really work within a very small radius, but you want to attract clients, especially if you’re like in a major metro and you want to attract clients from other parts of the city or outside of your radius to kind of come to you. It’s very hard to do that with search engine optimization. You can do it. There are ways and some people are successful with it, but on average, you’re going to do better if you have a studio targeting the studio location itself. Whatever is close to that physically is going to rank better on Google. So that almost necessitates other forms of marketing to bring in people from other areas. And so if I were trying to set up a marketing campaign to bring in people from outside of my area to kind of come in, I think I would be, even though Facebook is especially organically. I think that Facebook ads are still somewhat powerful for that kind of specific targeting. You can, you know, I like the idea of using my website to build out landing pages that I can send people directly to from social, from ads. As far as things like TikTok, you know, it’s a TikTok. That’s another one of those. I never thought it would be this guy. But like, I just I don’t I hate I hate the privacy stuff. I hate the lawsuits that are going on with them. It scares me like it really concerns me. That being said, like, I’ve had it and I’ve been addicted to it. I deleted it from my phone just because I was spending too much time on it. Good thing, but but you know, it’s like, I think I as a professional, I like to think about building my expertize with something substantial, and that’s just my personal preference. I think, yeah, I think that TikTok can work really well to, like, build your influence by being likable. And I think that’s a very valid form of marketing. Whereas when I think about SEO and I think about the things that I like to do, it goes back to writing, putting my thoughts out there as a thought leader and expert. And that can really like I have articles that have been sitting there for years and years and are still bringing traffic because no one else has written an article that is better than the one that I wrote years ago. And that’ll never happen on TikTok, right? So I think if you can build these assets, these pieces of content that really establish you as a leader and then you can use other methods to drive people to those assets, that is like the best kind of diversification in my mind. 

[00:15:32] Lisa DiGeso Yeah, I love that. I’ve been trying to look at all because we have like, we’ve got YouTube. We’ve got like, we’ve got all the things right. I started to have to start thinking about them, OK, well, what’s my purpose and my goal with each of these platforms and each of them actually has a very different purpose? Yeah, I’m really finding that Instagram is more about like quick win education and Tik Tok. It’s more of like entertainment connection, right? And, you know, YouTube. I probably haven’t posted anything in two years, but somehow we’ve gotten some bunch of subscribers, so I’ve got to go back there. No. Oh no. Now podcasting. So right, so it’s just it’s really interesting how there’s just all these different ways to connect with your audience, whether you’re a photographer or an entrepreneur, too, and just really being mindful about matching, I guess, in figuring it out. 

[00:16:22] Corey Potter Yeah. Yeah, I think about that all the time. I was even thinking about that this morning. I was just I was looking at my Instagram and I hadn’t posted in like I haven’t posted on my Instagram. It’s so long and I’m like cherry posting here and I was on Twitter yesterday. I’m like, Should I be using Twitter? I’m like, I don’t know, because like, I don’t know, there’s there’s really good things about all of them. I have a YouTube channel and I have a couple of videos that have just like, taken off. Yeah. And it’s like, Do I want to do? I want to dedicate my attention to that platform because I do feel like on a lot of these platforms, if you don’t give it a lot of attention, at least for a while, you almost never build up momentum and you’re totally right like you. There’s a different reason to be on each one in a different mindset that you need to have to be successful on each one. And so I think it’s OK to like, let your own personality and your own preferences kind of guide where you spend your time, but do it in places that you’re enthusiastic about. Like, don’t go doing TikTok. And just because just because everybody’s doing TikTok, you hate TikTok don’t do it because you’re not going to be successful if you hate it. Probably. 

[00:17:28] Lisa DiGeso Yeah, yeah, I love that. I think that’s so true. And it’s like I was listening to a podcast recently. It was like, You know what? Nobody really knows what they’re doing, especially when it comes to these like social media strategies and everything’s changing all the time. And just because, like you had a big win, one time doesn’t mean that it’s going to be like the same result every single time. So stop like putting so much pressure on yourself and just start throwing spaghetti at the walls because you’re going to you’re going to get it to stick sometimes, too. Yeah. So it was like such good advice. I was like, OK, I’ve been overthinking this. Yeah, the classic overthinking. 

[00:18:02] Corey Potter Yeah. 

[00:18:03] Lisa DiGeso So what would you say would be the first steps in starting to make your website SEO friendly? 

[00:18:08] Corey Potter That’s a great question. OK, so the first steps it’s it’s hard because it depends on where you’re starting, because the first steps really aren’t the same for someone who’s been in business for five years and kind of already has a website that they like but isn’t optimized versus like this person who is just starting their business today. 

[00:18:28] Lisa DiGeso Well, let me share a story with you because my website got hacked in December and I still can’t get into it, and I am building a brand new website from scratch so we could start with me. 

[00:18:39] Corey Potter Yeah. OK, so I do think that it’s important to choose the right website platform in the beginning. Yeah, I’m very opinionated about this, but I do think that it’s the most important thing is that you pick something that is both simple and future proofed. I think too many people are trying to get like all these features and bells and whistles and like, make it like, stand out and I’m just like, Ooh, don’t start with that. Yeah. Start with simple. What’s the easiest way that I can convey the information that my clients need to know to find me and book me? So that’s, I can think, the first thing. And it sounds it doesn’t even sound like SEO, but I think it’s it’s very important whenever you’re thinking about Google and all of their complex algorithms and the ways that they make decisions about. Remember, they’re trying to make sense of all this content on the web, right? How do they do it? And how can I make sure that no matter what kind of algorithm they’re using, they can’t make a mistake like this is very obvious that my site is about X, and they couldn’t think it was about anything else. So I think it sounds very simple, but I see so many photography websites. In fact, I was doing some website reviews in my Facebook group this morning and several of them that I looked at. I went on the site and I I I couldn’t tell where they were. I couldn’t tell you exactly what service they offered. And this is a major problem with photographers in my mind. They try to get too greedy in a lot of situations where it’s like I specialize in. Then they list like six or seven different specialties, and I serve all of these areas that are close to me and beyond. Like, I’ll travel around the world to serve you. It’s like, OK, I get that. I get that. But if you if you really want to specialize, pick, pick something, pick. One thing if you want. So we’re talking about the first steps to making your site SEO friendly. If you want Google to rank you for a specific thing, you need to make sure that your site is very clearly about that specific thing. That’s that’s the first steps. 

[00:20:55] Lisa DiGeso I think I love that full stop. Now, when it comes to clicks, I was on a WordPress site, and for me, that was like overwhelming. And because I’m like, I don’t know, I, my business partner Erin, takes care of all the tech when it comes to Milky Way. We have an amazing team, but when it comes to my photography business, I’m on my own, so I don’t know how to do those things. And it’s not that I can’t. It’s just like, I don’t want to really learn. Yeah. So what would you recommend going with like a Squarespace or like a show it or like what? Like, what should I do? 

[00:21:26] Corey Potter Yeah, that’s again, very opinionated here and of people don’t always agree with my opinions, but I generally do for photographers. I still generally recommend WordPress, and it doesn’t have to be complicated. Unfortunately, a lot of the the sites, the themes that are out there for photographers are complicated things like pro photo flow themes. To some extent, they’ve kind of like gone through a lot of changes. Another thing is still kind of complicated, but in a different way. It gets to the point where maybe you need all these plug ins and you’re not sure where to host your site, and it can be complicated. 

[00:22:07] Lisa DiGeso That’s kind of what happened, and I think what happened is I just said, Oh, let’s just see what happens if I don’t do anything? And then and then and then it got hacked and then it died. That doesn’t mean. 

[00:22:16] Corey Potter Yep. And that’s the most common thing I see with with sites that get hacked is like they had quite a few plug ins that didn’t get updated for a long time. And the problem is, if you’re on the wrong kind of theme and you have these plug ins and you update them and then something breaks, then you’re stuck trying to figure how to fix it. And that’s, yeah, overwhelmed. 

[00:22:34] Lisa DiGeso It’s so time consuming. And I was like, I don’t have time for that. 

[00:22:36] Corey Potter Exactly, so. So all that being said, there is a way to start with WordPress that is it too that I need to like make the ultimate guide to this. Please do, because it is possible that the main theme that I’m using these days is called cadence, and it’s embracing the direction that WordPress is trying to go with the block editor. And whenever you use cadence with cadence blocks and the block editor and a really good host, I generally use cloud ways. It’s it’s simple. You don’t need a lot of plug ins. The builder is almost exactly like Squarespace. I mean, it’s very visual and drag and drop without needing an extra plug. And you don’t need all these fancy page builders like you would have needed even just five or six years ago. You would have needed something like element to divvy something that’s going to help you build these pages, but you don’t anymore. The Block editor is evolving to the point where it’s just like Squarespace, in my opinion, especially with something like cadence blocks. Now, a lot of people might not have that same experience, but I think that it is possible. A lot of people that have been in my group have moved to that kind of setup and been like, Wow, this is so much easier. I think the hardest part is knowing where to start. So outside of that, like if that’s still overwhelming, you’re not willing to put in the effort to like, figure out how to get started. Then I would say Squarespace. Squarespace is not a terrible option. I do think that they’re relatively on the right direction with the future of the web kind of especially Squarespace 7.1, they made some major improvements. There’s still some things that really bug me about. You don’t have control over being able to fix some things that Google is really starting to prioritize, especially with regards to speed. Show it. Oh, if anyone is a short lover, they’re going to hate me. I just I I’m scared of show it because, yeah, they have a history of not keeping up with the future of the web. There’s been several instances where they were flash based, and they took like two or three years too long to get off of being flash based. 

[00:24:33] Lisa DiGeso Oh gosh, I forgot to put that. 

[00:24:35] Corey Potter They even in like 20. I can’t remember 2018 2017. It was the first time they introduced SSL that was like two years too late. Like there, there’s some things I see with short and I’m like, Oh, if they don’t fix this, it’s going to be a major problem in three years. And that’s hard to explain to someone who’s like, they don’t know a lot about the web and websites, but I’ve worked with a lot of the people who run, show it and then ask them these questions and they’re like, Yeah, we want to make it easy to design websites. I’m like, OK, well, you do that. But also there’s the technical side, so it scares me. I don’t think that it’s impossible to rank on any of those you could use. Yeah. So it you could use Wix and still rank on Google. It’s just that to me at the current stage in 2022, where we are with the internet, things are going to look drastically different in five years. Five years from now, the internet won’t look about as different as five years ago. From now, it will look significantly more different. And so, yeah, I’m worried about people who aren’t thinking about how do I make my content more modular and take ownership of it and. Know how to take it and move it to a different platform if I need to. So anything is locking people in. Scares me and that’s a really complicated answer. 

[00:25:47] Lisa DiGeso But no, it’s great and I think, you know, even taking into consideration how much people are on our phones now, like we are constantly on our phones, like look at our clients are looking at their galleries on phones, they’re looking at our websites on phones. And so trying to figure out if your website is even mobile friendly. Because I discover mine wasn’t. 

[00:26:05] Corey Potter Yeah, it’s surprising to me how many photography websites I look at. I’m like, Wait, I did this on a phone, but I think that’s the thing. Like as photographers, sometimes we’re sitting at a computer with a big screen to edit our photos and we have the access to that to build websites. We might as well use that to build the website, and a lot of people don’t don’t check. 

[00:26:24] Lisa DiGeso Now it’s interesting. So they talked a little bit about Facebook and ads. So over the years, the Facebook ads and organic reach really have been declining and there is a whispers that Facebook is slowly dying. So how do you feel about diversifying your marketing when it comes to having an email list and strategy there and why maybe that might be important to? 

[00:26:43] Corey Potter Yeah, I think an email list is another example of an asset that you can use that you have more ownership over than something like followers on any of these social platforms. Email I think people give it a little too much credit for how much you own it because deliverability is still a problem with email. Oh, is it ever? It’s and it’s funny because I’m actually in the past few days, I’ve been going through my, my personal Gmail that I’ve just bored for so long. It had 16000 unread messages in my inbox, and I’m like going through an unsubscribing and looking at all this stuff. But it’s surprising to me how many things went into my promotions folder that I would have actually wanted to go into my inbox, or vice versa sometimes. But that being said, I think having a way to own your ideas and then having a way to directly reach the people who are most likely to not only want to hear your ideas, but who would be willing to spread your ideas. I think that’s so powerful. And yeah, that might be something to think about is like instead of trying to grow your numbers, trying to grow, like to curate a smaller list of people who are likely to like, take that information, either act on it or give it to someone else. 

[00:28:05] Lisa DiGeso Yeah, go deep instead of white. 

[00:28:06] Corey Potter Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, I think I think it’s it’s important to really diversify, but I think for me, one of the fundamental principles is ownership. So do I own this data and can I move this data so? Right? Those are really not so true on Facebook. 

[00:28:23] Lisa DiGeso No, it’s not at all. And as you’ve noticed yet, my goodness, now, if someone would just prefer to hire an expert to take care of their SEO? Are there any red flags we should be watching out for who? 

[00:28:37] Corey Potter Oh yes, lots of red flags. It’s it’s unfortunate because my personal opinion is is very rare. It is going to work out well for a photographer to hire someone to do their SEO. I actually tried offering services for a couple of years early on and feel your photos. And even that didn’t go as well as I hoped it would. The problem was I had these ideas of like, what kind of packages I should offer and what services I should offer. But as I got into it with each client, I’m like, Oh, but because you’re on this platform, we need to do this first. And because you’re got this when you do this first, and there’s so much that goes into, like really customizing a plan that will actually work depending on all the initial variables that anyone who’s going to try to just like use the one method that they use on other clients is there’s there’s a high likelihood it’s not going to work. That’s not to say that it never works right. There are people who hire someone and they try that one method and it works great and they get tons of leads and they make lots of money. So it’s not that I would say, never do it. I have a whole article on the Filipino’s website about should photographers hire someone to do their SEO anti-GM doing air quotes. I know they can’t see that on the podcast, but do your SEO is like, what does that even mean? First of all, you need to understand all of the tasks that go into helping your website rank on Google. And then I would say it’s possible that you can outsource some of those tasks individually. I would be OK with someone saying like, I want to hire someone to write content for my website. OK, like I’ve I’ve used copywriters to write sales pages. I’ve used even blog writers to write these kind of informational posts, although I do feel personally that you’ll get the most reach whenever it’s genuine, like whenever it’s, you know? Yeah. And from a unique perspective that only you can have. So hiring that out is also, you know, your mileage may vary, although I. Had this one example of an article that I paid $16 for some winter, right? And it was it was about wedding planners in my city and I published it right after I got it back from them. And its ranking on the first page of Google for wedding planners and Columbia shut the front door. It’s not even a good article, but it so it can work. It can. But that almost feels embarrassing for me. I don’t want someone to find that article, and it’s not a good representation of know me or my business and authenticity. 

[00:31:07] Lisa DiGeso Exactly. Have you heard about like Jarvis day.I? 

[00:31:11] Corey Potter Jasper, did you try to change the name? Oh, it 

[00:31:13] Lisa DiGeso is an 

[00:31:13] Corey Potter e-book. Disney Start was going to sue them for using Jasper because of Iron Man. Oh, oh, Jarvis. Yeah. 

[00:31:20] Lisa DiGeso And really? Yeah, that’s hilarious. 

[00:31:22] Corey Potter So I’ve used it quite easily, but it’s surprisingly good. That’s not the problem is that you you can use AI writers to publish content that Google will think is good content. The problem is that I’m reading this content from so many of these writers, like I’m in the Jarvis Group and I look at some of the stuff they publish that ranks on Google. And I’m like, But this is not even factually correct. It’s not helpful for the answers that you’re trying to give their wrong answers. It’s like, why would we put this out into the world? You know, whenever it’s just going to cause more confusion, it that can’t be good for you right now. I will say, though, a tool like Jasper can help people who have a significant writer’s block, like if you sit down and you open up a, let’s say, a word processor and you look at it and it just gives you so much anxiety because you can’t type the first words. That’s a great time to use something like Jasper, because you can just like, tell it what you want it to be about and it’ll get it started for you. It’ll give you a whole first few paragraphs and be like, Oh yes, that’s a good direction, or you can start it again and be like, That’s a good direction. And so it can be a very good for helping get some momentum going. Yeah, I like the tools that are out there. I just think what’s going to happen eventually is that I think it’s tough. It’s tough because really what’s happening is there’s this like air war going on, right? Google has this A.I. that’s trying to figure out what good content looks like, and the AI behind something like Jasper is due to be three. It’s actually a very good technology. If you are like if you know on your cell phone when you’re typing something and it has like the suggested words that could be next up the top. It’s very similar to that. It’s just a language prediction software, essentially. And so it looks at all. You feed it a ton of text and it says, well, all the times that we’ve seen this word with these words behind it, the most likely next word is going to be X. And so they fill it in and surprisingly, it makes coherent sentences. And so anyway, all of that to say like these, I think Google has enough money and resources that they’re going to figure out a way to really combat some of that automated writing and really help the human writing, right? So I hope so, too. Maybe they won’t. Yeah, I hope so. 

[00:33:52] Lisa DiGeso Yeah, there is. There’s just something with authenticity. And you know, you can tell when something’s been written by a human and it’s been written by a guy I was doing, I was trying to get some hooks and some stuff just for social media, things regarding newborn photography and oh my gosh, it was brutal and hilarious. It’s like, Hey, I know nothing about you work. 

[00:34:15] Corey Potter Yes. Not at all. 

[00:34:16] Lisa DiGeso I was like, How does sausage wrap a newborn baby? I was like, That’s not a thing, right? 

[00:34:21] Corey Potter That’s hilarious. 

[00:34:22] Lisa DiGeso Sausage, right? Right. I was like, Oh. 

[00:34:26] Corey Potter Yup, yup. 

[00:34:28] Lisa DiGeso All right. So you ready for the lightning round? Sure. OK. Coffee or tea coffee? Most adventurous vacation you’ve ever been on. 

[00:34:36] Corey Potter My wife and I went to Nicaragua for a month. One time right before we had our first child, and that was we did a lot of stuff. I went both hunting in the jungle with someone who only spoke Spanish and the first time I tried surfing and we did a lot of exploring around the country. Oh, well, 

[00:34:54] Lisa DiGeso I love that. What was your favorite TV show as a kid? 

[00:34:57] Corey Potter Hmm. I didn’t watch much TV as a kid. I had what’s it called? TV land? So I like to like, Leave It to Beaver and these old shows 

[00:35:05] Lisa DiGeso like the classics? Yeah, I loved the Love Boat so much. The last thing you did for yourself as an indulgence, 

[00:35:14] Corey Potter I renewed my PGA membership, which is disc golf. Like playing this golf? Yeah, I love 

[00:35:22] Lisa DiGeso that morning person or night owl. 

[00:35:25] Corey Potter Can I say both? But yeah, I I really I think I would classify myself mostly as a morning person. But yeah, lately I’ve been mostly a night owl. 

[00:35:34] Lisa DiGeso Yeah, I’m like, I’m an omni bird. Like, I’ll go both ways. What did you want to be when you grew up? 

[00:35:40] Corey Potter I don’t know that I really remember. I would probably say with something like that adventurer or inventor or something along those lines, but I do love it. 

[00:35:50] Lisa DiGeso Go to karaoke jam. 

[00:35:54] Corey Potter I have never done karaoke. But if I’m doing karaoke around the house, it’s probably going to be with my kids. Some current Disney show, so love it. Yes. 

[00:36:05] Lisa DiGeso Nobody talks about Bruno. 

[00:36:07] Corey Potter That’s already been on my brain. I love it. 

[00:36:13] Lisa DiGeso What makes your soul light up? 

[00:36:15] Corey Potter Right now, I have just been really on this kick of like connecting to nature, walk in the woods and pay attention to the patterns and trees and the different fungi growing. And I just that really makes me happy in a way that love nothing else does so. Nature. 

[00:36:32] Lisa DiGeso Tree bathing. That’s the thing. Yeah. What advice do you have for someone just starting out in photography? 

[00:36:39] Corey Potter It goes back to something I was talking about earlier. It’s it’s really focused on being a better person, a better business owner and being the best that you can possibly be for your clients and let that guide you. And I think that’s that really take you pretty far above that. 

[00:36:59] Lisa DiGeso Where can our listeners learn more from you? 

[00:37:01] Corey Potter Yeah, feel your photos. Com has all of the stuff about photography and websites and all that stuff. You can find pretty much everything there, 

[00:37:09] Lisa DiGeso but we’ll include that in our show notes. So I love to end my interviews with this last question, and it is what are you currently curious about or artistically curious about? 

[00:37:20] Corey Potter Well, I am currently exploring human consciousness, and a lot of it has to do with the trees and the patterns that I’m finding in nature. And I am just so curious about consciousness and math and the the language of the universe and how I can help become more fluent in that language because I haven’t been so far loved that. 

[00:37:46] Lisa DiGeso Have you subscribed to Gaia at all the Gaia network? I don’t think so. You should check it out. It’s really good. There’s a lot of really interesting stuff in there, especially like the heart mind connection. I’m learning a lot about Kundalini, and it’s so funny. 

[00:37:59] Corey Potter I just watched a whole documentary on kundalini yoga and different things. I was like, It’s really interesting. 
[00:38:05] Lisa DiGeso Yeah, it’s really interesting. It’s really interesting. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. Yeah, thanks for having me. Oh, that was such a fun conversation with Corey. I loved his honest take in his opinions on logging on websites and helping me kind of get back on track with my own. What my challenge for you this week is to really assess blogging your social media, different platforms and really identifying if you’re showing up authentically. And if these are areas you even want to, because a lot of the times we spend time plugging away at things that maybe don’t bring us joy and the juice of life really does come from the joy that we put into it. I love this podcast. I love showing up for you guys every single week and getting to have amazing conversations with really cool people and sharing them with you. And so that is where I want to focus my attention and time and doing so. My YouTube channel definitely has taken a hit because I can’t focus my attention on everything all at once. So I completely get it if you’re struggling and you’re trying to find the social media or the different platforms that really resonate with you. I totally get it. But my advice to you would be to dig deep, find the ones that really speak to you, the ones you find making TikToks or Instagram Reels, or just showing up on social media in different ways. I would encourage you just to pinpoint what it is that you love and start working in that direction. I am sending you so much of my light and love today and every single day, and so much gratitude to you for tuning in every single week. And I will see you next time.