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SEO for Luxury Photographers with Melissa Arlena · Luxe & Legacy Podcast

Welcome to the Lux and Legacy Podcast.
I'm Marie from Marie Elizabeth Photography.
And I am Amber from Light Livin Photography.
We created this show for photographers who are ready to run a luxury business with clarity, intention, and elevated artistry.
Each week we uncover the strategies behind high level brands from shooting and styling to client communication, to marketing, to designing heirloom products that increase your value.
If you want to attract aligned clients, produce, work with a recognizable aesthetic and build a business that supports the life you want, this podcast will guide you there.
Let's dive in.
today we are so thrilled to bring on someone who is truly a powerhouse in the photography business world.
SEO expert, Melissa Arlena.
If you've ever felt overwhelmed by SEO unsure how to get found online or are curious about how photographers can actually leverage search engines to bring in aligned high-end clients, then this episode is for you.
Melissa's going to break it all down in such an approachable and practical way, so I am personally.
So excited.
'cause I've been wanting to work with Melissa for a while now.
She's pretty well known in the industry, so if you don't know her, go check her out.
I just haven't worked on my SEO very much in the past because 95% of my leads come from Instagram and I've always had enough leads.
To have a profitable business directly from Instagram, but I know in the back of my head that this is something really that needs to change and that you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket.
So I've slowly been making SEO changes over the years, but.
Diving into having an expert guide you is definitely on the to-do list for me, and I'm super excited to have her on the podcast today so she can share some tips and tricks for you guys.
So welcome Melissa.
Hey guys.
Thanks so much for having me.
We're so glad to have you, and SEO for me has been huge in my business.
It.
Been my number one lead generator for the past five years, and so I constantly am pushing how important good SEO is, especially if you're in the luxury market.
We talk a lot about how it's important to get as many eyes as possible on your website and your brand because not everyone is going to be a good fit for you, whether it's pricing based or otherwise.
When you're ranked on page one on Google, you're going to get a lot of traffic so the right clients will be able to find you.
Melissa has worked with me on SEO and I am ranking on page one for multiple keywords.
So I am so grateful for her wisdom and.
Just excited to chat and learn from her today.
So Melissa, before we dive into SEO, can you tell us a little bit about you, your business, how you got started in SEO? Any other background info? so I actually started my career in it.
I was an IT manager for the first 10 years and I was doing photography on the side.
And then decided I didn't wanna fix computers anymore.
I went full-time with my photography business and I started with weddings and the thing was, I didn't know anybody getting married, so like I couldn't get referrals from anybody.
I don't even think back then, this was like 2008.
I don't think Instagram was even out yet.
I'm not even sure, but I don't think so.
Barely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so I had to figure out, okay, if I don't know anyone, and I'm brand new, so none of the venues wanna put me on their list or anything, how do I start getting in front of people? And obviously the internet was around, I'm not that old I had to figure out okay, what is this SEO thing? And I think because I came from a technical background, it just made it easy for me to figure out.
And so I started learning everything I could about SEO.
And started implementing it on my website and then started ranking and started getting calls from brides and stuff who are like, oh my gosh, I was looking for a wedding venue and you came up for every venue I searched.
And I was like, yes, that's the goal there.
And then, from there it spiraled out.
I started having kiddos and I didn't wanna be gone on weekends.
So I made that pivot from weddings to newborns.
And so then I had to rebuild my SEO for newborns because everything had been done for weddings.
And I was in the DC area like Marie is and stuff.
And so it was just my clients were probably like 30 minutes from me and stuff, so I was targeting an area that I wasn't technically in, I feel like.
But Then once I got to the page one of Google there and like Marie, I was like, that's where I was getting all my clients and stuff from.
My husband was like, I can't take this traffic anymore.
Can we please move? And so we moved to Miami and I had to start over again.
And so then it was like, okay, we got started over there.
And it took probably about 18 months and then I was the top result for Miami newborn photographer because I took everything I had learned and just at that point had a process for how to just rinse and repeat.
And so we were in Miami for two years and then I said I don't like hot weather.
I don't like Florida.
we moved again.
And then once again, I had to start over from scratch.
And it didn't take as long here, if you Google like Charlottesville newborn Maternity family, I'm probably number one.
Maybe I've dropped a number two here or there sometimes, but I was able to get back on top again.
And so it This thing where I was rinsing and repeating and then friends started asking me like, Hey, how are you doing this? And so I started helping them and then it just ballooned from there.
And then now I feel like I'm the person behind, like a lot of people on page one.
That just goes to show how easily you can move.
From state to state or city.
'cause that's a huge concern.
A lot of photographers are like, I can't move.
My business is here.
Like I would have no income.
But you've proven time and time again that it's actually possible.
So I love that.
And one of my questions here today is a biggie.
Is right now we are in a slow season.
It's winter, Christmas coming up, and I don't shoot very much at all in December and January.
So what's something that some of us can do to really help our SEO and boost our business in a slow season? Yeah, I think the slow season is a great time for blogging.
And I know everybody rolls their eyes with blogging and they're like, isn't blogging dead? But honestly, especially with AI now and stuff like that blogging is just as big as it used to be.
And when you focus on it now, if you can knock out a bunch of blog posts, don't publish them all at once.
Don't go write five posts and just immediately hit publish.
Schedule them out.
So if you can get 10 blog posts done, schedule those out for one a month, and now you at least have consistent content showing up once a month.
Ideally I'd want you to blog more than that, but at the, if you're not blogging now, like I'll take one a month.
Just to get you started.
But I love blogging for that too, because I feel like it's a lower lift than everything else.
Like most people can sit down and they can write a blog post about something fairly quickly.
Versus if we're talking about, oh, we wanna redo your homepage, and now we've got headers and images and al and copyright, not copyright copy and alt text and all of that.
Like I start glazing over and stuff like that.
But if I'm like, could you write one blog post on, how to prepare for a newborn session? If you can start with that and most people at that point can just spit out what they like, what they know, it's a lot easier.
Then it doesn't feel so overwhelming.
And those posts help you and stuff.
They help you with your SEOI think a lot of times people worry a lot about their main pages, which you should, but you're also missing out on the opportunity of targeting so many other things by writing blog posts.
And you can do tons of blog posts I have some blog posts ranking that like you suggested, Melissa, like best photo shoot locations in Northern Virginia.
Best photo shoot locations in Maryland.
So I.
lot of those posts do bring in clients along with my, homepage and whatnot, but it is like you're increasing the number of eyes on your website, it's crazy with blogging.
I wrote a blog post at one point on a staircase wall gallery in my house.
like how I had somebody in DC actually who found me on Google and then hired me to come create one at her house.
And then they moved and she hired me to come back and redo it at another house.
I've had people contact me from like, all over the world from that post and like asking could they work with me? Could they do something virtually? And stuff like that.
And so that's where, like that power of blogging.
I'm like, this is just a post I wrote on this, photography related topic or whatever, but it's literally bringing money in my door that I would never have had that DC client find me for that in any other way.
And so to me, like when I think about blogging, it's like you can get in front of so many people with blogging, What would be some of the top.
Types of blogs you would recommend? So for me, I rarely blog.
So what would be the biggest bang for your buck type of blog? Like Marie said, top locations for photo shoots.
My most popular ones would be just outfit ideas.
So I.
A like to Knowit page, and I have all these different outfit collages that link directly to be able to purchase those.
Those have brought in clients from Pinterest before.
Yep.
but so what would be some of your suggestions for types of blogs that get you the most bang for your buck? The easiest ones to start with are FAQs.
So look at the bottom of your pages and look at those FAQs where you're having to fit in, two or three sentences for an FA q.
You can write an entire blog post on that.
So obviously what to wear is a huge one.
I tell people all the time, the biggest thing I don't wanna see people doing is session shares, Yeah.
Here's the Jones family.
It was so great seeing them again this fall.
No one cares about that.
But like you're saying, if I turn that into a what to wear post, because Mama Jones like made an amazing, outfit selection for everybody.
Now it's interesting.
Now other people are like, oh, yeah, let me go check out these outfits.
Versus I'm just like, oh, they had great fall sessions.
Okay, whatever.
I don't care.
And so FAQs can be a great one.
Locations like Marie said.
That's a good one.
How to prepare, like what to bring to a session.
Thinking about just what to do with your photos afterwards and stuff.
There's so many things, like you could write blog posts about every step of your process all the way through and have that, it's just easy for you to think about and stuff like, obviously prepping for sessions, and think about it this way too.
If you shoot more than one genre, you could do, how to prep for your newborn session, how to prep for your maternity, how to prep for family, how to prep for milestone, how to prep for senior, like now you've got one topic, but.
Five different blog posts that you've written out that are covering that, and then you can send those posts to clients when they inquire and stuff.
And that helps elevate your experience if you're sending, Hey, your session's gonna be in next month or something.
But I'm gonna send you this, how to prep for that newborn session blog posts now so you can review it.
That's gonna help you with, you're getting eyes on there, you're looking more like the expert and stuff to your client.
And that's what we want.
You wanna get in front of your client and you wanna prove that you're an expert because people wanna have that trust factor of oh, she knows what she's talking about.
Those are my favorite type of posts too.
I'm not into the, let's post every single session type of thing, but something that clients can use as like tips or, something that you can actually send them.
I think that's really valuable in multiple ways.
Yeah.
And honestly, even with what to wear posts, you could do one for winter, spring, summer, fall.
I, I do.
Yeah.
boatload.
Yeah, I do.
I do them every season.
Yeah.
And I love that awesome.
like the to know stuff where, 'cause you can get affiliate sales off things too.
I tell people that all the time.
I've had that blog post for Staircase Gallery, I just went in, I have an Amazon affiliate account and so I'll go in and update the Frames a ladder, like the beehive hangers, command strips.
I'll Yeah.
And I make $20 a month from Amazon.
It's not huge 'cause I don't push it that much, but I don't know, I did that work like once and now Yeah.
a couple hundred dollars over the year.
Like I'm all about that.
I love it.
Yeah, something for sure.
Okay.
So I think a lot of photographers don't even touch SEO because it seems so overwhelming and technical.
And this was me for many years in my business and so untechnical photographer, so it's actually shocking.
That I have.
Great SEO.
So for all those photographers who are terrified of SEO, should they start? Would it be blogging? Would it be optimizing their homepage? What do you recommend? blogging just getting that going.
But I also think too, if you're gonna start with one page on your website and start working on the SEO for that, pick a genre that you like.
What do you wanna shoot the most? So for me it was newborns hands down, I want newborn sessions because I could then convert those to memberships.
I could maybe get a maternity, like it's so versatile for that for me.
So I start with newborns and so I would start with whatever, whatever that genre is.
So for me it was my newborn page and then figure out a keyword for that page, like what is it gonna be? And then just go in and start optimizing it and making sure when you look through that page.
Can you, can anybody landing on that page tell that you do newborn photography in your location? And if you just put it one time on the page, like your keyword, that's not enough.
Like you need to make sure that keyword is in the page.
Talk about the locations you serve, stuff like that.
So I would say just start with that one page.
'cause it can feel overwhelming to.
For your entire website and stuff.
But if you narrow it down and say, okay, I'm gonna hit this page.
It's my favorite stuff to book.
I wanna get that out there ranking, then you can start tackling the next page and the next page.
And if even that sounds like, ah, I don't even know where to start on that seems overwhelming, start with a blog post.
Just go ahead and start with blogging and start blogging about that genre too.
Start blogging about the stuff you wanna book.
And then start focusing on the next, like for me, family sessions are like the last thing I wanna book at this point right now.
Except I like extended family sessions, so I would be blogging more about extended family sessions than regular family sessions.
So just think about it that way.
What do you love? And start talking about that and writing your blog posts about that.
And the other thing I always like to tell people too with blog posts is if you can write a blog post, you can then repurpose that content for all of your social media.
And save yourself so many hours a week.
I'm the worst for coming up with captions.
But now I'll take like our podcast episodes and I'll turn that into a blog post, turn it into an email, pull some quotes out of it for social media.
And now it's easy because it's content that I created, 'cause it's my podcast But it just makes it so much simpler.
Definitely and chat.
GPT helps with that too.
When you put in okay, here was the transcript of what we talked about.
Now let's create some pieces of content from that.
And I will say this because I know there's some people who are like, oh, I just have chat GPT, write my blog post for me.
I absolutely hate that because they're so dry and boring.
Like factually, they might be correct.
'cause sometimes we know they're not always correct from chat GPT, but let's just give 'em the better of the doubt.
Factually it's correct, but it reads super dry.
So we Tell other people in our blogging club of you need to have your own stories and personal experience.
Go into your blog posts like, sure, you can have chat, GBT help you with topics, help you with brainstorming, but please don't just type in there, chat, GBT.
Write me a blog post on how to prep for a newborn session.
No, you need to be telling that you need to tell, like I would tell from experience, I love hot pink, but please don't wear it for your newborn session because it's gonna color cast on your baby's face.
Like you're not gonna get that story from chat GPT, but that's the The client's gonna remember.
She's gonna be like, oh, she said don't wear hot pink, so let's pick a different color or something.
So Blogging, if you're gonna use AI for stuff, use it to help brainstorm, use it to help repurpose.
I love it for Use it just to write it for you.
We talked about this on our last episode about AI a little bit.
Sometimes it can plagiarize.
And you have to be careful with the logs especially.
So we talked about how if you create a really detailed ideal client avatar and then create content with your own tone and voice, and then say, make sure this isn't taking from another person's website, because when I first started using chat, GPTI tried that and what you were talking about, a, it's.
Kind of generic, but B, there were some options where you could actually click on it.
A little bit of it would be colored, Yes.
and link, it was linking to it was, and I was like, oh my gosh, that looks, it wasn't exactly their post, but.
Too close for comfort.
I would never wanna steal anyone else's words.
So you definitely have to be careful about that.
So I love that idea of okay, here's my personal stories.
Here's what to avoid.
You put in all your own input first and your ideal client who you're trying to attract, you own brand, voice, all of that.
And then it can help you be a better tool.
Yes.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah, I think those personal stories are huge because that's what people, as you said, like people will remember it more with the personal story.
It makes it like sticky.
And that's like back from my teaching days.
Like the kids love your stories and that's gonna help them remember the content.
So it makes it a much more powerful post, more powerful content, with with marketing.
so interesting that you say that.
My husband, this is his first year teaching at high school for ROTC, and he's freaking out a little bit on like how to teach high school kids, but I'm gonna pass that along to him that as he's Yeah.
military things, if he can share his own personal stories, that'll help it probably stick better with the kids.
I love that.
Oh yeah.
They'll eat it up, I'm sure.
Marie's husband is a teacher as well.
Nice.
Very cool.
Okay, so what are some common mistakes photographers make when it comes to SE? So this is one that's a little bit of an oldie because I see people who've been in business for a long time who are making this mistake.
It used to not be a mistake, but now it is.
And that is taking one keyword and putting it on everything, every blog post, every page of your website everywhere.
And what ends up happening at that point is.
Now you've got all of these pages and posts trying to rank for one keyword that let's say it's bringing in a hundred searches a month.
So all of your content is geared towards this a hundred searches a month versus if you said, okay, I'm gonna have one really good blog post or page on my website for that keyword, but then I'm gonna create other blog posts and pages for other key.
That are each getting their own traffic.
You could now have six or 700 people showing up at your website a month kind of thing or more.
I know Maurice's familiar with this 'cause she's in DC and so she's got several different areas she can target.
But if she put all of her pages towards DC and didn't do anything else, like she'd be missing out on hundreds of thousands of other people that are in that area.
So that's probably the biggest thing I see is people picking one keyword and just putting it everywhere.
other thing I see is people picking a keyword that no one searches.
And that really gets hit with the smaller towns.
And I know that I live in between two semi, large cities, but my town here, that doesn't get any traffic.
My town, when I was in Miami, I wasn't in Miami, it didn't get any traffic.
So if you're targeting your local town, and I mean we're a one stoplight town.
If I targeted this, I'd have nobody.
Target like the bigger cities near you That doesn't necessarily mean you have to travel to them.
A lot of times people will travel to you if it's within an hour or so thing.
But I see all the time people are targeting just this little tiny location.
They're not getting any traffic.
They're like, I'm ranking number one.
And I'm like, that's great, but nobody's searching for it.
Yeah.
Or they'll pick a keyword that is everything.
So it would be like.
Richmond Maternity Newborn and family photographer, and I'm like, no one's searching for that.
Yeah.
Down.
One location, one genre photographer or photography, and then, and stick Yeah.
So those are the big three I feel like I see when it comes to SEO when I'm looking, doing homepage audits and stuff.
Those are the big ones that I see over and over.
Yeah.
I made those mistakes when I first started.
I think my title was like DC.
Motherhood and newborn photographer and no one searches for motherhood photographer.
That's fine.
Else too.
And so you don't, Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You don't know what you don't know.
But yeah, doing that keyword research is so helpful.
a tip.
Motherhood milestones and children really do not get any searches.
Family, maternity, newborn, those are your big ones.
Seniors gets a decent amount too, though, About that.
But yeah, motherhood, we talk about it, but nobody else knows what that is.
The word.
The word heirloom too, that's something photographers all say, like heirloom artwork, heirloom albums, heirloom frames, and people don't type that in really, What does get searches heirloom portraits But if you don't, yeah, to search for that.
for sure.
But that's a very specific type of photography with the white, but yet, the generic heirloom portraits.
They're not searching like DC heirloom portraits, yeah.
it's one that hasn't made its way down to the local city level and stuff like that.
So yeah, I would definitely say don't get fancy with your keywords.
It's Fancy with your copy, but make sure your keywords, your headers and stuff like that are very clear about, what you're offering and what you're doing.
I see too much where there's a lot of fluff and I'm like that sounds really great, but I don't know what that is.
And Google probably doesn't either.
Yeah.
So you are saying, just to clarify, as someone who doesn't know a whole lot about this, so on each blog you do, so say I'm doing a spring outfit, what to wear, so you're saying Target San Jose, photographer only.
San Jose Photography only on that blog.
And then say I do a fall one and I do Sacramento Family photographer on that one.
Typically you wanna have different cities.
I would actually say with your FAQ posts and stuff like that, I would not necessarily put your big city locations in those, you might do a big roundup post on San Jose outfits for family photos and then that becomes a longer tail keyword.
That's the thing because if you put San Jose family Photographer in there and you have another page for it, yes those two would compete with each other.
So you do have to get creative.
'cause it used to be that we could do photo San Jose family photographer.
Fur on one page and San Jose family photography on another page and then Google wised up a couple years ago and said no.
Those are the same keyword.
And so they eliminated like half our keywords.
It's super annoying, but it can be hard.
Yes.
When you are blogging and then you know, you're constantly doing new things, but as long as you have something like you could do San Jose fall, family outfits, San Jose Spring, family outfits, San Jose, winter family outfits, then that keyword gets longer and the longer it gets, the more, the less competitive it is and and then it's called like a long tail keyword.
But yeah, definitely keeping, keep track of that kind of thing.
Okay.
very easy to not remember it.
And then you're your keywords everywhere.
And then you look at your And you're like why is that page coming up for this search term? That's not the page I want coming up.
And then what about bay area photographer.
So that's something that a lot of people here search because they're willing to travel two hours this way, that way.
And I travel hours.
It's just how we life is in California you drive a lot.
So it's perfectly normal for people to search Bay Area photographer or Bay Area maternity photographer.
So would you say get more specific on which city and choose cities that are.
Because I instagram, try to target hashtags that are specifically more affluent areas.
Yes.
So I would the thing for me is I'm like, target all of them.
So you would have a post that's Bay Area photographer, you would have one that's Bay Area Maternity Photographer.
And then if you know the affluent, smaller cities or neighborhoods even, I would have blog posts for those two.
When I was down in Miami going down there I didn't know the area.
It was a guess.
And so I asked our realtor, I was like, I described.
Alexandria Virginia to her.
And she told me, oh, you want Boca Raton? Dude, I had two clients for Boca the entire time I was there.
But what it turns out was Coral Gables is this little very affluent area right outside Miami.
Huh.
of my clients came from there.
So I spent a year targeting the wrong location until I figured out oh, that's where they are.
And then once I figured that out, oh yeah, it was Bo it was coral Gables Maternity.
Coral Gables newborn, like I was hitting.
All of the keywords for that area because yes, if you know those affluent areas and those areas where you get most of your clients a hundred percent, make sure you're targeting any keyword you can for them.
Alexandria was also that way of, even though DC's the bigger keyword and Alexandria was a city right next to it I always book those clients.
So I had a higher booking rate for that.
And so I was much more willing, I knew if an inquiry came in from them, I had a 95% booking rate on that versus some of the other I didn't.
So once you identify that, like definitely work that to your advantage.
Yeah.
Okay.
So let's say a photographer commits to SEO in the new year and they tackle it.
They get everything optimized and set up about how much time, like per week or month, so that they devote to maintenance with SEO.
And I like to bring this up because I feel like.
me from my perspective, SEO is so easy to maintain in comparison to like Instagram or other social media because that, to me takes so much time and like just mental planning and SEO like you, once you set it up it takes maintenance, but not as much in my opinion.
So anyway, I would love to hear what you have to say about that.
Yeah, I would say when it comes to SEO maintenance, to me, that's where I tell people blog.
Spend an Blogging, writing new content.
And then if you don't have something new to blog, go update old content.
Like you'd At content that is a.
Still currently ranking, but maybe it dropped a few spots.
I had a blog post that was doing really well for years and years, and then it dropped a few spots and I was like, whoa, wait a second.
And I went back in and I was like, oh, it is a little dated.
Like I had mentioned some camera gear that was, it was like an iPhone 13 or something, and I'm like, oh yeah, I should probably update that now.
So like just going through and updating that.
But I would say if you can spend an hour a week either creating new content.
Or updating old content that's gonna help you with your SEO.
You don't need to be going in and tweaking your headers and messing with your meta description or updating your alt text or anything like that once you've got it set.
But if you can keep creating new content, getting featured somewhere else, so if you sit down, you say, all right, I got one hour to focus on SEO today.
I'm gonna write a blog post.
I'm gonna, or I'm gonna update old content, or I'm gonna submit my work someplace where maybe I can get a back link.
Something like that.
But I don't think it has to be this ongoing thing where you're constantly tweaking and.
Tuning things.
It's just, it is a set it and forget it once you get it going, but you do have to be A lot of people nipping at your heels trying to get to your spot if you're on page one of Google.
So you can't ignore it entirely.
And that's where that fresh content comes into play.
If you're putting out a new blog post once a week, once every two weeks, and.
Stuff you're still showing Google.
I'm still active.
I'm still here.
Versus if you set it all and you just walk away, it's oh, now you got somebody else who is coming in hot behind you.
And I would say things Updating images, you could do that once a quarter, once a year kind of thing, unless you've got something you really wanna show off.
Then obviously go in and update it.
But you don't need to be constantly tweaking your main pages, focus on your blog posts.
And then what we do with blogging club members is I taught them how to use AI on how to take that blog post and create all their social media content for the week and email marketing.
And so now they're not having to sit there and figure out what to post on Instagram or what to email out to their email newsletter.
They can just go ahead and copy and paste things from their blog posts.
So to me, it's like double duty.
Not only are you getting your SEO done, but you're getting your marketing done.
Yeah.
Yeah I definitely need to start doing that.
I do it very rarely and I always do it as okay, what are the biggest bang for your buck type of posts? And, also, I had a quick question that was a little bit different.
When you put new images in, you mentioned updating your images.
Is there anything we should be careful of? 'cause I know you don't wanna have images that are too high res, right? Because it can cause the loading to reduce your SEO if it takes too long to load.
What are some of your quick tips for optimizing images and putting the alt text description on there.
Do you have any quick tips for that? Yeah.
So I would say as we go into January, I know everybody sits down and goes, oh, it's time to update my website.
So pull all of those images that you wanna update your website with into a folder, and if you have a keyword for that page, rename them all to that keyword.
So it's gonna be like, for me, it might be Charlottesville Maternity photographer Dash 100 dash 1 0 1 dash 1 0 2, something along those lines.
And the reason I say that is because that actually does show up in Google search results, like Google image results and things like that.
So I would rename all of them and then yes, you wanna resize them.
Canberra are getting like, it's getting outrageous, like how big these file sizes are.
It is Yeah.
I Even, I have like my camera like turned down and it still gets like these huge file sizes.
So you've got to reduce that down.
If you try to take an image that you would send off for print that could be five or six megabytes and you upload it to your website, yes.
A lot of website providers will downsize them a little bit for you.
They'll make 'em a little smaller, but they can't make it too small.
If you're giving 'em a six megabyte image, they're like, oh, we cut it in half.
It's still three megabytes.
And if you try to download that on your.
Phone on three bars just to open a website, you're losing people.
So Have to resize it down.
And I think for photographers, we should know how to resize export from Lightroom.
Something around like 2000 pixels on a long edge is what I recommend.
And then you wanna change your DPI to 72 because that's what's meant for internet is 72 DPI.
And that's gonna bring your file size down dramatically.
I have a plugin that I also use called JPEG Mini, and I'll run stuff through there and it'll shave off like a little bit more kind of thing.
But but if you can get your file sizes, I tell people nowadays, because cameras are being so much larger and stuff, if you can get it under 500 kilobytes when it uploads to your website, you should be fine.
Because the good news is.
We're all competing against each other and we all have this issue with file sizes.
If you go out to another industry, they're gonna have file sizes that are like super tiny, but their photos look like crap and none of us want that.
So The good thing is at least everybody is trying to have like good looking images, that aren't grainy and stuff like that on the site.
So it's okay that they're a little bit larger.
But if you're looking at your website and you're getting flagged that you've got files that are over a megabyte, over two megabytes go make them smaller and put those in.
And then when it comes to alt text, you definitely wanna be filling out alt text.
You wanna describe what's going on in the image.
So it could just be mom cuddling daughter, and then I like to work my keyword in a variation into that.
So it would be like mom cuddling daughter at Charlottesville newborn session.
Or by Charlottesville newborn photographer or for Charlottesville newborn photography sessions.
Something along those lines.
I'm not trying to take my keyword and just jam it in exactly the same every time.
I'm trying to work it in naturally.
And I've always found that's been like helpful when it comes to al texts.
So I'm still describing the image, but I'm getting my keyword in there too.
Yeah.
Awesome.
All right, so how can photographers find and work with you, Melissa? Yeah, so you can go out to our SEO website.
It's SEO for photographers.
It's picture perfect ranking.
So picture perfect rankings.com.
We offer done for you SEO services.
So there's some people, I remember one girl, she said, I heard you on a podcast that you offered done for you, and I about fell outta my chair because that's what I needed.
And I was like, yes.
So yes, we will take care of it for you.
We offer group coaching, so for the people who wanna learn, like they wanna learn how to do it themselves because maybe they're gonna update it later.
We offer group coaching and it's very hands-on you're getting my eyes on your work kind of thing.
And you get chances to ask questions and stuff.
Plus there's videos and everything.
We have.
Monthly citation and backlink services.
So if you've tackled your on page and you're good with blogging, but you're trying to build up your backlinks and stuff like that, we do offer that service for photographers.
And then we have the blogging club.
And the blogging club is our membership where you get two blog posts outlines.
'cause like we were just talking about I'm not writing a blog.
For you, I want you to write it because I want it to be about you.
But I'm gonna tell you the topic.
I'm gonna break down the sections for you.
I'm gonna tell you what needs to go in there.
And we've also got prompts for those personal stories.
And we actually have a whole AI section which helps photographers teach AI about, their business.
And then I've got a video where they can literally just.
to the AI bot, answer all the questions from the template, and then have it go ahead and write the template based on everything they've told 'em so they don't have to type everything in.
And that's like my Wow.
I got people who are telling me, they're like, oh, I finished a blog in under an hour with all of this stuff.
And it was like super easy.
And now they're repurposing amount.
So we also have you get a master class.
Like every month from some kind of SEO topic in there.
And then there's usually a bonus.
It's a fun little group.
We have a little Facebook group for it too and everything.
But yeah, so those are the different ways we try to cover SEO from all aspects.
Like anything SEO wise, like we've got something for it.
We just won't write blog posts for you.
Yeah.
sense.
Awesome.
Okay.
This conversation with you, Melissa, has been such a game changer, and I know that our audience is going to absolutely love this episode.
So I hope that you guys are walking away feeling much more clear, more confident and inspired to really work on your SEO this slow season.
And definitely go check out some of Melissa's amazing offerings.
I know they will make a big difference in your business.
Oh, and don't forget, I have a code for you guys for the blogging club.
If anybody wants to try out the blogging club, you get 50% off your first month using the Code Luxe Legacy.
Yeah, Thank you so much.
Amazing.
Yeah.
Make sure you guys check that out.
And remember, your online presence is a huge part of your brand and your brand legacy that you're building and leaving, and you don't have to do it all by yourself.
So huge.
Thank you to Melissa for sharing your expertise and so many actionable steps.
for having me all.
Thank you so much, Melissa, for that special code.
I know that a lot of our listeners are gonna wanna jump on that and join your blogging club and check out everything you have to offer.
So we really appreciate you coming today.
Yeah.
Thank you.
It was so good having you, and as always, feel free to connect with us on Instagram.
at Marie, Elizabeth Photo and Amber is.
At light live we love hearing what's resonating with you and how you're growing Thank you so much for spending time with us today on the Luxe and Legacy Podcast.
We love being part of your journey as you build a luxury photography business that feels aligned and elevated.
And if you enjoyed today's episode, we would be so grateful if you left a review.
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Like you discover the show and join this community.
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We have another conversation that's going to inspire and give you even more tools to grow your brand with confidence.
We can't wait to see you then.
Bye.