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EPISODE 6

BIO

Jodie Mitchell is an SEO-er turned self-employed wedding photographer. She has spent the last six years learning SEO and also learning how to explain it to business owners and truly believes anyone can do SEO. Now, as a self-employed business owner, she’s putting all of her skills from her old corporate life into action on her own website and loves to help other business owners demystify the world of SEO. Her motto is it’s not as scary as it seems. Jodie’s passion lies in teaching SEO to other small business owners and self-employed people. With a bit of time, effort and trial and error, you can get incredible results, just like big brands out there. 

Grab your pen and paper, get somewhere quiet and be prepared for a lot of incredible information, let’s dive into the world of SEO. 

SUMMARY OF SHOW: 

SEO, stands for Search Engine Optimization if you don’t know, but it’s essentially just a set of algorithms, just like with Instagram, but for Google instead, helping you sit higher up in the rankings because as everybody knows, you never really go to page two on Google, so the higher up you can get, the better and the more eyes you’re gonna get on your business.

Not only is it a whole other marketing platform, it’s for your website, so it’s like off social media, it’s something that you own yourself which is really nice because with Instagram these days if you lose your profile like that’s that’s kind of it like no one can really help with that but your website is yours that’s your like internet real estate that you own yourself. No one can take it away from you. 

Optimising your website, for better search engine rankings

So my number one tip that sort of isn’t really a tip but is sort of a tip is to make sure you are optimising as you go when you’re creating new content but what that means is to be working on optimising all the different SEO elements of the page.

 So when you’re creating a new website page or a new blog post, you need to be making sure that you are optimising your page title and your meta description which are going to be the bits that you see on Google in the search results. Make sure that your header tags are all nicely formatted, and make sure your pages are all linked up well together so users can get around really easily and get to like the information that they need, making sure your images are optimised which is a huge thing, especially for photographers.

Don’t forget about the alt text

Alt text is basically what’s going to get displayed instead of the image. If like for a number of reasons, if your users have visual impairments, so using a screen reader, which means they’ll literally just read that sentence out or Google uses it to see what’s in the image because it’s a robot and it can’t actually see images or if your image just breaks for whatever reason. An alt text is an alternative text. So it’s a very literal description of what’s happening in an image, it’s very say what you see, just describe the image so someone that has visual impairments can get an idea of what’s going on. 

Google can’t see images, so it will use your alt text and image title to read the photograph you’ve put on your website. As photographers, it’s so important that we give Google something to read, otherwise it looks like our whole website is blank! 

Google My Business profile 

Google My Business is a really handy free platform. Even if you don’t know what it is, you’ll have seen it. If you have ever Googled something like “Costa opening hours” you see that panel that comes up with pictures of it, the address, the opening times. That’s Costa’s Google My Business profile and every business has one. 

It’s so, so good for your business, especially with reviews. So the more reviews you get on your Google My Business profile, the higher you’ll appear with your Google My Business profile in match searches. Also, more positive reviews are going to help your overall website rankings, so they work really well together.

If you aren’t sure how to ask your clients for reviews, have a look on your own Google business page, there is a handy little button that says ‘ask for reviews’ and it creates your own unique link you can send to clients, making it super easy for them. 

FINAL THOUGHTS: 

Do a little and often, if you’ve already built a website, re-doing all these things can seem like a massive job. Take it slowly and remember, even if it’s small, it’s still progress! 

If you haven’t built your website yet, this is your sign to make sure you prioritise optimising your website for SEO. It’s so much easier to do it as you go. 

SPONSOR LINK: 

Policy Bee – for 10% discount

RESOURCES LINKS: 

Instagram: @nowheretono1

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/nowheretono1

Website: https://jodiedcmitchell.co.uk/nowhere-to-no1

Audits: https://jodiedcmitchell.co.uk/site-audits

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