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The New World of SEO

Lesson 11 from: Master the Business of Photography

Sal Cincotta

The New World of SEO

Lesson 11 from: Master the Business of Photography

Sal Cincotta

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Lesson Info

11. The New World of SEO

Lessons

Class Trailer

Day 1

1

Class Introduction

19:49
2

The Agenda

24:35
3

Why You Will Fail

39:49
4

The Changing World We Live In

18:57
5

Biggest Competitors For Weddings and Portraits

42:41

Day 2

6

Defining, Understanding, and Connecting to Your Clients

56:15

Day 3

7

Legal Issues

1:09:43

Day 4

8

Shoot and Share vs Shoot and Sell

56:18

Day 5

9

Pricing Your Work Part 1

57:12

Day 6

10

Pricing Your Work Part 2

1:10:02

Day 7

11

The New World of SEO

40:58

Day 8

12

Social Media - Facebook

48:42

Day 9

13

Social Media - Instagram & Pinterest

36:23

Day 10

14

Building a Better Portfolio & Attracting the Right Clients

1:04:59

Day 11

15

Proactively Developing Vendor Relationships

35:41

Day 12

16

Get More Publicity

47:28

Day 13

17

Booking More Portrait Sessions

37:23

Day 14

18

Booking More Weddings

52:39

Day 15

19

Understanding the Initial Sales Consultation (In-person vs Skype)

46:25

Day 16

20

The Engagement Shoot - Shoot To Make Money.

48:46

Day 17

21

Engagement Pricing and Sales

47:13

Day 18

22

Destination Shoots

47:46

Day 19

23

Working With & Training Second Shooters

1:04:10

Day 20

24

Growing An Alternate Brand

58:07

Day 21

25

The Wedding Day Timeline

42:00

Day 22

26

Managing The Wedding Day

54:03

Day 23

27

Post Wedding Sales and Pricing

36:07

Day 24

28

Post Production - A Real World Workflow

54:21

Day 25

29

Wedding Albums - Their Importance, New trends & Selling Them

31:22

Day 26

30

Ways Not To Suck At Customer Service

58:34

Day 27

31

Video - The Future of Story Telling for the Photographer

47:15

Day 28

32

Packaging & Final Delivery To Your Clients

47:20

Day 29

33

Lessons Learned - Where I Have Failed Over The Last 8 Years

35:10

Day 30

34

The Journey Of You

16:24
35

The Journey Of You: 30 Day Plan

25:00
36

The Journey Of You: 60 Day Plan

27:11
37

The Journey Of You: 90 Day Plan

24:49
38

Student Examples

14:31
39

Interview with Warren McCormack

26:16
40

Interview with Lenny and Melissa Volturo

19:24
41

General Q&A

26:26

Lesson Info

The New World of SEO

Let's get into seo in general, how it impacts are our business is our sites. And don't underestimate the power of seo. I mean, as as your business is continuing to grow, I want as many free or quasi free leads as I can possibly get. I mean, we gotta pay for all our marketing's, right marketing our cost of acquisition and so that's, probably in number. Not many of you track, but what is your cost of acquisition? What's? It cost you to get a new client in your door now. That's families, baby seniors, weddings, right? You goto a bridal show. He's paid a thousand dollars for a bridal show when you only book one bride, your cost of acquisition was a thousand dollars that's pretty expensive, then there's things like facebook and google, where we can do things where maybe your cost of acquisition is five dollars. Okay, so it's going to be all over the board now, when you go to a bridal show, you don't merely want to look at just cost of acquisition because there is you've got exposure, market...

ing, advertising, brand awareness so there's other intangibles, but you still need to understand how much it's costing to get those clients. In the spirit of that, seo is one of those things where, with minimal effort you can have really, really big impact and so I'm excited about this segment because I did a little experiment because I'm constantly trying to tune my ranking and compete with my vendors in my area to really see how we can make these these changes to stay on the top of ceo so in the spirit of that let's get going so if you google st louis wedding photographer, you're going to see that we're coming up number two and number three still to this day now I lost my top rank actually made me mad year and a half ago we did that course on marketing or whatever we talked about theo and all my competitors went out and use the same tactics that are used, so it kind of forced me to continue to evolve my business so I love the competition it forces me to do it, but we fell down like number seven and so now we're back up to two and three. So if you google st louis wedding photographer where two and three if you google seeing luis wedding photography were also two and three and so this just goes to show you it works. And so just with a little bit of work, a little bit of pruning this stuff is gonna work and help you grow your business it's always interesting because when I was on last time you know, several of you know my background was programming web development and I work for microsoft when I was on last time and I talk what I taught about seo there's a couple of people in the chat room there like this will never work that's not how it works it'll never work and then I started getting all these emails from people like it's pure genius it's gold it works I'm top of my page so this stuff works uh some of you hopefully you've had results with it and well we'll drill into some of the things that have changed and just some basic stuff is well and so is ceo today since our last appearance google released you know, kind of an update and that's to be expected right google's gonna release updates to keep us on our toes right? Because they don't want content getting stale they don't want people hijacking the system uh just really working it so we've got to keep evolving how we're how we're publishing our information and not content is king and today if you're pushing out data and you're doing it right that's what's going to get you ranked high if you're just trying to game the system that's when you're going to get into trouble so like I said lots of changes this is what search engines do keep everybody on their toes but we have to continually invest in this today we get approximately five leads a week from google free doesn't mean I convert five a week right then I'd have like, you know, a million weddings here but these air free leads coming into the system from from google so I'm doing bridal shows I'm doing google I'm doing vendor relationships I'm working on all these things I'm not just working on one thing on that's what you have to understand it's this kind of multi pronged approach to getting out there and going after it er if you're in a flash based site, you've got to get away from it immediately immediately there's no reason for you to do it it's like it's like web two thousand we've got to get away from it the flash sites just do not rank well so any of those hosting companies that are selling you flash based content your script shooting yourself in the foot it doesn't matter if it's nineteen dollars among twenty nine dollars a month whatever it is you're just never gonna get found by that search engine no matter how much they tell you owe our meta tags screw the meta tags you're not going to get right it's that simple I've never seen anybody successfully rank highly using no sites and so for us we use wordpress okay, so wordpress is what we use for our site you can customize wordpress and there are other sites out there that will allow you teo customizing tweak what you're doing but I found were pressed to just be the best and I've tried everything I'm not telling you to invest in a major platform, right? You khun you can host your side go daddy, they have wordpress based side so there's a lot of companies out there that have wordpress based sites sites have to be html five today, mobile friendly this is actually becoming more and more important. We're going to talk about that in a second if you're not mobile friendly, you're actually getting dinged by the search engines. And so right now I'm facing that challenge with south and kata dot com alison carter dot com is not mobile friendly at all because it's an older sites sites probably about maybe five or six years old. So it's crazy to think that your size five years old and that's old on so this is you've got to continually invested and nurture this kind of stuff, your sight must be responsive. I don't know how many of you know what that term even means and so responsive sites or what's called r w d responsive web design what this is is this provides optimal viewing experience from your website, so now if your website, if I grabbed the right corner of your website and start bringing it back all the way to the left in theory, your sight should start adjusting automatically ok that's what a response of web site is on a high level and so that means if I look at it on on ipad, iphone, android or a web browser I'm gonna have that scene viewing experience how many sights to go to on your mobile device and then you get to the site the buttons or super tiny they don't match up or you got a scroll left and right because it's formatted for right a larger computer that's not what's called responsive web our website or responsive web design google is actually going going dan you when it comes to ranking if you don't update your side and make it responsive and so this becomes really, really important as we go through this anybody have a response of web design here you do already who were you with squarespace is everybody was squarespace yeah square spaces is absolutely amazing when it comes to that. So square space is one of those sites that is touting r w d and it's super easy so you don't have to really do anything with it. How robin curious howyou ranking s e o wise barbell non existent nonexistence see that's what worries me page three yeah, this is interesting so it's one of those things where I don't want to slam them because their products really good I like square space a lot they're really beautiful I'm just worried about are you going to be able to get your sight ceo uh you know get it to the right place and so page three and in non existent is not good those are not good places to be I'm wondering I'm curious as we go through this if there's anything you're not doing with them because they do have like meta tags and things like that right? So bottom line my opinion you guys air almost solidifying what I'm saying but wordpress wins tax tax than more tax that's ultimately what's going goingto win here template based sites become really really difficult if you want to dominate on that first page because you're competing against just post after post after post we have to focus on one specialty you're never going to be able to optimize your sight for um weddings seniors, families, babies you've got to make a choice my side is optimized for weddings and so I'll never be able optimized for more than one set of key words and that's again just reality it's all about the keywords and so when it comes to keywords here's where you want to focus on your key words site title your domain name dot dot dot dot dot domain name description your tag line key words throughout the site blawg categories page titles page content this is where you should be utilizing all your keywords and we understand what those keywords are right? So for me it's st louis wedding photography st louis wedding photographer so I've got to utilize all of that when I'm doing page titles you know, block post things like that and we'll kind of take a look at what I'm doing but and today if you're not utilizing it, they're going to run into some problems and so youtube rob michael, I went to both your sights last night just because I knew you guys wouldn't be here and I figured I'd pick on you a little bit so as we're going through, I'm gonna talk a little bit about what you guys are doing and not doing where I think there could be some improvement and so I don't know if anybody even realizes this they came out with a new domain called dot photography and at the dot photography right? If you won't talk about your key key words, I jumped all over this and so here's what I own right now brooklyn wedding I one crazy man I went out there and I pre purchased as much as I could I own brooklyn wedding dot photography cleveland wedding dot photography indianapolis wedding dot photography by the way you could make a bid on this, I'll sell you indiana wedding dot photography michael you're in indiana, right? Indianapolis e I tried to get her that was gonna try to get it was gone too fast and then I'm like ninja fast kansas wedding dot photography casey wedding dot photography missouri wedding dot photography medium format dot photography san fran wedding so cow wedding st louis wedding st louis start photography s t l wedding dot photography so I just went on a buying spree for all of these. I don't know why I figured I don't know what I'm ever going to do from year to year, so I figured out I wanted to try, but I tried to buy every major city just so you know, and so I wrote up on new york city dot wedding, new york city wedding dot photography, I drove that price up super high because it went upto auction, and I think we drove the price up to that of almost a thousand dollars for that domain when it went live, I wanted that one really, really bad, so but this would put everything in your kit your key words right in your domain name. All right, so this is the kind of stuff you want to do now, you guys are sitting here in this segment, and if I'm you guys on the brake, I'm going to go daddy. And I'm looking up other versions of this to try and pick him up, because if you just buy the version of this and it's, not an auction, which it no longer is, it was only at auction when the domain first launched, you can buy these domains for nine, ninety nine, and so for nine dollars, ninety nine cents if you can get a version of your area or variant of your area that you can work into your key words that becomes really, really powerful questions about this. The other challenge I see is when we're doing this stuff, perma links and so permanent, you've got two ways to just you've actually got, like five or six different ways to display links on your site, and it could be a simple as your site dot com slash question mark p equals twelve that's garbage man, you're destroying yourself from a from the domain from google. This is a big mistake. I see an asio instead, it should be your side. Dot com slash keyword st louis wedding photography smith right. And that's how we do it. So, it's this this right here this st louis wedding photography is the header the post hatter, that's what you want, that's, where your key work should be in your post hatter your title that should come across here also noticed it's the first level is another place I see mistakes being made the further down your hierarchy that you have your links so your site dot com slash blog's slash november slash twelve slash st louis wedding photography google starts looking at that going that can't be an important page it's five layers deep, so what you want to do is get this so that it's at that first level and that's how it's set up on her site so it's just a back end thing it's not that complicated that's just knowing that you're even supposed to do it. This is going to help you from a domain perspective, and so we don't have your site dot com or south some kind of dot com slash blog's slash title it's right to the title and you want to make sure you get that okay, this is done super easy go right to your blogged don't have to be a programmer. You go to your settings, right understood every block, every word press block. This is how it's set up settings, perma links, and then you're going to see all these options and look at what the default is, which is comical to me because it's hard it shouldn't even be that because p equals one two three for the default is completely useless. No search engine would ever categorize your site it's it's a nightmare instead of chitti it should be the post name or some custom structure you don't want the date in the daytime numeric these are all things that are going to kill you from seo perspective and so we have it set up just by post name so you simply go in here to your wordpress sight go under settings perma links boob click post name you're done now your sights in a much better framework to start getting search engine to get optimized for a search engine don't have to be a programmer to do this stuff. All right, so let's, take a look at who do we got out? Uh, michael side. So picture michael anthony slash boom new journal problematic. We gotta fix that. I don't even know what his new journal log long title. So we got to get rid of that. So change your permanent structure so that's not there. And then here's, how google's going to interpret this rich charles carmel, indiana wedding photography lauren and andy the problem with this is indiana wedding photography is buried in the middle there instead what you should have clean this what is rich charles that's a location yet venue so that's really good then so it's charles but how do you want to be found? You more than likely want to be found by indiana wedding photography correct so I would get rid of that rich charles carmel I'm gonna show you a technique later that no one knows about it I think it's pretty cool but let's get changed these titles not in your current post in new post changing to be indiana wedding photography put their last name just keep it simple okay uh because that's what we do and then mix it up so it shouldn't always be indiana wedding photography smith indiana wedding for tired feet jones indiana no instead what we do is we go indiana are st louis wedding photography smith jones st louis wedding photography uh adam's st louis wedding photographer so we keep mixing up the key words between photographer and photography that's why we're ranking top on both of those terms every with me super easy stuff it's just about having that formula together once you have the formula it's huge on what what are five leads a week worth what three leads a week worth one lead a week it's free it's just all in how you're posting this stuff all right rob boom you're doing a lot of things right on your site by the way okay, but we got rescigno slash blogged slash sam and don in new york city wedding photography killer on the new york city wedding photography is that your key word though it is okay, so that's what you're going after so what we got to do is move this up and get it out of the block move it up one level it's going to help you immediately. Okay, so by being dot below your telling google this is two layers deep you wanted to be right at that root level. Okay, so dot com slash whatever you're posting, you understand what I'm saying? This is really important. So if we look at our site, you'll see what I'm saying. Giles st louis wedding photographer that's the post so that's the post header and that's also the post you are out and it's south and co dot com slash boom that if we go to my main page on my site, which I don't have it built in here, if we go to my main page on the site, you'll also see that same link right on the main page to our side is a custom wordpress site. The only thing that makes it custom is not really what's happening back here it's the main page so the main page of our sight serves as a dashboard. Most websites on you get to the main page your sight and there's really no s ceo heavy keywords what's already a big miss because the search engines give mohr wait to that main page that landing page and so what we've done on our landing page is rather than just having a bunch of giant images which are beautiful our clients love him rather than having just a bunch of big images it's got all this all of my recent post so for example if I posted five weddings those links to the five weddings are on my main page be with me not buried I don't have to go to block then find the wedding the links are right on that main page if you go to salis and kata dot com right now you'll see what I'm saying all those links are right there on the main page those internal links and link backs are also very important from a google search engine perspective if you want to have those links internally to your site all right some other factors these are the things now that the google has adjusted they're waiting their weight that there putting on your domain when they when they do it page low times believe it or not if you have a lo time that's taking too long because you got have big images flash plug ins loading your gonna get penalized you got to keep that main page really really light so no flash no plug ins no large graphics right so as much as we love and we get on those pages and the whole pages one giant image looks beautiful google's gonna nail you on this is this is something you've got to be concerned about now is your page lo time and they're our tools out there that will allow you to measure your page lo time so just go out there and google it and figure it out but there's a way to look at your site and say how long am I taking the load but the more important data right cause if they're like oh it's sixty milliseconds what does that even mean? Who cares what you really want to know is what's the average and so there's tools out there that will tell you the average web pages it takes ten milliseconds to load yours is taking sixty okay so that's really important key word in your images this is still a powerful thing so if you're posting images to your your blogger didn't check either you guys but if you're posting images to your block you can't just let it be like you know I am gi underscore to three g dot j j peg right we can't do that you've gotta actually incorporate your key words into those images that's also very very important so st louis wedding photography underscore smith underscore one two three dot j p e g and we mix that up a cz well so sometimes it'll be st luke's wedding photography sometimes will be st louis wedding photographer again I'm sharing with you everything we're doing you're seeing where I'm ranking we're ranking two and three in our market you do you put your name or you just put st louis wedding flower with that's your key word so nowhere on the actual file name of the picture does it have your name that's correct I'm not in the final no because I don't care about my name right when they google south and kata my website which has my my name in that is going to come back right so I'm not using my name it all more than likely I want to show up for that st louis wedding photography for my keywords in my business yeah so it's pretty straightforward frequency is actually super super important when I lost my ranking it was it was during a lol in this season I wasn't posting as much right so I went from like last year I think I went from like november to may with no weddings just how the calendar worked out like I didn't kick I think I had one wedding january february it's always a real slow time we have the center of the year really heavy with weddings and so that's when I lost it because I wasn't posting anything but we post so much so much content is going out to south and kata dot com from our weddings that we can maintain that rank so frequency becomes really important well right now it's this chicken and egg thing how ah sound how do how do I post a lot when I'm not busy how do I get busy if I'm not posting rights it just becomes this chicken and egg and so you've got to get out there and find things to write about fine things to post about and no matter when we're talking about things you know understanding that there is an absolute value to doing portfolio shoots model shoots promotional shoots vendor shoes once you start understanding the value there man it's really really powerful stuff you've gotta you've gotta put that stuff together you've got to stay busy you've got to get out there and work you've got to become an expert what about like writing a block post on top five things engagement couples were looking for right so now it's not necessarily you're writing about something that's relevant to your market top five things st louis brides should consider in st louis or I'm just making this up as I go but become an expert in your area whether it's seniors things to consider for high school senior photography right st louis missouri all those kinds of things will keep your block active they'll be content there and that that content will be optimized by google these are the things you can do when it's free again it's free it's just time there's a lot of things we can do but just requires time frequency talked about that age of the girl so you got to stop changing your domain name? This becomes really, really important. So for example let's say in st louis a new photography studio comes into town and it's just called africa dabir photography dot com and they're doing all the same things I'm doing literally every post is identical, right? So aber cadaver south takada we're doing all the same things. The difference is I will rank higher because my girl my domain name is ten years old there's his brand new but that's the other thing is, some of this stuff just takes time. The age of your domain is also really important. So the dot photography if I were to convert my sight from south and kata dot com to say st louis wedding dot photography and I we're gonna convert my side over to that I would immediately fall though, like page ten because st louis wedding dot photography has no age it's brand new domain. So now those those domains are we need them to age. They need to be out there online getting optimized so I will do that. I will use that st louis here's my ultimate plan to share with you guys I don't care nothing you could really do about it st louis wedding dot photography we will turn it into a landing page for photography in st louis now I got a couple of things I could do with that I can sell links to people I can sell advertising, right? It seems like something somebody wanted by advertising on banner sites, things like that if I get that page st louis wedding dot photography to rank top five on google thing about the traffic that's going to hit that now that side I can make that site all about wedding photography top five things to consider for engagement couples top ten tips and tricks for your wedding day makeup how to for to get the best pictures I'm just making up content as we go if that site becomes center of content well, I can tell you what's not going to be there any other photographers I'm gonna dominate that side right? That'll all be mine, but now I can sell advertising on that site now I can go to some of the catering halls, maybe there's a catering all four seasons in st louis I don't really have a good relationship with him, they don't really refer us weddings now I could go to them and go hey this sight's getting ten thousand visits a day, ten thousand visits a week a month, whatever good numbers we'd love to give you some banner advertising on that site in return to be on your preferred vendor list is how the world works, man, his business one on one so you've got to start thinking, if you just think literally oh are literally I should say about what you're doing, it's just pictures. I take pictures, I take pictures, that's all I do is take pictures. Well, then, that's all you're ever going to do just start thinking like business people. Man, if you want relationships with bridal shops, if you want relationships with venues, give them a reason to be in bed with you. Ultimately, think about how many photographers there are in your market. I mean, there's hundreds and hundreds of photographers. Why are they going to be in business with you? What do you have to offer that nobody else does? Fair question right now, doing something like this, you present more value to them. We'll wait. He could drive leads to our website. He can take pictures of our venue. He can post them up on the side. You see where I'm going with this? I'm just thinking like an entrepreneur. Um, inbound links from other sites. Very valuable, by the way. So having people link inbound to your site is very powerful. So, you know, if we get our link on behind the shutter dot com and I do a post behind the shutter dot coms of photography website right many of you all know that's gonna link back to southend kind of dot com if that does that I do a post that drives traffic back there immediately google looks at that and goes oh well behind the shutter dot com is a highly ranked site therefore we're gonna give more credit to south and counter dot com so how can you work that in your local market dress shops florist things like this vendor relationships that you can have dr traffic back and forth just having that link tie back and forth to your site is going to give you a higher ranking it's gonna help right like a normal person all too often when we're writing for our block post well, this was how it would work in previous versions you could actually write ah block post and right talbot orson kata is st louis wedding photography number one photographer in st louis if you're getting married in st louis wedding photography and you're looking for a st louis wedding for tara you could actually trick out google and do stuff like that well that's not working anymore okay so now they're penalizing you for writing like that so I just have to write like a you know, human being like a normal person and just use keywords where they make sense if you do what's called keywords stuffing which is what that is well, actually be blacklisted and so these are the kind of things we've gotta adapt on our website you've got to make sure you're not doing anything like that and that's why you're not ranking highly um right maur what topics to brides wanna work read about that's what we just talked to, you know, talk about or families or babies or seniors whatever your thing is right? Mohr put content out there and guys don't overcomplicate it next time you're sitting down at a starbucks or something, plot your ipad, get out a pen and paper and just put something together and don't over again known overcomplicated top five what top five tips for better pictures top five tips for better mitten makeup interview people interviewing makeup artist right just things like this can just provide content to your site and drive traffic I'm sure if you take thirty seconds and just think out loud to yourself about what your bride's might be interested in that it's self serving by the way the content should be self serving it should be driving traffic back to you you can come up with some things that are really, really gonna help um create a landing page so we did this we created a landing page called st louis wedding photographer now the reason we get away this is this is a key word stuffing at his bets st louis wedding attire for south towards and kata offer st louis brides the very best in st louis wedding photography it's keyword stuff tio no uh you know when but it's old it's an old page so it's still ranks on google so if you saw where we were ranked two and three south and kata dot com was right to south some kind of dot com slash st louis wedding photographer was rank three this page is still ranking this is a landing page this is the kind of content I'm telling you to produce so what we did was we produce content and don't copy this because you will actually get penalized if you copy this content this is something else google just instituted with their new changes so if your content on your site is found on another site you'll actually be penalized so they will they will kick you down on ranking you gotta put something together that's a ring but here's what we did top five things to consider when looking for a st louis wedding photographer I think it's brilliant to do that in your own words do that in your own market top five things for better engagement pictures again keep it simple but now you're establishing yourself as an expert you're driving traffic to your site on you're creating some some momentum here is this making sense questions on any of this no reason you shouldn't be doing it right now next level this is brand new no one knows about this no one's doing it but it frickin works so I wanted to do an experiment to prove that we can continue to one up our ceo game and so this is really gonna be interesting what's going too interesting he's after we announce this and see what happens in our market so I wanted to take everything I've learned about search engine optimization and I wanted to take it to that next level I wanted to really really if you think about it the only time brides find us right now with seo if your ranking is if they search for your key words correct st louis wedding photographer but today's bride is not really searching that way right today's bride when they plan their wedding you know how they're planning their wedding pinterest google images inspirational images block post things like that that's how they're planning their wedding that's how they're getting ideas well by the time they find me they're probably looked at fifty other photographers images if you think about it I need you to hijack that situation I needed to inject myself in much earlier in the process and so here is a little experiment we did um I took one of my vendors artistry florist okay they're one of the top florist in in st louis beautiful product very fresh flowers easy to work with we even shot their wedding so taylor photographed their wedding really, really awesome partnership that we've had and so what I wanted to do is having a chance to influence brides before they were ever even thinking about a photographer pretty interesting concept to want to do something like that, right? So I'm personally I think this is brilliant, so we'll see what you guys think, and so I created a landing page on my site for artistry. Flores south and kata dot com slash artistry florist then created a sticky album for them. I then created a pinterest board for them, but it kind of took everything I already do and just kind of combined it into one, so if you go to my site right, it'll be right on my blogged right in my sight rather under vendor, so I created a vendor page I did one for artistry florist then what I did you see, I don't know if you guys can see it, but it's south and kata dot com slash artistry florist, we created this landing page and I'll read it to you artistry florist is the premier flores in st louis. We've been working with them for over eight years here some things to consider when researching your st louis florist for your wedding day, so I'm kind of keyword ing it for artistry florist and st louis florist right see where I'm going with this and then there's like forty fifty pictures on the page that of course I've taken of all the events I've worked with them for then there's a sticky out and so if we go back you can see right here is this link I created a sticky album so that brides who are planning their wedding day can have my pictures on their phone if they like any of them so that they can use those for inspiration we also shared this sticky album with artistry florence so they can actually give that sticky album to their clients and say here's a portfolio of our work what a cool calling card right and so we did all this it took about two hours okay, we created a pinterest board this took about two hours to do to do the one vendor I want to do this for twenty or thirty vendors there's a lot of time to get involved so I had to prove it out. I literally just did this about a month ago, right maybe three weeks ago so this is fairly new if you google artistry florists were page one three four weeks page one for artistry flores one, two three four five six number six on page one I was out for working this is brilliant if you don't walk away from this and do this immediately for all your vendors you just turn off this course stop watching it. Stop writing. Go home, take your next flight. This is brilliant right here. This is going to drive traffic to you every time that bride searches for something. So not this is if she searches I'm going to come back. You might be thinking who cares you're you're the photographer okay? When she clicks on images which is how they're doing it they're clicking artistry there's googling artistry florist images first image south and caught a second image sallis and kata third image sallis and caught a fourth image the actual flores fifth damage south and kata I'd say it's working this is what they're seeing. This is what they're being influenced by this costs me zero guys this cost me two hours of my time this this costs me thinking differently about how we're doing business I'm hijacking their key words I'm hijacking it I'm getting the traffic before them then we created an artistry florist right board on our site on our pinchers bored because that's another way brides are searching boom artistry florist salvator sin kata salvator cicada salvador cincotti salvator cicada salvador cicada dude, we're dominating that air this was an experiment that I tell you that for weeks ago I'm experimenting I want to do something new I want a next level shit this is next level ing it. This is ensuring that I'm controlling and influencing my brides. Were there ever even thinking about a photographer. So now when they go on, look up a photographer there going oh, south and kat, I've seen him somewhere. I've heard that name before. Yes, that's what I want brand awareness. I want to be everywhere with my brand is this making sense? This should be absolutely huge for you. So I'm hoping you guys got questions on this because this is the stuff that's going to help you get ranked on do things that your competitors just don't have the time, the wherewithal or even care to be able to do to do talk to me what is the what, sisk, the content that you actually have on this page. What did you write? So this particular content with what I wrote is my whole concept. What seems to be working as a block formula is top five things for x, so what I did was I wrote top five things to consider when selecting the floors so real simple doesn't have to be overly complicated. So here's, what I came up with experience, do they pick up or drop off their alternative options for flowers? Will the floor supply centerpieces do they offer day of flower delivery? Are they fresh that's what I came up with right and then there's copy to support all that right top things and so you can come up with whatever you want to you've got to keep this fresh and then you need to update those pictures but now there's just kind of like ecosystem being built right? So the more I put pictures here the more my vendor artistry flores is getting excited and wants to refer me and then he's pushing out our sticky album which is helping us drive more business because that's kind of our calling card with my logo on all those things so he's handing out that sticky album with my logo on every image he can't put other vendors images in there he can't put other photographers images in there so we're kind of taking over where we're creating an ecosystem that's feeding our own business right I'm so excited about this now I have a follow up question if you were going to do this for a vendor how would you approach this so or a venue? Excuse me so what's that I don't have a big portfolio of x right so if I want to do this for let's say a top venue that I happen to work with and my approaching them first or mija hijacking this and going you know what I did this hey here's this for you guys if you want to use it off um yeah hi, jack it that's the answer that's what we did I didn't talk to them at all we just hijacked it from him and then once we did it and they saw the page was there now we're working with them to put a coupon in that sticky album so now you can use sticky album to be a marketing tool for him so use this coupon get safe two hundred dollars on your wedding order, right? So now there's again this ecosystem that were working don't go toe anybody and asked them to help you with this just do it do it and then go to them and be like bam look what I did you want to be part of it or not that's the way I'd be attacking it you're referring to these landing pages but if it's coming in at the second second level what is the old what's? The difference between that and just a blogger entry the way you were saying is there some something that I'm missing on that it's not coming in on the second level it's coming in right at the root right southland dot com slash artistry floors but that's also you wanted blogging interest to come in on no yes yeah yeah so if you are you saying like that on the back end what's the difference between the this is this is an actual page so the pages showing up at that same root level so you could do a post if that post is going to be able to be part of your knave right so the key here is I need this what I don't want to have is that get buried the artistry floors get buried in like thirty history of block post right so I set that up is an actual page on my blocks that make more sense person actual block post and that's what we'll do for each one right? So every vendor venu flores deejay everybody we're working with they're going to get this kind of just landing page now what I tried to do was vendor by category because I obviously work with more more than one florist so I wanted to have vendor florist uh and then five different florist the problem was the minute I did that I start in my girl there's no way to have all of them at that same same level so it started putting south and co dot com slash florist slash right because we're like sub levels down so I didn't want to do that so I don't care so there won't be categories correctly at the end of the day no one's coming to me looking for a florist right? So that's not what I'm trying to accomplish I don't need to categorize and sub categorize him from this perspective the content has to stay fresh that's key and you're going to start out right you may not you may only have five pictures from a venue right I've been working with this guy for years so I immediately had fifty that I could go to a cz you as you continue to evolve and grow you'll you'll get more more pictures but once you prove it out let's see you prove it out the first time okay just do it once prove it out now goto a venue and say hey you know we've never worked here before look this concept here's where we're showing up from a search engine perspective but it's got to be a place that you feel like you can trust because you don't want them going to another photographer and doing something like this going well I really want to work closer with you we'd be willing to come in let me do ah portfolio shooting here get a get a mock bridegroom shoot a venue I've done that before the st louis is a place called the coronado it's like starting price is twenty five thirty thousand dollars t get to get the room and dinner and so it's a high end place in st louis we did a shoot for their magazine at so they had designers come in tablecloth they did the whole room flowers everything artistry florist provided all the flowers they did all this stuff we came in photographed it for free their next ad in the magazine was our our picture with our logo or our copyright on then of course I got you know, to use the ballroom and use all these pictures for my portfolio and so you can do stuff like that when you start and say here's, what I'm looking to do do you want to be part of it? I'm just looking to work with one local vendor right now and I'm going to do this for free so that's that sweat equity that you can put back in the business but this has got if this doesn't get your mind's going I mean, of all the things we're talking about this got me the most excited uh when I was getting ready to come on for creative life because no one's doing it there's there's noth going out there like it and if you can go from like, non existent to page one on google in three weeks or four weeks that's pretty impressive you guys have had sites for a couple of years and you're not on page one here I just went and took over page one on I'm on google I'm on the images I'm on pinterest on dh so this is really, really powerful stuff now the minute I hit slow season that's what I'm gonna have time to go through and do it for every single vendor you hear so good stuff, good stuff. Hopefully everybody still learning back at home, hopefully, you guys, air keeping up there is blown away by. This is I know I am.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Master the Business of Photography - Workbook
Master the Business of Photography Slides
5 Tips to Finding and Booking Your Client

Ratings and Reviews

Brandon D
 

Sal isn't disgruntled and angry like someone below said, and he doesn't have time for people constantly whining about why their business isn't going good. He's from Brooklyn, so he can come across as harsh at first, but after watching several of his classes and even getting to meet him in person and talk a bit I can tell you he is a really nice guy who truly does want you to succeed. He was very encouraging to me after I thanked him for helping me and my business get to where it is now. Growing up, I can remember photographers grabbing us and posing how they wished. They are often in a hurry to get things right, such as at a wedding, so I am not sure why one reviewer stated he would dismiss them. Sounds like he is just looking for a reason to feel powerful. Anyway, this is a great class to get you on track with your business. Yes, its a bit wedding heavy, but the concepts are the same no matter what. Just apply them to your niche and you are good to go.

Sean
 

Amazing course. Sal is such a great photography educator. Terrific course. I'm not usually big on watching business courses, but this course as taught by Sal was terrific. Down to earth, entertaining, packed with real life experiences do's, don'ts and lessons learned. This courses business A to Z and Sal is very entertaining to watch/listen to. Thanks CreativeLive for getting Sal.

fbuser 0af5cf47
 

I have been a long time fan of Creative Live and have sat on the fence with all of Sal's classes because I already attend Shutterfest every year and get loaded with valuable information there, so it was hard to pull the trigger on a $300 course that was filmed 5 years ago. Also, in my earlier days of hearing about Sal, I'd heard a lot of negative opinions about how he comes across. Still, I'd heard he's a marketing guru, and my background is in marketing as well, so I really wanted to see what this class was all about. Now that I've finally gotten it, I'm completely blown away. There is just SO MUCH MATERIAL in this class that its actually difficult trying to decide what to implement first! It is good stuff too. It is all about marketing, sales, and workflow. If you're looking for a class teaching you how to take better photos, this one is not it. This is the class that teaches you how to get your work where everyone is seeing it and convincing people to book you and tell their friends about you! Now as far as others have already said... this class is definitely geared toward wedding photographers. Yes there are bits of information that work for other types of photography, but it is so heavily wedding oriented that there might be a better fit out there for another type of photographer. If you do weddings though, this is an amazing class! As far as Sal's personality goes.... he's a New Yorker transplanted to St. Louis. So expect that NYC no BS type of attitude. Susan Stripling is another one of my favorites and she is similar in attitude (and also extremely talented), so if you like her, you should like this. If you have a hard time with her, you might have a hard time with this. Regardless, its stuff y'all need to hear and implement to be successful. Obviously because the class is a bit older, you may have to make small tweaks to a few things (even though he says don't jack with the recipe), but the marketing principles are solid and timeless. Shoot this course is worth it for the SEO advice alone. Just buy it already!

Student Work

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