In this episode, we talked with Jason Berkowitz who runs a digital marketing agency in New York, specializing in SEO campaigns. We dived into what real estate photographers can do to increase their presence on search engines and provided some great tips to help potential clients find you!
Here is the transcript of this podcast and PDF can be downloaded below:
Welcome to shooting spaces or real estate photography podcast, discussions on gear technique, Industry News, and interviews with the best in the business. Now, here are your hosts, Rich Baum and Brian Berkowitz.
Welcome to shooting spaces podcast. This is rich bond from Sacramento, California,
and this is Brian here from New York and we have another special guest with us today, Jason Berkowitz, who have had the privilege of knowing for just under 30 years as he is my brother. He owns a CEO, an internet marketing agency out here in New York. So Jason, why don’t you say hello to our listeners. Introduce Yourself, tell us about your company and what exactly you do out here.
Hi everybody. My name is Jason Berkowitz, out here in New York City and I own a digital marketing firm out here in the city. We specialize in full service, digital marketing agencies, SEOl, facebook ads, retargeting, web design development, paper click, and it can be found that break the web.org seo services in October and he can visit my personal website, JasonBerkowitz.com
And everything will be in the show notes. I’m sure. Sure. Now, out of all the things you listed, um, I think seo is probably most prevalent to our listeners, um, at least to start off with. So tell us from an expert standpoint, what exactly is Seo? What does it mean? What is, what does it stand for? What’s the acronym stand for? What do people want to know about it?
All right, so the acronym of Seo stands for search engine optimization, and depending on who you speak to in the industry, they might have a different definition on what seo is. Essentially search optimization is using a variety of methods or tactics to increase the websites position on Google specifically or bing and Yahoo. If people decide to search through those to get better visibility and awareness. People that are actively searching for them, whether it’s using search terms or keywords and keywords are terms that people might type in for your specific industry. That’s really the process of Seo is really using specific methods, whether it’s on page seo or off page seo on pages. Really anything that’s taking place on your website. There’s two halves to the Seo campaign or off page seo, which is aspects taking place off of the website and we can dive into that a little bit later. I could get a little bit technical, but every seo campaign to have complete success requires both on-page and off-page Seo and that’s depending on who you speak to it, depending on what classification of Seo there in as many different quote unquote hats. We’ve all heard of a black hat people, black hat seo, but that’s kind of frowned upon in the industry, but essentially using methods and philosophies that are used to increase trust and authority within the website in the search engines.
So yeah, we’ll definitely jason dive into a little bit of on-page and off-page and a little bit, but in our industry, compare it to most. We’re in a very, um, word of mouth and referral based industry and many people will say, um, don’t necessarily need a CEO. I don’t, you know, my site is just there because it has to be there, but I don’t really get any leads from that. And most of my business comes from word of mouth, which is true, um, but I definitely feel, I mean me for instance, personally, um, that’s how it is for me now. But I was able to kick off and jump start my business because I’m ranking on the first page of Google and I was, I was able to, you know, get clients because of that and get those initial clients. So what are your thoughts to somebody in our industry that would say, I don’t necessarily need it because we’re a word of mouth industry?
Well, I think everybody needs it. Essentially it’s free traffic. It’s not like Google ad words or facebook ads where you’re paying every time somebody clicks on your link and the advertisements, it’s 100 percent free traffic. And if you’re there in the positions, if somebody says, how do I find you? And let’s say for example, you don’t have a business card, just say google real estate photographer Miami. And if your website’s there, that a also signals that you’re authoritative. Because if Google is telling you that you’re the number one website or the number one provider, a real estate photography Miami, you must be good.
Sure. Yeah. I love that because, uh, I always tell people that, uh, it doesn’t necessarily mean when agents look at, uh, either cold calling you, they look at a website and they think, oh my God, the photos are great and they’re cheaper. A lot of times you’re going to go with that because they think it’s apples to apples. But I guess, um, the best part is just, you know, getting, getting, popping up first in a search engine. It’s a great way to start and then you can back it up with your work.
Yeah. And there’s always people that are typing in all these different search terms into google. And if your website does appear, that’s a plus. You know, it can’t hurt. Especially if you’re in a non competitive city, a city that’s not dominated by big players, uh, you have a chance to get traffic, but it’s all 100 percent free. And that’s the great thing about it is you’re not paying per click. It might take a little bit of investment and the investment could be time as opposed to a financial investment, so it’s a lot easier as opposed to Google ad words and facebook ads and all the different other forms of marketing specifically
as I agree with that wall. Um, you know, most cities, you know, I’m in New York, have a lot of competition and smaller cities definitely have less competition. And what I’ve noticed is there’s not a lot of competition out there for people that are trying to rank in the top three, four or five spots on Google. So in an industry that we’re in, especially when it’s very localized by region that we’re looking for, are most, most of the photographers that are, you know, just basically trying to go after their local region. Um, it’s not that hard to rank fairly quickly onto the first page of google.
Yeah. At times it can be. Obviously you’re not going for it. Obviously in New York City we have some really crazy search terms which are super competitive. Things like personal injury lawyer is probably one of the most competitive search terms. You’re nowhere near that at all and uh, just investing time into the seo campaign and investing time into your website can really have some great benefits and warrant integrate visibility. You never know who’s searching and you never know what they’re typing in.
Sure. Now before we go into anything, I guess technical or any tips that you can share with us, let’s take a step back and don’t you share a little bit of your story. I mean, I obviously know your story, but I’m just tell people how you got from a personal trainer, which is what you are to what you do now.
Yes. So around 2009 I was personal training and just like anyone else, I was doing the hustle, struggling to get new business and I went on Google looking for a way to increase business, how to market myself up, being super cost effective. Obviously I didn’t have a lot of money to market with. So I learned about Seo and I started networking with some great minds of. I gave a lot of free personal training programs to people in exchange for some great tips. A lot of, uh, great people has some coaching programs I just simply couldn’t afford, so I kind of borrowed my way into their inner circle and learned about tricks that a lot of Beta testing could probably spent a good two years analyzing data on one of those data nerds and just learning how to rank websites on Google, specifically my website and while at the time I had a passion for personal training and helping people get better.
My passion for training turned into a passion for CEO and kind of figuring out a strategy to get websites from the top of the different search terms. I ended up creating my own agency website in 2012 now. That was the first one seo services in New York.org, which ended up breaking for a variety of New York seo terms. People that that would need seo services type type. The search terms into Google looking for an agency like mine. And then from there it kind of grew. It exploded a since Seo services in New York that Oregon is not very brandable. We made a break the web, which is the parent company of Seo Services in New York, and then here we are today, full service digital marketing agency, providing everything under the sun.
Well, I think that’s the number one trust factor. Obviously if you’re running an SEO agency and you’re showing up, you know, first or second on Google, then people know you know what to do and you’re legit.
Oh yeah. Especially when people call us, they say, oh, why are you better than. They always ask, why are you better than the other company will? How did you find us? Is what I say to them? They go, ah, yeah, good point.
That’s great. Yeah. Just while I was a surfing around here, I was just looking up my, uh, looking up northern California real estate photographer and I, I’m number one. How the hell did that happen? That’s awesome. One to now could wait. Let me ask you a question though. Could that have to do with I’m looking it up on my phone or would that be the same if anybody was
and Google? Yeah. Google is very odd in that sense. So if you’re logged in, well if you want to be a little creepy, you can go a website dashboard.google.com and see pretty much everything google has on, you know, you can see a interests, activities, search history in here, frequently searching a term or frequently visiting a website. I’ll while logged into google or your google account, your Gmail, they will show you personalized results. So personally when I’m doing search terms to see where things are ranking, how their software is that can auto track rankings. But uh, I’m just doing a manual search. I usually go to incognito mode or private browsing, putting on which one and perform a search. And also there was a point where Google about a year ago allowed you to search by specific location. So within the search results there was a setting where you can change your specific location to make a search and they got rid of that. But there’s also a third party website, which is really cool. I’ll just plug them, have no affiliation with them. I searched from [inaudible]. Do you want incognito results from a specific location as well?
Good tips.
Let’s dive a little bit. I guess we’ll start with a little on-page seo and most of the people that are listening to this are in the same boat there. Real Estate Photographers, um, might be a few architectural or interiors, but most of most of the listeners are real estate photographers. What should they look for? What are the most basic things they can do to try to boost their ranking? Well, first off, I guess to see where they’re ranking, find out where they stand compared to the competition and then give themselves a little bit of a boost.
Absolutely. And in the beginning of every seo campaign before on page seo for off page Seo, there’s a keyword research and thankfully you guys are not in a crazy, crazy competitive industry where a keyword research doesn’t need to be extensive, you know, trying to put yourself in the mind of the customer and what somebody would type in and then you can reverse engineer that to see how much monthly searches are coming in. If it’s really worth your time. If you’re in a really, really small city, it may not be worth your time, but if you’re near a rural area or a metro city, then obviously it could be worth your time to perform cured research and see how many people are typing in a real estate photographer Chicago and there’s many different websites. I would say the best one is a google keyword planner and that’s a tool that has meant for people using Google adwords, but then you take those keywords and you implement them on your website to kind of create a relevancy, a geographical relevancy and industry relevancy within your website, and that could all be done with the title, the content, the text on the page, the Meta information, as many different places where you can get those relevancy factors isn’t so in the google box and the Google crawlers all within their algorithm. Read your website. They understand what your site’s about and Google’s or probability algorithms. So they really rely on the information that’s given to them and the more information you can give them about your website, the better chances you have of ranking from an on-page Seo standpoint.
Well, tell me a few key. OK, now this is rich cocking who knows nothing about Seo. Um, I did not pay for Seo, but I did get a good ranking only because people told me that it really had a lot to do with, um, with wordpress for me, and it had a lot to do with keywords. Just tell me a few basic keywords that we might, might think about incorporating in posts and in the websites and, and in your blog, what are some real estate related keywords that we might not be thinking of
since Brian actually did the work.
I think he’d probably be the best bet in this. He actually spent, spent the time doing the keyword research, but off the top of my head, a real estate photographer, city, whatever city you’re in, architectural photographer, rocketer, architectural photography, real estate photography, all different variations of the primary keyword at Brian. Are there any others that you found? Yeah, that was primarily what I went after was real estate photographer, real estate photography, along with my city. I’m, I’m out here on Long Island and I rank for long island fairly well, much better than New York City and I did that strategically because it’s a lot easier to rank on long island in New York City for me and I’m out here anyways, so I figured I’d rather not travel as far, but I mean those are the basic key words that I went after. If there were a couple little, you know, extra stuff, you know, I think I went after commercial photography a little bit here and there, although that’s still very broad so I didn’t want to focus on that too much. But most of it was, as you said, real estate photography, real estate photographer with different variations along with my city that before or after and you know, interior photography, different things of the sort.
And, and Google is very smart on that. So if for example, you have the page title, the title of that specific page or on your website and it says a Joe Schmo photography, maybe a dash real estate photographer, Chicago, Google actually recognized as real estate photographer be this to be the same as real estate photography Chicago, or they also recognize that to be the same as Chicago real estate photography, so they also, they understand synonyms and variations of a certain word and kind of classify them in a keyword set to kind of keep them relevant. So again, if somebody types in, we’ll stay photographer and your page title has the words real estate photography, you will still benefit from it
on that point. That means that it’s not necessarily for me to go after four or five of the same variations of key words. For instance, Long Island real estate photographer, Long Island real estate, photography, real estate, photography, Long Island. Those are all pretty much, you know, just different variations of the same thing. And because Google can detect that, there is no reason for me to really go after every single one of those keywords. But I’m assuming a nice variation throughout your website is good.
Yeah, absolutely. Especially when you try not to over optimize your website for a certain keyword allows more diversity in the content. If you have the words real estate photography, Seventy Times in one paragraph just doesn’t look natural and that’s a lot of the big goals nowadays. Not only to have the keywords in there as much as possible, but also to convert the traffic that comes in. Now having number one can be great and all, but if the traffic doesn’t convert into visitors, just destroys it. Destroys the whole thing. Yeah. The only, the variations there. It keeps the content flowing nicely. Add some variety in your words. You could even add up pauses in between different worlds, you know, real estate photographer in Chicago and just play around with it, trying to keep it as natural as possible. Getting the words in there and a nice decent rate.
I’ve got a question for you. Uh, I’m just popping up
a few things that I’ve wondered about. I’ve always heard, you know, haven’t really gotten into Seo, which I probably should get more into. But uh, I got a couple of questions, so first of all, I know that everybody who’s ever helped me with or told me about building a website has told me that wordpress platform is, is very friendly with Google or vice versa, and it is a great way to get noticed. So if you’re going to have your website, it’s going to really help to have it be wordpress based. What is your feeling on that?
Well, I think wordpress is user friendly, but not for Google, for the average person who may not be a coder or developer. It’s super user friendly and the learning curve on wordpress is next to nothing. So at, essentially it doesn’t matter which platform you’re on, it could be just a regular html website by wordpress. At the end of the day, wordpress is a user friendly way to display html, so that, OK, my name. Oh, go ahead. So they’re all just displaying html, whether it’s wordpress, squarespace, shopify, they’re all using html at the end. And that’s what Google bots are reading is the html.
And another thing that I, I don’t do as well as I’d like, uh, I don’t do as many blog posts as I would like, but I’ve always been told a great way to get noticed and Google like you is to have a blog and if you’re going to have a blog, keep up on blog posts, get them regular, get them a once a week or two, three times a month. What are your feelings on a blog and, and the importance of keeping it relevant and up to date.
Yeah, absolutely. There’s definitely a lot of cool on-page seo tricks that can be done when you update your blog first. Google does look out what we call an fop, a frequency of publish. If you are frequently updating your website is signaling signaling to Google that you’re up to date, you care about your website, you care about providing value to the web visitors. And that definitely gives them a little a, a trusting knows that you’re there. Plus, you could also interlink a kind of like wikipedia, how anytime you go to a wikipedia article that they’re linking to other pages on their site. If you do it naturally, obviously wikipedia is a bit much, but they’re outgoing or internal links, but if you interlinked to another blog post that might be relevant or you interlinked to your portfolio, if you mention it more specific about specific gallery that you’ve done, you know, that works out really well.
What about, um, years ago, maybe four years ago, I did a blog post called a pole photography [inaudible] and Larry Lorman over at a photography for real estate PLA, real estate.net, a blog. Uh, he posted it and he promoted it and it got a lot of hits. Yeah. I always felt that that was really a big part of my, uh, raising on the, uh, on the, uh, Seo, uh, because it got it, got so many hits, is that, so?
Uh, it’s definitely possible, especially if you google analytics installed, no one will know and will ever admit it, but Google analytics pretty much has a backdoor key into your website. If you have the code installed and you’re using that to track how many visitors are coming to your website, where it coming from, what device they’re on. And in your case, it probably probably be all referral traffic that definitely shows Google that there’s a variety in your incoming traffic and as opposed to being strictly on one source on one platform, has its benefits, is it the end all be all. There was no data to show that it is, but it definitely doesn’t hurt to have other people share your links on social media, send it out to the newsletter or whatever it be.
And Brian, um, when did you, did you use your brother to a to help you with, uh, you know, the kind of ranking and seo and that whole genre, or did you do it yourself?
I’m not going to help them
unless you pay him. You know, it’s, it’s funny. I actually, most of my rankings that I’ve done, I’ve been on my own and obviously I differ with questions here and there, um, to Jason, you know, for a little specific things here and there. But, um, it was a type of thing where I knew throughout my career, especially nowadays with the way the web is that, you know, the next 40, 50 years in my life, I’m going to have a website and I’m going to need to rank them. So I’m going to need to learn how to do that. Um, obviously I can’t do it close to what Jason Can, um, if I could, I’d be in the digital marketing industry. But, um, that being said, I felt it was important for me to at least gained enough ground and the basics for me to be able to do it on my own.
Um, especially for local, I would have no idea how to, how to rank or try to rank a, you know, a national site or anything like that. But for something that’s as regional as what we do, um, I felt like I was able to learn enough kind of doing and asking questions here and there when I needed to. And I’ve been successful in the last. It took me probably seven, eight months to a go from when I rebranded my whole site to, you know, the top three or four search results. So with enough hard work and persistence that can be done, it’s not a question, especially in our industry.
Yeah. And it’s always good to start off really think about what you’re gonna do and what your, uh, what your domain name is going to be when, because when you get it going, it’s what you got. And uh, let me ask you a question. What is the pros and cons, and this may not even be ceo, but what’s the pros and cons to a lot of people? Like I have my, my website is [inaudible] and uh, that’s kind of my, my way of thinking. Uh, but a lot of people want to have a business, they won’t have a name and they want to possibly have something that they could sell it in the future, sell off their, their domain name. What’s your opinion on that?
I really think, like you mentioned, it comes down to the business model, the end goal. Where do you see yourself in five years, in five years from now? Are you a one man show that’s making a hell of a lot of money doing jobs here and there? Or are you bringing on other photographers, you know, bringing on another photographer? So I think it really depends on the business school and uh, I going to give business advice, but if, if you want to make a lot of money doing jobs here or there, go for your brand name, you know, stick to your name, get your name out there, obviously people that remember your name versus a specific brand name. The other goal is the opposite just to eventually sell off your agency or your photography business than a go for the brand route. But again, I think you have to spend time and maybe you take a piece of paper, pros and cons. Where do you see yourself in five years? What do you want to be doing in five years? Who Do you want to be with? Etc. Both brian and brian does have both. And I rememBer it was funny because probably about a year ago, brian saying that he’s going through his reBranding and he’s like, ok, I’m going to set everything up and place and then mayBe in a few weeks we’ll get together and we’ll talk about how the seo of my website and a few weeks went by and he actually said, look, I’m ranking.
That’s great. And I’m looking up right here. Adjacent berkowitz. seo. Yeah. Nice picture. and what kind of website do you have a. Did you build your own or
originally? Uh, we both. I built it myself, but now we hAve developers that take care of it. I, you don’t have patients until with code anymore. And I believe brian built his website himself also from wordpress.
Yeah, all my websites or wordpress platform, both of my websites. Um, but like you said, it’s easy to use, very user friendly and they have little plugins that can help with the titles and the descriptions which you were describing about, which is definitely something we should mention. [inaudible], we were talking about curating for titles and descriptions. Um, in case people aren’t aware of those are, you know, you can insert those titles and descriptions in whatever it typically in whatever platform you’re using, whether it’s wordpress, wix, squarespace, any of those platforms, there’s usually areas on every page where you can just go in and put your titles which will link, which should include your keywords in your description and all that stuff.
Let me ask you then, I, it’s great timing because all my websites, our word press based, but I just did a for the last three days. I built my own wic site, a free site for my new workshop page. And uh, I was really, really happy with it. It was super easy. It just went up today. And um, I want to ask you, what are some things I might want to do to help with the ceo on my free wix page, which is probably similar to squarespace or any other company. I
think the idea would be to get your keywords in there as natural as possible. If you have an option to get your keyword in. For example, the meta-description, which is the description that appears in the search results onto your website, you really wanna focus on conversions. You want to get that click, so having your keyword in there and naturally it doesn’t have to be six, seven times, mayBe once, twice, three times. If it looks natural and the description is focused on, uh, getting someone’s attention to click on your website that will enhance your click-through rate and obviously get them to your website, which is ideal. And also send google the relevancy factors back in the day a couple of years ago.
Give me an example of the word specifically that you’d, you know, just the, how to use it in a sentence that would,
yeah, my brother’s a photographer, not that well versed in the audience. I think brian might be a better candidate to give a good ideal meta-description for that,
for, for workshops. Yeah. I mean, well, yeah, for rich. I mean, I would, I would go something simple and this is without doing any research, but um, something you obviously want to put your name on it because you know, between your youtube channel and everything else, you have named condition as far as an educator, so you definitely want to have your name in there and I would go something like real estate photography workshop with rich baum coming to a city near you. Something as simple as that. Um, you know, obviously a little more research. I’d be able to elaborate a little more, but this way you’re getting, you know, your main keywords in their real estate photography workshop. You’re getting your name in there. Um, and then maybe one or two other things, keywords that you, yOu Know, another keyword that you, you know, completely dIfferent that you want to try to throw in there and just giving that description.
Great. And even, even about two months ago, google actually extended the length of the descriptions that they show in the search results. But this week, yeah. And it’s funny because nobody’s updating god first thing. We definitely saw the news. Can we just updated all of our clients websites and uh, some, it might be ok, it’s too long, no one’s going to read that, but you can take advantage of it, you know, write a book now in all caps that’s going to get somebody’s attention versus a bunch of texts. So use that to your advantage if you have some really big, uh, paint a hip points that you want to your perspective client to look at. You throw it in the description, you know, for example,
to just elaborate on what you saying, for people that might not be aware up until I guess last week or two weeks ago, google I think had a character limit on a hundred 60 for description. Is that correct? Yeah. And now they increased it. I don’t know what the new number is. Um,
I think it’s a range.
There’s 5,300, something like that. Um, so you know, what jason is saying is now that the description, kyra, with their limit is longer, you know, make your description is longer
and focused on conversion and allows you to get your keywords in there naturally as opposed to trying to squeeze them in in a weird way. You can go off on a longer sentence.
Sure. One cool tip that I noticed has worked for me, and I don’t know if anyone else, you know, his of I, I’m sure people have thought of it, but what I do is I put my phone number in the description and I’ve noticed that I’ve gotten a couple calls from people that say they didn’t even click on my website. They saw my phone number pop up in the search results on google and just figured they’d give me a call right away without even clicking to without even clicking to my website. So in my description I’ll, you know, I’ll mention keywords like real estate photographer on long island, you know, you know the luxury real stuff like that, you know, call now with my phone number. Um, so this way people are finding me on google, they’ll see my phone number in the description before they even click through to my website and they can give me a call. It’s if it saves a step, it saves a step.
Yeah, and that ties in with what google wants an answer box. So somebody is looking for a phone number of a real estate photographer and then it shows up right there. What reason do they have not to call?
All right, so jason, the beginning, we spoke a little bit. You told me about on-page seo and off page seo and you kind of went through on page talking about keywords and how important that is explained to us what off page seo is and what people have to look for.
Now, off page seo is automization that plays off of your website and that’s kind of similar to on-page seo that you’re sending. Relevancy began, geographical relevancy, industry relevance, it relevancy to your website, but this is coming from outside sources. One of the biggest and most powerful ways of gaining well website visibility within google is a tactic called backlinking. Now backlink is when one website has that little blue text where it links back to your website and that’s really the biggest trust indicator in google’s algorithms for ranking a website as well as good on-page seo of course, but they kind of come 50 50. That’S the most important thing is having backlinks from trustworthy, relevant, authoritative websites and uh, for example, you guys can benefit from getting back links from relevant blogs. And in a second we could talk about how to get those back links. It’s super easy had to be contributors and other people’s blogs. But, uh, that’s really the primary thing is getting a back link from, from one website to another. And like you mentioned, it’s kind of mimicking the natural word of mouth. If you’re giving a referral to somebody, oh, check out this great photographer, I now that person’s going to trust you. And that’s the same thing with google. If websites linking to another there, they’re basically putting their reputation on this website is a trustworthy source. I recommend them. They deserve to be on top.
Cool. So can you give us, you know, I know you mentioned blogs, but can you give us examples of some, you know, outside sites that we might want to, um, you know, look for links from, I mean, do you know, do the famous sites like facebook or instagram or any of that stuff, have any relevance if you put links on there to your website, if you post links to your website or.
Absolutely, absolutely. So they’re not going to be the big powerhouse kickers like the social media sites and other local directory type sites like yelp, superpages, manta, those definitely have some great benefits. And that comes down to a branding thing where google actually gives weight to websites that take that extra step to secure their brand online. Definitely has its benefits. You can get your name, your address, your phone number out there or a link back to your website. The ws has benefits, but we really want is a backlinks coming in from really relevant sites. You know, if you can get, for example, other photographers that you know to allow you to post on their blog that’s going to provide more power than facebook. Yelp, again, they’re all hundred percent essential for any business, no matter what you’re in, no matter what industry you’re in, but definitely getting other photographers or other news websites to post a link back to your website, whether on a relevant article or relevant content piece.
So Again, a guest blog posts and stuff lIke that is what you’re saying.
Yeah. That’s one of the technical terms is a guest posting where a website allows you to post a blog post onto your author name.
Sure. You’re essentially google sees it as his, another photographer referring you as a, I guess another industry expert
and since they’re willing to mention you guys, that’s a, that’s a passing of trust from one website to another. And the bigger the site, the more authoritative the site the better it is.
So talk to me. I know rich is big on this. um, as far as youtube, I know youtube is a global entity and richard is a big youtuber. probably the biggest youtube or out of the three of us, um, how relevant is it to have a youtube channel? I have a big subscription based and you know, does that have any effect? And the fact that rich said he doesn’t do anything seo and he’s ranking number one for northern California,
there no direct correlation until youtube and organic results are definitely helps build on the entity and the brand. Google hAs a very technical algorithm called semantic web and what the semantic web does is it creates entities based on brands, people associated a geographical location industry and basically the more powerful one of your entities get or one of the brands or the platforms and that specific entity gets the whole entire entity grows. So our brand, while riches are growing, his youtube brand, his website and his name overall will increase in visibility. And jason, what about you?
Google maps and google my business. Tell us a little bit about that and how important or if it is even important for people to get their listings out on there.
Oh, so it’s definitely important. Some search terms you might type into google even on your own when you’re looking for, let’s say a locksmith Because you’ve got like a little snippet of google maps in the top of the search results, so we call it the three packets. There’s three less things, maybe a fourth listing there, which is a google ad, but uh, it’s really important that that ties into google maps locations and there’s a whole nother algorithm behind that. The big factors behind the algorithm of google maps now, the biggest one I would say is what we call nap name, address, phone number, and that is having a unanimous name, address, phone number among multiple local directory type sites. We call them citations, but kind of like yelp, facebook, manta, superpages, city search, all the different citation websites that are local, but also if there are industry citations or industry directories as well, where you can get your name, address, phone number.
That’s one of the biggest factors when it comes down to a ranking on google maps. The more you have the better. Ideally you want more new guests we can call a naps for then your competitors. And that will push you up, that as, as obviously having a good reputation online, having some good reviews. If you have a bunch of one star reviews, google may not be as favorable to placing you highly, but reviews definitely play a part in google. My business, you have the ability to add a description, gets some keywords in there as well. Again, keeping it natural. But, um, everyone can essentially have a google my business listing, just put a google doc [inaudible] slash business. You can sign up, you get a postcard, they’ll deliver and verify your specific location. And that should be the first step when it comes to ranking in google maps.
Jason, let me jump in here for us that are not as savvy as you were, brian. Um, what would you say to, if you wanted to spend some of the listeners want to spend time? Uh, just learning more about, uh, the real basics. I mean, let’s just say that let’s say eighty percent of what you talked about was over somebody who’s had. Where would you go just to learn about it? Is there a resource or a website or a facebook group or something besides, you know, calling you up, but uh, what would you say for people to do just to learn a little more about it to get their feet wet?
I think the biggest, yeah, the biggest news site in the industry is probably search engine journal and again, you can google that to find that I’m assuming a search engine journal dot [inaudible] and they really just put it in the show notes. Ok. They really discuss moreso about what’s happening in the industry and that’s search overall. Not only seo in terms of seo specific blogs. Me personally, I’m a bit weary. I like to post what’s working and what’s not without actually showing data on what’s working and what’s not. Um, all the blogs that I would read a bit more technical, they read packets and stuff. Um, but, uh, again, you could contact me if there’s any interest in the future. You guys want a webinar can show some really cool stuff on a screen, might be a little bit easier. Versus seo for
dummies. I won’t need seo perhaps, but it’s not good. It’s outdated if it hasn’t been updated since 2006. Well, there you go. Jason. You can do a new one. Ok. I can quit my day job.
I think even if people want to learn just the basics of what we talk about, talked about whether it’s keywords, title, description, some smaller off-page stuff. I know jason mentioned the word citation. Um, I think a simple google search will turn up some decent enough results so people have an idea of what they are and then they can figure out their best strategy. If someone goes and searches in google what is, you know, a meta description for your website or what is a title for your website that should give them enough information to learn what it is and come up with a strategy on how they want to implement that into their own local campaign.
Yeah. Mazda calm is another good one. They’ll probably See ranking on google for seo up definition type terms.
Now, before we wrap it up, I know jason, You mentioned that you wanted to, you make a special offer to some of our listeners out there. If you waNt to tell us, tell us a
little bit about what that is to keep it brief for the first 20 people that email me or get in touch with jason@breaktheweb.org and willing to give them each one on one private coaching and analysis for only $100. We’ll discuss your marketing goals, analyze your website, and really create a unique strategy to obtain results that’s more specific to you.
ThAt’s great. So for $100 anyone can get a personalized one on one coaching session with you.
Yeah, we offer consulting to a lot of other seo agencies and in-house seo agencies out here, but it’s a pretty big discount than what we normally would charge also.
That might. I might take you up on that. Do I get 50 percent off the 50 percent off? I could use some help when I need to. Thank you so much, jason. It’s a, you know, it’s great for me because uh, especially me compared to brian because I know so little about it and uh, I know though there’s enough of me that knows it’s really important, so I thank you for, for coming on and, and, uh, giving just some food for thought.
I appreciate that. Thank you for having me.
all right. Greg anD jason, why don’t you just, you know, give everyone your website and your email address one more time in case they need to reach out to you.
Yeah, I can be reached via email@jasonatbreaktheweb.org. You can visit [inaudible] dot org seo services, newyork.org, and jason berkowitz, stockholm.
All right, great. Pick your choosing. That wraps up another episode of shooting spaces. Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review and email us if you have any questions. Info at shooting spaces, podcasts, [inaudible], rich, any final words?
Don’t forget that we’ve got the asked the guys. We’ve got an opportunity for you to go on the website shooting spaces, podcast.com, and you can record your own little snippet of question that you would like. Please don’t make it too long, but make it brief, but we’re going to answer questions and, uh, you know, you can send all of us, uh, you know, in questions that you have, you can, you can always contact me through the channels and I’m getting ready to do my workshops, working on websites, some doing the youtube channel and all that great stuff. So I’m super busy but never too busy to answer some questions.
All right, thanks everyone for tuning in. Until next time,
see you later guys. This has been shooting spaces or we’ll see photography podcast. Subscribe to this show and don’t forget to leave us a review. You can also follow rich and brian on social media and website shooting spaces, podcasts.
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