Stop Treating SEO Like Wizardry and Start Getting Results, with Steven Schneider

Struggling to make sense of SEO for your photo business? You're not alone. Search engine optimization often feels like arcane wizardry to small business owners—a necessary evil that's either too complex to understand or constantly shifting beneath your feet.

Steven Schneider, co-founder of TrioSEO, shatters these misconceptions in this enlightening conversation. "It's not all witchcraft and wizardry," he explains, revealing how quality content and authority form the scientific foundation of successful SEO. For photo retailers and photographers who rely on white-label platforms, Schneider offers practical strategies to regain control of your digital presence through strategic blogging and targeted content creation.

The podcast dives deep into what really matters for photography businesses online. Discover why topical authority works like an iceberg (with your specialized content forming the powerful mass below the surface), how to refresh seasonal content like "fireworks photography tips" to maintain relevance, and why Pinterest remains an untapped goldmine for photography businesses. Schneider shares his 90-day sprint approach to SEO, explaining why meaningful results typically appear within three to six months when targeting the right niche keywords.

Perhaps most valuably, Schneider addresses the elephant in the room: artificial intelligence. While AI tools can generate content quickly, they lack the human touch that makes truly effective SEO content. "The AI isn't going to know how to add custom quotes and testimonials unique to your personal experience," he cautions, explaining why his agency remains committed to human-written content despite industry trends.

Visit trioSEO.com for a complimentary, hand-crafted site audit that examines ten core aspects of your web

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Steven Schneider
• 1:03 Quality Content and Authority Basics
• 3:17 Creating Fresh Content That Stands Out
• 6:08 AI's Impact on SEO Content
• 9:16 Video and Pinterest for Photography SEO
• 14:40 Converting Website Visitors and Q4 Strategy

Transcript

Erin Manning: 0:02

Welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pageau. The Dead Pixels Society podcast is brought to you by Mediaclip, Advertek Printing and Independent Photo Imagers.

Gary Pageau: 0:17

Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau. Today we're joined by Steven Schneider, who is the co-founder of Trio SEO, and Steven's coming to us from Seattle today. Hi, Steven, how are you today?

Steven Scheider: 0:32

Doing great. Gary, Thanks for having me on.

Gary Pageau: 0:35

Now, seo is one of those topics that a lot of business owners know they have to deal with and it's either arcane wizardry that they can't figure out or they're doing it wrong. And plus, it's changing rapidly now with AI affecting SEO and what Google is doing and all these kinds of things. If you were talking to a small business owner, what would be the first thing you would have to say to kind of start their SEO journey?

Steven Scheider: 1:03

Yeah, the first thing is knowing that it's not all witchcraft and wizardry, like there actually is a lot of science and data and you know proof of that matter. But, you know, the biggest thing is just making sure that you have quality content and authority. I think that it's very easy to think that there's so much you have to do in SEO, but really it just comes back to you know, making sure you have a good user experience on your site, you speak to them conversationally and that you actually have some thought leadership behind your brand and your website.

Steven Scheider: 1:35

It's not too much.

Gary Pageau: 1:37

So a lot of the websites in our space, like the online photo space I was talking to a typical photo retailer they really most of them use a white label service provider. They use a platform that kind of does their photo ordering and all kinds of things and they kind of say, hey, we'll do this SEO for you. So it's sort of like that's their website. They don't have a lot of control over it. In a lot of ways, I mean, they can add blogs and things or that. What do you think of that?

Steven Scheider: 2:07

I mean I think that's great if you can ever tap into somebody who kind of facilitates a lot of that upfront work for you. I've never actually done backend research on those sorts of situations. I'm guessing you can probably just tap into their authority and really have some pretty good upside potential. But even if you have the opportunity to blog, like that's a massive leg up on anybody who doesn't blog in your space. You know there's always going to be keyword rich FAQs you could tackle or ICP related queries that you might want to target if it's going after a certain demographic of audience that you're trying to connect to. So the blog is definitely where my bread and butter is and I've seen a lot of success from clients in my own personal journey through blogging. So huge advocate obviously very biased, but yeah, I think there's a lot of potential there.

Gary Pageau: 2:55

So when you're talking about authority, what does that mean? It doesn't necessarily mean knowing a lot about in our case, I mean knowing a lot about, in our case photography or printing. It's really how much Google and search engines think you're valuable, isn't it? It's really what they think.

Steven Scheider: 3:12

Both.

Steven Scheider: 3:13

So, at least from the content side, there's what's called topical authority and you can kind of imagine it almost like an iceberg.

Steven Scheider: 3:20

So if you have all the snow or the ice above water, it's like your homepage, your about page, kind of the must-haves of the website. But we all know what sank the Titanic it was the ice that was below the water, and so that's going to be the depth or the blog content or any other content on your site that adds to your expertise and the fact that you can actually cover a wide range of topics, knowing that you have something to offer value to clients, customers, visitors, et cetera. Other side of it, exactly what you said. It's going to be your domain, your backlinks, all of the other people on the web who are mentioning you and either linking to you or maybe not, but they're still talking about you to some degree and giving you almost like their personal internet vote of confidence, if you want to think about it like that and that's almost a job unto itself building all that piece right what they call back linking yeah, it's.

Steven Scheider: 4:14

I mean, branding in itself is a full-time job, just to make sure that people are aware of who you are and you're networking and you're building allies and partnerships like but we also know, just based on history, like those who do that and can do it.

Gary Pageau: 4:30

Well, obviously, crush it in any space, because you're just constantly top of mind for any person or client that can think of you now, the challenge I think a lot of people have, especially in the photography space, is just keeping topics fresh, because you know if you are providing tips, tricks and things like you know we recently had, you know the July 4th weekends or everyone's posting how to take great fireworks pictures, you know that sort of thing. How do you keep those kinds of evergreen topics fresh?

Steven Scheider: 5:03

Yeah. So I think that, like, like you always want to refresh them right before the seasonality hits, so there's always going to be evergreen topics that come and go in waves. So like fourth of july stuff, that would be good. I think that you could also tie it back to like just some newer content in that article. So if it is the fourth of july article, there's always going to be new sections or questions you could add.

Steven Scheider: 5:24

So. So like how to take 4th of July photos, whether it's foggy or sunny or rainy. Like maybe your blog doesn't touch on that, but that's the settings I use for these photos. Like here's some good, like actionable tips you could kind of tap into. Other things would be like getting quotes from other people, like Google loves when you can offer a unique insight compared to someone else's piece of content. So, say you have other friends in the space and it's like go reach out to them, get, ask them all the same question, get a quote from them and then add that back to your blog and say, hey, I interviewed X number of people and here's their best go-to tip when taking firework photos on the 4th of July. So it's more about like, how do you make your piece of content stand out to competitors and others in the space, and Google loves that. That's kind of what you really want to lean into.

Gary Pageau: 6:23

And even, like I was even thinking, maybe for the sake of you know, the retailers in peace and all that maybe have your customers ask them to be quoted. Right yeah, making your customers hero.

Steven Scheider: 6:35

Huge, that's huge. And I think that the other part of it is like the trust side of things. So not only getting their insight on how they're using the product or how they're engaging with that side of things, sure, the other thing is just testimonials and credentials from your point of view. So you know, getting insight around, like you and them in that relationship, and getting social proof that you can then add into your content. So that goes a long way as well.

Gary Pageau: 7:02

What are some of the changes that are going on right now in kind of the SEO world? Because there's the AI piece, because, again, a lot of this stuff can be generated by AI. But then I think that you know, if you just drop into chat, gpt, write me a 400 page article about fireworks photos and the fog, you'd get one. But isn't that not being treated as valuable, as original content?

Steven Scheider: 7:26

no, and I would say that the really big caveat of that entire ai dilemma is that when the conversation adapts toward going more of a quantity output and like checking the box just to get the article out completed, there's a lot of things that lack from the quality side of things. So, like the ai isn't going to know how to add in the custom quotes and the testimonials that's unique to your own personal experience or it's, it's going to pretty much create a cookie cutter version of that topic. But where a lot of that value add is is where you can think outside the box and add that human element. So even if you use that as like your initial outline or, say, the foundation to go from there, I always suggest that if you must use AI like, you also must edit and try to incorporate it.

Steven Scheider: 8:17

So that's kind of my two cents on that. But like even in our own agency, like we're 100% human, written and edited and it's solely because that's what really works well, still to this day, and so it's a slippery slope.

Gary Pageau: 8:31

Yeah, it's one of those things where I think you know, just because it's easy and it does seem to get reasonable results, it can also be inaccurate and have tonal problems. Right, it may not fit the tone of the rest of your content, so it'll look weird.

Steven Scheider: 8:49

Yeah, and that's the huge part too is like I think that people are so overly aware of AI and how it's being used that, like I've been seeing on LinkedIn, where people are almost starting to add typos, at least in social content, as a way to show that it's not AI, which is so weird to even like think that we're in that day and age.

Steven Scheider: 9:09

But, like, even if you think about like M dashes. I think that M dashes are traditionally fine to use, but now they have this like tainted spell on them where, if you start to use M dashes in your content, it's a very that's a very common theme in chat. Gbt is to use those.

Gary Pageau: 9:25

Was not aware of that.

Steven Scheider: 9:27

So, yeah, that's one of the things you can look for that yeah, but it's also when it was like damned if you do, damn if you don't. Situations because, like, I just like using them. But because I use them in my content, people think that I'm using ai. So I think it really comes down to like, how is this read if you read this out loud, and would you be proud to present this to a board of people in a public setting? If you read this article out loud and say, hey, I am putting my name and my brand behind this thing, like, would you do that if it was in a social setting? And if not, you should probably rethink things.

Gary Pageau: 9:57

Yeah, because that is one of the things. I think, because it's so easy and it gives passable results at first glance, that people will start, you know, will accept it. There's also issue of you know for a lot of content it's you know you don't actually own that in a lot of ways because you know AI content can't be copyrighted.

Steven Scheider: 10:16

So I think it can mess up from a legal standpoint and part of your site, half your site would be not even copyrighted for your business, actually.

Gary Pageau: 10:24

not even copyrighted for your business, actually.

Steven Scheider: 10:26

So yeah, and I think that it's one of those things, too, where it's really easy to see some short-term traction and be like, wow, this is the new way forward, I can't wait. But anything in SEO is truly a game of delayed gratification and knowing that, like we pride ourselves on being really boring SEOs because it's boring that has proven to work for years and years and years you just do the same fundamentals over and over again. It sucks, but that's the way it is, and I think that the time you start cutting corners and trying to accelerate the timeline to success is also where you shorten your prolonged success at the same time.

Gary Pageau: 11:10

So what do you think is a reasonable timeline? Let's say, for example, I'm a retailer and I've had my website up for several years, I've been taking orders from it or whatever, and I want to start adding some blog content to whatever. So let's say, I'm posting a couple times a week just basic stuff. You know how to put on a lens cap or why you should have a camera strap and you know that sort of thing. How long is it going to take before I see appreciable results from something like that?

Steven Scheider: 11:42

Yeah. So we work in 90 day sprints because we found that that's a really good kind of like way to structure strategy. Like 90 days is usually enough traction to where you can see some meaningful results after the second or during the second sprint per se. So in that like three to six month range, the other kind of like asterisks, I would say is a huge component of that is going after the right topics. So like in the photography industry, if you are writing an article around like you know how to set up your f-stop or your aperture or something like that, it's a very competitive topic, I have to assume. Like every single photographer knows what that is and how to write about it got it. So the more niche you can get with the topic, the better it's going to be like just making something up, but it's more like how to take a photo of my three-year-old at the park on a sunny day. Like the way more long tail, obscure keywords have a much higher chance of success because they're less competitive so you should be.

Gary Pageau: 12:44

Instead of going for a broad interest in it, you could almost start narrowing that down.

Steven Scheider: 12:51

Yeah, or even tailor it to who your clientele is more specifically. So you know, like I've done audits and worked with people in the past who like only cater to like newborn photography or only work with wedding photography, etc. So there's tons of topics in those arenas specifically, um, and it's also more of like the intent behind who's reading the topic and who is your ideal customer. So, for example, if you're writing like how to take wedding photos, well, you're actually writing for another photographer, so it doesn't really matter. So you want to be like what should I look for when hiring a wedding photographer? Because that's going to be the person who's actually going to be looking for your services.

Gary Pageau: 13:32

So intent is important, but also just making sure that there's actual demand behind the topic to begin with, so where are some good sources if you're not a very good writer and you don't want to rely on chat, gpt to find content, to find this sort of thing?

Steven Scheider: 13:50

Yeah, I think WriteSonic is a good tool that I've been kind of tapping into nowadays. It's a newer AI tool. They have good keyword research built in. They also help you build your outlines. It's pretty much kind of like the ideal full circle suite for people nowadays. Like the ideal full circle suite for people nowadays. Se rank is good. Ahrefs is good for keyword research, not so much for writing, but definitely can help detail outlines and get the structure in place for the content. So I mean there's so many like Surfer. Seo is a good one Like they're. I can name dozens, but I think it's just more about like what your needs are and like where you think your weaknesses are in that process and then finding a tool specific to that weakness now, how does video content enhance seo?

Gary Pageau: 14:39

does it, or is it mostly for social clicks?

Steven Scheider: 14:42

no, it definitely helps. I mean, anything that can add more value to the user at the end of the day and also act as another gateway to your content is going to be a huge win. So, kind of going back to the blogging side of things, if you have a blog, well then you realize that, oh, this blog would actually serve really well as a 30 second reel where I can just talk on you know the touch points and the summarized aspects of it, add in some visual examples, you upload that to YouTube, meta, instagram, pinterest, especially like Pinterest is so good for photographers and Pinterest is also a search engine in itself, so like those things all feed together and then you link it back to your article, you include the video and embed it within your content, like you kind of have now this like ecosystem within your content and that all brings Google relevance customers. Like it all ties in together.

Gary Pageau: 15:40

So when you're talking about Pinterest specifically I haven't heard the word Pinterest in a while, I know right.

Steven Scheider: 15:46

It seems like a while I know right.

Gary Pageau: 15:47

It seems like it's almost like eBay. Right, it was super hot forever and now it's still around and millions of people use it, but no one ever talks about it. Why is that?

Steven Scheider: 15:57

I think it's kind of that same thing. It's like you know, it had its day and age. I think that just because it's not like trendy anymore it's not top of mind but trendy anymore, it's not top of mind, but it's very top of mind for some audiences and some people, like you know. I think that, like I used to own a site that's like majority of its traffic was generated just strictly through Pinterest and creating pins and content on that side of things, and it's great because it is its own search engine.

Steven Scheider: 16:22

So the more people search for content in Pinterest, the more optimized you can create your boards and your pins and like if you just study Pinterest SEO like you definitely have a leg up in your industry, and photography is like one of the more kind of top of mind niches in Pinterest. So anybody who's not doing that like I think that's a huge opportunity for people.

Gary Pageau: 16:45

Yeah, well, I know some of my audience they have Etsy stores right and they kind of-.

Steven Scheider: 16:50

Yeah, Etsy's great too.

Gary Pageau: 16:51

Well, they drive traffic to their Etsy stores through Pinterest, right, because you can. People are visually searching for stuff and they drive it there, so that works.

Steven Scheider: 17:01

Yeah, I used to own an Etsy store too, and it was the same strategy. Pinterest connects to Etsy and, yeah, I love all of those like little kind of indie backdoor marketing strategies, because it's not something that people usually like rave about in terms of like drop shipping or running Facebook ads, but it still works really well and I'm like you know you can really do a lot of damage.

Gary Pageau: 17:24

There you go. So let's get back to the AI thing for a little bit, because I keep hearing about how AI is hitting Google in the search business and it's really impacting how valuable Google search is Right, because they're even starting to bias their own AI results at the top of the page, so your results may actually go down under the fold because there's not as much space there because they're taking it up with their own AI results. What are your thoughts on that?

Steven Scheider: 17:58

Yeah, I think Google is killing Google. Unfortunately. I think that the user experience of Google is garbage nowadays. Hopefully they get it figured out, but at least from like an SEO perspective, what we're seeing is that the generative AI add in that you see at the top of Google nowadays is actually helping deter unwanted traffic from your site that isn't going to be meaningful or take intent or action. So anybody who's clicking through to your site and is from AI actually has more of a desire to work with you or learn more about the information on your site because they're much more driven based on the result. That started that. But if people can just get their answer in 30 seconds and move on, they probably weren't your ideal customer to begin with. So it's kind of like it answers the questions, it cuts out the fluff and then anybody who arrives from that like it's probably someone you want to get in touch with immediately.

Gary Pageau: 18:54

What are some ways people, once they've kind of run that the gauntlet of the Gemini AI feed gauntlet they're there. Is there anything they can do, once they're there, to help convert those people?

Steven Scheider: 19:09

Yeah.

Steven Scheider: 19:10

So the big thing I think that is very overlooked is giving people some sort of free, valuable asset to as soon as they jump in the gate.

Steven Scheider: 19:19

So you know, like it could be something as easy as, like take our quiz to see if you qualify for 25% off our next package or new, new customer package, like something that's engaging. Keep people on the page, gives them something to like interact with quizzes calculators are great, maybe a lead magnet, like maybe it's a 50 page bundle of ways that people can rethink their next photo shoot or something like that. So like things like that were like what would give somebody so much value that the next time they heard from you, it'd be ridiculous for them not to say yes to work with you. And I think like that's kind of the way you want to go about it, Because if you can do that, then people already feel like they've gotten so much value out of you that, like the next time you throw out a number price-wise, they're like oh yeah, great, like I already got that from the last thing you gave me, so there's no reason not to do that so that then requires some sort of way to retrieve those emails and do something with them, right?

Gary Pageau: 20:19

so there's sort of a whole crm side of it which is not of this, but it certainly is a way to feed that.

Steven Scheider: 20:26

Yeah, exactly so, like even if you're working with, like a email provider like kit, convert, kit or you know something, where it's just a drop in your email here, we'll send you this via email and then you set up maybe a multi day or something sequence where you just casually message them over the next week or so, or two weeks or month and just can check in and kind of make it more of an automated process, because at the time if you have to spend to email all those people manually, it's going to just be a huge pain yeah, so the fourth quarter is the big quarter for our industry a lot of industry, but our industry.

Gary Pageau: 21:06

Right, and it's July now this is running in August, so when do people need to get started on their strategy for if they want to have an outstanding SEO driven fourth quarter?

Steven Scheider: 21:22

Last quarter, last Q4. I mean, yeah, the sooner the better. I mean just because of how long it takes for things to come to life. I think that the further it's delayed or the longer it's delayed, it's really going to impact things. And I always kind of try and relate it to investing in your retirement account. You know, like people who delay that passive couple hundred dollars a month in their 401k or their IRA, like they look back and they're like dang it. I wish I would have started when I was 20 years old.

Steven Scheider: 21:51

And that same mindset is how SEO works Like it's a compounding thing. It takes time to ramp up, but once it's alive and kicking, you're so happy with the results and you're like, wow, I'm so happy I started. So same mindset shifts should kind of be adopted when it comes to your marketing strategy.

Gary Pageau: 22:08

Because, as you were saying earlier, you know this is an ongoing process. It's not a, it's a growth engine as opposed to a, you know, just a swing at a ball and trying to get a hit.

Steven Scheider: 22:20

Exactly. That's kind of where I think paid ads or ppc would come into play. It's very push button, get result sort of thing, whereas seo it's like push 50 buttons, wait six months and push 50 more.

Gary Pageau: 22:34

So but, and those two can work together because you're not saying people shouldn't do paid paid ads, but they're no exactly strategy 100. It's a very short term versus long-term strategy, and the two go hand in hand so maybe around you know when you, when you have a specific product you're pushing, you do the paid ads.

Steven Scheider: 22:54

But if you have the ongoing traffic building strategy to build your customer database, that's more of the seo approach yeah, I think it's a really good strategy to implement paid ads and then use the profits from paid ads to supplement your SEO strategy. And I think that, like, over time, that flywheel starts to churn and now you kind of have this ongoing thing that work hand in hand and can kind of survive as a result of each other.

Gary Pageau: 23:21

Sure, sure hand and can kind of survive as a result of each other, sure, sure. So where can people go for more information about your company and the stuff you guys offer for businesses to help them grow through?

Steven Scheider: 23:33

SEO. Yeah, you can go to trio SEO dot com. We offer free complimentary audits that are hand done by our team. It's not some AI automated thing, hand crafted Exactly Old school for sure. We look at things like you know 10 different core aspects of your site that would contribute towards success. Where your gaps lie in that process, what's holding you back? Keywords you should be ranking for kind of the whole gamut of what it needs to be successful at the end of the day.

Steven Scheider: 24:05

You can also find me on LinkedIn. I'm very active there. I post daily content. You can also just Google Trio SEO or Steven Schneider. I always joke that if you can't find me on Google, I'm doing my job wrong.

Gary Pageau: 24:16

Exactly. You should be eminently findable.

Steven Scheider: 24:21

Exactly, I am.

Gary Pageau: 24:22

All right. Well, thank you, stephen, for your time. It's been great talking to you. I know you've given a lot of great tips and direct action that people can use, and I look forward to speaking to you again sometime.

Steven Scheider: 24:33

Yeah, thanks, gary, this has been great.

Erin Manning: 24:36

Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at wwwthedeadpixelssocietycom.