Navigating Google Business Profiles: Ethics and SEO for Photographers

576: Richard Waine – Master Your Google Business Profile… Top Tips for Photographers

Andrew Hellmich: Today's guest worked most of his career in finance before becoming a very successful headshot photographer. He first appeared on the podcast for Episode 372 where we dive deep into the numbers of what it takes to build a successful business. None of that, though, has anything to do with why I'm asked him back onto the podcast today. If you've been following the recent chatter on social media, you may have heard about a UK based photographer and SEO teacher who is or was advocating the reporting of other photographers who were breaching Google's terms with their Google business profile. Now these reports, they see the nominated photographer having their profile removed by Google with no warning and a lengthy process to get it back, if they actually can at all. Now the reason for doing this is by having other photographers removed by Google, the photographers that remained, moved up in the search rankings. Now it's needless to say, the photographer in question has copped a lot of flak, and his actions have affected photographers I know personally and who are PhotobizX premium members. Anyway, I was on the hunt for a suitable guest to discuss SEO Google and what makes a good Google Business Profile listing and a legal one, as far as Google's concerned. And today's guest came highly recommended to me by other photographers I know and trust. I'm talking about Richard Waine and I am rapt to have him back with us now. Richard, welcome back.

Richard Waine: Thank you, Andrew. It's great to be here. It's good to see you again.

Andrew Hellmich: Well, how is business for you? Before we get into the Google stuff, is it still thriving?

Richard Waine: Well, I guess that depends on what you consider thriving, because I completed my entire pipeline before I took vacation for two weeks. So now I'm in the rebuild my pipeline space. But, yeah, I'm still flying pretty high.

Andrew Hellmich: So when you say pipeline, is that your funnel? Is that another name or word for funnel?

Richard Waine: Yeah, it's just my workload and who's scheduled. And you know what it takes to get that schedule all filled up. You know otherwise we're not making money if the schedule is not filled.

Andrew Hellmich: True, true. So how's your revenue today compared to when I talked to you a couple of years ago? You know, has it steadily increased? Has it stayed flat line? Has it dropped?

Richard Waine: In my particular case, it has dropped a little bit. And the reason why it has is solely because I dedicated quite a bit of time to taking care of my elderly father. So it is not an example of me doing something incorrectly, or the market or the economy, but rather, I decided to prioritize my family.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. How is your father now?

Richard Waine: He's still vertical. I haven't killed him yet. He's doing great. Yeah. He's 87 years old, and I look after him because I certainly don't want to bury him earlier than I have to, but he's doing well. Thank you for asking.

Andrew Hellmich: Look, I normally have no worries asking any questions on this podcast, but that is one I didn't know the answer to at all, and I was worried to ask. But I'm glad that he's doing well. So is your business that flexible? Or can you be that flexible with your income stream that you can just turn it off, turn it on, reduce it, pick it up.

Richard Waine: I like the flexibility of owning my own business where I can, but my income stream stays relatively consistent, you know. And it's not just an income stream. I should qualify that and say it's income streams, plural. And I think that's kind of the missing piece of that equation, is that I can let up the gas in one area and be completely fine on the other sources of income, but I can always come back to it and push down a little harder on the accelerator, and we're right back to where we should be.

Andrew Hellmich: So are the other income streams photography related, or is photography feeding those income streams to give you a return?

Richard Waine: Partially both. You may or may not know this, Andrew, but I moonlight in some ways as a front-end web developer, and I only do that for photographers. I do that at my leisure. It is not an advertised business. It pretty much just gets around by word of mouth. And the reason why I do that stems from the fact that I have a photography business, and when I first established my own website, I wanted to customize it beyond my capability, so I went out and I started learning the languages necessary to make my site do what I wanted it to do. But I did not believe that I could accomplish that without knowing the other side of a very important equation, which is search engine optimization and all of the marketing tools that go into that kind of optimization. And while I understand those are completely and totally separate professions, I don't see them as being unlinked in any way. So I decided to take the bull by the horns, and I do it all in one pill swoop. So it kind of broadened my horizons quite a bit.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so when you say Front-End Web Development or design that's making the website look good, does that also include functionality and SEO, or is that back end now we're talking about?

Richard Waine: No, you're still in the front-end, back-end, or is definitely not an area that I'm comfortable in, and I know there are many other people that are way more capable than I. So it is the look, the function, the feel, of course, the optimization of it, that's all involved.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so this is why your name came up when I was on the hunt for someone who knows SEO and Google. So have you heard or had you heard anything about this photographer in the UK reporting other photographers to help themselves move up the rankings?

Richard Waine: I had not heard of this example until I actually read it in your group, through the post the Facebook group. And I'll be very frank, I wasn't surprised, and I'm not surprised because it happens more often than we realize. This just seems to be making bigger waves. That's all.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. So when you say it happens more often than we realize, do you mean by other photographers or people that, are other photographers are hiring SEO experts to go and do it for them or on their behalf?

Richard Waine: These types of things happen in every industry, not just photography. I hear about it through other photographers, of course, because this is a space that I have more knowledge of and I'm more involved in, but yeah, in every industry, this kind of thing happens. And I think that we're all pretty much in tune why it happens. People feel threatened. It's really simple. It's a simple equation. If you want more money to flow to you make sure everybody else can't earn a living.

Andrew Hellmich: That sounds drastic, severe, like cruel, even.

Richard Waine: Yes. And you know, let me say this, I don't know why this person decided to take these actions. Maybe they really felt as if there were real violations on these profiles, and then it's incumbent on all of us to make the web a better place. But I think these matters are more or this particular method was way more extreme than it needed to be, and I think it happens way more often because somebody feels threatened in their own business and their own ability to market. I don't think that this was the appropriate approach, but I also don't have all of the details.

Andrew Hellmich: Sure. So, I mean, I guess we have to speak a little bit in hypotheticals, because I don't know all the details as well. But what I said in the group, when I made that post, because I had been reading and hearing about it myself, I said, "I can see both sides. I can see the side of the photographer that's being reported and being absolutely disgusted, upset, angry, because they're basically seeing their profile disappear before their eyes. But I can also then see the other side where, well, if I have a premises and it's registered with Google, and you're my competitor, for want of a better word, is working from home, and you're saying you see clients there, but you don't really, then you're doing the wrong thing and I'm doing the right thing. Why should you be getting the benefits that I'm getting?"

Richard Waine: Yeah, so I'd say that there's a right way and a wrong way to go about this. There really is a right way and a wrong way to go about it. The first and foremost thing that I think all of us should do if you own a business, is to scrub your profiles. Not just scrub it, but make sure it's optimized well and it's properly maintained regularly.

Andrew Hellmich: What do you mean by scrub it?

Richard Waine: Meaning go through it with a fine tooth comb.

Andrew Hellmich: Right.

Richard Waine: Make sure the details are not overlooked. I think one of the biggest things that most photographers especially, but most business owners across the board, fail to realize is that this is not a set it and forget it kind of thing. This is very much a regular maintenance type of activity, and it should be taken as such. Now there are, of course, dare I say, guidelines, standards, things that you should absolutely have on your profile. And what we're talking about here, I believe, is whether or not you have a brick and mortar shop, or are you in a service area, or even a hybrid of the two. There is a fine line here. I have a brick and mortar studio, right? I also go out and serve my clients on location, right? So does that make me a service area business? Partially. Does it make me a physical business? Yes. So I guess that's exactly why Google created the hybrid platform. Or should I say, the setting for a hybrid business.

Andrew Hellmich: Do one of those three options yield a better search result for the photographer, for the business owner?

Richard Waine: So there's been some back and forth here. Okay, having a service area does not give you a fixed point from which Google can pull from. For instance, in the local search for 'photographer near me'. Well, what are they going to pull from? What's near you, if you're covering all of this area, where are they going to pull from? Almost everything is in a triangulated type of shape. If you ever do a search for, let's just say 'wedding photographer near me', right? So you'll get at least three different results. And if you do a some form of triangulation between them, right, you'll see that they're not always the closest to each other. There might be two that are closer and one a little further away, but in either case, there is a triangle there, and it's based on proximity. But with service area, you cannot do that, right? It's just these are the areas I cover. So, you know, having a fixed point from which to draw from is more useful, I think, but that's not applicable, nor realistic for every business, right? I cannot tell you that there's necessarily a way around that. If you don't actually have a physical location, you don't really have a choice.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. So there's so many things I want to throw at you and get a response, and also hear what you have to say, and I want to come back to some of the things you've already said. But one thing that came up in the group was that photographers are saying, "I feel silly for not even knowing that this was something I needed to know. There's so many things I need to know in my business, this was so easy to overlook and miss." I mean, you can be as harsh as your life, but what do you say to those photographers?

Richard Waine: I would say it might be time to start educating yourself, right? Not that what you've done is incorrect. Most business owners don't actually know their own, you know, expenses. They don't know how much they should be setting aside for their expenses. They don't know their numbers off the top of their head. We talked about some of that in the last episode that we recorded together, right? None of that really surprises me, right? And one of the reasons why is because when you think about what photography as a business is, is most people think 'we stick a camera in this general direction, push a button, generate an image, get paid for it, have a nice day', right? It's a very simple formula for a lot of people, right? But there's so much more involved in operating a business, especially because gone are the days of the Yellow Pages, at least in the United States, the phone book, where we would just kind of open it up, find a service provider. That guy looks good, we'll go ahead and call them and get some information. But now we have websites, and we have other ways to find information on people, and this is just the next iteration, right? We have to educate ourselves. I think that if we're not doing those things, we're dropping the ball in one of many areas, because not only is Google Business Profile a form of local advertising, right, but it is also directly feeding into Google Maps. And remember, Google loves when you work with their properties. So we've got Google Business Profile, we've got Google Maps, we've got Google Search, all of their properties kind of come into play, and what happens when we're utilizing all of those platforms is that we make ourselves a more searchable, easier to find, right? And believe me, people looking for business providers don't want to go to page 10 looking for somebody to help them. We want convenient, we want ease. We want the best for the job quality, right? And so there's a lot of things involved in that search and in that flow that I think that business owners at large may be missing. If that's not you, for instance, then that's okay. Good, you're educated. Congratulations. I'm really ecstatic, because the more informed we are, the better off we are positioned as an industry, and rising tides raise all ships, which is what I think this other photographer kind of missed out on, is that by shooting other photographers in the foot they didn't really do the industry any service.

Andrew Hellmich: No

Richard Waine: But, you know, but there are a lot of platforms at play here, Andrew, and I think it's really important that we educate ourselves, right? So don't let that fall through the cracks, because not only are you missing out on potential income for yourself, right, but you're also missing out on an ability to boost your own perceived level of expertise.

Andrew Hellmich: I mean, to some degree, do you feel like, I know it's not just photographers, but do you feel like we, we try and game the system a little bit for an advantage? I know, for example, when I interviewed Jeff Brown, he's a LinkedIn expert.

Richard Waine: I know Jeff, he's great.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, just great. So in the beginning, when he first presented a course for my listeners, he would get us to change our name. So I would be, you know, Andrew Hellmich Wedding Photographer Terrigal. That would be my actual name in LinkedIn, which was really breaching their guidelines, but it was a great way to come up on a profile. Now he's since changed his tone or tune on that strategy. But you know, that's a way of gaming the system to sort of get found more easily and rise to the top. But it's not the right way in regards to the terms. Do you think we do that a lot in the photography industry?

Richard Waine: Absolutely, everybody's looking for a leg up. Everybody's looking for the next hack or a magic bullet, right? I think it happens again more often than we realize. There was a great example some time ago in some of the journals that I read, the E magazines and such, where somebody literally named their business. It was on the awning out front of their business, and this was a Thai restaurant. "Said, Thai food near me".

Andrew Hellmich: That's so good.

Richard Waine: So they've got a legitimate business name, right? That says near me, and they're gonna, so yeah, somebody might actually find that. I believe, and you might not quote me on this, that violated Google's guidelines. Google has a very, very extensive library of white papers and guidelines, etc. A great example of this would be when people wonder why their reviews were taken down or were never posted or something along those lines, and say, "Well, what happened? Well, you know, look at the guidelines, because they are really extensive, but I have always found that folks aren't going to read something that extensive. They just aren't. They don't have the attention span for it. If you feel so inclined, if you look at some of that stuff, they'll tell you exactly why something might have gotten taken down. I had that happen once as well. I have this propensity during my sessions to look at somebody and say, "Okay, show me more badass. I want you to see more", right? Just something like that, and just off the cuff, not even thinking that, well, in the review, my client said, "Yes, I felt like such a badass", taken down right away.

Andrew Hellmich: Wow

Richard Waine: Why do you think?

Andrew Hellmich: Obviously, because of that word.

Richard Waine: Language. Yeah, absolutely, right?, and they're very explicit about those types of violations. So my point here is that when they publish these types of guidelines, we should absolutely be aware of what's in them. So when we're thinking about service area businesses and hybrid businesses and brick and mortar, type of businesses, physical address, what are the guidelines for having, right? That's the big thing. What qualifies you as one over the other, right? And then make the best choice for your business.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, I like that. You said earlier, Richard, there's a right way and a wrong way to approach this, or that this other photographer could have approached things. So let me give you a hypothetical, let's say you know you have your successful brick and mortar business, and Joe Blow headshot photography down the road opens up. He's working from home, and he has a Google profile listing, and he's listing his home address, but he doesn't have a brick and mortar business, and he's rising up through the rankings, which is a bit frustrating for you. How do you handle it? What do you do?

Richard Waine: I honestly with me personally, I wouldn't care, because I have too many other things to worry about, building my own business, to worry about whether or not somebody has opened a shop and they're doing well out of their own home, right? Again, rising tides raise all ships, okay? And while I understand in some markets, is far more competitive, right? I understand we're all trying to make a living and that gets increasingly harder, but I would say that where you rank in the map pack, if you're familiar with that term, map pack.

Andrew Hellmich: No, no. What does that mean?

Richard Waine: When you do a search, let's say for wedding photographers, the first listings might be three listings that have a map right next to them, right, showing you the locations. Somebody rising up through the map pack, that's great, good for them, right? But I also know what my value is. I also know my client base, and I don't necessarily think that somebody making waves in their own business is going to affect mine necessarily, because if their efforts are going, you know, in building their own business, are going to be damaging my own efforts. I have to look inward first. How is it that I am allowing this? Meaning, what am I not doing, right? Where am I dropping the ball? So yes, there's a right way and a wrong way. I'd like to give you another example from my own business. Actually, there was another photographer who reached out to me. They live approximately 45 minutes from me, well within my service area. And another guideline might be this, don't plagiarize other people's stuff on their website. This person absolutely plagiarized, literally copied verbatim an entire section of my website. Now I had two options at this point. I could certainly have filled out some form of Google redressal form, right? I certainly could have reached out to Google and said, you know, they're plagiarizing my stuff, right? That's first, we could have and I take it back, there are three options. So I could have just let it be, and Google's own matriculation and crawl budget would have probably said, "You know what? This guy had the content first. This is plagiarism. We're going to demote this other person's website", so that's an option, or you could be, what I'd like to say is a little bit more gentlemanly, and reach out to that particular person and ask some questions, right? In this case, what I did was I took screenshots of their website, okay? And I screenshotted my own website. And I said, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but your content is verbatim what's on mine. I'd like to ask that you remove this particular content. Now, in that particular case, this person deflected in some way and blamed it on the web designer. Okay, we all know how that goes, right? And having done this kind of thing, I tell all of my clients, and every one of them will attest I will not write content. I will take what you give me and simply place it there, right? I may optimize a couple of words here and there, you know, based on the SEO component, but I'm going to take what you give me and put it there, so I can't really say it's a web designer issue.

Andrew Hellmich: Sure.

Richard Waine: So they did deflect. They blamed it on the web designer. They were apologetic, right? And in fact, they did take it down.

Andrew Hellmich: Good result.

Richard Waine: Good result for everybody. Of course, I kept that conversation open. I said, "Look, I'm happy to entertain any questions. If you'd like to bounce ideas off of me, here's my telephone number. Pick up the phone. Let's have a conversation like adults. I'm okay with that. I think that's a much better way of doing it than submarining the rest of your competition, because you don't like how they set up a Google Business Profile.

Andrew Hellmich: Right, right. So from what you're saying, I'm going to extrapolate that out to my original example. If someone had attended this photography in questions workshops, and he's telling them to report to Google, instead, they could just message, email, call the photographer in question, say "You've got an incorrect listing. You really service an area. You don't have a brick and mortar business. Can you make that change?".

Richard Waine: Yes, how difficult would that be, right?

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, and how refreshingly nice as well.

Richard Waine: Right. I would have way more respect for somebody that went about it in that way. Now, respect does not equal currency, but you have my infinite respect should you handle it gentlemanly.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, I agree.

Richard Waine: But in this case, I wonder if this person genuinely thought they were doing the right thing by having Google take down all of these listings, because Google is, I gotta tell you, in my dealings with Google, there's so many layers to this organization. It's insane, just because you think you're speaking with one department, right? For instance, I had some issues with reviews being taken down, and I could not, for a long time, actually reply to reviews. I wanted to have some of that dealt with. At some point, I got frustrated. It was about a year in the making trying to get the ability to reply to reviews. This was a glitch in their system. So at some point I said, "Is there a manager I could speak with somebody?" "Oh, well, we don't have any of those here." They're in a different office elsewhere, and they're literally all over the place, so getting them to do anything could be problematic, right? And they may not ask questions, right? They may not know what questions to ask. They may not have context on the entire situation. For them, it's cut and dry. If it violates the guidelines, it's done, very simple equation.

Andrew Hellmich: And that's exactly what was happening, by all accounts, in this circumstance.

Richard Waine: Yeah, it's a very confusing organization to understand who to speak to about what. You only have one option, it's the Google help, right? You can't really pick up a telephone and call them. You have to submit a ticket. Eventually they get back to you. You have no idea what their capabilities are, or whether or not you're going to receive a solution right away. And it does get really frustrating after a time. I can't lie about that. Like I said, I spent more than a year trying to get the ability to reply to reviews back because of a glitch.

Andrew Hellmich: Crazy

Richard Waine: And I got news for you. I still have a glitch in my own profile, like, yeah, and they're aware of it, but there's nothing anybody can do. So it's just biding my time. As it relates to this particular situation, I have a feeling this person knew exactly what was going to happen one way or another, right? So it feels quite vindictive to me. All right? I think there was a better way to handle it, and I think they missed an opportunity to show that they were, you know, above board. And I think they missed it.

Andrew Hellmich: I agree. I agree. So what would you say to the listener who has a Google Business Profile and they're not sure they're doing the right thing? I mean, I know, yes, go back and read the white papers, but like, what's the immediate action they should be taking when they hear this in case they are breaching Google's guidelines?

 
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Andrew Hellmich: Richard, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for saying yes. Thank you for fitting this in at such a quick time. And I am truly looking forward to getting this out to listeners as quick as I can, because, yeah, what you shared is so valuable. And again, massive, massive thanks for coming on and sharing your expertise with us.

Richard Waine: Of course, Andrew, it's my pleasure. I just want to throw a couple of add ons onto this, things that we didn't talk about. As we go through the profiles right, there may be a propensity to leave things blank, right? You may or may not be a woman led owned business. Well, if you're not, don't leave it unchecked. Just click No, because the completeness of your profile is a ranking signal as well, right? So don't leave any stone unturned.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. And Google sends me personally, I get emails saying, "Hey, you've got a couple of things you haven't finished", so I should go in and finish those things. That's why they're reminding me.

Richard Waine: Yes, I'll send you a couple of links as well, Andrew, things that I think that would be helpful both for your listeners and for yourself personally, some documentation from Google and some other tidbits that might be helpful. But I really do want to encourage people to dive in there. It's not a set it and forget it kind of platform. Go and put pictures up on a daily basis, put fresh content in the way of update posts up there. The big faux pas is, when it comes to that kind of content is just don't duplicate yourself. Don't put the same picture up anywhere else on the Google platform. Put it up on your website, put it up on Instagram. All that's fine, but when it comes to Google, don't put the same picture up twice. Don't put the same content up twice, right? They're trying to thin down the amount of duplication effort out there, that's all. They're making better quality.

Andrew Hellmich: So you said images there, but if I know that, I can write blog posts on Google for my pro, but I shouldn't duplicate a blog post on my website and have that same blog post on Google. Should I?

Richard Waine: No, well, I don't think that it would be helpful to you to do the same exact post, so you might want to change some stuff up there, but what I'm referring to is, if you go to your Google Business Profile and you add a photo, and let's just say we've got this beautiful picture of Andrew, and he's got his big smile on his face, and we post that picture right, and then the next day, I take that same picture and try to put it up again, Google will reject it. And the reason they're rejecting it is because it's the same picture you just put up yesterday. Okay? The same exact concept happens with update posts, right? If the exact content has been put up again the next day, they'll reject it. Here's where things get a little iffy. Is that if I put up just a regular picture, that beautiful picture of you smiling up there, if I put that up in the photo section of Google Business Profile, and then I create an update post, right? with words, and I try to use that same picture, they'll reject it because he used the same picture already.

Andrew Hellmich: Right

Richard Waine: So don't duplicate yourself. That's the big faux pas there.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. I mean, you literally can't, by the sound of it, it tells you that, "Hey, this is duplicate."

Richard Waine: That's correct. But if you do that more than a couple of times, they're gonna go, "We have an issue here", right? And I can't tell you what their action might be. You might end up being suspended, right? You might be in a worse position than that. I really can't say what they're going to do or what they would do, but remember, it's a tool like any other, right? It's just the same here. Here's a great concept, Google Business Profile is the exact same thing, like it's a tool, just like PhotobizX is a learning tool, right? That's all, right. It's not responsible for your problems, but it's also not going to be your ally in trying to get ahead, either, right? It's just another tool, right? So you can't lay the blame at Google's feet if the rankings got shaken up a little bit because they decided to refine their algorithm. You know, pardon my French, but shit happens. We're going to have to put our big boy pants on and adjust. Go with the flow, right? It just is what it is. They're doing it for a reason, and usually that reason has more to do with their bottom line than ours.

Andrew Hellmich: 100%. They're not thinking about us when they make their decisions. Not personally anyone.

Richard Waine: No, sir. Not at all. So there's the rest of my thought. I appreciate you giving me that.

Andrew Hellmich: Absolutely. I didn't ask you, Richard, so for the listener that wants to get in touch with you, should they do that via the members Facebook group? Should they email you? Should they go through your social, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

Richard Waine: Yeah, they can certainly do either. My email address is info, I, N, F, O, at, richardwaine.com Richard W, A, I, N, E.com. My website is richardwaine.com. My socials are all on my website as well. I'm happy to entertain conversation from anybody. Happy to do it.

Andrew Hellmich: Fantastic. I'll add links to all those, and I'm sure we're going to see some questions popping up in the group as well. And like I said earlier, massive thanks for coming on and sharing your expertise, Richard, it really has been a pleasure.

Richard Waine: Pleasure it's all mine. Andrew, thank you for having me back.