DFY Website SEO Case Study with Dolly Delong
“SEO is kind of like buying a car… You don't just buy it and expect it to run smoothly for years. You have to maintain it.”
Once you actually get SEO done, what does it look like to maintain it? You’ve heard me talk about it, but today I’ve got a friend!
Dolly DeLong is back on the podcast, and this time we're getting into her SEO journey.
In this episode, you’ll learn about her done-for-you SEO experience, the aha moments along the way, what monthly maintenance looks like as a busy mom running two businesses, & what she wishes she'd started sooner.
If you've been wondering whether SEO is actually doable for someone with a full life & limited hours, this one's for you!
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
Why Dolly decided to create separate SEO strategies for her two businesses
What made her finally pull the trigger and opt for done-for-you SEO with Brittany
How the North Star questions helped her get clear on more than just keywords
Why you do not need to come into the SEO Sprint or DFY SEO with keywords in mind
How Dolly uses the Detailed SEO Extension on a regular basis
What she learned about using Google Search Console
The H1 headline rule Dolly now shares with every business owner she meets
What monthly SEO looks like for her as a mom with just 2 hours a week dedicated to marketing
What Dolly knows now and wants other business owners (especially moms) to know about SEO
Whether you're a mom, a multi-business owner, or someone who's been putting SEO off—Dolly's story is proof that it's never too late to start & way more doable to maintain than you’ve been thinking.
If you have any questions as you’re listening—about SEO, the coaching program, or anything in between—I’d love to hear from you!
Say hi on Instagram or leave a comment below. 😉
Meet: Dolly DeLong
Dolly DeLong is a Nashville-based family photographer, marketing educator, and host of the Systems & Workflow Magic Podcast. After years of building her own photography business while raising a family, she discovered that sustainable growth comes from consistent marketing and strong backend systems—not doing more.
Today, Dolly helps family photographers build a marketing ecosystem that supports long-term visibility and growth. She teaches photographers how to create consistent marketing cadences using Instagram and email marketing, develop streamlined workflows, and implement repeatable systems that work together.
Mentioned Resources:
DFY Website SEO (one client per month; currently booking 2-3 months out)
SEO Sprint (next one: October 2026; then in December 2026)
Detailed SEO Extension (free)
Keysearch (paid; affiliate link; 20% off w/ code KSDISC)
SEO Data Dashboard (paid; affiliate link; 20% off w/ code BRITT20)
Related Episodes:
Blogging with SEO for Visibility & Growth w/ Dolly DeLong
SEO, Blogging, and Batching: A Marketing Strategy for Family Photographers (Brittany on Dolly’s Podcast)
Connect w/ Dolly:
The Family Photographer’s Marketing Society
Connect w/ Brittany:
This episode of The Basic B podcast is brought to you in partnership w/ Leah Bryant Co.! Help me reach more service providers like you by following the show & leaving a rating or review on Apple & Spotify!
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of The Basic B podcast follows
Hello and welcome back to the Basic Bee Podcast. I'm your host and favorite SEO coach, Brittany Herzberg. And I have really been loving the solo episodes with you. And I've got a treat for you today because we have a case study interview with my friend and client, Dolly DeLong. I'll have her introduce herself, but I'm gonna share a little bit of context so you know what you're walking into here. You've technically met Dolly before. She was on two years ago now, which is just nuts to me.
We talked in depth about blogging, how she does it, her tips, her success with it. So I'll make sure that that's linked below. But in this episode, I want to get into Dolly's experience working with me one-to-one for website SEO and beyond. So we worked together earlier this year. I think it's been about five months since we got her SEO implemented. I did keyword research, created the SEO strategies for her core website pages, plugged everything in. And since then, Dolly has actually joined my maintain membership.
Which is where we focus on all of the things that continue to move the needle forward on a monthly basis for your SEO. Things like optimizing social media profiles, media pages with podcast guesting assets, and of course, blog posts and podcast episodes, weaving the magic of SEO into all of them and reviewing the data to see what it that reveals and indicates for smart marketing moves going forward.
Things like how many blogs to write, what exact pages to optimize, and what to even create content about. So with all of that, welcome Dolly.
Dolly DeLong (01:33.016) Hi, thanks for having me.
Brittany Herzberg (01:35.02) Hi, I'm so excited to have you back and I'm most pumped to be able to talk about the done for you SEO experience in my world and then into like that maintenance phase of things. So before we go too far, because I will definitely get us down some rabbit holes, who do you help and how do you help them?
Dolly DeLong (01:53.154) Yeah. So I help two different business owners. The first group of business owners is our family photographers. And I like to help them with systems, workflows, SOPs, and basically creating a marketing ecosystem, like helping them have consistent marketing because of systems, workflows, SOPs, and also SEO. so that's one group I help. And then the second group, not business owners, but I am a service provider. I am a
Nashville-based family photographer, where I have been serving families with motherhood portraits, newborn maternity, all the types of family milestones. So I do two very vastly different types of businesses. And that's why you came into my world for the done for you SEO. So hopefully that helped answer the question. Did I answer all the questions?
Brittany Herzberg (02:46.52) That was perfect. Okay. And you know this, but not everyone may know this, especially if you're newer to the podcast. But the reason I asked that is because that's part of your North Star, which is what we identify before we go into anything, whether that's me guiding photographers in Dali Society, anyone coming in for workshops, done for you, SEO, the SEO sprint, we're starting with your North Star. And specifically who are you helping? How are you helping them? And why are you like the best option in your industry? That was beautiful.
Dolly DeLong (03:14.102) Yeah.
Brittany Herzberg (03:16.662) With that, for the Done for You SEO, like you mentioned, we were focused on your education side of your business. So what was it that made you go, It's time. SEO is the thing?
Dolly DeLong (03:27.694) Okay, so I'm trying to condense this as much as I can without like making it like into a long, long two hour talk. But essentially before I begin the education side of my business, I have always been a family photographer. I'm going into year eight of being a full time business owner for photography. And because of 2020, that helped me see like the importance of diversifying my income.
Because I could not provide a service for a certain number of months before I am in the United States. And so I was like, what am I good at? What do people actually ask me for that I find fun? And for me, that was systems and workflows. I didn't even know what it was called. I just knew I was really organized and was able to run my family photography business, being a stay-at-home mom and still run my business. And so that's kind of where my systems journey began in 2020.
And it's really had so many different iterations. I've been like, I feel like I've been on a wild ride of a journey. And I've finally like figured out what my superpower is, is like staying consistent with marketing and being really good about promoting my photography business and like getting clients in through SEO, through organic marketing, through a wide ecosystem of marketing. And so this was like four years ago.
when I was pregnant with Jack, my now middle child, because spoiler, I'm pregnant with a third baby now. And so when I was pregnant with Jack, I was like, I have to separate both of my websites because it's confusing the client journey. Like my clients coming in for just family photography services, they were like, well, we don't know what systems are. So is are you a photographer or am I getting education? So I was like,
I need to divide and conquer. And I knew I did not have the cash flow, like to just hire all the people out to do all the websites. And so I did everything manually four years ago. So I split up my website to two websites, one Dolly-Delung Photography. And then the second one was systems and workflow education. And then I concentrated just on SEO for Dolly-Delung Photography. I worked on optimizing that. And then about two years ago,
Dolly DeLong (05:51.114) A year and a half ago, I was like, time to optimize systems of work below magic. And so that's where you came in. I was like, I know, like I had saved up enough cash. I'm just like really big on like saving up for my investment. So I saved up for my investment to work with you. And pretty much I was like, Brittany, just please do it all for me because yeah, I I can't even think. I don't even know. I just know I trust you.
I know your work, your capability, your superpower is SEO. And so I was like, I know who I'm serving. I'm serving family photographers who need help with marketing and like with a twist of like systems and workflows, like how to make it all work together. But how do I describe that? How do I explain it? And so that's where you came in. And so you've been working with me, especially in the last year, to help like make that more buttoned up. And so
I finally like it's been four years in the making. Like two of my websites are working for me. And I'm just so excited. I know like I was sharing with you before we hit record, like my education side, my system side is it's a slower train because I'm communicating an offer that's very vastly different from actually providing family photography services. Cause family photography services is like normally a one and done thing.
people can conceptualize it because of the visuals. Like I have a membership for f family photographers who need help with consistent marketing. That's like a different marketing ballgame. And so both are very vastly different.
Brittany Herzberg (07:29.068) Yeah, they are. And one thing I want to highlight is that you didn't have to come to me with any keywords in mind. You may have had keywords in mind, but I'm never expecting clients to be like, this is my list of keywords. No, I just need you to bring to me who's your audience that you want to get in front of. What is it that you're offering? And then yeah, share with me like how you're different in your field. Some fields I know more about than others, like photographers or therapists or things like that. But
you know, I wanna hear it from you. I wanna know just like I wanna be able to tell people like you're coming to me for SEO because this. I wanna hear whatever that is from you about your stuff. So just wanna highlight that. Dolly didn't have to know the keywords before she came to me.
Dolly DeLong (08:10.51) And listeners like I struggle with thinking I have to know everything before I'm ready for a project or before I work one-to-one with whatever client I'm working with. So it is a struggle with me so much because I'm like, I have to be perfect. And it's just a mentality thing with me. And so it was a breath of fresh air working with you, Britney, because you were like, it's true. You were like, you don't have to have all of your perfectly curated.
keywords, like, let's just like hash out who you want to serve. All your North Star questions were really helpful for me because I was like, of course, of course I overcomplicated that too. And then you helped me rein it in.
Brittany Herzberg (08:53.858) Also glad you brought that up because I'm honestly the same way. I want to give someone, no matter what the project is, I want to be able to feel like I'm giving someone something that's like clean and easy to work with. Even like when I record the solo podcast, if I fumble over words, I'm like, my gosh, Leah, I'm so sorry. I'm like I messed up over the words, like ha. And she's like, no, that's what I'm here for. So I mean, I say that. I'm glad you shared that.
No one who's providing a service is really expecting you to come in with things buttoned up. Like we want the messy version so that we can make it look all pretty and nice.
Dolly DeLong (09:27.17) Yes. And you know, like it really helped me like when I was finally like got over my stupid perfectionist mindset and we were working through who I wanted to help, like what set me apart. That working through the quote unquote mess of it. I'm like using air quotes. Like that was more distilling for me to like know, okay, like this is who I want to serve and this is how I'm different. Yeah. From
other marketing strategists who also teach family photographers. So it was a really good exercise in homework, pre-homework.
Brittany Herzberg (10:06.2) So I do want to share some of the keywords, but before I get into that, I am curious. Definitely the answers to those questions were helpful for me with finding keywords with putting your SEO strategy together. Did you find it a helpful exercise beyond something just for SEO? Like were you able to take that into other areas and things? I can give you exact examples, but I'm trying not to fill it words.
Dolly DeLong (10:28.75) Hopefully we're on the same wavelength, but you shared a really good keyword research tool called Key Search. Okay. Key Search. And that tool I not only used for the education side of my business, but it's been really helpful for the family photography side of my business. cool. And so you teaching me like, okay, this is how you do basic keyword research because
That is what stumped me the most, like getting started with keyword research. Cause I literally sometimes I still overcomplicate it. I'm like, what is the perfect keyword that I need to formulate on my blogs, on my headers, on my website, on whatever pages, in order for people to find me. Cause if it's the wrong one, it's gonna be a disaster. Like I'm just letting all all of you guys know like the inner workings of Dolly's brain. It's really
It's scary sometimes. And so I you teaching me that tool kind of like, okay, that calmed down my fears because you said in several calls with me and then with the members of the society, you're like, Okay, this could literally be a 30 minute exercise, or you could potentially go down a rabbit trail and spend hours. Don't do that. Just do the 30 minutes of basic keyword research, like you taught me, like the search
What is it called? The search volume? Search for the number and the number and like go between zero to one thousand, not over. And that was so helpful. So I don't even know if I helped answer your question, but that is what helped me out the most. Like learning how to do keyword research without spiraling.
Brittany Herzberg (12:13.966) that's good. I like that. Let's stick with keywords. There was another like facet that I wanted to get to, but let's stick with keywords. I'm glad that that was helpful. Yes. Keyword research is definitely something that I would say stumps like 95% of the people that I end up interacting with. And it's not that keywords are the end all be all for SEO, but it is a very, very, very, very helpful foundational tool. And when you have a good philosophy and you understand your North Star and you're able to put all of that information, it just makes keyword research easier.
So we were able to find keywords like marketing for photographers. Cause again, Dolly said she has the membership. Membership for photographers, marketing and photography business, sustainable business marketing. Let me see if there's a couple of others. Even like one thing that you always say is like education for photographers. That was one too. Marketing coach, I remember that one. Yeah.
Dolly DeLong (13:06.796) scary for me. I'm like, well I'm not really a coach. I just teach other family photographers. And then finally I was like, well that's kinda like being a coach. But
Brittany Herzberg (13:17.844) What is it if it's not that? And you were like, I don't know, let's just go with that, I guess
Dolly DeLong (13:21.582) We'll go with coach. But to me, coach is such like a I grew up in like the athletic world. So I'm like, I am not, I'm not a D one coach. I'm just Dolly and I am just trying to help other family photographers think like marketers and think in ways to promote themselves. But you were right. It is like I am coaching them, but it was such a scary term to like admit to.
Brittany Herzberg (13:48.962) It is. It's very different in like thinking of it from when we grew up to now. Now online coaching, online business, that's a thing. And the people who are business owners, especially in an online space, which your people I would say are very familiar with it, because if nothing else, they're trying to market their business on Instagram. That is something that they're familiar with. So it feels like a scary term for us, but sometimes you just gotta call a spade a spade. And I'm glad that we brought this up too, because
This is something that also gets called into question with people when they are working with me, whether it's in the sprint or if it's done for you SEO. It's like, what do I call myself? There we have all these like mini existential crises when we're working together for SEO. And what do I call myself is definitely one of those things. So I'm glad we were able to work through that. With that, let's stick with this train for a little bit. That was one aspect of like the experience of working with me for done for you.
Was there anything else, any other moments like that that stand out for you?
Dolly DeLong (14:49.038) Three things. The first thing was, of course, I forget the name of the extension tool, but there it looks like a D. What's it called? Detailed SEO. There we go. I knew there was a D. I learned that from you on multiple occasions, not just one-to-one, but you've offered free classes on like basic SEO tools to use. And like it finally stuck with me. And so I have been faithfully using detailed SEO to
check on my different pages for whenever I publish a blog post to make sure there's one H1 in the meta description is the right amount of characters and there are keywords in it and the flow is right. So that is my number one favorite thing I learned from you. Also, I don't know if this is sounds stupid or petty. Sometimes when I'm like feeling like I'm not doing enough. I'm not Yeah, I'm in comparison mode. I will go to my competitors website.
Brittany Herzberg (15:42.274) Comparison.
Dolly DeLong (15:47.968) And I will check their SEO and it's all over the place. I'm like, what? They need to talk to Brittany. And it makes it makes me feel better. Again, is that petty? I don't know. I I just am like, I'm not doing anything right. And then I see, okay, yeah, I I am doing some things right. And then of course I want to tell them, hey, go to Brittany. She's gonna help you. And I probably will. And like, because I want people to get the basics right. And so
When I have those moments, I see, okay, I have my foundation right. I'm doing everything right. Just like my business journey is gonna look slow. It's gonna be different. Everybody's pace is different. Yeah. And so that was weirdly comforting me knowing, okay, my foundations are just fine. I just need to continue pressing on. So that was one thing, as silly as that sounds.
Brittany Herzberg (16:40.588) I wanna let you know, that's like so normal. You're not the first person to tell me that.
Dolly DeLong (16:45.043) man. Well people are gonna hear this and be like, Wow, Dolly, wow.
Brittany Herzberg (16:49.238) No, they're gonna be like, that's such a great idea. Let me go do that. What's this detailed SEO extension?
Dolly DeLong (16:54.52) It seriously helps at the end of the day, it helps my brain just know, okay, all my pages look healthy and they're doing their job. And that kind of leads me to the second thing is I had completely have been neglecting submitting my blog post. Like after talking to you, of course, like I've been doing this faithfully for a year, but before talking to you, I was not submitting my sitemap to Google Search Console. I wasn't submitting any.
new pages that I've been making. I just didn't know anything about Google Search Console. I had it set up, but I was like, I don't this is too technical for me. I d I don't know anything about and so submitting my site map, submitting new content that I'm creating, that has been really helpful for me to know, okay, like now Google is crawling my website and the pages are in the right
I don't even know if I'm using the correct term, but like hierarchy of H1, H2s, H3s. I am doing everything in my power. Like, so that's like with like detailed SEO extension and then Google Search Console. So those are the two things that really like have been ingrained in me because of you. And then the third thing that has been ingrained in me because of you is making sure that my character count for my page titles and my meta descriptions.
are within the good limits for I for my website. So I use show it. So like the way you described it, I was like, how come I've never been taught this before? Like describing the page and not leaving because a lot of photographers I've noticed are doing this. They just leave the template page description up. Yep. They either don't know or they neglect to update the page title. And so that's something I'm like,
I have to change it right away. Whenever I make a new page or a blog post or whatever, I have to make sure it matches what the information on the page is about.
Brittany Herzberg (19:00.28) Yeah. I'm glad that you're doing that. And that is something that I mean, I even just had a it was a discovery call, but not really yesterday. It was a a return client. We worked together three years ago and sh she had used the SEO strategy that I created. It was a brand new website. She was getting loads of inquiries. She updated her website, moved it to a different platform. That website designer like, I'll do SEO, like I'll update that. It tanked.
So I went and looked and I was like, I'm gonna have to take some time with this, but let me see if I can just figure anything out at a quick glance. SEO titles were too long. Some of them didn't even really make any sense. The meta descriptions were all too long. Some of the SEO titles had, like you were saying, there's certain formatting that with any website, it just gives you like a tail on the SEO title, which automatically makes the SEO title too long. And it's usually nothing that's helpful. It's like our name or our business name.
And so it was just a lot of like things that an SEO person or someone who's saying that they know how to do SEO would catch and should catch. But most business owners, like you said, we just don't know until we are shown and then it's like, that's what it is.
Dolly DeLong (20:07.918) I'm so glad you brought that up because it made me think of something else. Like I did have for the photography side of my business, I did for a lot of the pages Dolly DeLong photography as a page title. And the way you described it, you're like, Yes, that's your business name, but people aren't searching for your business name because they don't know that you are the answer to their question yet. They just know that they're looking for a family photographer or like newborn photographer. And so
That kinda like switched something in my brain to help me think, yeah, I don't need to put my business name on every single title of the page. Like that makes absolutely no sense. Yeah, that that makes sense now.
Brittany Herzberg (20:48.814) And I think so many of us do that because it's what the websites automatically populate. And then to your point, we'll go look at a competitor, not knowing if that competitor has any SEO knowledge, worked with any SEO person, whatever. We just like go and look at their site and we know and or think that they're doing better than we are. And so we're like, I should do what they're doing. We don't necessarily know that. So sometimes we're following advice that we think is good but isn't actually helpful at all.
Dolly DeLong (21:15.564) Yes. And then one more thing. Hearing your advice about only having one H1 per page is been so helpful for me. Every everything I say is like this, that's been a game changer. Everything you teach me is a game changer, Brittany, to make your head even bigger. But seriously. But seriously, knowing like there is this good rule that there should be one H1 per page. And I even tell other people about that. Like
that detailed SEO thing, I will go and show people on their website, hey, just by the way, there are twenty one H1s on your home page. You should change that. And like I had pushback on it once about like, it doesn't matter. The hierarchy doesn't and I was like, okay. And I didn't have the energy to fight back because I'm like, well y because then I'm like, well, you know, I'm not an SEO expert. So I just I'm just gonna let this one go. Like I but
But I know that there should only be one H one 'cause that's what Brittany told me. And I'm just gonna stay by that. But I didn't fight back. I was like, okay, but I told you.
Brittany Herzberg (22:24.056) Don't come for me later when you find out it really matters. I've actually learned in the like last few months that it's really, really important to have one H one, not just for SEO and discoverability, also for accessibility. It matters for anyone who's like visually impaired who's using what they call a screen reader to read the page to them. It needs to know what the H one is.
Dolly DeLong (22:45.71) What the main point of the whole page is. Yeah, I maybe I need a little bit more fire in me because I was like, Okay.
Brittany Herzberg (22:52.354) You can't send them to me. Just be like, go talk to Brittany. Think what you want. But when you want some advice, go talk to Brittany. But again, some people that we just don't know what we don't know until we know it. And then at that point, if you're ignoring it, then it's just, you know, a whole other conversation. Let me bring us back to anything that came through with SEO working together, not so much in the lens of SEO, like keywords or anything like that, but were there some main points that
Dolly DeLong (23:09.848) Yeah.
Brittany Herzberg (23:22.328) helped you, I don't know, figure out what content to write or helped you in other areas of business, whether it was for the photography business or for the education side.
Dolly DeLong (23:31.5) know that with like the keyword research, that helped me understand what levers of blogging to pull. Because I also, like you, am a firm believer that blogging is not dead. It's just what it works differently. And I think it's more of a long game play for a lot of business owners. And so that has helped me out tremendously knowing like if I pull certain levers, like when I
input more blogs to my website, I have better output, like meaning my family photography side of my business. I know when I blog more consistently with a cadence, I get better inquiries because they are searching for a specific type of session, newborn session or maternity session. And and it goes back to like I knew what keywords to put in. And then it goes back to well, I knew
How to research those. And then it goes back to like, who am I serving? And then it just played into like those are the keywords you need to use. And so for me, it was writing more blogs, not like spending more time, like waste, like spending 80 hours a week on blogs, but just like knowing how to write better quality blogs and having that input for my business. Yeah. Did I go in the right direction? Yeah, you went in the direction.
Brittany Herzberg (24:59.918) Okay. I'm happy that this is coming up as well because you can't just stop at optimizing your core website pages for SEO. And for a while I actually did say that because a lot of people were like, I don't want to blog. And I'm like, okay, well, we can do this and it should be enough. You see a rise in traffic, you see a rise in inquiries. And if you don't continue on that path, especially with blogging, I don't even care if you have a podcast. Dolly and I both have podcasts. We're still blogging and we're still embedding the episodes in the blog pages.
But if you just leave it at optimizing your core website pages, you'll see the spike in traffic in inquiries. And then it's going to drop off because there's nothing to like carry the boat and keep the water up high. I don't know what the analogy was that I just brought up. I'm curious because I have a lot of moms in my world. I love working with moms. SEO is an extremely supportive marketing strategy for moms and business owners. So I'm curious, what does it look like on a monthly basis? Like thinking through anything, everything that you do for SEO.
What does it look like for you to spend time marketing and including SEO in that? 'Cause so many people think it's gonna be so much harder. It's gonna take over your life, it's gonna be way more time consuming than social media marketing, but I don't find it to be that way.
Dolly DeLong (26:11.478) Yeah, that's so true. And I think we also overcomplicate it with being like, Well, I don't have forty hours a week to work, so therefore I'm just not gonna do it. And then we spiral or we don't have this perfectly curated work week. I'm just gonna talk to all the moms like that's never gonna happen, that perfectly curated work week. It's not gonna happen. Just I would say for me, what has helped me and my brain out is to know
my family's schedule. Like both me and my husband manage the house together. So I know when both of my boys are going to be occupied. And now I have number three coming. So I'll be learning a brand new schedule. So we'll see what happens in a couple months. But for now, I know it's easier now that my my oldest is in in school and my youngest is about to start like a little preschool program. But I know when my free moments are. And so
I take advantage of those free moments. So my free moments right now are nap time. And so I get two hours every day to work. And then I do have a sitter that comes in during the school year once a week. And so those are my work hours. So I know my work hours and I know versus my service hours. My service hours for family photography are on Saturdays usually or in the evenings. So I don't include those hours just
So my work hours, I know where my work hours are. And so I make sure at least once a week I am spending two hours of the week on marketing my business. And that includes SEO tasks. So blogging, keyword research, just like any myriad of things to promote my business. Knowing my hours, knowing my capacity. And so I work around my capacity again.
I do this on a week by week basis. You will hear business owners say, you can batch out one month at a time, and that might work for you. And I used to do one month at a time batching sessions, but now I do one week at a time batching sessions, like with my marketing and SEO. And so I would say, especially to the moms, do what works best for you and like your family rhythm. But I know everybody listening.
Dolly DeLong (28:37.43) you have at least one hour of free time every week. Like instead of you picking up your phone and scrolling and doing something on social media, filming something, why not use that one hour to do like something SEO and marketing related? And that's something that I constantly preach to the members inside my family photographers marketing society. I give them a marketing template every single week based on email marketing.
keywords to use for that week, Instagram marketing ideas, and then of course SEO from our resident SEO expert, aka Brittany. And I walk them through the template like I am their marketing coach. And then I have a section called the capacity section. And I'm like, okay, if you have 15 minutes of capacity, this is what I would do. If you have one hour capacity, this is what I would do. If you have three hours of capacity, this is what I would work on.
And so it just all comes down to knowing your capacity every single week, if you're able to, every single month. And then just know like every season is different. That was something that I really struggled with when I first became a mom eight years ago. I thought like, like it'll all be. I'm sure every mother who has children is laughing at me. But as a new mom, I was like,
be able to like balance it all. Like this will be easy. I learned the very hard way. It's I needed to like learn my capacity and enjoy motherhood while balancing out work. And if that meant like learning a new schedule. So I didn't even know if I helped answer that question, but that's where my brain went. I love it so much. Yes. Let's wrap
Brittany Herzberg (30:29.534) Like with what do you wish people, maybe who are just getting started with SEO or thinking of getting started with SEO, what do you wish they knew about it?
Dolly DeLong (30:39.054) I wish that they knew that they need to start now rather than later. That something that I am very glad that in my own family photography journey for my business, I had started the year that I began my business. It's important to learn about SEO. So I just was like, somebody told me it's important to learn about SEO. So I'm gonna learn about it. But then I like, of course, dropped the ball.
with other aspects. But I think for me, learning about SEO early on in my business was beneficial. But then what I needed to do was maintain it and learn how to have maintenance. Cause it's kind of like buying a car. Like you just don't buy a car and expect it to run smoothly for the next X amount of years. You have to maintain it. You have to like change the oil, rotate the tires, like actually take care of it and not trash it and run it into the ground and then wonder
Why isn't my car working? Like, I don't even know if that's a good analogy, but that's what I think. Expect to have a six pack after going to the gym one time. And you're like, you're like, it's not this is not working out for me. I guess I'm gonna go back to eating donuts every day. But like, if you want to have good health, you have to maintain, like have good consistency. There's no easy pill for that. Just like you have to, like, if you want to have a good, healthy car, you have to maintain it. And so
Brittany Herzberg (31:41.559) It's so good.
Dolly DeLong (32:06.838) With SEO, with running a business, there has to be some sort of maintenance that goes into running your business and having a healthy SEO. And that's something that I learned the hard way. Like, yes, I had started with good SEO, but then I just dropped the ball because I didn't understand what it took to maintain it. I thought it would be overly complicated to maintain it, but it's not. It really isn't. It takes me like an hour, maybe two hours max.
to maintain it and I have great outputs because of that.
Brittany Herzberg (32:40.864) Yeah. I love hearing that so much. Especially that last part of the like it's so doable. I mean, I kinda like what you were saying earlier too about your template that you share with people in the society. Yes. If you have X amount of capacity for the week, it's going to much better serve you if you put that towards something with SEO as opposed to doing something that's like got a twenty-four to thirty-six hour shelf life. Exactly. Like you have to think about this in a longer term capacity. my gosh. I love you. I adore you. I'm so glad that you came on.
I really appreciate you.
Dolly DeLong (33:11.52) You and I adore you so much.
Brittany Herzberg (33:14.808) This has been so, so good. I'll make sure that we have a link for the society below, that we have a link for Dolly's podcast, which I've been a guest on. So I'll make sure that's below. And then if you are like, okay, fine, Brittany and Dolly, I will do something about my SEO. Where do you start? You can either start with a done with you SEO sprint. I run those every other month. I'll have the link below and you'll be able to see what's coming up next. And then you also have the opportunity to do done for you SEO, like Dolly did.
Mm-hmm. I take one client a month there and I'm typically booked like two to three months in advance, but I'll have the link. If you are even remotely interested, go ahead and fill out the form on my website and we can start having a chat about it so we can come up with a game plan and you can feel really prepared, like Dolly was mentioning. Not that you have to have everything done because you really don't, but we can talk through what those steps look like. So I look forward to hearing from you. I'm so glad that you were able to join us today, Dolly. Thank you. And of course I'll have your contact info below too.
Go say hi to her on Instagram. She's like super sweet. I
Dolly DeLong (34:14.688) I am I feel like I am very sweet. But also at the same time, I was telling Brittany every time I'm pregnant, I am just so straightforward about everything because I'm like I'm like I'm growing human, so I'm just gonna be so straightforward with people. So but I I try to maintain my sweetness in it. So
Brittany Herzberg (34:34.796) You're very kind. I don't think you could be unkind if you tried, especially to someone new. Like maybe if someone like did something to you, but not just like a new person.
Dolly DeLong (34:42.754) Well, thank you so much. I'm like, you should talk to my boys. They probably have differing opinions about mommy right now. But you're a momma.
Brittany Herzberg (34:49.581) Code for them. This is so funny. Well thank you. I'll have all the links below and come say hi. We would love to chat with you. Until next time, remember I'm cheering you on on your SEO journey.
