Your website may be your own piece of online real estate, but how are people actually finding it? In this episode of Mind Your Wedding Business, Kevin sits down with live wedding painter Renée van de Kerkhof to talk about backlinks, why they matter for your website, and how wedding pros can start building them in practical ways.

Renée breaks down what makes a backlink valuable, why quality and relevance matter, and how relationships with fellow wedding pros can help strengthen your online presence. She also shares creative ways she's earned backlinks through blogging, vendor collaborations, styled shoots, guest posts, media opportunities, and even stock photography—plus common backlink mistakes wedding pros should avoid.

Renée van den Kerkhof is a live wedding painter and courtroom sketch artist from the Netherlands. She specialises in portraits that actually resemble the wedding couple, in a romantic and detailed style. She services couples (and their loved ones) across Europe. Renée is autistic, a dog mom, and lives with her partner in Dordrecht (near Rotterdam).

Highlights:

• What backlinks are and why they matter for your wedding business website
• Why relevant, reputable backlinks are more valuable than simply having a lot of links
• How blogging and sharing your expertise can naturally lead to backlink opportunities
• How vendor relationships, guest blogs, styled shoots, and directories can help build backlinks
• Why spammy links and outdated backlink strategies can actually work against you
• Simple ways to start building backlinks without a large audience or marketing budget

Connect with Renée:

WeddingIQ Article

Website

Instagram

Facebook

LinkedIn

Connect with Kevin:

Wedding IQ

Fantasy Sound

Instagram

YouTube

TikTok

LinkedIn

All right, folks, welcome to another episode of Mind Your Wedding Business. I'm here with Renee from the Netherlands, and I'm gonna let her properly say her last name because I don't wanna butcher it and disrespect her last name in any way. But we're gonna be talking about backlinks today. And Renee was gracious enough to write an article for our wedding IQ site, and we're gonna jump into more about that article. But before we do, Renee, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how we got you here today?

Yes, so I'm Renee van den Kirchhoff, but just Renee Renee is fine. I love to

See that's why I would I would not be

able to see I cannot say it as eloquent as you do.

I've heard

from Americans that it sounds very high posh, elegant, like luxury weddings. Yeah.

No, it's beautiful actually.

so I've I'll just go with that. And I'm here because I like sharing tips from my practice.

the business side of things has been an adventure on itself besides the painting and artistry of it. and I've actually started coaching and helping

starting beginner artists. So

love it.

I thought while I was discussing this with building your website, building your authority. I was like, I saw Kevin talk about networking and vendor relationships and was like, maybe that's a fitting topic.

Yeah, I love it. All right. Before we jump in, can you tell us a little bit how how did you become a live wedding painter and what makes your work unique?

Okay, so I went to art school in 2018 I did my first wedding, but before that happened, there were other events that I was asked to draw and like make cartoons at, do more like corporate events. the wedding industry in itself is

something that's been relatively new for me. and I've never been like the lady as a as a kid that, gets the collection of images on

yeah.

little notebooks. but I do have some romance in me and I really like

Yeah.

working like happy days, lovely people, helping them. yeah.

Celebrate.

Yeah, celebrate capture the memories.

Mm-hmm.

And I like I offered to come paint instead because I've seen I had seen like a live painter on the internet, which was Maggie Paints, by the way. Watch Maggie Paints

Yeah.

back then. because somebody asked me to draw at the wedding, was like, but I can paint as well. And

Yeah. And the rest is history, huh?

yeah, and I focus mainly on portraits.

and people that are able to recognize themselves in it.

I love it. All right. So Renee, you recently wrote an article for our wedding IQ site about gaining backlinks as a live wedding painter. First, why should wedding pros even care about backlinks?

maybe a few of the people who've just started out are mainly relying on social media. You know, DM me on Instagram and they don't have a website. I personally

Yeah.

I would like stress, that would stress me out. 'cause having your own website is like virtual real estate. It's your own little space that you can build. It's for your authority, but

it gives information, you can build systems around it, it can guide your ideal client towards booking you or at least inquiring with you.

Uh-huh.

So I it would stress me out to just rely on social media because that's like borrowed land in a in a way. it can be bought, it can be changed, it can be deleted even.

Mm-hmm.

I used to be big on Twitter before somebody bought that. So that's like an investment. Exactly.

Yeah. Some crazy person we won't talk about him.

So that's like an investment that's lost. And while you're building your website, you would want people to actually find the website and not just any people, but the people who are looking for you who would be interested in working with you. And I try to see backlinks as

another website having a clickable link towards your website,

basically pointing in your direction, and by pointing that person or that site basically says, Hey, you could and you should go there, which is a sign of trust, a sign of your expertise.

And you're basically pointing arrows, you're building pointing arrows across the wild west web that's

Ha ha

and there are we could go deeper on that, there's different levels of backlinks, different different types, but you want the reliable the good websites to point at you and have them basically say, hey.

visit this person, see this person, this might be the one for you. So not only the person that is actually on that website's clicks on it and visits yours, but it's also a sign for the search engines that website of yours is connected in a network of reliable sources.

Mm,

I love it. So, Renee, how has Backlinks helped your business specifically when it comes to visibility, SEO, or inquiries?

the main ways and people how how people find me is either through TikTok or through Google and other search engines. And for me personally I've always been a blogger

Mm-hmm.

and the more you share value the more you put your unique content out there. Others will notice that and

see like this person is saying something that's interesting and I've been able to build like a network of friendly vendors. Do you also call them frienders or is that just

Yeah, we do, we do

here in the States.

and we help each other, and people have followed me on other people's blogs. people have said, I found you through this recommendation list. the thicker the lines are between relevant people, relevant sites, they really help me. and also backlinks from media, which are more like journalistics.

sources, news media.

Uh-huh.

They are very credible sources as well and people will be like, you're the one that was featured in the newspaper.

Mm-hmm.

I've seen her on this and this platform. She must be like relevant. Because of course I'm relevant, but you know

Yeah.

so in I think that was kind of what you asked. Like

Yeah.

gives credibility, it strengthens network. It's been also been fun as a project because I've in when I started blogging I've interviewed a lot of artists and they were like, read this blog about me. I am able to help for example wedding venues with their score. Like there's this thing that's called like a domain score or

Mm-hmm.

domain authority so I help venues in my blogs like Italian themed wedding venues or castle venues in the Netherlands and I can help them as well and

Yeah.

I can it can strengthen the bonds you have with other vendors and venues.

Yeah, no, it makes sense.

All right, a lot of wedding pros here SEO and immediately feel overwhelmed. And you were saying there's many different types of backlinks. Can you like simply explain it in a like simple practical way?

Okay, so there are minor league backlinks, there are middle league, how do you call it top top tier?

Okay. Yeah, major league.

major league. let's say you have a hundred links pointing to your website and

Okay.

one is from your auntie who blogs about her life.

Ha ha ha ha.

like five people in their street related, it's okay. It means this person is human. It it's saying, my niece does this. Great.

Yeah.

It's it's okay, but if you want to be a rep a rep reputable, is that how you

Yep, that's right. Reputable.

reputable a source, it helps if like the newspaper or the

Association of wedding planners or a high end venue credits you on their site because it's more like a popular big website or things like Wikipedia or medium.com which is also like a news media blogging. if they point towards you, that's says more that like it's been peer reviewed, it's been checked, more people have been contributing.

It has more

more weight. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, more weight yeah. Well thick. We want thick things.

so there's a degree of level that is influenced and also the way the link is formulated gives more or less context to it. the term is anchor text. So

Okay.

if you have like a sentence that's

this wedding I worked with wedding DJ Kevin.

Yeah.

Click here for his website

Yeah.

and you use the word click here, that's so spammy. If that's

yeah.

the actual clickable text link, that's called anchor text. that's the search engine wants some context in the words that are clickable. So if you use a little bit about the destination from destination in the words, for example, if you choose

wedding DJ Kevin.

Yeah.

If you use those three words, that's like your name, your profession, it's relevant search terms, and it probably is also, represented in the goal

Yeah.

the link is pointing to. So that's way more valuable in terms of anchor text than if it's just click here because we don't want

Yeah, you wanna make it spammy?

If you're

Yeah, if you ever like interviewing a a a friender and you're helping them with links in your like blog about them, be sure to have either their name, their business name, or a qualification of what they do as a service, what they offer as product. And don't do click here. Yeah.

Yeah.

That's that's that's like a used car salesman. Click here, click here, buy my car. Like neon light. Yeah, yeah, that's funny. Yeah. That's crazy.

Yeah, like big big text blinking. Like a countdown happening if you don't click before Yeah. we don't want that.

Renee, what are some of the most effective ways you personally gain relevant backlinks?

Yeah. So as the as the base I would say I've been at least trying to if you hear noises those are my dog drinking 'cause it's very warm here. That's okay.

No worries.

We all love dogs on on on on this episode. On the I mean on this podcast.

If you're listening, be sure to get your glass and hydrate right now.

It's hydration time.

Okay, so as a base I would say I've been blogging, I've been over the years been building like a source of information on my site that's been

credited that's been linked to by other artists. I've shared information for beginner artists and other people have been typing, this has been so great. I'm gonna credit you in my blog. I really like just text info and and

Yeah.

starting out info. It's for me it's in my head, it's been my expertise, but getting it out there is really helped.

So as a base, I would say organically growing by sharing what you know, sharing your specific unique insights. and you know, blogging in general is great, but don't do the generic like ask one prompt in AI and that's the entire blog more

than

okay.

specifically from your personal

practice. For example,

Yeah.

I've done things like I've written about incorporating loved ones, lost loved ones in your painting or tips for beginning starting artists.

Yeah.

I would say growing organically is something you build over time. But if you want to start, like let's say you just launch your new website and you want to start building,

Mm-hmm.

a good first step you can take, and that's like completely in your own hands, is making sure all the social media accounts, maybe even your YouTube, your Pinterest.

Whatever you're using is pointing towards your site.

website.

That's like a like a first step you can take.

then second layer would be collaborating with vendors.

So if you're starting collaborations with vendors that has personally helped me as well.

Mm-hmm.

I've recently done a blog about life portraits because I don't offer that anymore, but I know there are

guest illustrators in my area that really like doing guest portraits and I've asked for a little paragraph and I've helped them with their findability and they

that's nice. Okay, yeah.

credit me in return with a link.

there have been a few vendors who've been so kind to credit me as well as

part of their team when they like blog or have a portfolio page about a certain wedding and we've worked a wedding together. So if you're working a wedding and you're like, I want to know who's working the wedding besides me and like maybe I know the photographer because I don't know. The DJ might see a photographer or videographer, but for example, I as a life painter I barely

I barely meet like makeup artists because they're

Mm.

gone by the time arrive.

You arrive.

Yeah. So I try to ask my couples for like a tag list or who who's doing what so I can make sure I credit everybody correctly.

Yeah, that's that's a that should be a good practice 'cause I wish everyone unfortunately that doesn't happen 'cause there's a lot of times I'll see like our work out on Instagram, but we're not credited for it. But I I think that's a good rule of thumb that everyone credits everyone.

Yeah. And I've also been a bit more active in the pursuit of backlinks. That's

maybe sounds a bit marketing ish. but I

No, but you gotta get yourself out there.

Yeah, and just simple open Google and be like guest blog

my topic. So guest blog, live painting, Netherlands. Or photography of best photographers in your area. Or tips for original wedding gifts. Whatever

Mm.

people are looking for and see what pops off.

what is shown through these search engines? Cause that's the stuff that's already been

very well indexed in that those are

Mm-hmm.

reliable sources for the most part.

Mm-hmm.

and I've actually found for example a blog by a wedding photographer who had been blogging about live painting because he'd seen it but the live painter he credited he that that one stopped working as a life painter and the website was like turning

Turning and like this fossil of a website with like scammy links that weren't working anymore.

jeez.

search engines don't like it if you point your visitors towards scammy websites so that

Bad. Does that make sense? Yeah.

yeah, you want updated, no errors. So I was like, hey, I just kinda it was kinda like a pitch. I just emailed this wedding photographer out of the blue hey like

Hey you, I saw

Mm-hmm.

you spent some time and effort in writing this, but it might help you if I provide some fresh content, which will be open for me to supply images, maybe even reuse some of the words that you already have in this text, but just more like my work is just images and

Yeah.

examples.

And some fresh content for you to spice up the blog and make sure that the old link is out there.

Yeah.

And it was like, okay, and we worked something out and I also offered him a backlink because I have this in the media page which is linking to places I've been featured, so he has a backlink as well for me.

and that helps each other, right?

Yeah, yeah, it was just it was just a collab.

and while also was googling like guest blog wedding I found like starting platform in the Netherlands about weddings and they were

Mm-hmm.

like hey we are open for guest blogs because some people say that very literally and I was like hello

huh.

I have these ideas for topics would you like

A blog about gifting a live painting. Would you like a blog about a day in the life of or how is it made? Or you know, thinking about providing context that's relevant and informational value for their visitors. Because if you're writing or pitching to do a guest blog, you don't want the guest blog. Well, at least most platforms don't want the guest blog to be, ooh, buy a live painting. Do you want to buy a live painting?

hire a live painter, you know?

Yeah, no.

Very commercial lingo. We page that.

Yeah. Which I think turns off the clients.

Yeah. It it doesn't help them, it doesn't help you. But if you try to see think in their mindset and from their point of view, they are looking for value to add to their website.

Mm-hmm.

It's basic basically helping each other as well. And I'm I'm always up for

writing like a guest blog that's specifically for that platform.

I like that.

You've also you've also done some guest blogs in the past.

Yes,

yes. And there I feel like you get a lot out of that. And we we on our website tried to feature new frienders, you know, like so some some vendors that we work with or whatnot, just to give them visibility on our site and and then they promote it on their social media, but then they also sometimes we'll even post what they did and like you said, we'll get the the link, that way. So

Through your relationships that you have, like people you're meeting on site at the weddings, is there opportunities to create backlinks with all of these folks as well?

Yeah, you could one one thing I like to do is see what styled shoots are out there because I all I'm always up for inspiration and

Mm.

new things, trying out and if you talk to people like, hey, I like working with you at the wedding, do you know of any styled shoots coming up? 'Cause sometimes it's a wedding planner, sometimes it's a stylist, sometimes it's a photographer that's organizing these. and I love to blog or incorporate

inspiration from style shoots in my blogs as well. And talking about style shoots, if you do them together, some platforms accept styled shoots as like a it's kind of like a guest blog, but what more in images.

And they can be decently scored backlinks as well. There are

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that makes sense.

yeah, there are many platforms that you can like rent a profile on and

Mm-hmm.

there's some discussion and you can be like deciding on whether you want something that's in your region or for your specific audience.

I personally only am featured on a smaller directory website. that's in the region that I was born in and I love to do more weddings there because we have all the castles and hills and it makes my

wow, yeah, it's probably gorgeous.

it make my it makes my mother happy that I'm spending some time in that region so she sees me every once

Yeah.

in a while. So that's that's for me, that's a useful investment. but everybody should, you know, decide.

Which platforms are for them. And it's

Yeah, it makes sense.

easy to get a directory link if you own the directory, because I've also started like a collaboration with a German colleague that we have like a European map and profiles featuring directory about painting.

that's nice and helpful.

All

right, Renee, how are important are real weddings and published work when it comes to building backlinks?

I'm gonna be not that great of an answer for this because I

Okay.

I've only had one real wedding featured.

Okay.

but I know for photographers it can be very, very interesting because they can submit those. these bigger platforms can have really nice backlinks to feature them because they're very relevant for the wedding industry.

Uh-huh.

Like they tell the internet, like, hey, this is our little corner of the world and this person is part of it. And I would definitely see if like if the wedding couple is okay with it, that they are featured. Something

Mm-hmm.

that's I don't know if it's like a Dutch thing, but there are two platforms here that accept real weddings and something they

Have like as a requirement for styled shoots and real weddings, or at least for styled shoots, because that's what I've known that like contributed to, is that

Mm-hmm.

all vendors have to supply an indication of costs. So it's

No.

very transparent that if people see it and get inspired, be like, I want that food thingy.

I want that art thingy, I want this and that that they immediately get like an sense of whether that's within their budget.

Mm-hmm.

Cause we've all seen like the the the extravagant big weddings and people be like, I need to have that and they don't realize it's like fifteen thousand euros for

Yeah, they can't afford it.

Yeah. So inspiration is great getting inspiration out there, but also keeping it realistic and not to

let potential wedding couples down.

That makes sense. Makes sense. All right, let's talk about some mistakes that people make when they're trying to improve their backlinks. what do people get wrong?

So

Other than the

spammy stuff, 'cause that that I would say that's probably number one.

the spammy stuff and one of the more outdated practices is just buying like

there they're like lists and lists of directories that are just that's one page filled with like just links just a wall of links in in dutch it's called startpagina start the

Uh-huh.

start pages i don't know if you have it but it's

Not relevant, it's very general, you pay something just for the link of it. There's no

Yeah.

context, there's no nothing indicating that you're actually working in a specific field. It's just waste of your money really.

Yeah, I was gonna say it's probably a waste of your money and then probably Google doesn't like it.

Yeah, yeah, so there are some like also like with the click here vertex,

Mm-hmm.

you don't want that as well. Cause it's basically basically telling Google, okay, so you're spending energy and money, but I I'd much rather see other people that are really people pointing towards you.

Hmm.

Another spammy thing or thing that would be considered spammy is

if a certain website has like hundreds and hundreds of links pointing towards you, you would much rather have like ten different websites that are from real people having one link towards you than like one spammy site having ten or hundred or two hundred links pointing towards you because they can be a bit toxic.

makes sense.

There's actually a like a scan you can do, like a backlink audit. I personally use SEMrush.

yeah, I've heard of that.

Yeah, you can also do like the the free version and you can go to I think it's like the tab is called link building or something, and you can get like a scan of what backlinks are toxic, like which

which scammy blogs are scrawling your info.

They can give an indication of like the anchor text that are used to point to you, what type of websites, what countries, the domain scores that are pointing, all lots of information, really even with the free version.

Yeah.

And maybe at something else you can do wrong, but it's more like neglect to do. when you're pitching ideas to potential blogs or write writing guest blogs, it's you can be too much focused on commercial text.

Mm-hmm.

Don't see it as promo, see it as helping somebody.

And it's okay that a lot of platforms will not email you back. It's like pitching anything. There will be a lot of no's or just straight out ghosting.

Gotcha.

Cause I've I've made tons of I've written tons of emails that have never gotten a response and that's okay. Like I don't

But you tried.

Yeah. if you like are let down by the fact that somebody's not replying to you.

And you stop, that's that's like yeah, that would be a waste.

Yeah, it makes sense. It really does.

Okay.

So Renee, have you noticed the difference between backlinks that simply increase your traffic to your website versus backlinks that actually attract ideal clients?

So something that really helps is if somebody is like, hey, I want to link to you, or that I know that they are linking to me, but they are generally linking to my main page. So just

Mm-hmm.

neetje.nl, like the main route of the site. But sometimes it can be way more helpful to link to

like a more specific landing page or a blog about that theme. There

Mm.

have been, I think, two or three instances where I've been like, hey, thank you so much for featuring me. I think it would be very helpful for your website visitors, if

Okay.

they land directly on this or that blog, because that's what they're looking for and we want to help people getting there.

Uh-huh.

so for example, there's been a French page that featured me and it was

wow.

like don't go to my root page that's like in Dutch or maybe they

Mm-hmm.

can easily find the English one, but the French is a bit more deeper. So

well.

just just use this one, that's okay. And the ones that have been

surrounded by context some more so not just hey visit this page but a bit like embedded in a paragraph of hey this person paints it's really inspirational or maybe they say something about my style or the romance of the day or something like that. And

Uh-huh.

if I see somebody featuring me

But they haven't included like an image because people are like, no copyrighted images and I'm like, thank you for the feature. If you want, you can use this this example. I'm I'm totally okay with you using this. So I'm also helping them with content. And yeah, it really helps people to get an image of what I do 'cause my work is so visual.

Yeah. It makes sense. All right.

Maybe

that's a good like segue into a funky way I've got gained some yes.

I was gonna ask, is w was there a strange way?

Yeah, so there's been in my research of like seeing what's out there, it's always a good idea to check what's out there, what is describing your niche, what is being blogged about the specific thing that you do and

I noticed that a lot of websites feature life painting in like an inspirational list, like ten

Mm-hmm.

original ideas for wedding gifts or three ways to have interactive entertainment stuff like that. And I noticed that if they even mention live painting, they incorporate an image that's very generic, like

yeah, just

like a painter and an easel or bouquet painting and was like hmm this is very generic what if I look on the stock websites like the ones that offer images for people to use in their blogs and such and hey what if I t type in live wedding painter?

Almost none.

Really?

Almost- there was like I can imagine you can find images of a DJ or like a wedding photographer, maybe, or like a bride in general stock images.

Yeah.

But live wedding painting was so specific specifically like empty. There was like out of five or six stock like the bigger stock image sites, there was maybe one image that was remotely

relevant for life wedding painting because it was like a ceremony scene and the painting was very small in it and most

Mm-hmm.

the artist was covering like the back he le saw the back of the artist. So I was like, hmm, maybe there's an opportunity for him here. Because

Yeah.

I don't mind being visible. I I can take like okay, not very professional but decent enough photos with my camera on like a tripod.

Mm-hmm.

Like with a remote access, remote control. you know what? I'm just gonna try it out. And I made an account on this site called UnSplash.

okay.

And they are mostly from styled wedding shoots or the ones that I know that my clients are okay with as long as they're not like big in the image, if they're like small or

just several examples of me in different positions like watching the canvas or looking in the camera just a variation to try out what would work and there have been many sources who use my images credit me as a painter.

Mm-hmm.

Also been a very cheeky one because there was a platform that's pretty big that has a pretty decent domain score about event planning. And they used one of my images and they had made like an error in like crediting one of the other images.

So it's like, hey, just so you know, this bouquet photo is actually by this and this photographer, and if you don't mind,

Would you be okay with linking to my website instead of unsplash? 'Cause sometimes they link to the unsplash

file, which you know is great, but if they're

Yeah.

me that's way more helpful. It would really help. Thank you. And they just change it and I was like, Okay, I got a

Wow.

linky.

Yeah, it's just by simply reaching out and asking. Just y you

Yeah,

and I've I've also when I saw several like sources using one of the images, I was

Uh-huh.

like, Hey, I saw you also have this or that blog. Here are three images on my and I send them a link that's from like secluded online storage, I think you would call it.

Yeah.

Here are three images that are like

a little bit more specific but also less widely available. But if you want you can use these three, just reaching out, just saying if you know if you want. It don't you don't have to, but you can use these. If you want.

Yeah, no. That that was a nice way to go about it. All right.

Yeah, but if

you if you want to like one caveat if you want to be offering yourself a stock image. I've also like you don't have control over everything. And I've

Mm.

also been like the face of a person like a article about people with mental images, like mental troubles and like

Mm-hmm.

painting as therapy and I've been

like a header image in other articles, I'm like, Okay But that's the risk the risk of being visible out there.

Yeah, that makes sense. Makes sense. All right. So Renee, what for a wedding pro who doesn't have a huge audience or a marketing budget, what are kind of the easiest backlink opportunities to start?

So you said without a budget, right? So we're not

Yeah.

we're not purchasing anything, we're not

And I don't have a really big audience yet.

Yeah, so the

First thing I would do besides getting your own social media linked to your site, I would blog on your own site and place

Okay.

a blog on medium.com.

Okay.

And it can be a short blog, just a few hundred words about your service. Just a fun example, something really you only you could have encountered. It's like a case, like one wedding.

You worked, share some insights from that and place it on medium.com. That one

Okay.

has like a very decent backlink as well, like the domain score I mean not backlink, and you can link to your own site there. so that and make a Google business profile.

Okay.

Linking to you if you don't have that already.

you gotta have that. Sara Dunn who does SEO stuff, she's

Yes, Sarah. Yeah.

she said that's a must.

Yes. And maybe a s second thing, start collaborating with like sending some emails out there to other vendors that maybe that you have worked one wedding with and you were like, Hey, I featured you in my blog. Would you be willing to share that on your site on your social media that you've been mentioned here? That would

Mm-hmm.

be something.

That makes sense.

Well I love I love Sara.

Yes, sir.

Like not

romantically, but like her

No, I know what

you mean. We know what you mean. we hired we actually hired Sarah's company to come in and do some work on our website and we are seeing huge results from what we did and we're working

Nice.

at venues that we've never worked at before and doing all kinds of great work. So I can't recommend her enough. She does such great work, so

Yeah. Yeah, it's it's sometimes something that's like overlooked by somebody is that's beginning, especially as you can do a lot of things on social media right now. But I would really recommend starting building your own virtual real estate on your website. And s backlinks in SEO can be something you can work on over time. You don't have to do everything in one week. Just take your time every now and then, maybe in the lower seasons and the slower seasons and whatever.

Yeah, you're off time. That's a good, good, good,

good thing to be working on. All right, Renee, we're coming up on time, but before we do, I wanted to ask you one more last question is what's one backlink building strategy that has had the biggest long term impact on your business?

Mmm, I think something I haven't not mentioned yet. I've been proactively responding to journalists. So there

are some platforms that journalists use to like pitch their ideas and requests like hey I'm looking for a wedding planner to comment comment on this or that trend or there's been this

outrage on social media about makeup. I want to speak to a makeup artist. There are several platforms. you can like join their newsletter or

Mm-hmm.

Facebook groups. There's one Facebook group here in the Netherlands with Dutch journalists and they will post things like I'm looking for people who have a very interesting occupation or are

examples of this or that and I really like that as you are not only there's not only a chance that you'll be featured at such a big platform because it's usually the like the established media but

also you're helping people so it's not like cold calling you're not doing like almost like acquisition, you know like salesy approaching people that have never heard of you, but they are

Yeah.

actively looking for answers that you are able to give to them.

Yeah, Meghan Ely always recommends HARO. Help a reporter out. Yeah. Yeah.

That's one of the yeah, yeah, I get emails too.

And there's also internationally there's feature or featured. That's

Okay.

has always also helped me with some publications. Yeah.

I love it. All right, Renee, we can't thank you enough for being here on our episode. We really appreciate it. But before we let you go, where can our listeners learn more from you and more about you and connect with you?

Okay, so my general website is difficult to pronounce, but it's Neetje in Dutch. It's if you just Google like live painter Renee or Renee from the Netherlands, you'll find me more easily than trying to spell it. But if you

Well, we're gonna

help everyone out, Renee. We're we send out an email blast and we're gonna put all your social media information and all your links in there to help these folks that find you and connect with you.

I also started Substack that's like learning educational program for platform for live painters and other creatives. So I share

I love that.

like in-depth, like more specifically to my niche information there as well.

I love it. All right, Renee, we can't thank you enough for being here with us. And I know it's really hot where you are right now in the Netherlands. So I appreciate you everything you did to be with us here today. So can't thank you enough. folks,

Thank you.

we'll see you next time on another episode of Mind Your Wedding Business. Thanks, Renee.

Bye bye, thank you.