SEO Reference

SEO Glossary for Photographers

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01 General SEO and Web Design Definitions
02 On-Page SEO Definitions
03 Off-Page SEO Terms
04 SEO Data and Tool Specific Terms
05 Technical SEO

There are numerous search engine optimization terms that can confuse beginners. This resource organizes important concepts by category with straightforward explanations to help photographers get started. Those seeking initial ranking steps should check the Local SEO guide.

General SEO and Web Design Definitions

Blog post vs. page: Structure and sorting differ between these types. Pages contain permanent content linked from main menus, while posts are typically more temporary. SEO impact between them is minimal.
CMS: Content management system handles blogs, image databases, or text storage. WordPress exemplifies this capability.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): Distinct from SEO but equally critical. This involves increasing site conversions through signups, form submissions, or calls after visitors arrive.
Google My Business (GMB): At the core of Local SEO is Google My Business. This is Google's directory / map style platform where businesses can be listed and customers can find them.
Hyperlinks: Links connecting between hypertext documents.
HTTPS vs HTTP: Secure website vs. the older non-secure protocol. HTTPS provides security from end-to-end transfer meaning that it can't be intercepted and changed before delivery.
Indexing: Search engines add sites to their database during this process, making them candidates for ranking consideration.
Keyword: Terms people search for using search engines. Despite singular naming, keywords typically consist of multiple words forming phrases.
Local SEO: Businesses that serve a surrounding area as opposed to the whole country or internet, fit this category. This is where photographers have the advantage in SEO.
Long-tail keywords: These are keywords that consist of multiple words creating a very specific phrase search. A long tail keyword might be, 'professional headshot photographer in Littleton, CO' whereas a shorter keyword would simply be, 'professional photographer'.
Map pack: Google My Business results displayed in standard search results, presenting multiple businesses answering the query.
Organic traffic: Visitors arriving independently without advertisements or referral links.
Paid traffic: Visitors accessing sites through advertisements on various platforms.
Queries: Alternative terminology for search terms, keywords, or questions related to searching.
Responsive: Sites adjust appearance based on screen size, scaling content appropriately between phones and large monitors.
Rich snippets: Standard search results that have additional information displayed. An example of this is when you type in a recipe search and you see a star rating in the results.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Working to increase search engine rankings and drive more traffic to a website through the use of on-page optimization, off-page, and technical optimizations.
Search Engine Results Page (SERP): This is what you see when you type in any search into a search engine like Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo. We use SEO to increase our ranking positions and show up higher on these pages.
Search Intent: The reason someone is looking something up on a search engine. When we create new content on our site to rank, we want to see what's already ranking for that keyword.
SERP Features: In search results, these include anything that isn't the typical search result. Maybe it's an image in an image box, or it could be a question with your site as the answer.
Web Crawler: Any tool that crawls the internet to learn more about the websites and build a database. Search engines have their own crawlers that constantly move around the internet from link to link.
Website audit: Audits are reviews of websites from different perspectives. A good website audit will cover the SEO aspects along with the CRO components. It will feature on-page, off-page, technical, and Google My Business.

On-Page SEO Definitions

Alt Text / Alt Tag: Often abused by photographers and SEOs in general, the alt text is actually for accessibility. This means that if someone is visually impaired, then their computer can read what's in the picture to them.
E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust): From Google directly. These are the 4 most important factors to display on your website. Addressing these well should put your site on a path for SEO success.
H1 Heading: The most important piece of text on your page. The H1 says exactly what the article is about. For photography homepages or niche pages, we want to include the location, the niche, and the word 'photographer'.
H2 Heading and below: Secondary headings allow more flexibility than H1s but shouldn't excessively repeat keywords or become overly lengthy. Tools often mislead users into treating headings merely as styling.
Heading Tags: These are little bits of code that basically turn your pages into outlines for Google. We want to organize our pages by individual heading tags with normal text sections underneath.
Keyword Density: This refers to how often your main keyword is used in your text. Use it too often and your content looks spammy. Google can rank a page without any keywords.
Meta Description: Short 1-2 sentence write up covering what a person can expect to find on the page if they click on it in search results. This sits right below the title.
On-page SEO: Optimizations performed directly on websites, including new content, heading tags, and images.
Semantic keywords: These are keywords that aren't the exact same as your main keyword but that are closely related to what the keyword means. When we speak naturally we use these without even realizing it.
Title: This is what your page is about and shows in the search results. A great title entices people to click on your page and answers their original search intent.
Topical Authority: Covering your topic completely. Showing Google that you are the authority on your topic by providing all the details and linking all the dots.
Word count: The total number of words on a website's page or post. In SEO, most people advise using a higher word count to hit more keywords and create more in-depth content.

Off-Page SEO Terms

404: Error that is shown when a page or post is not found. Maybe you've created a new page or changed the URL and a link still goes to the old URL.
Anchor text: The visible words in text that a person sees on a site linking to another page, post, or website. This is an indicator to search engines as to what that link is about.
Backlink: Any page or post that links to your website from a different website is considered a backlink. Note that there are different types of backlinks - some will matter, some won't help, and others will be the most powerful.
Backlink profile: Quality and quantity assessment of backlinks to a website. Strong profiles contain quality sites linking back; weak ones consist of low-quality backlinks.
Domain Authority (DA): This is a score that ranks your site based on its backlink profile strength and quality, combined with traffic that it receives. Different SEO tools will provide different numbers here based on their own proprietary algorithms.
No-follow: Code added to links instructing crawlers to avoid following them and preventing value transfer through the link.
Noindex: This bit of code is used on pages that you don't want to be included in search engines. An example here would be a black friday deal page, or a lead magnet that you only want to send to people directly.
Noreferrer: Does not affect SEO. This code simply says that any links that go to another site should be considered direct traffic, and not a referral visit, when it reports the visit in analytics.
Off-page SEO: Work performed outside websites to build links and business presence, including social media, guest posts, and directory listings.
Redirect: Code telling browsers and crawlers that pages have moved to new addresses, automatically sending visitors there.
Referring domain: Website-level links to your site. Multiple pages from one domain count as separate backlinks but represent one referring domain.
Social signals: Search engines crawl everywhere on the internet, even social media. They look at photographer's profiles, posting activity, and more as signals for a site's SEO.

SEO Data and Tool Specific Terms

Click-Through Rate (CTR): The amount of clicks divided by the number of impressions that a search result receives. For example, a keyword receives 100 impressions and one click. This would be a 1% click through rate.
Google Search Console: This is Google's hub providing all the details Google has indexed on your website. GSC shows you a wealth of information including how many times your site shows in search results (impressions), how many people click to your site, what pages they visit, who's linking to your site, any manual penalties or actions from Google, and so much more.
KD or Keyword Difficulty: This is used by SEO tools and shows you how hard a keyword is going to be to rank. If it's a higher number it means that the top search engine results pages or SERPs are pages that have a very strong ranking.
Manual actions (penalties): These occur with aggressive SEO practices and occasionally attacks on websites. Google will issue manual actions in Google Search Console if they have decided not to trust your site for any reason.
Position: This is where a site stacks up against other sites for the same search term. Each page consists of 10 ranking positions typically (unless Google is running an experiment or changes this up, which does happen from time to time…).
Position tracking: Knowing where your site ranks helps guide your decisions with SEO and also provides motivation to continue working on it. Many SEO tools and Google Search Console will show you your positions over time.
Volume: In SEO tools, this is how many times per month a specific keyword is estimated to be searched. Although SEO tools provide great insights, they can only come up with estimations based on what they are seeing on the internet.

Technical SEO

Canonical: The canonical page version is the chosen one, either by your indication in code, or by a search engine's choosing. An example any site can relate to is if people type in 'www'.
Cascading Style Script (CSS): Code that defines the styles, layouts, and feel of a website and that is used between multiple or all pages on a site.
Favicon: The little image next to the title of a page that shows up in your browser. This is customizable on all platforms and will show the company's default logo if you do not update this.
HTML: Website programming code (HyperText Markup Language) - All websites on the internet are based in HTML.
Impressions: Any time someone views a page in search results and a page or post from your site is listed on that page, counts as an impression. Impressions will rise first as you improve SEO, followed by clicks once you break through to the top 10 results.
JavaScript (JS): Programming language enabling a wide variety of advanced effects and web solutions. This website relies heavily on JavaScript and for years Google had issues indexing JS, now it is very common again and through SSR (Server Side Rendering).
Page speed: How fast a webpage loads. Google has stated that pagespeed is important as a ranking factor, however, most SEOs are likely too focused here. As long as your score is even in the 40+ range your site is probably not having any issues with SEO because of page speed.
Sitemap: Think of this as a table of contents for your website. It consists of all the pages and posts you want it to consist of (depending on your site settings and SEO tools).
Technical SEO: Work that dives into code for search engine optimization. For photographers, this should be a later area of focus as it only gives slight edges when compared to on-page and off-page work.

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