SEO Glossary for Photographers
There are so many different terms that get thrown around in search engine optimization that it can be quite confusing when you're just starting out. Here's a list sorted by category of some of the most important and common terms with simple definitions to help you get going!
General SEO and Web Design Definitions:
Blog post vs. page: This comes down to structure and sorting of pages. Pages are typically used for lasting content, the type you'd link from your main menu. Posts are generally more fleeting and regularly written. There isn't much of an SEO difference between the two - it's more about your own organization.
CMS: Content management system. This could be a blog, an image database, a text database, etc… Wordpress is a CMS and most other platforms have CMS capabilities.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): Unrelated to SEO, but just as important. This is where you work to make your site convert better - land more leads. Any activity that is designed to get more people to sign up, fill out a form, or call you once they are already on your site is conversion related.
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. It's completely free to set up and one of the key components of ranking as a photographer.
Hyperlinks: This is a link. The deeper definition is a link from a hypertext document or file, to another hypertext document or file.
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: When a search engine adds your site to their database. Once a site is "indexed" it means the search engine is considering showing it for the keywords that fit it best.
Keyword: This is the term that someone searches for with their search engine (Google, Bing, Etc…) The name can be misleading as "keyword" implies just one word, however, a keyword generally consists of multiple words creating a phrase.
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. Local SEO means that we are only competing with other photographers in our area for our same niches. That narrows the competition down from the 1000s to under 100.
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 Littelton, CO" whereas a shorter keyword would simply be, "professional photographer".
Map pack: Another name for Google My Business when it shows up in standard search results. It's a "pack" of businesses that address the search query.
Organic traffic: Any visitors to your site all on their own without clicking through an advertisement or link.
Paid traffic: Visitors who find your site through an advertisement on any platform.
Queries: A variation on the word search term, keyword, or question when related to search.
Responsive: When a site behaves differently and adjusts depending on the screen size of the visitor. For example, text sizing shrinking down when the same site is loaded on a phone vs. a 24" monitor.
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. The results towards the top receive the most clicks.
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. Maybe people are looking for a list, or maybe it's an in-depth guide. Our content should answer that intent.
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 to find all the websites and index any that are relevant, authoritative, and quality.
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. It can have a small impact on your SEO if you use your keyword for the page in an image's alt text, but it should accurately represent the picture and not be abused.
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" to make it extra clear to Google and our visitors what this page is about.
H2 Heading and below: These are the next headings down. You can have more of these on each page but you don't want to stuff these with the same keywords and they shouldn't be too long. Most web design tools like SquareSpace, ShowIt, and Wix lead users to believe that headings are just a form of styling. But the order of your headings is very important.
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 the heading tags. Think of this like the outline you had to create back when you were in school.
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, but having the keyword on page and in the right places will almost always work better.
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 and typically works best when it contains the keyword that the searcher typed in initially.
On-page SEO: Optimizations for higher ranking that you do on your website specifically. New content, H1 tags, images, etc…
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. Great content will consist of these naturally and show Google that we are writing a useful article.
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. For photographers, this means you are covering every bit of detail possible about professional photography, what your niche is, and where you shoot specifically.
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. There is a balance to be had here and more words doesn't mean better results.
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. This would result in a 404 error page.
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 and gives context.
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: This is the quality and quantity of backlinks that you have to your website. If you have a strong profile it means that there are quality sites linking back to you and usually a solid amount, if it's weak, it's likely that your profile consists 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: When this bit of code is added to a link, it instructs search crawlers not to leave the site and not to carry any value over through the link. This is for links that are not important on a website or material to the content.
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: Any work done to grow links or presence for your business that is not directly on your website. This could include social media, guest postings, directory listings, etc…
Redirect: A bit of code on your site that tells browsers and crawlers that a page has moved to a new address, and sends visitors to this new address.
Referring domain: Similar to backlinks, this is where a website is linking to your site. The domain level encompasses the whole site, so there can only be one referring domain per website. If multiple pages link from the same domain, each of those counts as a separate backlink.
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. A higher click through rate can be achieved by adjusting the title and meta description to drive more clicks - this will indirectly influence your ranking positions.
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. It’s completely free to set up and every photographer who is considering SEO should set this up.
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. The ranking for keyword difficulty is largely determined by the backlink profile for each page.
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. These are not common unless you take spammy approaches, and can be reversed with time and the right approaches.
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…). If your site is the 2nd result on the 2nd page, it means it ranks position 12. The top 10 positions drive the bulk of all traffic, with the top 3 consisting of roughly 67% of all clicks.
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 and how each keyword is ranking for every page.
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". There is also a duplicate of that page that can load without the "www". In your design software or platform you can typically indicate which is your preferred, or canonical, version.
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.
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. You can see more of my thoughts on pagespeed here.
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). These can be submitted to Google Search Console or Bing to help facilitate web crawling and make sure they know about all the pages on your site. Some platforms have different URLs for these so you'll need to look up how to access your sitemap on your specific platform.
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.
