40+ Blogging Terms You Should Know As A Beginner

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I’ve been blogging for over 5 years now, so I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with all the blogging terms out there.

But when I’m talking to someone who is just starting out in the blogging world, they’re like “Kel, what the heck are you talking about? Why are you talking about slugs? What in the hell is a widget?”.

It makes me realise that I’ve forgotten how steep of a learning curve blogging actually is in the beginning.

So, instead of letting you figure it all out on your own, I’ve compiled a list of blogging terms that you should get to know.

It will make your blogging life much easier!

(This post may contain affiliate links – click here to read my full disclosure policy.)

Blogging Terms

40 Blogging Terms You Should Know As A Beginner

Affiliate

When you’re an affiliate, you’re helping to promote a product, program or service and when you successfully refer someone, you make a commission.

Your unique referral link, is called an affiliate link and you use it whenever you recommend the product.

Different affiliate programs offer different amounts of commission and have different terms (like where you can post your affiliate link) and you need to always disclose that your blog post contains affiliate links.

Alt-tag / Alt-text

An alt tag, alt-text or alt attribute, is the alternative text used to display instead of an image, if for example it takes too long to load or the viewer can’t see it.

You can see the alt-text when you hover over an image.

It also helps describe the image to search engines, which is why they’re really important.

Screenshot of alt-tag

Analytics

You may hear bloggers talking about their Analytics otherwise known as Stats. This is the data that shows how many visitors have been to their blog and where they’ve come from.

Google Analytics is the most popular service for this.

Backlink

Backlinks are links that come from another website, directed to your blog/website.

Backlinks are helpful when it comes to ranking your blog on search engines, as they they tell the search engine how important and relevant your blog is.

A good way of getting backlinks is to guest post for more popular blogs or websites relating to your niche.

Bounce Rate

Your bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your blog after only visiting one page.

This is why many bloggers are concerned if they have a high bounce rate.

Call-To-Action (CTA)

Your call-to-action is how you tell your readers what to do next. For example, after they’ve read your blog post, or before they leave your blog.

You can use a call-to-action to get people to sign up to your email list, encourage comments on your blog post, to buy your product etc.

Category

This is the category your blog post belongs to.

For example, a ‘Smoothie Bowl Recipe’ blog post could go in a Breakfast category or a Smoothie category if your entire blog is about food but could go in a ‘Recipes’ category if you have a lifestyle blog with many topics.

Cookies

Not the yummy, delicious, chocolate chip kind of cookies. I’m talking about website cookies.

Cookies are small text files that are stored on your browser once you visit a website (if you allow them) and they track your visit to that website, along with preferences.

There is a good chance your blog generates cookies, especially if you have Analytics installed or personalised ads.

Due to GDPR, every person that visits your blog now needs to consent to cookies. You can read more about that here.

DA (Domain Authority)

Your domain authority is one of the main determining factors of how well your blog will rank on search engines and tells search engines how popular your blog is.

Your domain authority is scored from 1-100 (100 being the very best) and is measured by several things including how many quality backlinks your blog has.

Check your latest DA score here.

Email List / Mailing List

An email list is another way of saying email subscribers. It’s basically a list of people who are signed up to receive emails from you.

Engagement

Engagement refers to the measurement of how your followers and readers interact with your content, such as; liking, commenting and sharing.

Gravatar

Ever seen comments on a blog and people have their pictures next to their name but you can’t figure out how they uploaded it? Well Gravatar is an avatar you can attach to your email address!

Group Boards

Group boards refer to boards on Pinterest that have several contributors. They are well known for getting the Pins for your blog posts seen.

Lazy Load

Lazy loading delays the loading of images or scripts in long-form content until the user gets to it. It can improve loading time and help optimise your blogs performance.

Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a free piece of content that incentivises people to subscribe to your email list, such as a PDF, checklist, free email course etc.

Long-form Content

Long-form content is a style of article or blog post that goes far beyond the minimum recommendation of 300 words and pushes way into the thousands mark.

Packed with way more information, long-form content has been proven to rank better in search engines.

It also makes your blog posts more shareable and converts into better sales.

Long-tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are very specific keywords that consist of 3 words or more.

With all the competition, it’s unlikely you will rank high in Google for “food blog” unless your blog gets insanely popular, but you will have a good chance of ranking for specific blog posts, with long-tail keywords like “chocolate chip banana bread muffins”.

Media Kit

A media kit is a document with information about your business or blog similar to a resume/CV.

A good blogging media kit should outline your stats, such as page views per month and follower counts for social media, why brands should work with you and previous brands you may have worked with.

It should also include a list of your services and your fees (unless you quote based on the project).

Media Kit Example - Blogging Terms

Metadata

Metadata, such as meta titles and descriptions are used to describe your blog posts and help search engines and social media platforms to determine what your blog post is about.

Monetise

To monetise your blog is to put in place certain things that will help your blog make money, such as ads, affiliate links and sponsored content.

Learn more about how to monetise your blog here.

Niche

Your niche is the subject your blog is about. When people say to “niche down” they mean you should be more specific with your blog subject.

My mental health blog is quite niche because it’s talks mostly about social anxiety, whereas this blog is a bit less niche because it talks about two different subjects.

NoFollow

The nofollow attribute assigned to certain links, tells search engines to ignore those links and not to let the link influence search engine rankings.

Basically if someone links to your blog but it’s a nofollow link, it won’t help you rank in Google. If someone links to your blog and it’s a dofollow link then it will help your ranking.

Also, any link that you put on your blog that you get paid for should be nofollow.

Opt-In

This is the same as a lead magnet. An opt-in freebie or incentive that gets people subscribing to your email list.

Page Views

This is how many views your blog and posts have had altogether, not to be confused with how many visitors your blog has had.

Permalink

A permanent URL for your individual blog posts.

Permalink Example - Blogging Terms You Should Know

Pin

A pin is an image that links back to your blog on Pinterest.

Pingback (Or Trackback)

A notification that another blog has linked to one of your posts.

Plugin

A plugin is a piece of software that you can install on your self hosted WordPress to increase functionality.

For example, I use the Yoast SEO plugin to help me with my search engine optimisation.

Sales Funnel

A sales funnel is the process that your customer goes through to purchase your product or pay for your service.

In blogging terms this usually starts when your prospective customer subscribes to your email list.

Self-Hosting

Self-hosting in blogging terms, means to pay for hosting and set up your own blog rather than using a free or fully hosted platform such as Blogger, WordPress.com, Tumblr, Squarespace, Wix etc.

Self-hosting gives you more freedom with your blog, whereas fully hosted free platforms (and even the paid plans) are quite limited in functionality.

SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and is the process of making your blog more visible to search engines such as Google.

Sessions

Sessions (in Google Analytics) relate to a group of interactions one visitor has to your blog within a certain time frame.

One session can equate to several views to different blog posts, pages and clicks. Not to be confused with page views (see above).

Slug

Not the slimy shell-less mollusc that comes out when it rains. No, in blogging terms, Slug means something very different.

A slug is part of a URL/permalink in easy-to-read form, that describes the post and makes it easily searchable.

Slug Example - Blogging Terms You Should Know

Sidebar

A blog sidebar (on desktop) runs alongside the main content and usually includes a mini introduction the blog.

It’s also a prime place for advert placements and somewhere you can display links to your most popular posts, as well as social media buttons.

In mobile, the sidebar tends to be at the bottom of the page.

Social Share

This relates to how visitors to your blog are able to share your posts on social media. There are lots of different social share plugins available for WordPress. I personally prefer Social Pug.

Social Share - Blogging Terms

Sponsored Post

A sponsored post is a blog post that has been paid for by a brand to advertise their product or service.

Stop-Words

These are the words that search engines ignore, such as “a”, “and”, “to” etc. and are discouraged from being used in the slug of your URL.

Subscriber

Someone who signs up to your email list.

Tags

In blogging terms, these are tags you assign to your blog post, that describe the contents on your post. They are different to your categories, as they’re more like keywords.

Tailwind

Tailwind is an approved scheduler for Pinterest and Instagram.

Theme

This is the template or layout of your blog and how it looks to your visitors.

Traffic

Your blog traffic is the amount of visitors coming to your blog.

Widget

In blogging terms, widgets are smaller blocks on your WordPress blog that perform a specific function. If you look at my sidebar as an example, everything on there is there because of widgets.

WordPress

WordPress is a powerful open-source software that can be downloaded for free at WordPress.org and is one of the most popular ways to build a blog.

Not to be confused with WordPress.com which is online based and much less flexible.

Are there any blogging terms you’ve heard and are unsure of what they mean? Pop them in the comments.

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40 Blogging Terms You Should Know

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