Do you ever try to look up how-to instructions for your blog and after reading it, you wonder what in the fresh hell you just read? This blogging world is hard out there ya’ll.
I have gathered some common blog terms and blog definitions that I think will be helpful to you, if you are just starting out with your blog.
Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link. Please see my full disclosures page for more information.
Blog Definitions A-E
A
A/B Testing: Testing two different versions of content, to see which one resonates more with your target audience. For example, which blog post headlines get more clicks, or which email subject lines get the most opened emails.
Above-the-fold: A term from back in the day, newspaper articles and ads that were physically located above the fold of a newspaper were named “above-the-fold”. This was considered prime content, as it was what readers saw first, and as a result, sold the newspaper. This term is used in blogging to refer to the content of a blog or webpage that appears at the top before you need to scroll down.
Affiliate: A blogger that uses affiliate marketing (see below).
Affiliate Marketing: A referral program, or revenue-sharing program that compensates you for recommending a product or service to your readers (usually if the reader uses the affiliate link you provide to purchase the product or service that you recommended). See an example of affiliate marketing here.
Alt text (alternative text): Verbal description of an image or graphic, for the visually impaired. Frequently assessed by search engines, making it a valuable place to include targeted keywords.
Analytics: Information that is collected to evaluate the performance of your blog, such as visits to your site, time spent on your site, and website referrals to your site. It also may include some select audience demographics (gender, location, age), to give you a better understanding of who your readers are, so that you can tailor your content to them. A popular program is Google Analytics, which allows you to measure the amount of traffic to your blog, and advertising ROI (Return on Investment) from any amount that you spend on Google ads to advertise your product or service.
Anchor text: The text used within a hyperlink. For example, the anchor text of this hyperlink: Blog Quotes, is “blog quotes.”
Archive: A collection of all past blog posts
Avatar: A small graphic picture or thumbnail image used to represent a blogger online, and across other social-networking sites. Here is my Avatar, when I respond to comments on my blog:
B
Backlink: A link from another website that directs to a page or post on your website. A backlink usually takes you to a page or post on your website, with content related to what you were reading.
Black Hat SEO: Unethical tactics used to gain favor with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and increase your website’s ranking in search engine results. This practice is discouraged. Google knows. Google always knows. An example is keyword stuffing.
Blog: A website with conversational-style, informal articles that are published regularly. A blog usually has a goal, whether it is to educate, build a community, or build/grow a business.
Blogging: The act of writing for a blog
Bounce Rate: A bounce is a single-page session on your website. The bounce rate is the percentage of people who view only one page, before leaving your website. It is an analytics feature that measures the behaviors of visitors on your website. Bounce Rate can be tracked on Google Analytics. It is important to track because a high bounce rate (meaning a lot of people leave your site soon after arriving to it) indicates poor user experience, or that your content is not relevant/engaging to your readers. A high bounce rate is bad for SEO because Google isn’t going to recommend websites with poor user experience, or that aren’t relevant to user intent.
C
CAPTCHA: This is actually an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart”. This is a challenge-response test to verify that the data provided belongs to a human and not computer spam. Frequently used to verify data provided in forms and transactions.
Call to Action (CTA): Prompts readers to take a specific action. For example, a blogger might offer a related free product or service, in exchange for the reader’s email address (to then be added to the blogger’s email newsletter list).
Canonical tag: prevents issues with duplicate content for SEO by specifying which is the preferred version of a web page.
Category: A specific category label that bloggers assign to a blog post. This is more frequently used on blogs with multiple topics. For instance, my blog categories are “blogging” and “digital planners” (although I am thinking of doing away with the digital planner category for now and focusing on my passion for blogging).
Child Theme: a sub-theme that inherits all the functionality and style of the main theme, but is safe to edit without breaking something on your site.
Click Bait: Misleading headlines or text that trick readers into clicking on a link, with the belief that this link contains content that it doesn’t. Usually done to make the content highly shareable. This is a poor customer service tactic and one I do not practice.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): the percentage of people that click on an advertisement to arrive at your blog. Used to measure the success of an advertising campaign.
CMS (Content Management System): allows users to create, modify, and manage content, without requiring the use of technical knowledge. An example of a content management system is WordPress.
Content Strategy: planning for the creation and delivery of relevant and useful content about a particular topic.
Content Upgrade: An incentive given to readers for signing up for your email list. Usually, a free product or service is offered in exchange for the reader’s email address.
Conversion Rate: the percentage of blog visitors that successfully completed a particular metric. An example would be how many people sign up for your email list, or the percentage of people that buy your product.
Cost-Per-Click (CPC): Measures how much you spend for each click of your ad when you are advertising on a platform like Google.
cPanel: the web host’s control panel
CSS: This is short for Cascading Style Sheets. Written in HTML this is commonly used to style web pages. Styling options include page layouts, colors, and fonts. I do not mess around with CSS code. This is for more advanced users to modify the style of their website.
Blog: A website with conversational-style, informal articles that are published regularly. A blog usually has a goal, whether it is to educate, build a community, or build/grow a business.
D
Dashboard: The home base area that is located behind the scenes of your website, to help you navigate around your website, like installing plugins, creating blog posts, and creating menus for your website.
Domain Authority: Also known as domain rating, your domain authority is your ranking of authoritativeness on search engine results, on a scale from 0 to 100. The closer to 100, the higher your domain authority.
Domain Name: Your website’s equivalent to a physical address. It’s the web address that people type into the address bar to find your website. Your own unique domain name helps establish credibility, memorability, and effective branding.
E
eBook: A digital book that can be read in digital format. Creating and selling your own ebook is a popular avenue for monetization. See an example of an ebook here.
Editorial Calendar: A map of ideas for future blog posts. This helps organize your ideas and makes blog writing a lot easier when you don’t have to come up with a new idea every week.
Email List: list of your subscribers that have signed up to receive regular emails from you.
Engagement: The collective amount of likes, comments, and shares of your blog content.
Evergreen Content: Blog content that remains relevant for years to come. Typically, these posts are in-depth and thorough.
External Linking: a link from your website, to an outside website. Typically done to establish credibility, if linked to reputable content.
Blog Definitions F-L
F
Favicon: The image displayed beside your website name in the browser tab. Leaving this to the default image makes you look like a rookie. Make your own favicon! Here is mine:
Footer: The very bottom of your website. This space is most often used to list site navigation links. The footer is typically displayed on every page and post of your website, except for your landing pages, or sales pages. My footer displays my logo, and links to my privacy policy, website disclaimer, terms of use and contact me. It also displays my copyright and a form to subscribe to my email newsletter list.
G
Guest Post: Writing a blog post for another person’s blog, in an effort to get backlinks and traffic back to your own website. Increasing your number of backlinks increases your credibility in the eyes of search engines, so this is great for SEO.
Google AdSense: A program that allows Google to run targeted ads on your blog. Advertisers pay Google either by click (PPC) or impression (CPM), and Google shares a percentage of that revenue with publishers that allow Google Adsense to advertise on their blog or website.
H
H1: Heading that contains your blog post title, only used once per page or post.
H2: Subheading that is used to break up major sections of your blog post content.
H3: Subheading of H2, sectioning your content even further.
HARO (Help A Reporter Out): This is a service that you can sign up for. You receive an email three times a day, with reporter queries for information from experts. If a query matches your area of expertise and potentially gets some backlinks from reputable websites.
Header: The very top of your website. This space is most often used to showcase your blog’s logo and key navigation links. The header is typically displayed on every page and post of your website, except for your landing pages, or sales pages. My header displays my logo, and links to my blog, resources, freebies, and about me. It also displays a search bar for readers to search my website.
Hex Codes (short for hexadecimal): A specific color code, made up of a combination of 6 letters and numbers. Example
HTML: This is short for Hypertext Markup Language, the language used to write web pages. Like CSS code, I don’t mess around with HTML, so you don’t need to worry about it either. This ain’t for us, honey.
Hyperlink: Used synonymously with the word “link”, this is clickable content within a web page that takes the user to another page, website, or within part of the same page.
I
Indexed: The process by which search engines find your content and then make it available to users by storing it and displaying it in search results. To know whether or not your content has been indexed simply do a search for a page and if a search engine returns your page then it has indeed been indexed.
Infographic: A graphic that is used to break down complex information into visual content that is easier to digest. An example of an infographic can be seen here.
Internal Linking: A link that connects one blog post to another blog post on the same site.
K
Keywords: Targeted words that best describe what a webpage or blog post is about. Using relevant keywords from keyword research helps Google determine the subject of the article.
Keyword Research: The process of ideally finding highly searched keywords with low competition, so you have a chance to rank for them.
Keyword Stuffing: The practice of adding too many keywords within a single post or page. This practice is looked down upon by search engines.
L
Landing Page: A landing page is a standalone web page that a person “lands” on after clicking through an ad. Every content strategy should include the use of landing pages to increase conversions.
Lead Magnet An incentive that is offered to the reader, in order to encourage them to add themselves to your email list. This term is like a content upgrade.
Listicle: Just a fancy word for a blog post in list form.
Long-Form Content: Content that is greater than 1,000 words. Longer content is favored by Google (as long as it is quality content. Don’t write a bunch of fluff, just to meet a word quota.)
Long-Tail Keywords: Keyword phrases, usually made up of 3-4 words. Long-tail keywords are ideal because they are less competitive to rank for.
Blog Definitions M-S
M
Media Kit: Relevant statistics about your blog or website in a form that can be used to pitch to potential sponsors.
Meta Description: a description of your blog post or page for search engines
Meta Tags: Collectively, meta titles, descriptions, and keywords are known as meta tags. The tags are elements that provide information about a given web page, most often to help search engines categorize them correctly.
Meta Title (Page Title): The page title is the bold text that shows up on a search results page when you rank in a search engine.
Mobile-Optimized: A blog that’s been tweaked to be viewed on handheld devices with a great user experience. My advice is to find a theme in WordPress that does this for you. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Monetization: The practice of earning income from your blog. Examples of monetization methods include advertisements, selling
N
Newsletter: Email-based content delivery that’s sent out regularly to the subscribers of a blog.
Niche: the specific category of topics you blog about.
O
Off-Page SEO: All activity done away from your website (by you, or others) to increase the ranking of a page with a search engine. It includes building backlinks, doing competitor research, writing guest blogs, being active, and promoting posts on social media
On-Page SEO: Optimizing content on your website. It includes optimizing keywords, headers, meta titles, meta descriptions, and images.
Opt-in: An incentive (like a content upgrade or lead magnet) that’s offered to readers who opt-in to receive email updates about your blog.
P
Parent theme: the main theme used to control the visual style of your blog.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC): a form of advertising where bloggers pay for each click their advertisement receives.
Permalink: The unique URL of the blog post that you publish.
Pillar Content: a central piece of content that serves as the cornerstone for a topic cluster
Platform: a software or service used to manage and publish content on the internet in the form of a blog. WordPress.org is my blogging platform.
Plugin: Plug-ins are add-ons that provide additional features to the host, without altering the host itself.
Posts: The blog post is an entry (article) that you write on a blog. It can include content in the form of text, photos, infographics, or videos. Posts are dynamic and updated regularly
Pages: Blog pages are displayed independently of post history and are more static. They remain the same from day to day since they are rarely updated. Normally used for information that you want to share with readers but don’t expect to update frequently.
R
Redirect: Used to specify an alternative URL in order to redirect the user (or search engine) to a different location.
ROI (Return on Investment): a calculation that compares an investment’s benefits to its costs and shows the earnings you may be able to expect in the future. The ROI metric is used by investors to evaluate their investments and judge if they are profitable.
S
Sales Page: a standalone page created with one specific purpose in mind, to secure sales for your product.
Self-Hosted Blog: When the blogger owns both their blog content and their domain name.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization): the practice of optimizing your website to improve your blog’s rankings in search engine result pages.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page): how your blog is performing in organic search results.
Sidebar: A vertical section or column, located on one side of a webpage. This area is usually used to promote related content, subscribing to your email list and advertisements. This is my sidebar, only displayed on select web pages:
Sitemap: A public directory or index, to help users and search engines easily access pages of your website. Basically, this is a page on your site where you tell users about key pages of your website by listing them in almost an outline format and then linking to those internal pages.
Skyscraper Technique: The skyscraper technique is a tactic that’s used by bloggers to analyze all the existing content for a particular keyword phrase—and then come up with more creative & useful ways to better answer those reader queries with content that’s significantly more valuable.
Slug: The portion of a permalink (URL) starting after .com/.
Split Testing: synonymous with A/B testing
Sponsored Post: A blog post that’s been paid for by advertisers or brands to promote their product or service.
SSL(Secure Sockets Layer): an encryption-based Internet security protocol.
Subscriber: A person who’s signed up for your email newsletter.
Swipe File: a collection of marketing and copywriting examples to use for inspiration.
Blog Definitions T-Z
T
Tagline: The slogan used by blog owners to describe the purpose of their site. My tagline is:
Tags: A tag is a bit like a category in that it is another way of classifying a blog post. It is a word or set of words that help define what the post is about.
Tailwind: an official partner of Pinterest that allows you to schedule your Pinterest posts ahead of time.
Template: A single-page layout, available within a WordPress theme. Applicable to only certain website pages, rather than the entire site. Multiple templates can be used on a website at one time.
Theme: Dictates the complete design of the entire WordPress site, which determines the general appearance and how the website functions. This includes fonts, color palettes, page layouts, sizing, positioning, etc. Only one theme can be active on a website at a time. To customize the theme, CSS coding is needed. This is why I prefer editing templates over themes.
Traffic: The number of visitors a blog receives within a given time period.
U
URL (Uniform Resource Locator): this is the address of a piece of information that can be found on the web such as a page, image or document.
User Intent: User intent describes the user’s motive, or what they hope to find when they type a query into a search engine.
User Experience: Optimizing user experience means designing your website in such a way that users enjoy it.
V
VA (Virtual Assistant): someone who (often) helps bloggers with administrative tasks, usually remotely.
Vlog: A video blog that publishes content primarily in video format.
W
Web Server: A web server can contain one or more websites, and it’s what keeps your blog online.
WordPress: an open-source content management system (CMS). It’s a popular tool for individuals without any coding experience who want to build websites and blogs
White Hat SEO: Necessary terms and conditions of SEO. This includes offering quality content and services, content-relevant keywords, keyword-rich page titles and metadata, fast site loading times, and mobile friendliness.
Widget: Areas of your website that are uniquely designed to stand out and commonly found in the sidebars of your website (left or hand side of a page)
Y
Yoast: A popular WordPress plugin used by bloggers to improve their SEO.
From …
With Love
Thank you for hanging out with me and reading this blog post. I hope that you this reference tool of blog definitions to be helpful. Pin this to your Pinterest board, so you can always look back on it if you need to.
Do you have other topics or products that you wish to see on my website? Let me know here.
