May 21, 2020

in Blogging Tips For Beginners , How To Start & Grow A Christian Blog by Nicky Johnson

65 Blogging Terms & Vocabulary To Know To Make You Sound Like A Blogging Pro

laptop and microphone blogging terms and vocabulary

Terms Used In Blogging

There are about a million different blogging terms and vocabulary words that it can be hard to figure it all out. In this post, I explain 65 of the most common terms you might see bloggers use.

Do you want to be able to intelligently discuss blogging tips and strategies with more experienced bloggers but struggle to understand all of the jargon that is used in the blogging world?

I totally get you. There is so much to learn when it comes to blogging that there really should be a blogging dictionary (hmmm…maybe I should create one, no?).

If you read posts in blogging Facebook groups and draw a blank on what they are talking about, this post will help you, promise!

We really do have our own vocab here in these blogging streets.

This post was something that was requested by one of my lovely subscribers so I thank her so much for the suggestion.

I’m sure to learn something new in the making of this post and the nerd in me is super psyched about it.

Now let’s get to learning shall we!?

65 Blogging Terms To Make You Sound Like A Pro Blogger

1. A/B Testing

A/B testing (AKA split testing) is a way of testing out which versions of a piece of content perform the best.

For example, if you market on Pinterest, you can create two different pins for the same blog post but use 2 different headlines to see which pin gets the most clicks.

This is important because the more A/B testing you do the more you get to know your audience and which words and phrases they connect with the most.

This is helpful also with email marketing headlines as well.

2.Above-the-Fold

The content of a blog or webpage which appears up top before you need to scroll down.

Above the fold refers to all of a webpage that you can see without scrolling down. Once you start scrolling down, you have gone below the fold.

This is important because the content above the fold might be the only content that the web visitor sees. If they don’t like what they see they may click away.

3.Affiliate

Affiliate marketing is where you, as a blogger, promote the products produced by someone else. They might be products produced by a major company, small business, or another blogger.

In exchange for you promoting their product, they will give you a commission if anyone buys their product through your special referral link.

4. Anchor text

You see anchor text all the time in blog posts. For example, this right here is anchor text to a blog post about Tailwind.

Anchor text is a kind of link that uses words to direct you to a new page instead of showing you the actual URL of the new page.

This is an example of anchor text.

5. Avatar

This can mean 2 different things depending on the context.
An avatar can mean a picture or thumbnail that represents you online. It can sometimes be cartoon-like.

An avatar can also refer to a customer avatar which is a detailed write up of your ideal reader or customer.

You can totally personify this avatar and even give them a name.

This avatar makes it easier to write blog posts, create products, and connect with your reader because you are seeing them as a 3-dimensional person and not just a reader.

6. Analytics

When you hear people talking about their analytics they are referring to information, metrics, and data gathered in regards to a website/blog, email marketing, etc.

You use this information to evaluate the performance of whatever it is that you’re measuring. It helps you track your progress over time.

The most common form of analytics that you’ll hear bloggers talk about is Google Analytics or GA.

You can sign up for Google Analytics for free to be able to track data on your blog such as blog traffic and the demographics of your audience.

7.Alt Text

Alt text is short for alternative text. It is used to describe the images on a webpage.

Have you ever gone to a website and some of the images on the page don’t show up. What you’ll see in place of the picture is the alt text.

8. Blog

A blog is a website that the owner (or its contributors) update on a regular basis.

9. Blogosphere

The blogosphere refers to the worldwide community of bloggers.

10. Backlink

A backlink refers to a link on someone’s site that links back to your site.

Okay, that was slightly confusing so let me put it another way.

If I put a link in one of my blog posts to your blog, that link would be called a backlink. It takes you from my blog to your blog.

11. Brand

Your brand is the overall feel and look of your blog and any of your social media accounts.

For example, using the same colors and fonts on your blog, Pinterest pins, and Instagram posts is a form of branding.

The personality of your blog. It’s your logo, your slogan, and the way your blog makes people feel.

12. Call to Action

A call to action or a CTA is when you direct your audience to do something (or rather ask them politely).

For example, if I say hey guys I have a free Christian Blogging Roadmap that will help you go from blog launch to your first 100 email subscribers.

Just enter your email address below and it will be sent to your inbox, me saying “enter your email address below” is the call to action.

13. CMS or Platform

CMS means content management system. It is a software program that helps you manage your content. If you are using WordPress.org then you are using a CMS.

14. Click-Through

Click through is when someone clicks a link that leads to your site.

This can refer to someone click through on one of your Pinterest pins, someone clicking an advertisement, someone clicking a link to your blog from your Facebook page, etc.

15. Click-Through-Rate

Click-Through-Rate or CTR measures the percentage of people who click through on your link. This is a way to measure how effective your keywords are or how much your audience responds to them.

16. Content Marketing

Content marketing is when a blogger uses amazing content to try and convert the reader in some way.

You might try and convert them into becoming an email subscriber, a customer, etc.

Content marketing is a great way to build trust with your readers so that they know you are an honest and genuine person.

17. Content Syndication

This is when the blog posts on your blog are published on another website. It does not have to be the entire article that is published on another site.

18. Content Upgrade

Content upgrade is when you offer a free resource to your readers that is closely aligned with the blog post they are reading.

For instance, I have a post about building an emergency savings and as a content upgrade, I created an emergency savings tracker.

In order to get the tracker, the reader has to sign up for my email list.

The content upgrade is used to entice the reader to trust me with their email address in exchange for something that is valuable to them.

19. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate refers to the percentage of readers on your blog that follow through on your CTA.

For instance, if you have a blog post that 100 people see and you have a content upgrade available on that blog post, the conversion rate would be the percentage of that 100 people who converted and signed up for the content upgrade.

If out of the 100 people who read the post only 2 people signed up for the content upgrade then you would have a 2% conversion rate.

20. cPanel

The cPanel refers to the dashboard that your web host assigns to you. It gives you the ability to make all kinds of technical changes to your website. This is how I access my Hostgator account.

21. Cost Per Click

Cost Per Click or CPC is an advertising term. CPC refers to how much it will cost you when someone clicks on your ad.

For instance, if you did a promoted pin on Pinterest, this is considered an ad. Every time someone clicks on that ad, you have to pay Pinterest an agreed-upon cost.

22. Directory

A blog directory is a listing of different blogs on the internet. They are (or should be) nicely categorized and easy to browse through.

You can add your blog link to directories sometimes for free. This is a way to have more people to discover your blog.

23. Dashboard

A dashboard is what you see when you log into the backend of your website. When you log into WordPress, Wix, Blogger, Squarespace or wherever you access your blog, what you are seeing is your dashboard.

This where you can make changes to your blog posts, add pictures, etc.

24. Direct Traffic

Direct traffic is when someone types in your blog’s URL into the search bar in order to access it.

They don’t go to Google or find it on Pinterest. They either know your blog so well that they just automatically go to it when they need information that you talk about.

Or maybe they are typing it from a business card that they received from you.

25. Domain Name

This is the web address of your blog. The domain name of this blog is Christianbloggingacademy.com

26. Draft

This is the state of your blog post before it is published. When it’s in draft mode, only you can see it and not your readers.

Once you publish the post, it has left draft mode and gone into published or live mode.

27. Embed

Embedding is when you take like a picture or a video from another site and put it into within the content of your blog post.

You can embed Youtube videos into your blog posts for example.

28. Evergreen Content

Evergreen content is content that doesn’t get old or stale. It remains true in your blog’s niche for many years.

It’s like a piece of content that will still be relevant 5 years from now.

29. Favicon

A favicon is the little icon that you can see on a tab in your web browser.

30. Header

This is the top of your blog where your logo, tagline, and other branding elements are usually found.

31. Hosting Service

Your web host or hosting service is the company that allows your website/blog to be seen online. That’s the least technical way to put it.

They literally host/accommodate/serve your blog so that it works properly and is usable.

Examples of a web host would be Hostgator which is the one that I use and have used for many years. I totally recommend them and you can read more about them here.

32. HTML

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. It is the language used to write web pages. It is not considered to be a programming language.

33. Hyperlink

A link that directs you from one page to another. It can be a link that directs you to another page on that website or blog or it can be a link to another website altogether. You can hyperlink texts or pics, for example.

34. Infographic

An info graphic is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a graphic or image that contains information that teaches you something. See above.

35. IP address

IP (interent protocol) address is a number that’s assigned to computers or internet abled devices so that it can “talk” to other devices that are using Internet Protocol.

All computers online have one.

36. Listicle

A listicle is a blog post that present information in list form. This blog post you’re reading is a listicle.

37. Lead Magnet

This goes by many names. Lead magnet, opt-in freebie, bribe to subscribe, etc.

It refers to the free gift or offer you present to your readers in order to get them to sign up for your email list.

It is usually general free resource that relates to the subject of your blog. This is as opposed to a content upgrade that is related to the content of that one specific post.

38. Monetization

Monetization or monetizing a blog are the different methods a blogger using to earn money from their blog.

You can earn money through ads, affiliate offers, printables, courses, and more.

39. Niche

A blog niche is the specific category that your blog would go in. Christian blogging (a blog about Christian blogging tips) would be considered a niche.

There are all kinds of blogs that teach about blogging. That would be the broad niche.

A blog on Christian blogging would be a sub-niche. A blog about Christian blogging ministries would be considered a niche and maybe even a microniche.

40. Page

A page is static (for the most part) and is not updated frequently. An exception to that would be a blog page or the page that shows all of your recent posts.

It would update every time you publish a post. An example of a static page would be an About me page.

41. Permalink

This is the specific URL of your blog post or page.

42. Pingback (AKA Trackbacks)

A pingback lets an author know that you linked to their website. That author/blogger must have pingbacks enabled on their site.

43. Plugin

Pieces of software that you install from your CMS like WordPress dashboard that enhances the capabilities of your blog.

You can find plugins to put social media icons on your blog, to make your website faster and everything in between.

44. Pillar Content

Pillar content is usually long, thorough content that could be considered like a reference or guide to people in your industry or niche.

Many ultimate guides (or blog posts like this one) are considered pillar content.

45. Podcasting

Creating audio files about specific subjects and uploading them onto platforms like Apple so anyone can listen to it.

Most podcasts are free to listen to.

46. Post

A blog post is an article published on a blog or website. It is usually text with images and sometimes videos but they are not required.

A post could be all images, all text, or all video. Posts are usually created on a frequent basis.

47. Post Slug

A post slug refers to part at the end of the URL (typically the end) that identifies a page or blog post. For example, in this URL christiainbloggingacademy.com/blog/seo, SEO would be the slug.

48. RSS Feed

RSS feed or Really Simple Syndication is another way of subscribing to a blog.

When someone subscribes to blog through an RSS feed all of the content from that blog is found on one central page making it easy to read a lot of blogs in a short amount of time.

This is different from subscribing to someone’s email list where you would get personal emails from the blog owner.

49. Sponsored Post

A sponsored post is when a company (usually) will pay you to write a blog post that will promote one of their products.

50. Subscriber

A subscriber could either be someone who has subscribed to your email list or someone who has subscribed to your blog through an RSS feed.

51. Self-Hosted blog

This refers to a blog that is owned by the blog creator. For instance, I own Christian Blogging Academy.

You can tell that by my domain name. But if my blog was on Blogger and the domain name was christianbloggingacademy.blogger.com, that would indicate that my blog and its content is truly owned by Blogger and not be me because I am on their platform.

If you are a serious blogger and not doing this as a hobby then you will want to have a blog that’s self-hosted.

52. Sitemap

A sitemap is literally a list of all of the pages on your blog. Now, it is not really something that your readers can see.

It is more for Google’s search engine crawlers so they can see what your blog is about and which pages should rank for certain search terms.

53. Spam (Comments or Email)

Spam are those annoying comments you get on your blog that look like (and probably are) written by robots.

They say things like “You’re blog make pretty. Very good visit. Content much needed” lol. Delete these.

Spam emails are emails that are unsolicited and go to a SPAM folder in your inbox, usually.

54. Tag

Tags are the keywords that describe and categorize the blog posts and page on your blog. For instance, for this particular post I would put it in as a Blogging for beginners tag.

55. Tagline

Taglines are those short catchy phrases that you use to describe what your blog is about.

The slogan used by blog owners to describe the purpose of their site. My tagline is, for Kingdom and Business minded bloggers.

That let’s you know right away (if the actual name wasn’t enough ha ha!) that this blog is about blogging for Jesus and also focuses on earning money.

56. Traffic

This refers to the number of visitors that come to your blog.

57. Troll

Trolls are people who leave negative comments on your blog just to rile you up and see how you will react.

58. Theme (WordPress)

A theme is the code that determines how your blog will look. You can buy themes already made or if you know CSS you can create one yourself.

59. Target Reader

The target reader or target audience, is the group of people that you are targeting with your blog’s content.

It is the group of people that you want to touch the most with your words or the ones you want to serve the most.

60. Tailwind

Tailwind is the best (in my opinion) tool to schedule your Pinterest pins. Using Tailwind helps your pins to circulate on Pinterest automatically which boosts your engagement and blog traffic.

It is also an approved Pinterest tool which is very important because those that are not can be shut down (like Board Booster).

Check out Tailwind’s Features Here!

61. Thin Content

Thin content is a blog post that is short (usually) and does not contain information that is considered helpful to that blog’s audience.

62. Webinar

A webinar is a live or sometimes pre-recorded seminar that covers a certain topic.

Usually, at the end of the webinar, the host will try to sell you something that is related to the content of the webinar.

63. Widgets

Widgets are little drag and drop tools found in the WordPress dashboards that allow you to add different functions to the footers, headers, and sidebars of your blog.

64. WYSIWYG

This stands for “what you see is what you get”. These kinds of editors allow you to add content to a blog post without knowing how to use code.

In WordPress, it is the visual editor. The code editor is called text.

65. WordPress

A free blogging platform or CMS, as mentioned above.

Have you learned some new blogging terms and vocabulary?

Phew, that was quite a list of words ya’ll! I hope that some of those words were familiar to you but that you always learned a lot of new things as well!

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