New Blogger? You’ll Love To Know These Blogging Terms!

(At 50+ Too! )

Blogging vocabulary, blogging terms, blogging words, or blogging terminology… No matter what you call it, just learn it!

Blogging terms!… I know! There are so many new words to learn we can easily get lost!

Even though the blogging world seems strange and complicated at first, learning the wording associated with it will help you a lot.

You will quickly realize that it’s less complicated than you thought! 🙂

Of course, there are tons of blogging terms and words! But because we don’t want that post to last forever, we will cover the main ones… and there are quite a few! ha! ha! But I promise I will talk only about the ones you really need to know to start your (successful!) blog 😉

1. Blogging Vocabulary…The Base
2. General Blogging Terminology
3. The Anatomy Of A Blog Post
4. Terms To Set Up Your New Blog
5. The WordPress.org World
6. Set Up Your WordPress Pages
7. The WP Dashboard
8. SEO Vocabulary For New Bloggers
9. What Are Links?
10. Learn About Blogging Technology & Codes
11. Before We Conclude
12. To Conclude

So, ready to finally understand every word you read?!

*Before we jump into our topic, make sure you save this post.

No doubt, you will love to come back to it… 😉 more than once!

Blogging Vocabulary… The Base!

First thing first, let’s start with the base! The most common words you’ll read everywhere.

I know you’re probably familiar with most of these terms, but let’s do a little recap; we have to start somewhere, right? 😊

• Blog: A blog is an informational website consisting of posts or articles, often informal, but most of the time, blogs are there to help people find good information on a specific topic. Some bloggers also use their blogs to compare products or give their opinion on one or several topics. A blog is where you share your talent and knowledge to help others.
• Blogger: People that are blogging are called bloggers. Food bloggers, lifestyle bloggers… no matter the topic, if you blog, well, you’re a blogger!
• Blogging: The action of writing and adding new material or regularly updating your blog.
• Niche: A blog niche is a specialized topic area that you’ll be focusing on when writing content. Blogging niches allow you to narrow down your audience and craft content that is much more relevant to them.
• Post/Blog Post: Blog posts are pieces of content on your blog. It’s an article, news piece, or guide that’s published in the blog section of your website. A blog post typically covers a specific topic or query, is educational in nature, ranges from 600 to 2,000+ words, and contains images, videos, infographics, or any interactive charts.
• Article Vs. Blog Post: A post is usually more opinion-based and relaxed; on the other hand, articles are more research-based and more informative. But these days, both terms are often used interchangeably.
• Blog Post Content: This is basically what you will write about. And most of the time, your post content will be related to the same topic.
• Posting/Publishing: Is the action of publishing a new post or article on your blog.
• Traffic: Is the number of visitors that your blog gets. The more traffic you get, the more engagement you are likely to receive. Traffic can come from different sources, such as search engines, social media, other bloggers, etc.
• Blogosphere: Is a term used when referring to the blogging community as a whole.
• Tagline: This is your slogan. It explains in a few words what your blog/website is about.

*Disclosure: I may receive a small commission if you make a purchase through one of my affiliate links, of course, at no additional cost to you!  I share and promote only products I use, trust, and love! 🖤 Products I know you will love too! 😉Please read our disclosure for more information.

Blogging Terms…

General Blogging Terminology

Permalinks, snippets, subdomains, evergreen content, Phew! There are so many blogging terms!

I was so confused at first! How will I learn all these new words? 🤔 How long will it take me?

But no worries! Most of these words make so much sense that it is pure logic! You will quickly get it. And once you get familiar with these; blogging gets easier…and so much more fun!

After all, you start your blog to have fun, right?

• Domain: This is the name of a website (mine is So Perfectly Simple). It’s the name that will come right after www. ( for example; www.soperfectlysimple.com). You obtain a domain by purchasing it from a domain name registrar or a web hosting service ( you can even get it for free with BlueHost!)
• URL: Means Uniform Ressource Locator. It’s the complete web address to find a specific webpage. It’s what others will type in the search bar to go to your blog. It contains a domain name, plus www. For example, my blog URL is www.soperfectlysimple.com, and the URL for this post is www.soperfectlysimple.com/blogging-terms-for-new-bloggers/
• Evergreen Content: This is a blog post that is relevant all year long. As an example: How to start your blog at 50+ obviously, you can use this guide and start a blog whenever you want! ha! ha!

 

• Seasonal Content is content that is only relevant during a particular season. For example, Best Spring Activity,  Best Holiday Cookie Recipes, How to Plan A Super Bowl Party…
• Round-up Post: These are pieces of content in which a list of selected experts give their insights on the same topic in short descriptions that include their opinions, predictions, or reviews. Of course, round-up posts are good for traffic too! You will have to grant each of these experts a link to their website under their quotes so they can receive traffic from you. It will also generate more traffic for you because they will probably share your post with their followers because they were mentioned in it. It’s a win-win!
• SEO: SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization’, which is the process of getting traffic from free, organic, editorial, or natural search results in search engines. It aims to improve your website’s position in search results pages. Remember, the higher the website is listed, the more people will see it (more about SEO in a few minutes!)

Keep on reading; the best is yet to come! 😉

• Link: In a website, a hyperlink (or link) is an item like a word, phrase, or button that points to another location. When you click on a link, the link will take you to the target of the link, which may be a webpage, document, or other online content. Websites use hyperlinks as a way to navigate online content.
• Permalink: The permalink is the address that will be created exclusively for one blog post. Of course, you can make changes to it by clicking the edit button beside it.
• Keyword/Keyphrase: A keyword or a keyphrase is a term used in digital marketing to describe a word or a group of words an Internet user uses to perform a search in a search engine or search bar. Keywords are crucial for SEO (more about it in the SEO section!)
• Snippet: This is a small piece or a brief extract of your blog post.

Blogging Terms…

Now, let’s talk about the anatomy of a blog post

 

Actually, here is what your readers will see once they land on one of your posts. No need to say that each piece is important, right?

That’s why I made a Blog Plan, and I follow it for ALL my blog posts! I’m sure not to forget anything! Grab your free copy of my Simple Blog Plan, I know it will help you too!

• Title: The title obviously is the title! 😉 But it’s important to know that your SEO Title and your Post Title can be different; totally up to you to choose what works better for your blog post.
• Menu/Table of content: A table of contents is a list of jump links that lead to different sections on a page or post. They’re particularly useful for long posts, as they highlight the critical sections of an article in order to improve the reader experience. A reader might jump to the section that is most relevant to their question.
• Body: The body is the “meat and potatoes” of your blog post. It can be about anything from new, incisive observations that will revolutionize the life or business of your readers to the latest info in your industry. In other words, it’s the most important part of your article where all the crucial information stands.
• Sidebar: A sidebar is a column placed to the right or left of a web page’s primary content area. It could be a sticky sidebar or a floating one. They’re commonly used to display various types of supplementary information for users, such as Navigational links to key pages.
• Header/Footer: The header and footer are typically the top and bottom sections, respectively, that remain the same- no matter which webpage a visitor navigates to. 

• Logo: Your logo is your website’s image. The main part of your branding (more to come 😉). So make sure you choose a logo that represents you or what your blog is about. I chose a daisy because, for me, there’s nothing more So Perfectly Simple than a daisy!

Blogging Terms…

Terms To Set Up Your New Blog

Now time to learn everything about your new website.

Almost every new blogger gets a little overwhelmed and confused with all of these!

Hosting Platform? Hosting Provider? Web Hosting?… mmm… How to unscramble all this?

• Platform/Web Hosting Platform:

A blogging platform is an operating system where software applications can run. It’s what allows the interaction between a reader, a computer, and an application. It is programmed by web developers with a computer language called code.

• Host/Hosting Provider:

A host will provide you with the services and technologies necessary to run your website on the Internet. Like if they were renting you space on their computer servers to house your website. And because your site has to live somewhere, you absolutely need a Host Provider. See below; there are two types of web hosting platforms. The most popular ones are BlueHost and SiteGround

• Hosted Platform:

Hosted platforms are the kind of platforms that already include the hosting service.

They provide you with the server space so you can run your website and domain, and they make website building extremely easy. BUT, you won’t have full control of your website, and customization options are extremely limited. You wouldn’t be able to monetize it, either. It’s as if you were not the owner of your own website!

I would never, ever recommend a Hosted Platform! You want full control of your blog at all times! Some of the Hosted Platforms: Wix, Squarespace, Blogger, and WordPress.com ( be careful! there are two different WordPress, don’t mix them! WordPress.com is a Hosted platform, while WordPress.org is a Self-Hosted one.

• Self-Hosted:

With a Self-Hosted Platform, you will need to have your own hosting company. And yes, you will have to build your site, but you will have total control of it at all times!

You can customize your site, use any plugins you want, and choose from thousands of beautiful themes. Also, you can run ads if you like, add affiliated links, or even have an e-commerce store, and all profit belongs to you! You would really be the boss of your blog!

Self-Hosted is what I highly recommend to any new blogger! Yes, it’s a little more expensive ( but really not that much!), but it’s definitely worth it!

The most popular Self-Hosted platform is WordPress.org.

WordPress.org is software, which means you can download it and modify it as you wish. They also have tons of plugins and tons of ready-to-install themes. It’s very easy to use, and on top of it, WordPress.org is SEO-friendly; what more can we ask? 😊

• WordPress:

WordPress is a big thing, and it deserves his whole section… and this section is right below!

Blogging Terms…

The WordPress.org World

You will spend so much time in that WordPress World! ha! ha! Better learn all the right vocabulary now 🙂

Let’s go through all those blogging terms that look so strange for all beginners.

Believe me; you will soon become a WordPress Expert!… OK, maybe not an expert, but you’ll know more than enough to make your blogging journey a breeze. Remember that you start your blog to have fun!

• WordPress.org: As we saw earlier, WordPress.org is a Self-Hosted Platform. The software that will host your website. Also good to know that it’s the most popular content management system in the world!
• Dashboard: The dashboard is the first screen you land on right after you log into your WordPress site. It’s the main screen and where you’ll spend a lot of time. The WordPress admin dashboard, often called WP Admin or WP admin panel, is essentially the control panel for your entire WordPress website. It’s where you create new pages or posts, change settings, install and work with plugins, customize the appearance of your website, and much more! It’s the home base of your website. Also called Admin Panel.
• Administrator/Admin: Is the owner of the website and has total control over the blog. The administrator has the power to assign and/or remove other roles within his blog.
• Editor: An editor can pretty much do the same as the Administrator, such as writing posts as well as editing, publishing, or deleting them. but he can’t take any decision.
• Author/Contributors: An author can write and publish blog posts, while contributors can only write and edit post content.
• C Panel: This is the Control panel of your hosting provider. From this C Panel, you will control any actions related to your hosting services. CPanel allows you to publish websites, manage domains, organize web files, create email accounts, etc. Learn everything about WP cPanel …and more!

Still there? There’s quite a lot, right?

• Archives: This is where you can store your old blog posts in a way your readers can easily access them. A great way to organize your blog. Some old blog posts sometimes become less relevant, so instead of deleting them, moving them to the archives page is a good way to keep the info close to you.
• Posts Section: Guess what? This is where you write new posts and edit older ones. But wait, there’s a little more in this section…
• Categories: If you blog about many different topics, having categories will help you keep your content organized and make it easy to navigate for your readers.
• Tags: Tags are kind of keywords on your posts. They are short and have to describe specific information about your blog post.  And they are good for SEO too! As an example, if you write a post about The Best Low-Fat Brownies Recipes, your tags could be low-fat recipes, best brownies recipes, low-fat brownies, brownies, and any other keywords that you think your readers will use when searching.
• Media: This is where you stock all your images, pictures, videos, and audio documents. All these documents will be stocked in your media library. By clicking the add media button while writing a post, you can select any of these to add to your article or choose the “add new” option to download new images.

Finally…

• Description, Alt text: For Seo purposes, it’s better if you fill out the file’s title, alt text, and description using keywords related to your post. The image alt text is an alternative text that will show in place of the image. If the image can’t load properly, the alt text will show up instead. Make sure the alt text well describes your image. Learn everything about alt text and how to write it right here!

Blogging Terms…

Set Up Your WordPress Pages

• Home Page: The home page is the first page that we see when we land on your website. By default, it will be a page that shows your recent blog posts in reverse chronological order. You can also set up your home page to be a static page.
• Static Page: This is a stationary page. You can use this page to display customized sections of your blog, making it looks more like a website. If you have many categories or sections, this is a great place to display them, with the titles of your posts and links to make it easier for your readers to find your great content.
• Landing Page: This is a bit different than any other page. A landing page is mostly used as a sales page. Your readers will land on this page after signing up for a freebie or by clicking a link to purchase a product or service you sell. It’s important that this landing page carries a clear message as to what you should do once you’re there. It has to be clutter-free and contain a clear call to action (CTA). Remove any ads, sidebars, menus, or extra links. It has to be totally dedicated to the product you are selling.
• Sales Page: Pretty much the same as a landing page; selling products is the main goal of that page.

Pages, pages, and more pages!!

• Archive Page: A blog archive page organizes your individual blog posts in a user-friendly way and encourages readers to explore various individual blog posts, blog categories, and tags. It also highlights your expertise and the range of subjects your expertise covers. WordPress makes it easy to create these pages, and you can choose from many templates. You can also create several archive pages on your blog.
• About Me Page: Yes, an About Me page is about you… well, kind of! Your readers will come to that page to learn more about you. Info here should be simple and straightforward and ideally include a picture of you. But the most important on this About Me Page is to write about what you can do to help your readers. What will they learn from you, and why they should trust you. There are tons of About Me Page templates on the internet, I suggest you check some of them to give you an idea.

 

• Contact Me Page: Yes, you guessed it! A contact page is where you add all the ways that your readers can contact you. Email, phone number ( if needed!), social media channels… Make it easy for visitors to contact you, especially if you offer a service or sell products.
• Privacy Policy Page: This is another page you should add to your blog. It tells your visitors what info you collect from them and what you do with it. It’s a legal requirement to protect your reader’s privacy. You will find tons of privacy policy page templates on the internet.
• Disclaimer Page: Having a disclaimer page is a must for all bloggers thinking about monetizing their blogs. It’s the law! You have to disclose any affiliation you have with companies that pay you or give you any kind of rewards and incentives for recommending their products. Again, you will find a lot of different Disclaimer Page templates online.

Oh, my Gush! So many pages here! 😆

Blogging terms…

The WP Dashboard!

Stop talking about pages! Let’s get back to our WP Dashboard; because there are still a few other things to learn 😉

• Appearance: This is an important section. Here you can make any changes to customize your website, colors, logo, and fonts…
• Theme: The first on the sub-section list. As you know, the theme of your blog is the design of your blog. There are many different themes available ( free or paid). Make sure you choose one that is simple and easy to customize. I use the Astra theme, and I just love it! I share a list of all my favorite amazing blogging tools right here 😉 I’m sure many of them would be as useful for you as they are for me! Ok, back to your theme now! The default theme is the theme you are assigned by default when you download WordPress. But I highly recommend you pick one that will reflect your personality and brand.
• Customize: Here, you’ll be able to edit colors, header, text, footer, etc. Options will vary depending on the theme you choose. Simply keep in mind that you will use this section for most of the changes you want to make to your blog. You will also have a real live view of how the changes look on your website.
• Widgets: A widget is a pre-built module that adds a specific feature to your site, such as a search bar or a list of recent posts. It can be placed into one of your site’s ‘widget areas’, which are defined by your theme and are usually located in the sidebars, header, and/or footer. The widget areas may vary depending on your theme.

Please, don’t ruin your blog…

• Theme Editor: This is where you can make permanent changes to your blog using coding. But because coding is not my thing, I never use that section. And all the experts say that you shouldn’t play with the coding of your blog. It can cause complete havoc on your site, causing many problems, such as your screen going totally blank or locking you out of your website. Believe me; you don’t want that!! So I suggest you stay away from that section!
• Plugins: In this section, you can add new plugins or activate/deactivate them. But what is a plugin? A plug-in is a piece of software that adds new features or extends functionality to an existing application. Plugins are used to extend or add functionality to your website. For example, if you want to sell products or take donations on your site, you’re going to need a plugin to handle that. There are tons of plugins available to help you in many different ways. But don’t add too many because it will slow down your website. As an example, I use the Yoast SEO plugin to help me with SEO. I also use plugins to speed up my website and others to protect it. You will see all the plugins available in the Plugin → Add New section.

Blogging Terms…

SEO Vocabulary For New Bloggers

Yay! It’s finally time to talk about SEO! Great!!… but what is SEO?

SEO is for Search Engine Optimization. Easy, right? ha! ha! No, it’s not!

SEO is a little complicated… SEO is all about bringing traffic to your blog. Using a good SEO strategy will help search engines like Google find your posts. So please, do yourself a gift and learn it right from the start ( gush! I wish I had realized that before!)

I bought two fabulous books to learn SEO, and believe me; they are worth each penny I spent on them! 😉Both are from Debbie Gartner. She explains SEO like no one! After reading these books, SEO became crystal clear! Really! These books were so helpful (and still are!) that I talk about them all the time!

Debbie’s books are Easy On-Page SEO and Easy Backlinks for SEO. And guess what? She also offers a bundle to make us save a little ( that’s what I bought, and I love both of these books! 🖤) Easy On-Page SEO + Easy Backlinks for SEO Bundle.

So, please, please, don’t do the same mistake as me. Learn about SEO right from the start. You want people to find and read all the great posts you’ll publish, right? After all, we write blog posts to have readers!

So make sure your readers find you!

Let’s go through some of the major SEO blogging terms.

• SEO: is for Search Engine Optimization
• Organic Traffic/Search: The term “organic traffic” is used to refer to the visitors that land on your website as a result of unpaid (“organic”) search results. Usually through Google, Yahoo, or Bing
• Keywords: These are words you use within your blog that will connect you with people searching for those words. Keywords are vital for SEO! They will make your content discoverable and help you rank higher.
• Short Tail Keywords: These are usually 1-2 words long that you’ll use within your blog or posts.
• Long Tail Keywords: These are 3-5 words long and provide a more specific description. Because it’s more specific, fewer people will search for these, but good news! People who search for these words are interested in the topic you wrote about and have more chances to become loyal readers.
• SERP: Search Engine Result Page
• Indexing/Google Index: Indexing is the process by which Google or any other search engine collects and saves data to their web search index. In other words, indexing your blog posts will tell Google your posts exist, and their crawlers and bots will find them easier and propose them when people search for the topic your post is about.

M. Google’s best friends…

• Bots/Crawlers/Spiders: Google uses these to do its crawling. Computer bots are computer programs that are designed to run specific tasks. Their job is to crawl the web to find new pages to be added to Google Index.
• XML Sitemap/Site map: Is a list of all the URLs on your website. It’s kind of a roadmap that allows the search engine to navigate for easier crawling.
• IP Address: Is for Internet Protocol. It’s a unique numerical identifier for every device or network that connects to the internet. Typically assigned by an internet service provider (ISP), an IP address is an online device address used for communicating across the internet.
• Anchor Text: This is the text that appears highlighted in a hypertext link and that can be clicked to open the target web page.

Blogging Terms…What Are Links?

There are so many kinds of links. Let’s learn how to differentiate one from the other.

1-Link/Hyperlink: In a website, a hyperlink (or link) is an item, like a word or button, that points to another location. When you click on a link, the link will take you to the target of the link, which may be a webpage, document, or other online content. Websites use hyperlinks as a way to navigate online content.

2-Internal Links: These are links from one page to another within your website. You can add internal links in a post to promote one or more of your other posts that are related to the same topic you are writing about. That will also give additional info to your readers.

3-External Links/Outbound Links: Will point to pages on a different website. You can use them to give extra information to your readers related to your post topic.

Juice?! Really?

4-Link Juice: This is slang used to describe and measure how much power a backlink passes onto another site and therefore strengthens it. This is gold for SEO! Google ranks your site based on how authoritative, trusted, and relevant other users say your site is. And according to Google, link juice is one of the most important factors in page ranking.

5-Affiliated Links: An affiliate link is a tool used in affiliate marketing programs. A unique link is assigned to an affiliate partner by a partner program. When a website user clicks on the link, that click is attributed to the affiliate partner. The link contains the affiliate’s ID or username to enable tracking. I added some affiliated links below to talk about books I used to learn SEO ( books that I love and still often refer to! ❤️)

Finally…

6-Backlinks: A backlink is simply a link from one website to another. Search engines like Google use backlinks as a ranking signal because when one website links to another, it means they believe the content is noteworthy. High-quality backlinks can help to increase a site’s ranking position and visibility in search engine results (SEO).

Oh Boy! I know!

All these blogging and SEO words look so, so complicated!!

But trust me, once you start to learn about SEO, it all becomes crystal clear! To tell you the truth, I totally understand all these blogging terms and SEO words after reading 2 fabulous books! Easy-On-Page SEO  and  Easy Backlinks for SEO from Debbie Gartner.

She explains SEO like no one! I can’t tell you how happy I was when I discovered these books! You can buy them separately, but because they both go so well together, she also offers a bundle to make you save a little (and we like saving a little money, right?), so Easy-On-Page SEO & Easy Backlinks for SEO: The Bundle! is the perfect bundle I recommend! That’s what I bought, and I never regretted it! ( See? These are affiliated links! 😉)

Blogging Terms…

Learn About Blogging Technology & Codes

Now time to learn everything about cookies, breadcrumbs… Stop! Are we talking about food here? ha! ha! So weird, isn’t it?

Here are some of the terms you need to know…even if you’re not a food blogger! 🙂

• Cookies: A cookie is an information that a website puts on a user’s computer. Cookies store limited information from a web browser session on a given website that can then be retrieved in the future. They are also sometimes referred to as browser cookies, web cookies, or internet cookies.
• Breadcrumbs: These are another navigation system that allows you to showcase the trail a visitor made when they visit your site, enabling easier navigation. In other words, it helps your readers know exactly where they are on your website by showing them the hierarchical links they have used.
• Thumbnails: A thumbnail is a small image representation of a larger image, usually intended to make it easier and faster to look at or manage a group of larger images.
• Caching/Cache: In computing, a cache is a high-speed data storage layer that stores a subset of data, typically transient in nature, so that future requests for that data are served up faster than is possible by accessing the data’s primary storage location.
• Shortcodes: A small piece of code indicated by brackets like [this], that performs a dedicated function on your site. You can place it just about anywhere you’d like, and it will add a specific feature to your page, post, or other content. For example, you can use shortcodes to display galleries, videos, or even playlists. * To be honest, I never use shortcodes. I’m still a little scared about all this coding thing! 😆

Blogging Terms & Vocabulary…

Before We Conclude…

Of course, there are tons of other blogging words. But we went through the most common ones. The ones that will help you in your blogging journey.

Yes, I know; I haven’t covered any of the marketing and promoting terms here. I didn’t want this post to last forever! ha! ha!

But no worries! My next post will be all about them! Yay! tons of new words to help you promote your blog and make a little money from it! Because yes, you can make money from your blog!

Blogging Terms & Vocabulary…

To Conclude

It wasn’t that bad, right?

Think about all you’ve learned here!

No doubt, you are now ready to become a blogger!

So, what do you think? Blogging now looks easier, isn’t it? Everything is way less intimating once we know and understand all that blogging language. Believe me, the further you’ll go in your blogging journey, the easiest it will get!

Don’t ever let scary words stop you from blogging. Like I always say, a blog is a never-ending story 😉and the more you’ll learn, the more you’ll have to learn! ha! ha! But you absolutely don’t have to learn everything at the same time!

Start your blog and learn as you go… Stop wasting all that precious time trying to figure out everything before. Just dive into it and enjoy each moment…without stress!

It’s time to start blogging the So Perfectly Simple way!

What if blogging was the beginning of your New Dream Life?

As always, I would love to hear from you! 🖤Use the box below for any questions or comments ( I swear I always answer! ). Or even better, tell me which of these terms intimidated you the most. Why is that? … I’m such a curious girl; I have to know! And I love comments  (😉 plus, comments are good for SEO!! ha! ha! but that’s another story…)

We are now blogging friends 😊 it’s time to connect and share ideas!!

Talk to you soon!

Related Posts:

-Blog Post Content, How To Find New Topic Ideas ( readers will love!)

-Amazing Blogging Tools We Need ( why you will love them too!)

–Over 50? Time To Start A Blog Too! (why you’ll love it!)

-Blog Marketing Terms New Bloggers Over 50 Love To Know!

-How to Keep Your Blog Organized: Bloggers Over 50 Will Love These Tips!

 

P.S. I hope you enjoyed reading about these blogging terms every new blogger needs to know! 😊