There is a lot of verbiage and jargon thrown around in the blogging and influencer industry. And whether you’re in this business or not, it helps to be familiar with these common blog terms and know what they mean. Knowing about these industry phrases and what they mean, especially when negotiating brand deals and contracts is essential to your success and protection of your content. So with that, we’re here to share some blogging definitions of common blog terms.
Common Blog Terms To Know And What They Mean
SEO Terms
SEO – stands for “search engine optimization.” It’s the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. (source)
YOAST SEO – a WordPress plugin tool that can help you make your site as search-engine-friendly as possible. (source)
SEO TITLE -The title tag is the first thing a user sees in the search results. It’s also one of the most important factors for Google to decide what the topic of a page is. (source)
META DESCRIPTION – is a snippet of up to 320 characters, a tag in HTML, that summarizes a page’s content. Search engines show the meta description in search results mostly when the searched-for phrase is contained in the description. (source)
INTERNAL LINK – An internal link is a type of hyperlink on a webpage to another page or resource, such as an image or document, on the same website or domain. Hyperlinks are considered either “external” or “internal” depending on their target or destination.
OUTBOUND or EXTERNAL LINK – links that are meant to take you elsewhere. These are links that are going to direct you to another specific webpage or website altogether. (source)
ALT TEXT – or alternate text is an attribute added to an image tag in HTML. This text appears inside the image container when the image can not be displayed. It helps search engines understand what an image is about. (source)
FOCUS KEYWORD – is a field where you can insert a keyword or phrase. Once the keyword or phrase has been added, the plugin evaluates the page or post—including the SEO title, H1 tag, body copy, and other elements—to let you know how well you’ve optimized for your keyword or phrase. (source) People don’t just type one keyword in search engines, they use phrases. Your focus keyword can be a phrase. WordPress SEO by Yoast allows you to choose a focus keyword for your individual posts. It also helps you find similar keywords as you type your focus keyword. (source)
Google Analytics Terms
UNIQUE VISITORS – Unique visitor is a term used in Web analytics to refer to a person who visits a site at least once within the reporting period. Each visitor to the site is only counted once during the reporting period, so if the same IP address accesses the site the site many times, it still only counts as one visitor. (source)
PAGEVIEWS – Although you may only have 100 unique visitors to your blog, you may have 300 pageviews. A pageview is counted when a web page is successfully loaded in a web browser. The goal is to keep your unique visitors on your site and view multiple pages for numerous pageviews.
BOUNCE RATE – The percent of visitors who click out of your webpage on the very first pageview. The goal is to keep this percentage low which is a good indicator that people are coming to your blog and staying around for a bit.
REFERRAL TRAFFIC – Google’s method of reporting visits that came to your site from sources outside of its search engine. When someone clicks on a hyperlink to go to a new page on a different website, Analytics tracks the click as a referral visit to the second site. (source)
Blogging Terms
MEDIA KIT – A one or two page document that is provided to brands and agencies so they can learn more about your blog, audience, past collaborations and types of partnerships you offer. You can view some of our Media Kit templates here.
BLOG THEME – A pre-made design for your blog usually designed by a professional web designer/developer. These are downloaded and then uploaded into WordPress to transform your content into a beautiful layout. You can see some of our favorite pre-made blog themes here.
WEB HOST – The place that stores your website information and access to the backend of your site. This is usually called a server. PS we recommend checking out this article on our favorite web host service.
DOMAIN – The assigned URL for your website that you own. This is usually purchased where you also set up your web hosting.
IMPRESSIONS – a term that refers to the point in which an ad is viewed once by a visitor, or displayed once on a web page. (source) These may vary based on social platforms, but traditionally, one load is considered one impression.
REACH – a term that defines the potential audience size and potential conversation. This is usually compiled of total followers and unique visitors.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY – work that is the result of creativity, such as a design or photography, to which one has rights over.
WHISTLISTING – when the influencer gives access to a brand partner to access your social media accounts to run ads on your behalf. A whitelisted post will look like it’s coming from your blog social media account, but the copy, the image, the link, will be written by the brand that was given access.
IMAGE RIGHTS/LICENSING – Granting a brand or partner photo usage rights for one of your images for a fee, also known as the licensing fee. (source) Please note that photographers own the copyright for images and you can not hand over image rights to a photo you do not own. So check with your photographer and your contract.
Affiliate Programs Terms
AFFILIATE LINK – An affiliate link is a specific URL that contains the affiliate’s ID or username. In affiliate programs, advertisers use affiliate links to record the traffic that is sent to the advertiser’s website. (source)
CPA – Cost per acquisition (CPA), also known as “Cost per action” or pay per acquisition (PPA) and cost per conversion, is an online advertising pricing model where the advertiser pays for a specified acquisition (source). For example, rewardStyle has always had a CPA model for generating affiliate income.
CPC or PPC – Pay–per–click (PPC), also known as cost per click (CPC), is an internet advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a website owner or a network of websites) when the ad is clicked. (source) For example, ShopStyle Collective historically was always CPC/PPC.
LTK – A CPA model affiliate program for influencers. Previously known as rewardStyle and LikeToKnow.it.
ShopStyle Collective – CPC or CPA model affiliate program for influencers.
Have a term you’ve heard and aren’t sure about? Leave us a comment below and we’ll add it to the list!
