The Bloggers Dictionary

We use so many words and phrases in our posts that might be totally new to you, so thought we’d put together a bit of a dictionary for you! It’s a brief list, but we’ll keep adding to this. If you’ve got anything you’re not sure of, let us know and we’ll add it to the list – you’re not the only one who doesn’t know what something means!

Affiliate – A way of monetisation. If you link to a product in a blog post using an affiliate scheme, then when a reader clicks that link, a cookie will be left on their computer. If they then go back to that online store within a certain period (usually 30 days) and make a purchase, you will receive a percentage of that sale. The buyer is not affected by this commission (and may not even know most of the time!) but it is still a good thing to disclose.

Avatar – An icon that will appear next to your username to represent you.

Bblogger – The hashtag for beauty blogger chats on Twitter. There are the main chats (find out when those are here!) or people will use them to promote new blog posts and when they have questions about beauty type things

Blog – Blog is short of web log. It’s a website made up of separate posts that are arranged in a chronological order, usually with the most recent post at the top of the index page.

Bloglovin’ – Bloglovin’ has become the main way for many bloggers reading this to follow their favourite blogs. It’s a website that keeps track of any new blog posts for you.

Blogosphere – A word used to describe the world of blogs. You can also have subsets of blogospheres – mummy blogs, fashion blogs, etc.

Blogroll – A list of links to other websites and blogs. On Blogger, this can update itself automatically when that blog or website is updated.

Bounce Rate – A high bounce rate is where you have a unique visitor coming to your blog and leaving it without looking at other pages. Using things like “read more” links on blog posts could reduce your bounce rate, but it could also annoy regular readers.

Category – This is the topic of a blog post. Organising blog posts with categories makes it easier for readers to find posts on a general topic. Categories are not tags – think of them like a subsections in a book, with different posts collected under each one.

CPM – Cost per thousand impressions. A way of monetisation, this relates to how many times an ad is displayed on your site.

CSS – Cascading Style Sheets. In HTML, you can hard code text to be a specific way, but by using CSS, it makes it very easy to redo your whole website when you decide to redesign.

Disclosure – When you receive something, either in monetary terms or products, for doing something on your blog (or Twitter, etc), then if (and we hope you do!) you write a sentence explaining this exchange, that is disclosure.

Fblogger – The hashtag for fashion blogger chats on Twitter. There are the main chats (find out when those are here!) or people will use them to promote new blog posts and when they have questions about fashion topics

Gravatar – Gravatar is a type of avatar that can be used on many different sites. Read more in this post!

Hashtag – Hashtags are a way to collect topics under one grouping on Twitter (and now on Facebook). You can make a hashtag out of almost anything you like – although you can’t use punctuation or emoji in them!

Haul – When a blogger posts a blog post or vlog about things they have bought or received.

Hits – This number represents the number of items requested. One page view can cause many hits because it requests each image, etc on the page.

HTML – HyperText Markup Language. It’s the code that makes your website look the way it does! (Find our posts about HTML help here)

Impressions – In terms of advertising, this is how many times the ad has been displayed. Some ad programs will offer a set amount per CPM

Keywords – Keywords are words or phrases that describe a blog post or your website. They are essentially the same thing as a tag.

Lblogger – The hashtag for lifestyle blogger chats on Twitter. There are the main chats (find out when those are here!) or people will use them to promote new blog posts

NSFW – Not Safe For Work.

OOTD – Outfit of the day. You can have other similar topics/hashtags like this such as nails of the day, hair of the day, etc.

Page – A page on your blog is a static page. Typical pages on a blog are your “about me” or your contact page

Page Views – Perhaps this is a bit obvious – this is how many pages were viewed in a visit.

Pingback – When you link to another blog post, they will receive a pingback or trackback to let them know you have linked to them

Permalink – A permalink is the address to a specific blog post.

RSS Feed – “Really Simple Syndication” feed. A way of telling various software and apps that a website has been updated.

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation. These are techniques that are used to say what a blog post is about to gain a better Google ranking. (Find all of our posts about SEO here)

Tag – Tags are more specific than categories, they are the keywords used to separate each blog post. Think of them like an index in a book.

Tagline – The slogan for your website, or subheading. It helps to tell visitors a little more about you in the first glance

Unique Visitors – This is a count of each unique IP. One unique visitor can have multiple visits, each with many page views.

URL – URL stands for uniform resource locator but in laymans terms – it’s a website address! For example, the URL of Bonjour, Blogger! is http://www.bonjourblogger.com

Visits – In your analytics programme, the figure for visits is the number of times a unique IP has visited your site. It doesn’t take into account if the visitor looks at lots of pages during that visit