Blogging Jargon Buster | What Does It All Mean?

I am by no means an expert when it comes to blogging, but since I went self hosted in May I was literally thrown in the deep end. I naively wandered into the blogging world, not knowing that there was so much more than just writing some fun content and taking some cool photos. There is so much blogging jargon, so much behind the scenes, so much to have prepared and so much that seems to be almost a secret that no one wants to share.

I cannot even begin to explain how many hours I have spent on Google, begging for answers. Only to find the answers and not understand the lingo, I basically needed a ‘blogging for idiots’ guide. So I thought the time has come to create a little helping hand, the guide I wish I had that would have saved me hours upon hours of research. So let’s get into the thing’s no-one tells you about blogging!

DA Score

This confused the hell out of me, but it really is a very simple concept. DA stands for ‘Domain Authority’, which in a nutshell is how your website ranks on Google. It’s as simple as that. It is ranked 1-100 and the higher your score, the higher it ranks. It is essentially impossible to have a perfect score, with Facebook and whatnot being the highest ranking. The entire concept was created by Moz.com which provides an entire breakdown of how your website ranks (you can find your ranking HERE).

How do I improve my score I hear you ask? It really is as simple as, keep creating quality content that people are interested in reading, getting other bloggers and companies to link to your website and finally it is just age. The longer you’ve had your blog, the most trust worthy it is, and the longer you’ve had to complete the other 2 steps. Simple. That being said, the chances of your score changing overnight is slim, it will take a lot of time and effort to raise your score. As well as Moz only updating their database once every month to 6 weeks. So don’t feel disheartened, or feel you need to check your score everyday – just keep doing you!

PA score

Your Page Authority (PA) score is exactly the same as your DA score, however it is how your individual posts rank rather than your overall blog. So more often than not, you can expect your PA score to be higher than your DA score. Want to improve your PA score? For that we’ll need to know how to put SEO into your posts, coming up next!

SEO in your posts

Again, another piece of jargon that made me want to rip my hair out. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is basically how easy your blog or post is to find on the web.  And again it really is quite simple, just a few things to remember to tick off. So the things to do to optimise you posts are:

SEO title– something short, sweet but clearly states what your post is about, e.g. a post about a Urban Decay eyeshadow palette, say that in the title.

Keywords – using the same example the keyword could be ‘eyeshadow’ or ‘Urban Decay’ as it is the main search word that will trigger your page turning up when someone Googles the keyword.

Meta Description – is the brief description that appears under your post on Google, make sure to include the keywords in this to link it back together.

Internal links – if applicable, link a previous post you have written within the post to encourage traffic and provide more links to your site.

Alt image description – this is for any photos you maybe using. Think of the Internet as blind, it cannot see your image and thus does not know where to categorise it. If you write what your image is e.g. Urban Decay eyeshadow palette, you’re telling it where to file your image and thus improving your blog’s chances of being found.

Side note: if you are self-hosted with WordPress, I highly recommend downloading the YOAST SEO widget. It provides a checklist of all of the above, and rating of how your post ranks through SEO.

Media kit

If your aim is to work with brands, you maybe asked for a media kit. This is basically your blog’s CV, and every blogger has a different style on how they represent themselves. For me personally, I like to keep mine looking clean and concise. I include:

About me: who I am and what my blog is about
Stats: my DA and PA score, as well as how many views I reach a month
Where to find me: my blog link, social media handles, following and email address
What I offer:what the brands can expect if we were to work together etc etc.
Photos:to show the brand the kind of photos they can expect if we were to collaborate.

I tend to update this every 4-6 weeks, just to keep my following and views up to date. You can easily find someone to make you a media kit for a small fee, or you can create your own. Canva.com is a great app for making your own, that way you can customise as often or not as you want.

These are just a few of the biggest hurdles that I faced a few months ago, with a lot of them being so simple once you know what they are and how they work. If I have helped one person to feel a little less alone in this little blogging world, my mission will be complete.

Please do let me know if you found this useful, and if you enjoy these types of posts! Also, what are the biggest hurdles you found when you started blogging? Let me know in the comments!

As always thank you so much, and I’ll see you all next time!

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