Every now and then, I get an email from someone who says, “I want to start a blog! Where do I start?” The answer to that is too big for me to ever properly answer, but I can write a post on Blogging 101 in which I explain some key terms and information. These are all terms that you should start with if you’re looking for blogging tips for beginners.

This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Kate the (Almost) Great! 

Blogging 101: Terms You Need To Know

Blogging Platform 

A blogging platform is where you do your blogging.

It is probably the place where you will spend most of your blogging time. That is where you write your blog posts unless you are writing your posts in Word or Google Docs and copying and pasting them into your platform.

Your platform is not your domain name. It is not your blog’s host (although, theoretically, it could be).

Essentially, it is where everything happens.

My blogging platform is self-hosted WordPress. WordPress is available in two versions: free (.com) and self-hosted (.org). Free WordPress is, well, free. In that case, WordPress is your host. Self-hosted WordPress means that I use WordPress as my platform, but it is hosted somewhere else.

If someone asks you what your platform is, your answer would be Blogger, WordPress, Squarespace, etc. 

What Blogging Platform Should I Use? 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO, or search engine optimization, pretty much means exactly what it sounds like. The goal is to optimize your site for search engines to find you. 

In my mind, there are two ways for bloggers to utilize this: for your blog overall and for individual posts. For example, this blog’s official title is Kate the (Almost) Great | Chronic illness blog. This way, whenever anyone searches for a chronic illness blog, I will hopefully come up. 

I also try to use keywords to describe the blog and my topics. I don’t include anything that isn’t descriptive of me or this blog; I just try to use specific phrasing. In individual posts, I choose keywords that fit the topic I want to write about. 

Do you want your blog posts to be found online? Do you want them to be found on Pinterest? If the answer to one or both of these is “yes,” then you should care about SEO. 

The big thing for me personally is Pinterest. Yes, Pinterest is a search engine! In January, for example, Pinterest brought me over 65% of my traffic. Pinterest is for more than pretty pictures; it’s a search engine. If you’re not taking that into consideration, you’re losing out on blog traffic.

There is a LOT of information out there about SEO, as well as for SEO for bloggers. One of my favorite resources is Neil Patel, one of the leading experts in the field. If you want a complete overview of SEO, check out this guide.

The absolute best resource for mastering Pinterest is Pinterest with Ell. I have been touting this course for years because it’s one of the best things I ever did for my blog. She goes into SEO for Pinterest in the course, among other things. 

Best Social Media for Bloggers: How To Manage Your Social Media 

Plugins 

You’ve probably heard the word “plugins” thrown around, so let’s talk about what they are. 

Lifewire says, “Plugins are software additions that allow for the customization of computer programs, apps, and web browsers — as well as the customization of the content offered by websites” (x). They exist in a variety of places and formats, such as blogging platforms. 

As self-hosted WordPress is very bare so that you can customize it as you see fit with plugins. Plugins can be anything from easy ways to connect your blog to Google Analytics to an easy tool to check for broken links, or from a tool providing security measures to an easy way to share your blog post on social media. They can do a wide variety of things!

You can read about the plugins I use here.

Newsletters

You probably know what a newsletter is, but in case you don’t, it’s when you gather email addresses from your subscribers/readers and then send them emails.

This is different from when people sign up to receive your blog posts via email by using an RSS feed. RSS feeds are “protocol[s] that provides a standard method for websites to publish updates that anyone can see by displaying them in a program or website called an RSS reader” (x). These feeds “are published and updated in real time, so if you subscribe to a site’s RSS feed, you’ll always have access to the newest published content” (x). 

A newsletter, however, is when the blogger creates the content and schedules it to be sent when they want. Sometimes, newsletters are just about the most recent blog posts, but even then, they’re not sent automatically when a post is posted to the blog like an RSS feed is. 

While social media is incredibly important because it’s a main way to get blog views and build your brand, your newsletter is also important. This is for a big reason: it’s the best way to gather your most supportive readers in one place.

Yes, people can sign up for your newsletter and not really care. But the people who are your most devoted readers will subscribe to your social media. 

I suggest starting your newsletter ASAP. It takes a while to build a following, which is why starting your newsletter ASAP is a good idea. The sooner you start it, the sooner you can grow your following. 

Why You Need a Blog Newsletter + What To Send Your Newsletter 

Editorial Calendar

An editorial calendar is a calendar where you keep track of your blog post dates, categories, and topics ahead of time. Basically, you decide what you will write about on what days in a calendar format.

This will look different for different people; for some, the categories or topics in the calendar are more general, while for others, they are very specific. For example, my editorial calendar itself is very general 75% of the time; I write “health,” “lifestyle,” or “blogging,” which are my categories. If I have a specific post I want to write at a certain date, I’ll write something like “recent reads” or “sponsored.”

The whole point of an editorial calendar is to help you stay organized, so you should find a system that works for you. 

I have found my editorial calendar to be especially helpful now that I’m not writing as many blog posts as I used to. I went from posting 5 days a week to 3, then I went to 2, and now I aim for 1. Since I’m writing fewer posts, being strategic in spreading out my content is more important than it ever was.

Additionally, I often start posts weeks ahead of time, which I can’t do unless I know what I want to write about. Especially because I only have a few hours a week to work on my blog. Planning ahead of time helps me make the most of my limited time.

Learn more and get a free editorial calendar template here!

Media Kit 

A media kit is one handy document that has everything a potential collaborator could want. It holds your statistics – as many as possible – the services you offer, how to reach you, key information about your blog, and sometimes the prices that you charge for your services.

Your media kit is your blog’s resume.

It’s an overview of what you’ve done and what you’ve achieved.

It’s the place to brag about your blog.

It’s how you convince people to work with you. 

My media kit has about the blog and me, some of the services I provide, screenshots of my analytics from 2022 (to give a full picture of my statistics for an entire year), policies I have, an overview of my followers, an overview of reader demographics, examples of sponsored posts, and an overview of popular posts. 

When someone contacts me and asks about a collaboration, I send them my media kit. It serves not only as a snapshot of my experience but also provides evidence to support what I say about my site. 

If I were someone who pitches collaborations – I really need to do this, but I just don’t have the time or energy – I would send my media kit to people as a part of my pitch.

Your Guide to Making and Using a Media Kit as a Blogger 

Nofollow links

“Nofollow links” are links with the attribute “nofollow” in the HTML. These instruct search engines to not follow the links when crawling, aka that they shouldn’t count the link towards the destination’s search engine ranking. 

Basically, Google wants to make sure that companies are not artificially inflating their search engine ranking by paying people (like bloggers) to have them on their page.

If a company pays you to write a post about them in any capacity, you need to use nofollow links. 

As another example, let’s say that a restaurant provides you with a free meal in exchange for a blog post review. In that post, even though they are looking for people to go to their restaurant and not necessarily to raise their search engine ranking, you need to use nofollow links.

If someone wants to pay you to use dofollow links, you can’t do that. It’s illegal. And you might think, “Come on. The federal government has bigger things to deal with.” And you’re probably right. But sites like Google don’t want to lose their ability to do their thing, so they take this very seriously. 

When I started blogging, I wasn’t good about using nofollow links. A few years into it, I got an email from Google; because I hadn’t used nofollow links, my entire site was kicked off of Google results. 

It absolutely tanked my site traffic, so I’ve been vigilant about it ever since.

These sorts of things are legally required by the FTC (Federal Trade Commission). I know that, if you’re not American, you might think that this doesn’t apply to you. But a) you probably have readers in the US, so it does apply to you and b) your country might have a similar law. I mean, I’m not in the EU but I try to be GDPR-compliant because I have readers in the EU. 

What I Would Do If I Started a Blog Today

Google Analytics 

Google Analytics is a free web analyzer tool made through, you guessed it, Google. It doesn’t just track info from Google; it also tracks views and users who have found my blog through Yahoo and Bing! Not to mention social media networks, websites that mention it, and basically everywhere online.

As of 2019, Analytics is the most widely used web analytics service online (x). It’s not a service; it’s the service. And it’s definitely not blog-specific. Tiny blogs, gigantic websites, and everything in between use Google Analytics.

How To Track Blog Traffic in Google Analytics 

Gift Guide

A gift guide is a blog post that provides gift ideas for people. 

Generally, they’re based around a topic or theme, but that theme can be as general as “gifts for men.” I like to do gift guides that are a bit more focused than that, as they’re easier to make and I’m able to make them for people who are struggling to shop for people who like a certain thing. 

Additionally, lots of bloggers and websites make gift guides, so by making really specific ones, you can hit what fewer people are doing. This brings me to my next point: gift guides are generally aimed at people who are shopping for gifts, although they can be used to find the gifts you want, too.

There are a couple of reasons to make these posts, which generally take more time than regular posts. 

One, people like blog posts that solve a problem, and gift guides do that. Two: these often bring in more blog traffic. And three: if you use affiliate links, you can make some money off of these posts. 

Blogging is great, it’s a fun creative exercise, but it can also be expensive. Affiliate links can work in a number of ways, depending on the site you use. For some sites, you make money for every click (usually cents, so not a ton of money). For others, you make a percentage of every purchase made through the link, which is often dollars. Again, it’s generally not a lot for each post or even each link, but by making several gift guides, you can make a sizable amount of money. 

And make sure you include a disclosure in your post, like the one I have up above. It’s required by the FTC (in the USA). And again, if the FTC doesn’t come after you for not having a disclosure, Google might. 

Learn how to make a gift guide here

Like this post? Share it! Then check out: 

15 Best Blogger Tools To Try, 52 Blog Post Ideas Health Bloggers Need, How To Brainstorm Blog Post Ideas: 12 Questions To Ask Yourself, How To Improve Your Blogging Skills: 8 Skills You Need