Blog

  • How Render Blocking Above the Fold Slows Page Load and Costs You Visitors

    Are your site visitors waiting too long to see what they came for?
    It’s likely you have too many render-blocking elements loading prior to the main content.
    Instead of waiting to see something, visitors just bounce and leave your site.
    And that costs you money.
    Discover what render-blocking elements are and how to reduce them on your site for faster page load time.

  • Tips Tuesday – Disable Gutenberg, Speed Post Series and Tutorials, MediaVine

    Tips this week include:
    • Site speed post series launching this week
    • New Webmaster caching plugin tutorials released
    • The hoohaa still going on with the MediaVine plugin and loosing HTTPS secure status
    • A new plugin that will disable Gutenberg completely
    • The Gutenberg nag that will be coming in WordPress 4.9.6
    • Why you need to start checking plugin update notes
    • Why getting in on Google Voice Search is more important than ever
    • Why Google is giving podcasts some extra exposure
    • A new test on how well longer meta descriptions are working out in Google SERPs
    • A GDPR tutorial on how to make your MailChimp signup forms compliant
    • How SiteGround is preparing for GDPR compliance
    • Whether your site needs a Terms and Conditions page and what should be on it
    • Why you need to log out when you’re not active in your WordPress site
    • What the death of SquirrelMail in cPanel means for us

  • Tips Tuesday – Changes to GDPR, MediaVine, Cloudflare, SEO, PHP 7.2

    Tips this week include:
    • Why page weight is the big factor in site speed and why you need to reduce it
    • Update to the Cloudflare Page Rules tutorials that affected my member site access
    • What MediaVine ad network users need to check on their sites right now
    • Which hosting failed when a major ice storm hit Michigan this weekend
    • SiteGround removes a blocking filter for WP Rocket users
    • Why you need to test going up to PHP 7.2 soon
    • What SSL related issues a new version of cPanel is going to cause
    • Why to check your email list service for GDPR compliance
    • The new GDPR compliance tools coming in the WordPress core this month
    • What steps you may need to take, or not, for GDPR if you’re running ads
    • How to republish old blog posts so both Google and readers are happy with you
    • A refresher on SEO basics that 80% of my clients were missing, and I bet you are too

  • Tips Tuesday – Live Site Speed Tests, Speed Workshop, Sizzling About Us Page

    Tips this week include:
    • Ultimate speed tests on live sites have started!!!!!!
    • Speed Workshop for Webmaster Training Members
    • Are you getting all the low hanging, easy fruit to speed up your site?
    • Why to check your SSL certificate to ensure it is not from Symantec
    • The skinny on Google using Chrome data to verify your site speed
    • How and why speed matters to your bottom line
    • How to hook your visitors with a sizzling “About Us” page
    • What’s up with the stop word feature for permalinks in Yoast SEO
    • Whether issues I reported at SiteGround have been resolved
    • Why you should never ask your host to make changes with your site

  • Tips Tuesday – Ultimate Speed, Cloudflare DNS Resolver, WordPress 4.9.5 Release

    Tips this week include:
    • Ultimate speed tests have started on BlogAid and client sites this week and what I’m encountering
    • Update on the status of the WP Fastest Cache and WP Rocket Tutorials
    • Issues at SiteGround you may be encountering
    • What’s not in the latest WordPress 4.9.5 release that rolls out today
    • The big change to Caldera Forms coding that will affect all plugins
    • How and why you must switch to PHP 7 immediately
    • Getting your site ready for GDPR with a new plugin and whether to use it or not
    • Facebook cracks down on email list uploads and what it means for your privacy statement
    • Cloudflare launches a DNS Resolver that you’ll want to use
    • How HTTPS sites are going to be harder to snoop on soon
    • Google announces the shutdown of their goo.gl link shortner service
    • Why it’s time for an RSS revival
    • Which words convert the best and how to test them

  • Tips Tuesday – Yoast 7.1 Tutorials, GDPR, SSL Authentication, Site Speed

    Tips this week include:
    • New Yoast 7.1 Tutorials
    • Next DIY SEO live workshop on formatting for Google Snippets
    • Why I’m hiring a Cloudflare consultant to speed up my member sites
    • An update on what’s on my site audit waiting list
    • The Gutenberg callout that may be coming to WordPress 4.9.5 and why you don’t want to do it
    • A new way to keep your SSL certificate from getting spoofed
    • Why paying for HTTPS conversion is a good long-term investment that saves you money
    • Mobile-first indexing emails from Google Search Console coming out to you soon
    • 2 lists of the slowest and most resource intensive WordPress plugins
    • A call to plugin devs to stop supporting old PHP versions and what that means for you
    • How and why to get your site and marketing strategy ready for GDPR that hits in May

  • Tips Tuesday – Speed Tutorials, Google Image Search Changes, Free Stock Art

    Tips this week include:
    • New WebPage Test and GTMetrix speed tutorials
    • What went haywire with my live site speed tests on BlogAid
    • Speed tweaks coming to client sites
    • Status update on the waiting list for site audits and HTTPS conversion
    • Whether or not it’s safe to update Yoast SEO yet
    • The new wildcard certificate from Let’s Encrypt and if you can use it or not
    • Changes to how SiteGround auto updates your site
    • Best practices for pagination and SEO that will affect everyone who promotes their categories
    • What we should do with our old XML sitemaps on our non-canonical
    • Huge changes to Google image search that will bring you more site traffic
    • A great place to get free stock art
    • WordPress celebrates hitting another milestone
    • Great news from Cloudflare that will speed up your site delivery
    • 7 important design trends for sites in 2018 that is a must-read for all designers