Tips Tuesday – 2022 Year in Review for Bloggers

Hello happy site owners and webmasters!

Special Edition

Welcome to the last BlogAid Tips Tuesday for 2022!

Today is a special treat, as we’ll be looking back at the big events for bloggers so we can see the trends and changes and what will bring success for us in the new year.

Listen to the Podcast

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BlogAid Happenings

I sure hope you are having a wonderful holiday season!

Get $100 off BlogAid Courses

Quick reminder that the gifts are still giving with serious discounts on the courses you need for your site success, including:

• DIY SEO – we are shaking it up this year and including info on AI and more
• Ultimate GA4 Course for Bloggers – trust me, you’ll want help even setting up GA4, it’s not at all like Universal Analytics
• Webmaster Training – if you’re a designer or VA and touch the back side of sites at the hosting and want to make them safe and fast, this training is made for you

And no coupon needed to get these discounts!!

New Music for the Podcast

Some of the secret projects I’m working on also have me back in my music studio and I thought it would be fun to make new music for the podcast intro/outro too.

The last time I did that folks flipped out thinking they were listening to the wrong podcast.

So, fair warning.

And, these will be fun things, not time-consuming productions.

So, I hope they put a smile on your face – and I may not announce when they will change next – it will be a surprise.

BlogAid Course Happenings

GA4 Tutorial Update

The new click tracking tutorials are live!

In GA4 you can see exactly what link was clicked and on which page.

This week I’m starting in on the Tag Manager tutorials so you can make more advanced reports for seeing if folks click on specific links, like your optin and affiliate links.

And again, you’ll be able to see which page/post they were on when they clicked so you’ll know what’s converting the best for you.

I have to tell you, this one new click tracking feature in GA4 is the bomb!!!!!!

I know exactly which posts are making me money and getting me new subscribers.

Hubber Happenings

Did you know that BlogAid’s DIY site audit clients are invited to an exclusive member area that offers more support and tutorials? Yep!!

And we’ll be meeting live next week to take a look into my crystal ball for what’s coming in 2023 and what they can do to capitalize on those changes and trends too.

Are you ready for a fast, secure site that makes you more money, plus support from a thriving blogger community? Get an audit and join us!

That’s all the happenings around here. Let’s jump into our look back and forward.

2022 Year in Review

I think it might be easier to see the trends and changes if we cover the year by topic, so I grouped it all up for us like that.

WordPress in 2022

WordPress Full Site Editing Began

In January 2022, we started with the continued rollout of Full Site Editing (FSE) that began with WP 5.8 and continues to be improved to this day.

This was Phase 2 of Gutenberg. Phase 1 was the editor. And FSE took blocks into other areas of the theme.

I still don’t know of many site owners who are using an FSE compliant theme, and I don’t think many will switch to that in 2023 either.

WP Performance Team Debacle

The worst of 2022 for me was participating in the WP Performance team. In brief, I volunteered for months to get real benchmark performance testing for WP development and ended up spending the majority of that time fighting a very stressful battle to keep WebP by default out of WP.

Despite all evidence, including the hours of testing and data I provided, and literally 300+ devs and vendors screaming for this not to be done, they pushed for it anyway.

And it would have made it into WP 6.1 if Matt Mullenweg himself had not stepped in and put a stop to it.

Folks, something in me absolutely snapped over this. 

While WP may be the best platform for blogging, I am no longer exclusively suggesting that online business owners use it.

And it changed the entire outlook for what I want to do with BlogAid from here on out as well.

WordPress Loses Market Share

For the first time since its inception 20 years ago, WordPress lost market share to other site building platforms.

It has become apparent to many that WP is not only trailing ease of use compared to other site builders, but that design by committee is no longer working and things are moving far too slowly with a serious lack of coordination.

Vendors who make one product for a specific audience are flying past WP as they are far more nimble.

On the other hand, none of these other platforms allow for customization at the level WP does, especially when it comes to SEO, speed, ads, and more.

But, the writing is on the wall that WP seriously needs an organizational structure that can deliver products for different types of users, and be far more nimble in how it addresses the fast-paced changing landscape of the internet.

Even Matt Mullenweg complained about how long it took to redesign a WP.org page by committee and said that it would have been faster to have designed it in Wix.

Site Security in 2022

Hosting and Security

DDoS attacks were up 109% in 2022.

The bad bot attack vectors changed all throughout the year as well. 

That made it super hard for hosts to guard against attacks on the whole server while making sites accessible, not only to our visitors, but to us as bloggers working on the backend.

You’ve likely heard of ModSecurity, which is one of the vendors cPanel uses to protect the host server and the sites on them.

Well, Imunify360 makes the rules that ModSecurity uses and they keep tightening those rules to the point that bloggers can’t even save a post without getting an Update failed or JSON error.

So, hosts have just been turning off those offending rules so they are not inundated with support tickets from angry site owners.

And then Imunify360 thinks the rules aren’t working so they tighten them some more.

It’s an insane cycle.

And it’s so bad that I can’t even say that sites I’ve worked on are secure at any host other than Iridium where I know that the security on the host side has not been relaxed to the point of nearly being non-existent.

That’s one of the really big reasons me and my peeps moved off these other hosts. The lack of security was allowing bad bots to chew up our hosting resources and that slowed down our sites, plus made them less secure.

Cloudflare is Not an Option

It’s also the really big reason me and my peeps use Cloudflare.

Things got so bad with bots that Cloudflare even made parts of their WAF (Web Application Firewall) available on the free version.

FYI, it’s not enough to put your site on Cloudflare. There are over 30 settings that have to be configured to get max security and speed.

A fast site is no longer an option.

That also means that a secure site is no longer an option too.

PHP 8 Update

Another big hurdle for site owners this year was getting everyone updated to PHP 8.

The version all of us were on, 7.4, experienced end of life support on Nov 29.

I started my clients and webmasters on PHP 8 testing and upgrades back in July. 

Several folks discovered they had older plugins and themes that were not compatible, and we were able to get them all fixed up in plenty of time for the update deadline.

Unfortunately, most hosts can’t figure out how to configure servers properly anymore and every single site owner I know of on hosts other than Iridium had their site break when they updated to PHP 8.

What’s even scarier is that some hosts have yet to force the update, and here we are a month after the end of life of what they’re running sites on. 

That’s a major security issue.

And some folks can’t update because their themes are still not compliant, nor will they be for several more months. That’s whack, and a clear sign not to use that popular theme developer again.

I’m just so happy that me and my peeps stay well ahead of these curves and we can do what we need to do without panic and stress.

Web3 and the Metaverse in 2022

Y’all may recall that I was all ablaze with Web3 and metaverse news at the start of 2022. That included the exciting projects coming and warnings about jumping into NFTs.

Well, the crash of crypto, and the whole stock market and world economies, ripped the buzz rug out from under both Web3 and the metaverses as well.

Trust me, all of it is very much still in the works, and it is coming back.

And when it does, I’ll be covering it again.

SEO in 2022

Accessibility is a Must

Sites need to be accessible to all internet users. That includes those who can’t read text on the screen or must use a keyboard instead of a mouse to navigate.

More bloggers began to be sued in 2022 for lack of proper accessibility on their site.

In early 2022 I launched Code Name Ida as my secret joint project with my top theme webmaster designers so that we could later provide resources and services for all clients to make their sites accessibility and ADA compliant. And more importantly, helped them avoid pseudo services that masked the problem and even put a target on their site for getting sued.

And, that included adding an ADA and UX workshop to the DIY SEO course too.

IndexNow

In January, a plugin was released for IndexNow, which pinged all search engines, except Google, when you had a new post.

Some folks jumped on that bandwagon too quickly and got all manner of things marked noindex showing up in Google search. 

Not my peeps. I asked them to hold off until the bugs got worked out, which they did later in the year and we’ve now got it turned on at the Cloudflare level, no plugin needed.

Death of AMP and Rise of WebStories

Google finally killed AMP in 2022. I’m thrilled 99% of my clients listened when I strongly suggested they not modify their sites to use it. AMP was a super expensive hot mess to come out of, as many news organizations later discovered.

Google has ever since toyed with featuring WebStories. That, and the Discovery mode on mobile have helped some bloggers get seen on page 1 of Google search. But, it comes and goes as Google continually tweaks their layout and what they are featuring in search.

AI Generated Content

December of 2022 may seem like when the boom of AI generated content started – but the fact is, bloggers have been spinning content with AI for 2 years already.

In fact, Google rolled out a special algorithm in early 2022 that hunted AI generated content.

The huge takeaway is that no blogger should copy/paste any AI generated content straight to their blog.

AI is great for generating ideas. But you need to personalize it for your voice and your readers before putting it on your blog.

Now that’s the SEO part of this. We’ll talk more about AI in a moment.

Video in 2022

The Other Big Search Engine

YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine, just behind Google. 

And Google owns YouTube.

And that has everything to do with why Google features YouTube video on page 1 of search – and in multiple places on page 1 too.

In fact, video is the best way to ensure your content gets seen in Google search.

In the last half of the year, Google Search Console even released a new Video Index report to help you see how well your videos are performing in search. I had bunches of them in the top tier and even in the featured snippet at the top of Google.

Video Growth Booms

THE biggest story in 2022 was the growth in popularity of short-form video content, largely due to the explosive growth of TikTok.

Every other social platform has tried to copy TikTok, and that means video has been placed front and center on them. This, despite the groans of users who want Instagram and other platforms to remain what they’ve always been, and that’s a focus on still images and graphics.

Google Indexes TikTok

Since TikTok became the hottest content creation tool on the planet in 2022, Google started indexing what was being posted there.

TikTok Becomes a Search Engine Itself

And by the end of 2022, TikTok itself had become THE place where folks searched for info, not Google. 

In fact, TikTok totally embraced the whole search angle by increasing the character limit and even assigning clickable links to certain keywords so folks could find more on that topic.

Rise of the Direct Pay Creator Economy in 2022

I think this is the single most important trend that emerged in 2022.

Content creators are fed up with making platforms rich and they want to share in that profit.

The prime examples of that are Google Search and Pinterest.

Content creators are the ones who supply those platforms with the content in the hope that searchers will click on their links and visit their sites.

But both Google and Pinterest got greedy and decided to directly monetize their platforms with ads.

And that became a horrible user experience for searchers.

So, other platforms took notice, especially the video platforms.

They began offering ways for content creators to get paid directly by fans.

TikTok was the first with a gifts program, and a few other platforms followed suit.

Even YouTube started competing directly with Patreon by offering a members area for fans of certain channels where exclusive content is behind a paywall.

Rise of Sponsored Videos

And brands took notice of the soaring popularity of video platforms too.

That’s why they pulled money from traditional ad spend on blogs and put it on sponsored videos from creators who have grown a large following.

In fact, my clients who listened to me 2 years ago when I strongly suggested they get into making videos are now nearly exhausted trying to get to all the sponsored brand deals they are being offered.

The Decline of Ad Revenue

Two years ago Google announced that they would be dropping 3rd party cookie tracking from Chrome. And they’ve been kicking the can down the road on that topic ever since.

The new deadline is supposed to be sometime in 2023. We’ll see.

But, my gut feeling is that it will be near to the ending of Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023.

The main reason we have to switch to Google Analytics 4 is because of privacy issues with Universal Analytics.

All other browsers dropped 3rd party cookie tracking years ago.

And when Chrome finally does it, ad revenue will go down due to lack of targeting. That’s another reason why the brand sponsorship of creators with their target audience is going up.

And, that’s also why I’ve been strongly urging my clients to diversify their income streams beyond ads. In fact, ad revenue should become the side hustle.

The Rise of AI Content in 2022

AI (Artificial Intelligence) has been available to use for 2 years.

But it wasn’t until late 2022 when the OpenAI project took their programs out of beta and offered them to the public, and that adoption soared. In fact ChatGPT gained over 1 million users in just the first 5 days of its release.

ChatGPT Search Goes Bonkers

ChatGPT has been called the Google Killer – and for good reason.

Folks want a quick answer – not to have to search through site after site for it.

But, that’s also the weakness of ChatGPT – it only gives one answer, and it may or may not be right, though most of the time it is.

However, I think the biggest reason folks are flocking to ChatGPT, and all of the other AI interfaces that are actually running on it, is because of the insanely poor user experience they get from both Google and the sites they click on from search.

Both of them have so many ads that it’s nearly impossible to get to the content.

Right now, ChatGPT has no ads.

But that may change down the road.

Marketing in 2022

Two things have become crystal clear in 2022.

Video is where the eyeballs are going.

Don’t count so hard on SEO alone. 

Folks can look up anything that can be conveyed in text using an AI generator, like ChatGPT.

Bloggers need to focus on doing what AI can’t, if they want to retain and grow an audience.

Show and tell through video is THE best way to do what AI can’t even consider doing.

For instance, you can get AI to spit out a weekly meal planner and make the grocery list for it.

What AI can’t do is show how to prepare that meal.

What bloggers need to do is go beyond the written recipe and into vlogging (video blogging) where they can show how to make it.

Same is true for DIY projects and for any kind of tutorial, like the kind I make for BlogAid on plugins and other how-to site info.

Build Tribe

Counting raw visitor numbers to your site is not enough now.

I believe bloggers need to pay special attention to growing their repeat visitors.

And that’s not just for the blog, it’s also for every platform and channel where you’re posting content.

With all this AI stuff, we need human connection.

The big question to ask for 2023 is what can you do to build a tribe of loyal followers?

Monetizing in 2022

Besides getting on the video bandwagon, I strongly encouraged my clients to diversify their income and start making their own products.

We started with a digital downloads workshop in the spring.

And that has led many bloggers to move into more paid products, both digital delivery and memberships too.

And, I’m strongly advocating that we continue that trend through 2023, especially for my clients whose sole revenue right now is ads.

Another avenue to seriously consider is video reviews, especially with Google’s 2022 algorithm stomping down spun review sites. All year Google has been heavily promoting recorded reviews from humans.  

Rise of Burn Out in 2022

One of THE most disturbing trends I saw in 2022 was a significant rise in burn out.

Many of us have been at this online business thing since 2006. That was 16 years ago.

I’ve had more long-time clients ask me to help them sunset their sites in the last 12 months than in all the years I’ve run BlogAid.

We’ve also had more pillar WP industry folks retire this year too.

And, daily I’m reading reports of another top YouTuber or other creator giving it up or at least taking an extended break.

Being a solopreneur can be a lonely and stressful job. And there are just so many ways you can tell folks how to make grandma’s apple pie. Not to mention how overly saturated most niches are now too. It’s harder to stand out.

I have a LOT of clients who got big many years ago and they have been skating on the sheer volume of content they already have. 

But, I also have clients who started their sites within the last 2 years and they are really struggling to get to a financial level with it that makes all the work worthwhile. I honestly believe that it takes much more work now to get a new site off the ground than it did even 5 years ago.

And that leads to faster burnout too.

Change of Focus for 2023

I’m feeling a bit burnt out myself, with the stress of site tech work increasing.

And I’m changing the focus of BlogAid to help with that.

I’m going back to why I started this business in the first place, which was to teach.

So, more emphasis will be on courses for 2023.

Plus, I’m doing what I’ve been telling my clients to do and I’m diversifying my income streams. I tried that with Heartwood Art, but that is not sustainable, especially since I can’t make enough projects a year to garner brand sponsorship or such, and I have no desire to run ads. But, that evergreen content is getting me paid a bit with affiliate links and YouTube revenue. So, I know I want to do something that is evergreen.

Y’all have heard me mention a secret project. I’ve actually got 2 and I released one of them last week and will be releasing another this spring, I hope.

Both of them have re-energized me. While there is a learning curve, it’s fun stuff. So that’s good.

Plus, everything I learn about the marketing and tech are things I can bring back to BlogAid and help my peeps continue to adopt and grow and diversify their income streams too.

That also includes a slight change of focus in the type of clients I serve and making new memberships for folks who are making a full-time living with their sites and doing all the new things like video and brand sponsorship and member sites and such too.

Your Turn

So, how was your 2022? 

What kinds of plans do you have for 2023?

Let us know in the comments, or anywhere you see this post online.

And I’ll see you in the new year!