Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• Only 46 days to get GA4 set up
• Why metrics = money
• Blog on purpose to get off the content creation hamster wheel
• Google releases AI search
• Image SEO workshop starts this week
• Google Helpful Content Update coming
• See why your SEO traffic is dropping
• And even more reasons why traffic drops
• Core Web Vitals to drop FID for INP
• WordPress drops Twitter sharing from JetPack
• Why I’m dropping social share plugins
• YouTube’s new adblocker message

GA4 Tips

46 Days to Get GA4 Set Up

In just a few weeks your Univeral Analytics will stop collecting data.

Rumors have been circulating that Google will extend the deadline.

But, Google has publicly announced those rumors are not true.

Now is the time to get into the GA4 courses, even if you only do the GA4 Lite that ensures you get GA4 configured correctly.

New GA4 Tips Series

I’ve started a new video series of GA4 tips. So, y’all will be hearing me talk about it non-stop between now and July 1.

Google and I are both stunned at how many folks have not set up a GA4 Property yet.

I’m even more stunned at how many site owners simply don’t value their analytics data.

Metrics = Money

My highest earning clients are bloggers who spend 90% of their time digging into their metrics and 10% of their time creating content that gets seen, read, and acted upon.

My lowest earning clients spend 98% of their time on the hamster wheel of churning out new content with 2% feedback on what’s working.

All they glance at are their top performing posts and other vanity numbers on platforms, like how many followers they have.

Blogging Tips

Blog on Purpose

Only brand new sites need to do that constant content creation churn to build up their content base and their follower and newsletter count.

That’s exactly what I’m doing with the AIDiscoverHub by posting at least 5 times a week – and all are videos and posts.

But, I’m also looking deep into my analytics everywhere to see what’s working so I can focus on doing more of that.

The metrics analysis helps me make targeted content that succeeds in building a community.

And then I will monetize that community.

My content creation efforts will move from volume splatter to strategic narrowing to serve 2 goals. 

• Some content will be to trigger algorithms to get more eyeballs and grow my community.
• And some content will be to directly feed and serve my community of followers.

SEO Tips

Google Releases AI Search

The new AI search feature was released at Google I/O last week.

It’s called Google Search Generative Experience.

It features an AI response at the top, along with the sources it cited.

See my post on AIDiscoverHub for why I don’t think this change will impact us as much as ChatGPT and Bing Chat already has.

Image SEO Workshop Series Starting

This week in the DIY SEO course we’ll be starting the first of our Image SEO workshops.

And we’ll definitely be covering the new AI image impact on it too.

That includes Google’s new labeling tool for images generated with AI.

Google Helpful Content Update Coming

Another algorithm update will be rolling out soon.

They will continue to go after spammy review sites.

What Google is desperate for are folks who actually use products and do reviews.

And a video review is the new gold standard.

Find a way to get this on your content calendar and benefit from these algo updates.

See Why Your SEO Traffic is Dropping

Google rolls out all manner of unannounced and unconfirmed algorithm updates.

These can dump your traffic by 50% or more.

I strongly suggest you follow the following 2 sites:

• Search Engine Roundtable – reports the chatter from SEO pros around the net. These reports, mainly Twitter threads, are the first indicators that Google is on the move with something. It’s also the best way to ensure you are not the only one suffering with a change – and more than anything – it’s the best way for you to STOP looking for something wrong on your site – like a temporary Core Web Vitals dip in Google Search Console that has absolutely nothing to do with anything.
• Search Engine Land – reports the news more in-depth than on SER. And does follow up reports once Google changes are confirmed by a wide SEO pro user base and pro SEO tools.

More Reasons for Traffic Dropping

There are so many reasons why your overall traffic may take a dip, including:

• Google algorithm change
• Social platform algorithm change
• World events
• Economic factors 

This is why it is so radically important that you keep close watch on your metrics AND on the news.

99.9999999% of the time there is NOTHING wrong with your site that wasn’t wrong prior to the dip.

If you’re my site audit client – your site is NOT the first place to look for trouble.

If you aren’t my site audit client yet – then you need to get an audit and rule out your site as being the issue. 

And you want to get into my DIY SEO course so you can rule out your technical SEO as an issue too.

Those other SEO courses you’ve taken that start with keywords – yeah, that’s far from all there is to it. In fact, all the keywords in the world won’t help if your SEO foundation is cracked.

In my course, the first thing we do is ensure Google can crawl your site and ensure it sees the right stuff when it does.

And we ensure you’re set up right with Bing so that you have a shot in coming up in Bing Chat and such too.

Core Web Vitals Tips

INP to Replace FID

FID stands for First Input Delay. It has been Google’s way of measuring responsiveness on your site.

And the way they are using the term responsiveness is unfortunate because it makes most site owners think it has to do with how well their theme adjusts to a mobile screen.

Nope.

Responsiveness with regard to Core Web Vitals refers to how soon a visitor can interact with your site after the initial load.

The problem with FID is that is lies.

Visitors with a high-speed wifi connection using an iPhone can interact much sooner than any online tester shows.

But, FID lied less than TBT (Total Blocking Time) and TTI (Time to Interactive).

Google wants to extend the good metrics they have gathered using FID.

That new metric is called INP, which stands for Interaction to Next Paint.

INP will:

• Consider the responsiveness of all user inputs (not just the first one)
• Capture each event’s full duration (not just the delay).
• Group events together that occur as part of the same logical user interaction and define that interaction’s latency as the max duration of all its events.
• Create an aggregate score for all interactions that occur on a page, throughout its full lifecycle.

To me, this is a far better indicator of real-world user experience.

But, not all testers are going to be able to show it accurately.

In fact, WebPage Test is the only one that can run multiple concurrent tests to show the difference in first-time visitors and repeat visitors, where the latter is experiencing a much faster speed due to caching.

We won’t see this metric in Google Search Console until March 2024.

But I’m betting we may see it in testers sooner than that.

And honestly, the testers are more accurate than what you see in GSC.

Want a Fast Site?

Get a site audit with someone who: 

• Actually keeps up with what Google is prioritizing
• Uses testers that are accurate for your target audience (and that’s not Google PageSpeed Insights)
• Knows how to read those test results way beyond the scores to identify the actual speed drags
• Knows that the testers only show 50% of the speed drags – and where to look for the other 50%
• Actually fixes the speed issues
• Does not use any trickery or crap that breaks later
• Educates non-techies on how to keep your site fast and secure 
• Keeps you well ahead of the curves with site and tech changes
• Does not have an expensive monthly maintenance fee

Plugin Tips

WordPress Drops Twitter Sharing from JetPack

Elon Musk decided that the Twitter API can’t afford to remain free for developers who want to include it in their plugins and such that help folks share links to posts on Twitter.

WordPress decided to just say no to the new $42,000/yr price tag.

And then they dropped Twitter sharing support from JetPack.

My bet is that this will impact all social sharing plugins.

Why I’m Dropping Social Share Plugins

Honestly, I don’t see folks sharing blog posts that way anymore. Instead, they share directly on the platform where they found the article.

I didn’t bother including a share plugin on my new AIDiscoverHub website, and now I’m very seriously considering removing the sharing plugin I’m using from all other sites too.

What is worth keeping is a social follow plugin, though.

And that’s just a link to your profile on each platform and does not require an API.

Heck, it doesn’t even require a plugin, really, as you can create it with a Gutenberg block.

Video Tips

YouTube’s New AdBlocker Message

YouTube makes money 3 ways:

• Ads on videos (free)
• YouTube Premium (regular YouTube with no ads, at 11.99/mo)
• YouTube TV subscription service (regular YouTube and TV streaming, at $72.99/mo)

Over the past 1.5 years, YouTube has inserted WAY more ads into videos viewed on the free version. In fact, it’s rather disruptive when watching long-form content.

This is YT’s way of getting more folks onto their paid plans.

And now, YT is coming after freeloaders who are using ad blockers.

YouTube is now showing them a message that says ad blockers are not allowed.

And they won’t show the content until that viewer turns their ad blocker off.

This is great for content creators who rely on YouTube ad revenue.

But the fact is, YouTube is going to get paid one way or another, including with their premium plans where they don’t have to do revenue sharing with creators.

The takeaway for me is to ensure that I’m making content that folks expect to be free. They’ll turn off that ad blocker, and I’ll get paid.

Wrap Up

That’s a wrap for this week’s Tips Tuesday.

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