Tips Tuesday – Affiliate Link Click Tracking, $100 off BlogAid Courses, ChatGPT Watermark

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• Live Hubber Huddle this Thursday for DIY site audit clients
• $100 discount on BlogAid Holiday course sale ends this week
• New affiliate link click tracking tutorials added to the Ultimate GA4 Course for Bloggers
• Why to stop spelling out your email address on your site
• Salute to WP Fastest Cache
• New WP sandbox for test driving themes and plugins
• The impact of search becoming more multi-modal in 2023
• Did you get caught in Google’s Helpful Content update that’s still rolling out?
• The 3 Parts to Artificial Intelligence
• Introduction to Artificial Intelligence for Blogging
• Why a ChatGPT Watermark is forthcoming
• 10 ways to use ChatGPT for your content marketing

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BlogAid Happenings

Welcome to 2023, y’all!! 

This will most definitely be a big year of pivots and transitions in the online game.

And I’m here to help you stay ahead of those curves and become early adopters so you can capitalize on them and get ahead of the pack.

Hubber Huddle This Thursday

I sure am looking forward to chatting live with my DIY site audit clients this Thursday for our first Hubber Huddle of the year.

We’ll be sharing our goals and visions for 2023 and how BlogAid is pivoting to meet our needs.

Site Services Update

We’re running into late Jan, early Feb for all site services. So, if you’re due for a site audit checkup, or want to get your first one before winter is over, now is the time to fill out that form.

BlogAid Course Happenings 

Last days on BlogAid course holiday sales

This is the last week to get $100 off on BlogAid Courses, including:

• Ultimate Google Analytics 4 Course for Bloggers
• DIY SEO – and we’ll be seriously shaking up the course modules and schedule this year
• Webmaster Training – for designers and site techs

The sale ends midnight this Sunday, Jan 8.

No coupon is needed to get your discounts.

Affiliate Link Click Tracking Tutorials Added

All the new affiliate link click tracking tutorials have been added to the Ultimate Google Analytics 4 Course for Bloggers.

I know you are as excited as I am about this new feature in GA4 where you can get reports on all outbound link clicks.

You can see:

• The exact link that was clicked
• The page/post it was clicked on
• Where that traffic originated

This is such a great way to know which posts are converting for you with your affiliate marketing.

That’s all the happenings around here. Let’s jump into this week’s tips and news.

Security Tips

Stop Spelling Out Email Address

Folks, if you’re showing your email address on your site, and using something like 

me(@)mysite(dot)com you’re not fooling anybody.

Bots figured out how to read that stuff years ago.

And, you just stopped any type of email obfuscation security from working for you too.

Get rid of the raw email address and replace it with a link to your contact form.

That includes the link you likely have on your privacy policy page.

Here’s how to get started with Formidable Forms, which is my contact form plugin of choice.

Plugin Tips

Salute to WP Fastest Cache

I want to send a huge congrats to my favorite plugin developer, Emre, who makes the wonderful WP Fastest Cache plugin.

He released a 2022 year in review post with some amazing stats:

• Nearly 37 million downloads of the free plugin
• A solid 4.9 out of 5 stars rating

Now that’s saying something.

I love working with Emre and truly appreciate that everything I’ve ever asked him to include in the plugin has been done.

We are so very grateful to have such a dedicated dev who listens to our needs and provides us with such a stellar plugin that helps our sites be super speedy.

WordPress Tips

WP Sandbox to Test Themes and Plugins on the Way

As all of my site audit clients can testify, when you delete a plugin, it can leave lots of orphaned files, folders, and database tables behind.

In fact, that’s the majority of the cleanup we do on first time site audits.

And now my peeps know to fully vet a plugin before installing it just to try it.

Well, Automattic has been sponsoring one of its core devs to come up with a way for us to try plugins using a sandbox site that runs only in our browser.

You will be able to fully test drive the plugin to see if it will actually meet your needs before you install it on your site.

And, you’ll be able to do the same with themes too.

Of course, I suspect this will only be possible with free plugins and themes, but it sure is a welcome addition!!

SEO Tips

Search will be Multi-Modal in 2023

Recall that I mentioned we’ll be seriously revamping the DIY SEO course workshops this year.

One of the reasons why is because Google Search is becoming more multi-modal.

That means Google is not focusing exclusively on info from websites.

It is increasingly promoting video, and now audio, since YouTube started its podcast channels.

And ChatGPT going public may have beat Google to the punch, but Google has been working on its own AI GPT for the last few years and is not far away from releasing it.

Search as we know it will never be the same.

And Search Engine Optimization will forever be changed too.

The focus is strongly favoring a clean user experience with show and tell answers.

And how to make the most of that, is what we’ll be covering in the DIY SEO course this year too.

Google Continues to Roll Out Helpful Content Update

If you haven’t regularly been looking at your Search Console rankings, you definitely want to take a look at how your content has been doing for the last few months, and into the first of 2023.

Google has been rolling out their Helpful Content algorithm with a huge focus on detecting spun content, including AI generated content.

More on how they are detecting it in a moment.

But unfortunately, some human creators write so poorly that they have gotten caught in this update, with Google thinking their content must be robo generated, and their ranking has dropped too.

The December algo tweaks are still rolling out, and may for the next 2 weeks. So, if you’re content has not jumped up or dropped yet, it may this month.

AI Tips

The 3 Parts to AI

This year y’all are going to hear me talk a LOT about AI.

And that will include the 3 parts of it we have now, like:

• Productivity hacks
• Content generation
• Image generation

I’m doing a super deep dive into the SEO and more technical parts of it, plus a couple of secret things, so I don’t have my own posts to share with you just yet. 

In the meantime, I’ll be sharing the news and tips I find that I know will be helpful to you.

And I very STRONGLY advise that you read them too, as AI is here to stay and will radically impact how online marketing and content creation is done.

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence for Blogging

The nice folks at ProBlogger have an excellent post that will introduce bloggers to the parts of AI that will most impact them.

And they asked ChatGPT to write an article for them, and then gave it a critique.

You’ll see just how powerful a tool ChatGPT is, and what it’s missing that you need to ensure is in every post and newsletter you create from now on.

ChatGPT Watermark Forthcoming

As you heard me mention in recent Tips Tuesdays, ChatGPT was released in a research beta, and they are researching how we are using it.

So many content creators think that ChatGPT and other AI writers are the perfect shortcut to churn out articles.

And the folks at OpenAI, which is the parent company of ChatGPT took notice.

They plan to release a watermark on the content that it generates so that it can more easily be detected by search engines and such.

Google already has its own detection engine that is powering the Helpful Content update they are rolling out now.

So, please follow the advice I’ve been giving you ever since ChatGPT was released – DO NOT copy and paste the content to your site, at least the long-form content. Short-form content like titles and tweets that it generates are okay.

Use AI to help you generate ideas, not as a replacement for you writing for your audience – human-to-human.

10 Ways to Use ChatGPT for Your Content Marketing

Denise Wakeman is a visibility expert.

I would also call her a productivity hack specialist because she is a huge advocate of finding helpful tools and techniques to work smarter, not harder.

And she immediately saw the potential of ChatGPT and other AI to help her do just that.

Denise has done a deep dive into how to use AI for your content marketing.

And she just published a post with 10 ways that are truly helpful – and safe to use.

I strongly encourage you to get on Denise’s email list for a possible upcoming class on more AI productivity and content marketing hacks too.

Wrap Up

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

Thanks for sharing this podcast and post with your blogging buddies, and for leaving comments and reviews too.

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Be sure to visit BlogAid.net for more tips and resources and I’ll see you online.