Tips Tuesday – AI Discover Hub, WP 6.2 Launches, Ranking Factors Workshops
Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!
Tips this week include:
- AI Discover Hub has launched!!
- Universal Analytics ends in less than 100 days
- Ranking Factors 2-part DIY SEO workshop starts this week
- Do we optimize for Google or Bing search?
- It’s all about show and tell with video now
- Why to turn short-form videos into long-form videos
- AI Discover Hub briefs
BlogAid Happenings
AI Discover Hub Launched
I’m delighted to announce the launch of the AI Discover Hub!
It’s where I’ll be sharing the AI news and tools you can use.
Be sure to sign up for the weekly newsletter so you don’t miss anything.
And, follow me on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter for the latest videos to ensure you see it all as it happens.
I’ll be covering the breaking news and what it means for us.
And, I’ll be covering the tools that I find useful and fun too.
Huge Thank Yous
I also want to say a huge thank you to Michelle Phillips of Codefetti for the wonderful Kadence theme she did for the new site.
And thank you to fellow webmaster Larry Snow of Strategic Marketing Solutions for a consult on email service providers. I desperately wanted to get away from MailChimp for my new ventures and he told me all about Active Campaign, which is what I went with.
And of course, a big thank you to Dustin Hyle of ProSiteHelp and Iridium Hosting for setting up my domain-related email and ensuring that I have a fast, safe host for all of my sites.
BlogAid Course Happenings
Universal Analytics Ends in Less than 100 Days
We’re down to 100 days and counting before Universal Analytics stops collecting data.
It’s easy to set up Google Analytics 4 – in fact, you can do it in one sitting.
And it’s a full setup, not the partial thing Google calls an auto migration that only finishes 2 of 12 steps.
Jump into the Ultimate GA4 Course for Bloggers and by this weekend you’ll have everything connected right and a whole slew of custom reports that show you what you’re used to seeing in UA.
Ranking Factors 2-Part Workshops
This week and next we’ll be covering Ranking Factors in the DIY SEO workshops.
There are over 200 factors that Google looks at when it is deciding how to rank your posts and site.
We’ll be culling it down to the top factors that are the most important and the ones that are entirely under your control.
This is not just a bunch of theory.
There is real homework on things for you to check and tests for you to run.
We gather real data so we can see the fruit of all the positive SEO changes we make.
And, I show you how to avoid making SEO mistakes when you do things like update your content and such too.
It’s never too late to jump into the course.
Standing tutorials are always available for Yoast, Google Search Console, and more.
Plus, replays are available on all workshops.
And the course is fully updated for the impact of AI on SEO too.
That’s all the happenings around here. Let’s jump into this week’s tips and news.
There is not a lot of blogging news this week.
Almost all of the 80-100 blogs I follow are talking non-stop about AI these days, or they are covering changes that impact enterprise-level sites.
WordPress Tips
WordPress 6.2 Launches
WP 6.2 is slated to roll out today.
We will not be the first folks to update, though, as there are some request name changes to the core code that may impact older plugins and themes.
BlogAid News subscribers will get my exclusive update instructions when I think it’s safe for us to do, so be sure you are subscribed. HINT: If you’re receiving Tips Tuesday in your inbox, then you are subscribed.
In the meantime, I’ll have a video tour for what to expect in WordPress 6.2 out for you later this week.
SEO Tips
Do We Optimize for Google or Bing Search?
Google fully rolled out Bard last week and it wasn’t much better than the “grand opening” limited release they did a couple of weeks ago.
Unlike Bing Chat, it doesn’t always cite sources for the info it delivers either.
Even though Google has gone “code red” with all things AI, they are constantly doing a “me too” release for everything Microsoft and ChatGPT are releasing.
And the ChatGPT stuff works better than anything Google has released too.
But don’t let that conversation fool you.
The AI engine that Google seems to be mostly sitting on is far, far, far more powerful than the GPT engine released by OpenAI.
Plus, 80% of Google’s income is from ads in search, plus Google ads on some of the sites it shows you in those search results.
Google keeps defending Bard as an AI research interface, not a replacement for Google search.
And Microsoft can’t really argue, or even compete with that statement no matter how novel the new Bing Chat seems.
The fact is, Microsoft simply does not have the infrastructure to crawl as much of the internet as Google has.
When you compare searches on Google and Bing for the same query, you’ll clearly see that Google has far more link depth that Bing has.
And that has brought up a bit of an issue for how we should do our SEO.
Google wants to rely solely on its own crawls for finding new and updated content.
On the other hand, Bing wants us to let them know about new and updated content.
Google doesn’t want you to mark your content as updated in any way if you just make minor changes.
Bing wants us to let them know about any change, and they may choose to rank fresher content no matter how minor the update was.
So, while Google lags behind Microsoft in useful AI releases, Google is miles ahead of Bing when it comes to search and filtering for folks who are trying to game the system.
Plus, Google is, by a long shot, still the preferred search engine.
So, if you’re wondering whether you should follow SEO tactics to make Google or Microsoft happy, lean heavily toward the Google way of doing things.
Google is not going anywhere, and the “answer economy” that everyone thinks we are moving into is nowhere near rich enough to rely on solely. Folks will still need more search results than the answers AI can kick out at this time.
Video Tips
It’s All About Show and Tell
If you want to ensure that your content still gets seen in search no matter what happens with AI, then video is the way to go.
You have to create content that AI can’t do.
For example, if ChatGPT can tell someone how to make biscuits with a text-only response, and one of those steps is to kneed the dough, maybe somebody has no idea how to do that step.
And the next place they are going will be YouTube to see someone kneed dough.
Make sure they find your video there because YouTube is the place they are going to look for it, and not some short-form video platform like TikTok or Instagram.
Turn Shorts into Long-Form Videos
Short-form video is a great way to give someone a taste of what you know and can show them how to do.
For example, I’m constantly seeing folks on YouTube turn a flea market find into a great looking piece of furniture that has been modernized.
A 60 second video does not give me enough info to do all of the steps myself if this is the first time I’ve ever done it, though.
But, that short video lets me know who to follow to get all of the instructions.
And guess where I would want to look for that? Right, YouTube.
Take each segment of of short video and do a longer video on just that part of it.
Or, be sure that you have a long-form video on the whole process where you can give more details about each step way beyond what you can cram into 60 or 90 seconds.
And long-form doesn’t have to be all that long. I can tell you how to do most things in under 5 minutes, 10 at the most.
Or, break up a series of 3 minute videos into a playlist of 3-4 videos where each one is focused on one step.
You can even chop down that longer video into the segments for your short-form video.
The point is, YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine, Google owns it, and Google likes to feature YouTube videos in Google search.
Every segment of your long-form video can be pulled up in those search results, like the segment on how to kneed dough in a full video about making biscuits or such.
And if someone got the recipe on ChatGPT first, they may just stick around and watch your entire video to ensure that ChatGPT got it right and if it left out the special tricks that you know about how to make the tops of the biscuits golden brown instead of just toasted brown.
I get bunches of traffic to my site from YouTube.
And I get paid for the video watch time no matter where they see it.
Video is your best insurance against AI making your text content obsolete.
Whatever it takes, get into making videos of what you know and what you can show folks how to do.
AI Discover Hub Briefs
Wrap Up
That’s a wrap for this week’s Tips Tuesday.
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Be sure to visit BlogAid.net for more tips and resources and I’ll see you online.
