Tips Tuesday – AI SEO is the Future, Affiliate Links on Social 

ByMaAnna Stephenson
Tips Tuesday – AI SEO is the Future, Affiliate Links on Social
  • Tips this week include:
  • More video SEO masterminds and challenges
  • AI SEO is the future
  • Google expands AIO for certain industries
  • WP 6.8.1 released
  • Affiliate linking on social media
  • Meta plans to upend the whole ad game
  • Pinterest is cutting down on AI Slop
  • Major overhaul to the Lighthouse tester
  • AI price increases coming to Google Workspace

Y’all, I’m so excited about what we’re up to in the DIY SEO Everywhere course!!!

We’re getting our ducks in a row to go WAY beyond Google for visibility now. 

SEO Tips

More Video SEO Masterminds and Challenges

We had a GREAT mastermind on Instagram Reels in the DIY SEO Everywhere course last week!!!

It’s clear that we need another one plus challenges, especially on how to strategically use both Reels and Stories, plus types of Reels to make.

I’m thrilled about it because, as y’all know, my entire marketing plan for the courses on eCreators Hub got blown up this year due to life happenings.

So, this should get me back on track with that!!!

I plan to focus my first efforts on the Substack Guides and on the Shopify Starter Plan for Digital Downloads.

Plus, we had a quick look at a new video editing tool from Meta. This will be direct competition for CapCut, which is owned by ByteDance and will go away if TikTok goes away.

We discussed ideas for videos made with your phone and I think we need a challenge on that.

And, we need to see the best ways to sell directly on social media. You’ll read more about that in a moment.

Join Us

It’s always a good time to join us in the DIY SEO Everywhere course. 

If you’re in any of my other memberships, look in your member area for a big discount.

And if you’re not in a membership already, holler at me for a sweet discount.

AI SEO is the Future

I want to thank Denise Wakeman for inviting me to guest post on her Substack publication Your Visibility Edge.

READ: AI SEO Isn’t Optional Anymore

And I’ll be doing a presentation on this topic for her AI Success Club today.

This is a mini version of the two AI SEO workshops we did in the DIY SEO Everywhere course.

Y’all, AI SEO is on so many platforms now that we HAVE to pay attention and ensure that our content, with links, shows up there.

That means optimizing content for it.

And that’s what SEO is – Search Engine Optimization.

Now it’s all about AI Search Engines.

You can’t just keep doing what you did for Google and expect it to work – not even on Google anymore. They are 100% focused on AIO (AI Overviews), as you’ll read next.

It’s ALWAYS a good time to join us in the DIY SEO Everywhere course and get up to speed on the new ways of doing things.

Google Expands AIO for Certain Industries

Y’all, I believe this is just the beginning of AIO (AI Overviews) completely replacing regular Google Search.

Search Engine Journal has a post on how Google Expands AIO Coverage in Select Industries.

The 3 industries they are starting with are:

  • Actor filmographies – up 175%
  • Geographic specific travel queries – up 108%
  • B2B Technologies – up 7%

For travel, the types of queries that are benefiting from AIOs are the complex ones that ask about specific activities in specific locations, and often include specific times of the year.

I can see this happening with food at some point too. Think complex queries that involve specific ingredients or food for holidays or such.

Think super niche.

And think how you could focus hard on a shorter post or video that satisfies super specific queries like this.

WordPress Tips

WP 6.8.1 Released

This was a maintenance release to fix some bugs in the 6.8 release. But I’m still hearing about other bugs that weren’t addressed. So, we’re going to hold off on updating just a bit longer.

Monetization Tips

Affiliate Linking on Social Media

One of the things that we discussed in our Reels mastermind was affiliate linking.

And you REALLY do need to pay attention to how each social media platform deals with it.

The nice folks over at Blogging Wizard have a good post on it titled How to Make Affiliate Marketing Work on Social Media.

One of the tips they mention is that some platforms only allow links on your Link in Bio page.

We’re definitely going to add this info to a workshop in the DIY SEO Everywhere course.

And, I’m going to do a workshop on how to create a Link in Bio page on your WP site, instead of using something like LinkTree. It’s actually quite easy to replicate the look of that service. 

And there are most definitely strategies you want to use with the layout too.

Meta Plans to Upend the Whole Ad Game

Remember me talking about doing a challenge together with one of my clients to run ads on Facebook?

We are still planning to do that.

But, I’m keeping an eye on what Zuk just said about how he wants to make massive changes to the whole ad game for Facebook.

He’s wanting to use Meta’s AI to make and market the ads for you.

This is a ways off. But it’s something I’ll be keeping an eye on.

Frankly, I think it will be embraced.

Ad creation and monitoring can be expensive. If we can get Meta to do all of that work for us, why not give it a try, especially if the price is super low?

Pinterest is Cutting Down on AI Slop

You heard me recently report on AI Slop videos and how they are going viral on YouTube, but how Meta wants to get rid of them.

Well, Pinterest wants to get rid of AI Slop images.

I see a few problems with this.

Of course they have to use bots to detect such images. But many of the AI image generators are so good now that I can see real images getting caught in that net too.

All I can say is that if you use AI generated images, you need to give them a deep, critical look for obvious issues, and then do upscaling to remove the pixelation of the low quality version that the AI image generator spits out.

I’ve seen these AI images mostly in the home decor niche. Where have you been seeing them?

Webmaster Tips

Major Overhaul to Lighthouse Tester

I don’t talk about speed as much as I used to. That’s because now that most all sites are speedy enough for mobile, Google has backed off making it a super big part of their ranking factor.

It’s still important, especially the initial load, as a slow loading site will make visitors leave before they see anything.

But, speed is no longer the main factor in getting your site ranked.

And that’s likely why Google is now taking the time to do a major overhaul on their Lighthouse tester.

Every speed tester I use in a site audit is based on the Lighthouse tester. It’s just that some of those testers reveal far more helpful info about the speed snags on your site than Google’s own PageSpeed Tester does. In fact, the PageSpeed Tester is THE worst one of the bunch.

I suggest that all Webmaster Training members read the full article for what is changing.

But, we’ll have to wait another month, maybe, before we all see the actual changes.

I’m betting it will be at least summer before we see the new names of things in the other testers we use, like my favorite one, WebPage Test.

Google Workspace

AI Price Increases Coming

Many of us use the Business Starter level of Google Workspace for our domain-related email.

Over the last few months I’ve received emails with them announcing that they are including AI features into this plan for free. Previously these features were only available to Enterprise-level users, or whatever the $30/mo plan is.

The new features include:

Well, last week I got an email saying that my Business Starter plan price would increase from $7/mo per user to $8.40/mo per user starting as early as July.

I don’t use any of these features. And I wish to heck that they would make them optional instead of making me pay extra for them.

Of course, I’m not leaving Workspace as I run my entire back office on it. And I expected there would be a price increase at some point. I’m just not too happy about it being for this reason.

Out of all of the AI features, the one that I might have a slight interest in is NotebookLM, but not for the reasons they listed. If/when I ever have time, I’ll dive into it to see if it really does help me be more productive. I don’t use ChatGPT much as what I cover is bleeding edge stuff, and it simply does not have the info I need. Plus, it trains on whatever I do share with it, so no way would I have it analyze data spreadsheets or share any real business info with it.

NotebookLM is private. And that’s why it appeals to me.

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MaAnna is a geek who can still speak in plain English. She helps DIY site owners plus webmasters and designers create sites that are secure, perform well, and get noticed by search engines and readers.