Tips Tuesday – Best WP Themes, Top Ranking Factors, Content Marketing Trends

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• How more vlogging is paying off
• How a consult can help you make and save money
• Top Ranking Factors for 2023 workshop is this week
• How jumping to conclusions when rank or traffic falls hurts you
• Why most revenue-loss problems are not the fault of your site
• How to check and fix the missing data glitch in GA4
• Why we’re not updating to WP 6.2 yet
• What the Spectra One theme release means for Astra users
• How to use Find My Blocks to remove specialty block plugins from your site
• If Kadence, GeneratePress, or Genesis is really better than Astra/Spectra
• Why I chose not to use Google Fonts on the AI Discover Hub site
• Web colors matter for ADA compliance
• Where to get help with ADA and accessibilities compliance
• 5 content marketing trends for 2023

BlogAid Happenings

Welcome to Q2 y’all!! 

2023 is flying by and we are already ¼ of the way through it.

More Vlogging

This year, creating videos has become my new career. 

I’ve seen a LOT more positive views and engagement since I started dedicating myself to making them. 

I’m also picking up new clients too, so they are converting.

And I’m getting my workflow for making videos squared away with generous help from AI.

AI Discover Hub Newsletter

I sent out the first AI Discover Hub News over the weekend explaining why there was such a gap in the first 2 videos and posts and new ones.

If you did not receive this email over the weekend, your email may not have been verified. You may not have received that double optin verification email, or you didn’t verify through it.

I was able to verify everyone that was unconfirmed and resent the email to them on Monday. Please look for it in your inbox, spam folder, and All Mail places.

If you still don’t see it, please contact me.

I literally had to throw out my entire editorial calendar of all the videos I had planned to launch the site with.

The AI news that week was huge, like the release of ChatGPT plugins. That literally expired some of the tools that I had on my list to cover for you.

So, I revamped my editorial calendar.

I’ve already made a bunch of AI news vids that I’ll be releasing all week.

And now I’m creating the vids for the AI tools I’m using every day.

Plus, I’m putting together a new resource page of prompts for some of those tools too, and I’ll be making videos on them as well so you can see them in action.

Follow the AI Discover Hub on your favorite video platform so you can see the news and tools right away. 

You’ll find all the links to where I post right on the homepage of the site, along with the optin to sign up for the newsletter to ensure you never miss a thing.

Site Services Update

The waitlist is about 1 week for all site services. So if your annual site audit checkup is due in April, now is the time to fill out the audit request form.

Money Making and Saving Consults Available Anytime

Consults are available on demand.

In fact, I did one this past week for a new client who has partnered with fellow info/resource providers and she though maybe they wanted to combine all of their content into a rebrand of her existing site.

We talked through the caveats of doing that, especially the confusion to her SEO, and the ranking all of them had for their individual resources.

Turned out that setting up a new site with the new domain was the best way to go.

And I gave her all kinds of ideas of how to repurpose existing content so that it would be great for both SEO and the audiences each of them already have.

We also discussed the member site that is attached to this new venture and more ways to make money with it.

She had already consulted with several other site techs, but didn’t feel confident with the advice they were giving her.

I told her how much it stuns me when I do a site audit for a new client to find all manner of goofiness that someone took money for just to bork the site.

The truth is, there are 14 ways to do anything.

I put my 15+ years of experience to help clients do things in ways that help them, not bork them down the road.

That’s probably why I’ve enjoyed long-term relationships with my clients. Some have been with me for over a decade and they just keep making and saving more money because of it.

And it all starts with a consult – including chats with existing clients who want to talk through new ways of running their online business.

BlogAid Course Happenings

Ranking Factors Part 2 Workshop

Last week in the DIY SEO course we did Part 1 of our Ranking Factors workshop where we had a look at what several SEO pros say are the top ranking factors for 2023. 

None of the lists are in agreement with what they are and what order they should be in – and there is a reason for that, which we also covered.

Plus, we discussed the impact of AI on SEO and why E-E-A-T needs to be the thing you focus on the most this year, as it’s something that AI can’t do.

This week we’ll do Part 2 of the Ranking Factors workshop where I lay out the top ranking factors for bloggers, and the order of priority and weight for each one.

It’s Not What You Think

Let me tell you something. 

Most bloggers don’t have the most important ranking factors at the top of their list.

They put way too much emphasis on things that are not even a ranking factor, they are filters.

And when traffic drops, they look in the wrong places for the cause too.

That has a LOT to do with the way they perceive correlation and causation.

The fact is, most bloggers are creative people, not statisticians.

And most don’t look at all of their metrics enough to really decipher what’s going on with their sites.

So, when there is a drop in revenue or traffic, they take wild guesses based on either the wrong metrics, or partial data, or worse, how they feel.

When working with clients, we find that 9 times out of 10 they have no data to back up their best guess at what’s going on.

Jumping to conclusions is not going to fix the issue. 

Making changes based on assumptions could make it worse.

It’s Not Your Site

And more likely than not, nothing is wrong with your site, or anything attached to it.

Read the SEO chatter in this post from yesterday about how messed up Google search can get to the point that it drops all your traffic and conversions.

Google tweaks their algorithms 150 times a month, plus they are rolling out big updates to it every couple of months now.

All year the internet has experienced higher than normal bot attacks that clog hubs and servers and disrupt your traffic.

And none of it has to do with fixing anything on your site or setup.

Plus, looking only at GSC and GA will not give you the whole picture.

Consider following an SEO site or Twitter stream that reports daily on search volatility and a site security forum that reports on internet conditions including bot attack volume.

Between all of that you will get a bigger picture and perhaps not be so keen to try to fix or tweak your site when you see volatility.

Make More Money with Statistical Analysis

I know some of you turned off your brain when you read that heading.

Let me give you some numbers to encourage you to turn it back on.

My clients who make $10,000-$20,000 a month spend 90% of their time going through their metrics and 10% of their time creating/revamping content. 

And that time also includes promotional content to consistently drive eyeballs to it.

If you are spending all of your time on the content creation hamster wheel, and no time figuring out what is working and why, you are working WAY too hard for the money.

It’s your time. It’s your money.

Spend it on what works and makes the most of both.

Found the GA4 Glitch

Some members of the GA4 course have reported seeing empty report data on some custom reports.

One of those issues was an incorrect Dimension used in custom reports showing Channel Groupings. I updated the 2 tutorials affected.

The other issue is Thresholding on the part of GA4.

And Google has been SUPER vague with explaining exactly how thresholding is applied to reports.

They finally released more data about it.

And thanks to a live session last week with one of the GA4 course members, we were able to confirm that thresholding is indeed the issue.

There are 2 ways to fix this problem, but both of them have caveats, not the least of which is knocking out some of your demographic info.

If you work with ad agencies or brands, they want that info.

So, I’m doing more investigation into this, and in a new tutorial released this weekend, I showed members of the course how to confirm if thresholding had been applied to their reports. And if they find it has, I asked them to check with their ad agencies and brands to ensure which settings will work best for them.

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

We’re shy on site related news again this week because all of the blogging-related news feeds I follow are mostly talking about AI again this week. And I’ll be covering that news over on the AI Discover Hub.

WordPress Tips

Not Updating to WP 6.2 Yet

Neither me nor my webmasters have updated to WP 6.2 yet. 

I am checking it out on a testing site, but that site has no old plugins or themes, and that’s what we are most concerned about.

They even had to delay the public rollout by a day due to a major bug with date format.

I’m going to hold off on putting out a video tour until I’m ready to call it safe to update for most of us.

BlogAid News subscribers will get my special update and testing instructions, so be sure you’re on the list.

Theme Tips

Spectra One Theme Released

Astra has made their Spectra One theme freely available in the WP Themes repository.

This is what they hope to fully replace the original Astra theme with.

It is Full Site Editing compatible.

That means it includes blocks for what were previously widget-only areas, like the navigation, sidebar, and footer.

You used to need the Astra Pro plugin to edit those areas.

That plugin is now Spectra Pro. 

Moving Away from Spectra/UAG

Don’t confuse this with the free Spectra plugin. That is the new name that the Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg Blocks plugin became. On its initial release, it borked some users of UAG, as it did not have backward compatibility for some of their specialty blocks.

That was the breaking point for me and I have stopped using the UAG/Spectra specialty block plugin everywhere I can.

The fact is, the WP native blocks now have so many styling options that we may no longer need some of the features in the specialty block plugins.

Find My Blocks

If you want to remove all instances of any block plugins on your site, see my tutorial on how to use the Find My Blocks plugin.

It’s a super easy way to see where each specialty block is in use on your posts and pages.

Are Kadence, GeneratePress, or Genesis Better?

All theme frameworks have had hiccups keeping current with WP core code changes, especially the move to Full Site Editing compliance.

That has a LOT to do with the fact that WP has been rolling in that code over time.

The WP 6.2 and 6.3 releases should complete the majority of those mass code changes, though.

What we’ve seen historically with Astra/Spectra is that they try to be bleeding edge innovators. 

And then when WP code finally catches up, Astra/Spectra removes/changes their code to match, but doesn’t always check for full backwards compatibility.

To me, that combination has led to far too many breaks when we update, or having to hold off on updates for a month until all of that is worked out.

GeneratePress is the most boring of all the popular theme frameworks, and that’s on purpose. They strive for function over fashion. And because of it, their code is cleaner and lighter.

I’m running Genesis or Kadence on all of my sites as they have had the least bumps through this Full Site Editing code transition.

And I’m trying to use as few specialty blocks from Kadence as possible now too. But they have styling or features that I don’t believe will ever be in the WP core at a level that suits me.

It’s the same reason why we use these theme frameworks instead of the native WP themes – they have more things we need and like.

I applaud Astra for being the industry leader with Gutenberg and giving us styling and function options that it took WP 4 years to catch up with.

But, at this point, I want stability. And that’s why I’ve chosen, and recommend what I do to folks wanting a change of themes.

No More Google Fonts For Me

One of the first decisions I made for the new AI Discover Hub site was to not use Google Fonts.

Until I switched to Genesis many moons ago on BlogAid, I had been perfectly happy with web-safe fonts such as Georgia for the serif font on titles and Verdana for the sans-serif font on the regular text. 

And that’s exactly the combo I went back to for the new site, and will likely use for my next new business site that will launch later this year.

Even WP is encouraging all designers and theme developers to load Google Fonts locally to avoid GDPR tracking issues.

Fonts are not just in your theme, though.

Some plugins pull in their own Google Fonts. I’m hoping those devs will change their plugins to host Google Fonts locally or drop them for web-safe fonts.

Web Colors Matter for ADA Compliance

For AI Discover Hub, I looked at other popular AI sites to get a feel for the colors used in the industry. 

For my two colors I chose navy and orange.

But, we just could not get a bright orange to work for ADA compliance, and the dark orange that did work was, well, dull looking.

So, we changed to another ADA compliant color combo of a brighter blue and a deep magenta that had the same “family” of saturation and such.

That combo worked perfectly, in my opinion.

And the magenta gave me a unique branding color to help my site stand out from the crowd.

So, when choosing colors for your site, keep in mind that it’s not about your favorite colors.

It’s about the vibe of the industry and niche you’re in.

And, it’s about accessibility to the widest possible audience.

Need ADA Compliance Help?

See Michelle Phillips at Codefetti.

She has several posts and checklists on why you need an accessible site and how to check if yours is.

Content Marketing Tips

5 Content Marketing Trends for 2023

You can’t just keep doing things they way you’ve always done them.

Trends change.

Trending platforms change.

Pinterest is a good example. The heyday of it is long over.

That’s not to say that folks don’t still get traffic from Pinterest. But those are usually the folks who pinned a ton of content on it from back when. 

The nice folks over at Convince & Convert have a list of the 5 content marketing trends to pay attention to for 2023.

At the top of the list – AI – to help make you more productive.

Also on the list – video – and AI can help you be more productive with that too.

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.