Tips Tuesday – Bots Will Rule the Internet, Time to Evolve Your Business
Tips this week include:
- UpdraftPlus package changes
- What it takes to prep a new YouTube channel for launch
- Instagram now being crawled by Google
- Why Google Search Console is useless now
- YouTube metrics are still accurate
- The AI Agent wars are here
- More AI Agents will be visiting your site than humans soon
- AI and emails – what to do
- Why I suggest you get rid of freebies
- Cautions when using AI Agents
- Bot and site hit security
- AI agent site security
- Why bots will soon rule the web
- Where to get real webmaster help for your site security
- A trip down blogger memory lane
- Why to rethink your online business model
- How to get new eyeballs now
- Why it’s time to evolve
The internet is rapidly changing at a fundamental level.
While some of the news today may sound like doom and gloom, I hope you can instead hear it as an opportunity to evolve and look at your online business in a new light.
Plugin Tips
UpdraftPlus Package Changes
I swear, Updraft has THE worst UX/UI for purchase, installation, and renewals.
I have the Premium package, which is a 10 site license. And I had it set to manual renewals.
There was no email letting me know it was about to expire, only a notification at the top of my WP site’s admin pages.
And when I went to their site to renew, there was no way to do it.
I opened a support ticket where they told me that the package I have is no longer available and that I have to make a new purchase.
The new, equivalent package is now called Business – same price and number of licenses.
I had to ask if all of my currently connected licenses would transfer once I made that purchase. They told me they “should” but to contact them so they could confirm.
I’m guessing this change happened when they moved to being TeamUpdraft.
An email to explain it would have been nice.
A discount coupon for a returning customer would have been nice.
A better UX/UI to make the transition would have been nice too.
Maybe they’ll get that in the future.
FYI, if you have to update to the new package, leave the checkbox on for it being a renewal so that your current licenses have a chance to migrate.
Video Tips
Prepping to Launch an New YouTube Channel
As you know, I’ve been making tutorials for a new YouTube channel that teaches beginners on the complex software I use to make relaxing videos.
I did a LOT of research into the topic and the competition to see what works and what doesn’t.
I storyboarded my series based on that research so that you can go step-by-step through one project, but so that each video focuses on one topic that can rank standalone too.
This week I’m in the process of making:
- Logo
- Channel description
- Playlist description
- Video descriptions
- Video timestamps
All of this is to prep for launching the channel. There’s a LOT to the SEO on YouTube, just like there is with your site, and I want to get it right the moment the channel goes live.
And of course, there are all the settings for the channel itself. I cover those in the DIY SEO Everywhere course.
SEO Tips
Instagram Crawled by Google Now
As of July 10, Google will have more access to your public Instagram posts.
Google has been crawling IG for a while now, but IG is cooperating in a bigger way – meaning more posts will be crawled.
This will definitely change my IG strategy to ensure that more posts answer specific questions.
And we’ll be covering this in the DIY SEO Everywhere course soon too.
AI SEO Tips
Why GSC is Useless Now
It’s nearly impossible to tell how your blog posts are ranking on Google Search now.
That’s because Google Search Console has not kept pace with what AIO (AI Overviews) have done to Page 1 of Google Search.
On Heartwood Art, I’ve got 400+ Position 1 query rankings. I only have 40+ posts on that site.
And the Impressions vs Click ratio is just as whack. In fact, they are completely decoupled from one another now, as explained in this Whiteboard Friday post from the nice folks at Moz.
YouTube Metrics Still Accurate
The metrics that still seem to be true are on YouTube. It accurately tells me when my YouTube videos show up on regular Google Search and accurately tells me the clicks to YouTube as well.
And the fact is, my videos have shown higher in regular Search than my blog posts all along, for the most part.
So, if you’re trying to show up in Google Search, seriously consider how many more eyeballs you could get by having a video. I have PLENTY of traffic to my site from YouTube. Folks click over to see more info and what else I have on the site, like tools and other such things that have affiliate links.
FYI, you can just as easily get paid from YouTube ads and put your affiliate links in the description too.
The AI Agent Wars Are Here
In a recent Tips Tuesday I reported that the AI Browser wars are coming.
A whole new twist got added last week that will fundamentally change everything.
ChatGPT and other AI platforms just dropped powerful AI Agents.
They tried this 1.5 years ago and it was a big flop.
But they learned from that, and from all of the start ups that have built agents that work, and the new ones will eventually take over Search as we know it.
Google just dropped $2.4 billion to scoop up Windsurf’s CEO and license their tech, which is one of the top 3rd-party AI coding companies, and will help them build powerful AI Agents, among other things. OpenAI was counting on getting that tech for themselves, so this puts them a wee bit behind Google, but not by much.
And it has everything to do with why OpenAI fast-tracked the news about their AI browser coming soon. Google already has Chrome to build on top of for their AI browser.
More AI Agents Will Be Visiting Your Site Than Humans Soon
Before this year is out, you will likely have more AI Agents visiting your site than humans.
And those agents are just scanning for info and things to buy.
They will not be signing up for your newsletter.
They will not follow you on social media.
Your persuasive copy is not going to work on them.
What the agents will do is present the info they gleaned from your site to their human owner – and it may or may not have an attribute link.
Agents will also be able to fill out forms. So they may get your top-of-funnel freebie offer and then immediately unsubscribe if it is connected to your newsletter that they really don’t want.
Agents may also purchase a product, or at least present it as an option to their human owner.
Monetization Tips
AI and Emails
As I reported in a recent Tips Tuesday, it is almost impossible now to track who opens the emails you send.
We really don’t have a good way to determine the ROI of a list that is a business expense.
The very last thing we can afford now is to have AI agents sign up their owner for a freebie and then another AI filter out your newsletter or follow-up emails so that the human got the goods, but never sees another word from you.
Get Rid of Freebies
I’m thinking that if you put even a $1 price tag on your top-of-funnel offer, you have a better chance of getting a human on your list who is so interested in you and your topic that they are willing to put a bit of skin in the game to get it.
Security Tips
Cautions Using AI Agents
OpenAI says that all data given to their Agents is private, meaning that ChatGPT can’t see it and won’t train on it.
Even if that is true, DO NOT put sensitive info into these things and DO NOT connect them to accounts that have sensitive info.
Last time OpenAI offered Agents, it didn’t take hackers long to reveal all manner of security holes in them.
These are new tools. Be careful with them.
Bot and Site Hits
As I reported in last week’s Tips Tuesday, one client had a 500k bot wave hit directly on the IP of her hosting which sent it into hosting resource overages and made the site unreachable.
We got that fixed in a way that will not curtail human traffic to the site.
But the fact is that bots make up 45% of all site hits now.
Let that sink in – deep.
That’s with all of the security we can throw at it that will still let your human visitors and desirable bots see your site.
You’re paying for enough hosting resources to serve your content to those humans and good bots, like Search Engine crawlers.
I am CONSTANTLY evaluating hits to my client’s sites during audits, which we do every 6 months now, mainly for security changes.
Because I have multiple audits every month, I see the trends, and I take action to meet the ever changing challenges to ensure that bad bots are not eating up the hosting resources.
But that has become an even bigger challenge now with these AI Agent bots.
AI Agent Security
All legit crawler bots identify themselves by name, like Googlebot and Applebot (no kidding, that’s their names).
No-name bots are usually bad bots that we don’t want to have access to our sites.
But not all are, and that could be a new problem.
We don’t know yet what these AI Agent bots look like, as far as how they will be recognized by the security we have in place.
Some popular client sites are already getting 45k-65k waves of legit AI bot crawlers and search bots coming through weekly. We want those.
But, those legit AI bots + regular human traffic + legit regular search bots are decreasing the resource headroom we need at the host before we trigger an overage.
I will be scouring my client’s sites to see what’s hitting them now that these AI agents are out.
And I will be adding a look at the GA4 stats during audits too. Between those and what I can see at the host level and at Cloudflare, I should be able to determine what is hitting our sites. I say “should” because it’s a big puzzle I have to piece together.
Bots Will Rule the Web
Scraper bots are cheap and easy to get and use – for anybody.
See this TikTok for one such scraper bot company. You just tell it what you want and the bot figures out how to get it from the site.
All I can say is that if you don’t have a webmaster and/or good host in your corner that is paying attention to all of this, have fun paying more to upgrade your hosting package.
As mentioned previously, bots already make up 45% of web traffic now.
That is expected to increase to 90% – likely before the year is out.
Get Real Webmaster Help
If you are not my client, and have someone else helping you, ensure they know every single thing in my Webmaster Training course, which gets updated with my latest security findings.
If you’re not sure what they know, contact me for an audit and I’ll tell you what’s missing.
Visibility Tips
A Trip Down Blogger Memory Lane
Some of you, like me, were online when blogs first started around in the mid 1990s.
That was 30 years ago.
Some of you, like me, started a blog on something like Blogspot in the early 2000s. And then we moved over to WordPress.
That was 20 years ago.
When a few “topic” and “lifestyle” blogs started getting super popular, they monetized by running ads. I remember when brands reached out to me to advertise on Heartwood Art when my carvings started being featured in major magazines.
Then Pinterest came along in 2010 and the entire Mommy Blog movement started and ad agencies went bonkers.
That was 15 years ago.
And that’s when I got super serious about running BlogAid full time – to help the booming blogging industry make friends with Google by having fast, secure sites that were SEO’d to the hilt.
Several of my clients were making $10k/mo.
But things have continued to change, and you can’t keep running a 15 year old business model anymore.
Rethink Your Online Business Model
For the last 5 years I have STRONGLY encouraged my followers to jump on the video bandwagon as well as produce their own products – either digital downloads or courses.
Only a fraction of my clients followed that advice. They got out of the blogging-for-ads business model years ago. And they are the ones still thriving now.
For the last 2 years I have been jumping up and down, screaming, ranting, and begging folks to diversify their income streams and get away from blogging for ad revenue.
But too many folks are stubbornly stuck in a business model that is 15 years old and is on its last leg.
They thrive or die by the whims of Pinterest and Google – and both have let way too many bloggers down, especially in the last 2 years – many to the point of giving up rather than evolving.
It’s time to SERIOUSLY rethink your online business model.
Blogging and broadcasting to social media, or hoping Google will reverse itself, is not going to work anymore.
How to Get New Eyeballs Now
Substack
Like blogging more than anything?
Substack is a writer’s haven. And it actively promotes you on that platform and shows up on Google.
But you can’t just broadcast there. You HAVE to actively engage. That’s what the platform is all about – blog, newsletter, and social all rolled into one platform.
Using Substack strategically alongside your WP blog is exactly what we’ll be focusing on this fall in the DIY SEO Everywhere course.
You can get started with Substack right now with my Substack Guides that get you up and running quickly with your personal profile and your first Publication.
Video
I’m going all in on video for Heartwood Art – and it’s working!!!
I’ve also got 2 new YouTube channels that I’ll be starting this year and neither will have an associated website.
Meta just announced that they are monetizing Reels.
We cover video – including how to make them easily, in the DIY SEO Everywhere course.
Keep doing it, if you’re already there, or get started with it. Yes, it has its ups and downs, but that’s why you need to diversify into the 2 other platforms mentioned above.
See the BlogAid Resources page for THE best Pinterest course – my clients rave about it.
Time to Evolve
You can’t stay stuck in a business model that is from 2001, or 2010, or even 2015.
It’s time to Thrive in ‘25 by doing what works now.
The hardest part is deciding to put butt in seat and just do it.
The rest is a lot easier, and a lot more fun than you think!!!
