Tips Tuesday – Content Revamp SEO, WebP Images, Video SEO, AI and Your Site

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• How to make a content revamp plan workshop is this Thursday
• Security updates sent to all BB Hub members
• The theme tests are well underway, and what I’ve found so far
• The Video SEO Booster course is close to launch, and the new tutorials I just added
• Clarification on Inodes and where to see that total for your site
• Why I’m considering a switch to Interworx instead of using cPanel
• Why I’m not crazy about WP supporting WebP images in 5.8
• Why you may want to skip your image program’s optimization
• New section on Trend Observations
• Will Artificial Intelligence power our sites?
• Why personal touches on your content will mean more to your followers

Listen to the Podcast

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Spill the Beans Livestream tonight

I hope you’ll join for tonight’s livestream at 8pm ET / 5pm PT on the BlogAid Facebook Page. We spill the beans on this week’s news, breaking stories for the day too, and special info just for those who watch. So come join us live for the party.

And you can catch the replay here on Tips Tuesday later too.

Replay

Who I Help

All BlogAid posts and tutorials are intended to assist business-minded, hands-on bloggers and webmaster designers who are serious about making money and who want to stay up-to-date with site changes.

BlogAid Happenings

Wow! A whole week without fires to put out – what a joy!!

I was able to get a whole bunch of folks on the site services wait list finished up and new folks onboarded. And I got a lot of testing, tutorials, and other such stuff done that you’re going to like too, which I’ll be telling you about in a moment.

Make a Content Revamp Plan

In last week’s DIY SEO course workshop we covered how to do a content audit.

And this week’s workshop is all about making a plan for revamping that content in a way that won’t be overwhelming.

If you have an older blog with tons of existing content, these workshops are invaluable to help you do your best content management and get the most from every post and page on your site.

It’s never too late to join the course and replays of all workshops are available. Plus, there are multiple standing tutorial sections to help you lay a solid SEO foundation on your site too.

New security updates for BB Hub members

On Friday I sent an email to BB Hub members, who are my site audit clients that get an extra support member area and Facebook group for free. 

The email gave details on 3 security measures you need to take now with:

• The URL you use to login to your cPanel or WHM account
• Your domain-related email setup and why you must get it off your hosting
• A security update that I will not be giving details on publicly

So, look for that email, and the related post in our BB Hub Facebook group for any questions you have.

Theme tests underway

I set aside this weekend to get the theme tests started now that it looks like the hosting and internet are not on fire.

I got all of the initial baseline testing done on all themes, including my control theme with the TwentyTwentyOne theme. I tested both the home page and the Hello World post for SEO and speed.

I was also able to load up the Astra theme demo and get all of its testing done too.

All of these demo sites for each theme are exactly the same as far as content and layout and it’s a perfect way to do head-to-head testing to see how each of them handles both SEO and speed.

But there were issues with either the backups or restoring them with all of the other demo sites and I am currently working with the creators of the Genesis, Kadence, and GeneratePress demo themes to get those fixed so I can get back to testing all of them.

I can tell you that all of the base theme frameworks are lightning fast. In fact, they are way too close to call a winner.

But the load order changes radically when you have content, especially on mobile. So, that’s why we created these demo sites to be exactly alike. And we’ll see how the load order changes.

I can also tell you that all of the themes output the older microdata schema markup natively. But they are all over the place in what they support with it.

I already know that Genesis backs out its schema markup gracefully when you are using an SEO plugin like Yoast, which outputs the modern JSON-LD schema markup that Google prefers and eats like candy.

And we already know that Astra does not back out their microdata when you have an SEO plugin, so now you’re outputting both types, and that could confuse Google. There is code you can add to fix that, but it’s a shame there is not a simple toggle setting to do it in the theme.

I’d bet money that Kadence and GeneratePress are going to be the same.

And the SEO of these themes, plus links on how to fix that issue are things I will be covering in my public post on the case study too. But, if you are running anything but Genesis, you’re welcome to look up that fix yourself right now.

So, these tests are about way more than just speed and I’ll be leaking more about my findings as I go. 

This level of deep testing and data graphing will take me at least a month, if not two, so that’s why I’ll be dropping little tidbits along the way, as the public report won’t be out for a while yet.

Video SEO testing update

A couple of weeks ago I read a report from Yoast about how poorly Google is handling the VideoObject schema markup, and how it may get confused if:

• you have more than one video embedded on the page/post
• it’s not embedded in a certain place
• How the video placeholder image and the post’s featured image can get confused.

So, I delayed the launch of the Video SEO Booster course to do more testing, as this is central to your video SEO success and site speed.

But, I could not replicate any of the issues that Yoast mentioned, and that concerns me. It’s not like him to be way off base. But then, he did not detail his testing setup fully either. So we may be testing under different conditions. 

I’m testing under the conditions that my clients have on their sites. And to me, that’s what matters most.

What I haven’t tested yet is the same, or different YouTube videos on the same post when one of the videos is in the recipe plugin, which has its own video schema markup. And that’s the test I had at the top of my to do list before I dropped everything to check out what was in that Yoast article. So, I’m circling back to it now.

And I have already looked at the SEO on my client volunteer sites who run video ads. There is no issue with them as those videos have no schema markup and are not involved. So, at least we know that much already!

All of this has delayed the next launch phase of the course, but I’m getting caught up quickly.

The new landing page draft is done and has been handed over to the editor.

I also have new tutorials for YouTube’s new copyright setting that it is rolling out as well as a new section for YouTube Shorts.

The plan is to have all of those posted today, so if you are a course member already, look for an email about them as well as a post in the course Facebook group when they are ready.

I’ll be sending invites with special discounts to all of my BB Hub members soon too. That will be even before I finish these recipe plugin tests that I’m still working on.

I had planned to do another 2 phases of launch with discounts to just my BlogAid News subscribers too, and then one for the public, but I’ll be running into my summer sales event by then and will be letting y’all know when it hits and those discounts become available.

Site Services update

My wait list for any site services, including audits, migrations, and such, is running into September at this point. If you are currently on my wait list, I’m contacting folks about 3 weeks prior to when I think your project will come to the top. So, if you haven’t heard from me, you’re likely at least a month out for your project start date.

If you are an existing site audit client, please fill out the same audit request form for your checkup. Or, if you will be moving to the new HOA hosting, please fill out the migration/audit combo form.

Inodes clarification

In last week’s Tips Tuesday I gave you an overview of why Inodes are important for determining which host package is the best fit for you.

I need to clarify some of that, as I was mistaken about how the Inodes are tallied.

Inodes are basically every file you have on your hosting now.

And that’s it. It’s a static number and only changes when you add or delete files, like for a blog post and images. Each of those is an Inode.

What I was mistaken about is that the number of hits you have to those files does not matter. So, there is no need to track monthly usage on them.

For those of us on hosts with cPanel, it’s super easy to see your Inode total. It will be in the Stats section of your cPanel sidebar.

Things that erroneously drive up your Inode count are:

• Running your domain-related email through your hosting in such a way that your emails stay on your hosting until you download them to your own email client, or maybe they are not setup to delete properly once you do that download. This is just one more reason to get your email off your host, not to mention the disk space they take up.
• Duplicate image files take up a ton of inodes. Every image you upload to WP is copied into 3-4 other sizes, according to what your theme calls for. If you are using an image optimization plugin, or even something that provides WebP images, then it’s likely you are doubling those copies. So, instead of 4 images, you now have 8! That not only increases the number of Inodes, it dramatically increases the disk storage space you are using. I have a whole other way for you to do image optimization prior to upload to resolve all of these issues. But you can’t use that method while you still have any other method on the site. Plus, all of those duplicates may not get deleted when you remove the plugin or such either. This is the kind of stuff I can see and fix in site audits that helps you avoid high hosting costs just because you run out of room for all those images.

Why I’m considering switching Interworx instead of cPanel

You may recall that a little over a year ago cPanel suddenly had a dramatic price increase that stunned the hosting community.

Many hosts had a knee-jerk reaction to the news and dumped cPanel immediately.

But other hosts knew not to be so reactionary as the cost of vetting a new control panel plus changing over all of their Knowledge Base articles to cover it would cost a pretty penny to do.

A few months later Liquid Web purchased Interworx, which is a direct cPanel competitor. They threw a lot of R&D money at it and brought it up to par with all that cPanel offers.

I’ve recently seen the new Interworx dashboard and as far as I can tell, it does offer all I need now to continue doing in depth audits for you, as well as the fixes.

As you’ve heard me report recently, I’m preparing to move my sites over to the new boutique hosting. And instead of getting the shared WHM account, which is all my traffic actually warrants, I think I may step up to VPS and get the Interworx control panel so I can work with it more often. That will also give me a way to make tutorials that cover both cPanel and Interworx control panels too.

Most hosts are either continuing to absorb the higher cPanel pricing for their shared hosting, or they are getting a volume discount. But most hosts are passing along the higher cPanel pricing for VPS clients and are offering Interworx for free instead.

All of my clients who moved to VPS hosting have elected to pay the higher fee to get cPanel so that their control panel matches tutorials from me and every other vendor they use.

But, now that Interworx is on par with cPanel, and now that it’s far easier to translate between the two for anything you need to do because they work almost identically, I’m thinking it may be time for us to consider switching to it.

Another reason I’ve been highly motivated to make this switch is because cPanel itself has been responsible for so many of the SURPRISE! changes I’ve encountered over the last year and lost money trying to figure out what this new code in our files is and where it came from and what it does. cPanel has also been directly responsible for a few of the fires I’ve had to lose billable hours on to help put out and instruct my clients on too.

When I look at all the money, and more importantly, all the time I’ve lost to such things this year alone, not to mention the stress, I think I may find a way to like changing over to Interworx, and taking as many of you with me as I can.

It will take me time to vet it and I’ll keep you posted.

But I did want to let you know that I think it is finally on par with cPanel and may be a better fit for us now.

And yes, our new boutique host has both Interworx and cPanel available for VPS. So, if you’re on the wait list to move there, and need a VPS package, I will be asking you to consider going with Interworx, which will also save you quite a bit on the hosting price too. And maybe we’ll offer it on shared hosting at some point too.

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

It has been an extremely slow site tech news week, thank goodness, as we all need a break from that! So, I’ve included a new Trends section this week, along with a few tips.

WordPress Tips

WP adds WebP support in 5.8

It has taken years for browsers other than Chrome to begin supporting Google’s WebP image format. They’ve all been supporting the modern image formats that have been around for years, like MozJPEG and OmniPNG, that don’t require fallback images that are safe due to a different extension on the file.

In other words, an image saved as MozJPEG is still going to have a .jpg extension on the file name. And that is an extension that all browsers can display.

But no, instead of telling folks to use what we already have that’s working just fine for the whole world, Google goes and invents its own modern compression format called WebP. And nobody supported it but the Chrome browser. 

The point of using these modern formats is to get the far superior compression algorithm that radically decreases the file size and makes image load faster on your site. And WebP is no faster than MozJPEG or OmniPNG.

If you used WebP instead of the others, then you had to serve 2 versions of your images on every post/page load because all of the other browsers could not display the WebP version.

That directly contributes to using more disk space and Inodes at your host, plus a bloated load.

Tell me, how does that help the situation that Google is trying to solve with speeding up your site?

It doesn’t.

I’ve been telling folks for years not to use WebP and to use the other modern formats instead.

READ: Why Squoosh is My Favorite Image Optimizer for a tutorial on how to properly optimize your images prior to upload and get these new file extensions.

Now, you can’t use this tool if you have any other image optimization plugin going on or such. So, get rid of that first.

But, just because you get rid of the plugin doesn’t mean that the double image file bloat is gone on your site. That’s something you will want me to clean out for you in a site audit so you can recoup all that disk space.

My other concern with WebP images, and the significant delay in any other browser support for it was that I was afraid that it would be just one more in a long list of things Google created, made hard to use, and then dumped. And there is no way I wanted to advise risking all of our image formatting on it.

Well, after all these years, it looks like most of the popular browsers are finally supporting WebP extension natively. And now even WordPress will begin to support it natively with the release of version 5.8 this summer.

Even so, I’m not sure if or when that will stop the double image load issue so that the regular safe .jpg and .png extensions still need to be provided.

So, I’m going to stay with my current advice to use Squoosh as your last optimization measure and save it in one of these common image formats that will still be recognized by online testers, like Google PageSpeed Insights, as a modern file format, just like WebP.

And if you are concerned about the time it takes to optimize your images via this online tool, I timed myself and was able to optimize 20 images in 4 minutes.

Skip the first optimization when you save the file

And no, even Photoshop does not have the new formats. So, if you use that and save for web or such, maybe just skip the optimization in Photoshop and do it only in Squoosh and see if it stays nice and crisp for you.

I’ve heard folks complain that they can’t reduce the file size in Squoosh without the image becoming fuzzy. 

Maybe the double optimization is the issue. You don’t want to compress the file twice.

Some of my clients have also tried the direct MozJPEG site for optimizing their images to see if that helps with the fuzziness. Please do a test image first to ensure that it outputs the Progressive render as seen in this tutorial for how to test image speed.

Trend Observations

This is a new section of Tips Tuesday where I can share with you what I’m seeing from a broader perspective of trends that will translate into how we do content marketing and run our sites in the future.

Will Artificial Intelligence power our sites?

In a recent Tips Tuesday I reported that I am lifting my head outside of the WP world to see what’s going on with tech everywhere so that I can get a better perspective on what’s coming down the pike for us, and ways we can use that tech to improve our WP sites.

What I’m seeing is an explosion of publicly available AI (Artificial Intelligence) apps and services everywhere.

One of the best explanations of how AI works came from guest David Lockie on a recent Press This podcast. He said:

So, for example with machine learning, rather than it being about giving inputs, and the program, applying computation and getting the answer. [AI is] about giving the inputs and desired results, and creating a model from the computation.

In other words, you tell the computer what you’ve got and what you want to end up with and it figures out how to get you there.

I’m seeing AI pop up in codeless app builders that make it super easy and quick for you to build your own supplemental digital helpers or even deploy your site as an app or as another method to connect with your peeps. 

I’m also seeing all manner of new SEO agencies popping up that are advertising their keyword research tools are AI based. The only hold up on them being super powerful is that they are so new and haven’t had enough time to crawl the entire web to do deep competitive analysis in all niches, but that will change over time. This is also why I have to start looking into how we can block all of these bots as the hits to our site are getting way out of hand, and that info is being given to our competition.

I’m also seeing AI generated content agencies popping up all over too. And if you don’t think they can write as well as humans, you haven’t been reading what they are producing lately. On top of that, Google uses AI to determine if your content is worthy of ranking.

Let that sink in.

AI generated content for AI judges.

Personal touches will mean more to your followers

All of this is why I think video, especially in-person video, and audio will become the hottest mediums for you to make a personal connection with your audience.

It’s going to make a difference if folks can see and/or hear you – the creator – delivering your content. Or at the very least, you delivering snippets of your content in audio or video format will get you more viewership in more places.

There are new audio platforms popping up everywhere. I expect the new ones will come and go, but audio versions of content on established platforms like Facebook, and Twitter, and such may get some broader traction. 

And I think this is why there have already been billions of views on YouTube’s new Shorts videos, and why TikTok took off like it did.

Jumprope is another video platform that is trying to make its mark as THE place to go for how-to videos on everything.

Clubhouse is an audio-only format that attracted big attention from big players. We’ll see if it has staying power or not.

But the point is – video and audio are very popular. And it doesn’t matter if the platforms come and go. 

You need to start making this type of content and learning how to repurpose it for any platform.

Get those eyeballs while that platform is hot and folks will follow you on other platforms where you deliver that type of content if the one they saw it on first fails.

When I came up with the idea for the Video SEO Booster course, it was always a desire to do it in conjunction with other course creators who covered how to make videos on your phone and repurpose them on multiple platforms. 

And then to partner with coaches to help folks who are camera shy find ways to overcome that, including ideas for what to say, and ways to practice in a safe environment.

And then to partner with gearhead folks who can help you turn your existing high $$$ DSLR camera into a video making machine.

The Video SEO Booster course is only one part of a bigger whole in the way I see content marketing trending. And with so many new platforms popping up, you still have the chance to gain a big audience over your competition who is not willing to keep up with the times and thinks staying on that hamster wheel of blog post creation is all there is to it.

And I plan to do all I can to help you get the most bang for the buck with creating content in all forms to help you grow your reach and influence.

Do you want to see more Trend Observations?

I’m thinking about busting this commentary out into its own category of standalone posts. 

Please let me know if you would like to see more on what’s trending that may impact how we market and connect with folks.

Wrap Up

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

Gimme some love!!

Share this post with all your blogger buddies and blogger groups to support all the free info and help you get on BlogAid – and help your buddies too!!

Get the BlogAid Tips Tuesday Podcast on iTunes or Stitcher

And please do leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to the podcast so more folks can find this helpful content. And I appreciate your support!!!

Subscribe to allBlogAid Posts via email so you never miss anything!

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