Tips Tuesday – Content Silo Workshop, Find My Blocks, Being Wrong on Purpose

Hello Happy Site Owners!

Tips this week include:

• A mower tale, a website tale, and why good service matters
• Exciting results from the Looker Studio beta tests!
• Content Silo workshop is this week in the DIY SEO course
• Why you need to use Query Loops and Categories strategically
• WordPress 6.5 Beta 1 is out
• Find My Blocks has a new developer
• WP Fastest Cache has a new Delay JS setting
• The psychology of being wrong on purpose and how it makes you more money
• Feedback from Kadence support on the new AI features

BlogAid Happenings

I had something happen last week that made me feel what so many of my clients felt when they first came to me. Here’s the story.

A Mower Tale

My dad taught me how to service a lawn mower. I’ve been taking care of the regular maintenance on my old push mower myself until last year when it sprung a gas leak.

I just don’t have interest in dealing with gas-related issues, including changing the gasket on a carburetor. Nor do I have the tools.

So in my neighborhood Facebook group I asked for a mobile repair person they recommended,, or at least someone who would pick up and deliver, as I didn’t have a way to take it anywhere.

Turns out a neighbor guy works on them, not as a business, but as a hobby. So I had him do the full service on it including the spark plug, filter, and sharpening the blade too, plus fixing the gas leak. That was great until later in the year, when it got super hot, the mower wouldn’t start after using it for a while. I contacted him, but no reply.

So, I found another mobile mechanic who didn’t really listen well when I was telling him the problem. And he decided that the new spark plug was the wrong one and that it had been cross threaded. He rethreaded and put a different spark plug in. We never were able to replicate the issue with not starting when hot.

But the next time I mowed on a hot day, same issue with not being able to restart without letting it cool down for half an hour.

The mobile mechanic had insisted it was the starter solenoid. I couldn’t figure out how, but maybe he’s seen this issue more than me. So I replaced it myself. That wasn’t it.

Then I started digging into research and discovered that older carburetors for this mower had that overheat issue. And I guessed that the first person who fixed the leak issue may have not just replaced the gasket, but maybe replaced the carburetor from some cheap overstock of the old ones, and that introduced this new issue.

It was later in the season, so I decided to mow in smaller spurts so it wouldn’t get so hot, and get it fixed at the beginning of the next season when it would be time to do a full service on it again.

I asked a neighbor to help me haul the mower into a nearby small engine repair shop.

Turned out that the block where the spark plug goes in had been cracked. And it had the wrong spark plug. They had a used head block and replaced it with that, as it was an expensive part otherwise. And they did the regular service and sharpened the blade instead of putting in a new one, as it was still good and he wanted to keep the cost down from anything unnecessary.

So, I’m really glad I didn’t try to replace the carburetor myself, as that was not the issue.

And I’ll never go anywhere else for service on my mower that is beyond the regular maintenance I can do myself.

A Website Tale

A lot of my clients went through similar experiences with their website. 

They hired IT friends to do it, or folks who don’t really know what they’re doing, or who used trickery instead of actually fixing stuff.

And maybe they hired a string of techs before they found me.

Or they tried to fix it themselves or limped along for a while.

Or, and this is even worse, somebody did fix the issue for them, but never educated them on how they, as the website owner, were actually contributing to the problem.

Or, the tech didn’t educate the client on what was done, so the owner made another change later, not knowing there would be a conflict and new things broke.

Get an Audit and Get in the Hub

I work with DIY site owners because I don’t want to be another link in the chain of site techs that folks hire only to have things break later.

The service I offer is a partnership with folks who are not techies, but they aren’t technophobes either. They are okay doing the non-techie things on their site and/or changing other settings on the backside or at Cloudflare given the clear instructions I provide.

And I do all the techie stuff, educate them on what needs doing and why, and how to keep their sites fast and secure and up to date.

Plus, I keep them ahead on changes that are coming so we can do them way before a deadline.

And they stop jumping from tech to tech or trying to figure out the hard stuff on their own.

They stay with me because I make it easy and inexpensive to run a site.

Get an audit. Get in the Hub. And let this be the last place you have to go to find real help at a fair price.

Site Services Update

Things are getting back to a normal pace around here, and I’m getting caught up on my to-do list backlog too.

The wait list for any site service is running about 2 weeks. So, if you have an audit checkup due in March, now is the time to put in that request.

And if you want to get your site all spiffy for Spring, now is the time to get an audit and/or migration/audit combo to get on better hosting too.

Live consults are still on-demand. Just request one.

Looker Studio Beta Test Exciting Results

The beta testers are ecstatic with the info they can quickly glean from their new Looker Studio reports!!!

Here is some of the feedback.

“I had a spike in traffic for close to a week in late January. I quickly determined it was due to a particular post thanks to the percentage of change delta shown in the report for that post.”

And this:

“I learned that my highest traffic source for a particular post was YouTube instead of Google as it had always been! Video is working!”

And this:

“The absolute GOLD NUGGET for me is clicking on URL clicks and URL CTR in the Query section to learn what posts and pages are ranking better for search terms I’m not even using!”

This week I’m working on the improvements in the reports and tutorials that the testers suggested.

We’ll have another couple of weeks of testing.

And then I’ll start working on the different tiers I’ll be offering with this service and training.

I’ll keep you posted.

SEO Tips

Content Silo Workshop This Week

Google runs on links. 

It’s how they discover new content to crawl.

More importantly, links are how Google determines what content is most important.

The content with the most links gets ranked higher.

And that’s not just backlinks from external sites either. It includes your site’s internal link structure.

Building a Content Silo on your site is one of THE most important things you can do for organizing your internal link structure and ensuring visitors and Google find your most important content.

In the DIY SEO course, I’ve reordered the workshops to cover how to build a Content Silo this week instead of later in the course. That way they can make plans for all the content they will be revamping, which is what we covered over the last couple of weeks.

And I’ll be including info on using Query Loops, as they need to be part of your Content Silo, but there is a trick to using them properly.

A Query Loop is the type of layout you see on archive pages like your blog page or category pages. It shows all the posts in reverse chronological order. Some folks include them in sections of their home page too.

But, pointing folks to a category page is no longer the way to go with your visitors or with SEO. Content Silos are far superior.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t make use of Query Loops. You just have to use them strategically. Same with your Categories

And that’s what we’ll be covering in this week’s workshop.

It’s always a good time to get into the DIY SEO course. 

All workshops have replays, so it will be easy for you to catch up quickly.

WordPress Tips

WP 6.5 Beta 1 Has Released

The first rollout of WP 6.5 is ready for testing.

I expect that Beta 2 may be out today.

And, they suggest using the WordPress Playground to do the testing.

This thing is great for seeing how free plugins and themes work on a site without having to set a site up too, as it works in your browser.

It’s an experimental version, so keep that in mind if you use it.

Plugin Tips

Find My Blocks Has New Dev

The Find My Blocks plugin has not been updated in about a year.

Morgan Hvidt has now adopted it from the original dev, Eddy Sims.

I hope Morgan doesn’t change it much, as we rely on this plugin heavily for finding where certain blocks are being used on the site. That’s especially true right now as we switch away from using the Spectra Blocks plugin.

See my Find My Blocks video tutorial.

WP Fastest Cache New Delay JavaScript Setting

Some of the online speed testers ding us for loading JavaScript that is not in use in the viewport. And that slows down load too.

So Emre, the dev at WP Fastest Cache did something about it.

There is a new Delay JavaScript setting to help fix it in the premium version.

Keep in mind that any JS load change could break a function on your site, so purge all caches and check carefully.

See the new setting in my WPFC tutorial.

FYI, if you like being the first to know about things like this, and ensuring nothing gets broken on your site, get a site audit and join us in the Hub where we have clean sites that don’t break, and help each other by reporting anything that gets goofy so we all know, and I can ask the dev to fix it for us too!!

Video Tips

The Psychology of Being Wrong on Purpose

One of my Heartwood Art videos is currently getting featured and that’s resulting in a bunch of new comments every day.

Most of them are from folks saying thank you.

But, a whole other bunch of them are from folks telling me about another method they like better.

I could reply with something snarky, like “Then why don’t you create your own YouTube channel and take the time to learn how to make a good video showing how you prefer to do it.”

But, that kind of reply would just create more competition for my video, which I don’t want.

I just say something like, “There are lots of ways to do it and this is the one that works best for me.”

And I heart all the comments where folks just say thank you or such.

Engagement of Any Kind is Good

The fact is, all that activity is seen by the YouTube algorithm.

And activity means folks watch the video and take time to comment.

And that means YouTube thinks it keeps folks on their platform longer.

So, it trips the wire for the algorithm to boost the video.

Folks Can’t Resist the Urge to Correct You

I used to get annoyed when someone would take the time to email me that I had a typo in a blog post, but would never take the time to say thank you for the info.

The fact is, there is a psychological urge to correct mistakes that most folks just can’t resist.

And there is even a name for a mental illness for those who make a life out of correcting others – it’s called Pedantry Syndrome.

This urge is so strong that some folks purposely make a mistake with something they say in their videos just to get more comments and engagement.

And all of this activity fools the algorithm into ensuring the video gets seen by more folks.

Gamers use this technique too. In their ads they show you someone playing the game and not getting it right. But of course you can see the mistake, so you get the game and do it better than the person in the ad.

Could You Be Wrong on Purpose?

I didn’t try to say something wrong in my video. I just don’t think I could bring myself to do that on purpose.

But, I did present what I showed in an authoritative way.

And I guess some folks saw that as a challenge to ensure I knew that there were plenty of other ways to do the same thing.

Works for me.

I’m making more money from them watching and commenting on the video and driving up the ranking.

So, the next time someone corrects you online, laugh all the way to the bank about it instead of getting defensive or upset.

Kadence AI Support Feedback

I contacted Kadence support about my findings and suggestions with the AI parts.

Here’s how that went.

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