Tips Tuesday – Core Web Vitals, FLoC Blocking, CLS Issues, Shopify Video

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• DIY SEO Workshop spring break
• Updates on progress with the Video SEO course, Gutenberg Ninja, theme testing, and boutique hosting
• The CLS issues me and my webmaster designers are chasing
• Why not to cut corners on getting your Core Web Vitals issues fixed
• Why it may not be your host’s fault that your site is down
• The scam emails flying around for host disk quota overages
• My experiment with a new way to deter comment spam
• A super podcast from the head of Shopify, including how to effectively use video there
• The growing frustration with all those pesky notifications at the top of your WP admin pages
• Full Site Editing is a go for the upcoming WP 5.8 release
• An update on whether WP will block Google’s FLoC tracking or not

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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.

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

It’s been an interesting week around here with some super enjoyable extended chats with clients, vendors, and friends. And it has helped me realize how much I miss doing consults to show folks where the money is with their sites. It has also encouraged me to consider bringing back live website review sessions.

There was a lot of cyber security news this week which we’ll get to in a moment.

Come to the Live Party Tonight

I do want to encourage you to come to the livestream tonight for breaking news.

It seems that I’m developing allergies, and I laid off my meds for that for a day because I’m getting my CoVid shot. So, I’m actually producing Tips Tuesday early on Monday morning because I have no idea how I will feel later, and we generally have big news releases on Monday that may not be in Tips Tuesday.

So, come to the livestream tonight on the BlogAid Facebook page and get the rest of the story. You can also watch the full replay here on Tips Tuesday next day too.

DIY SEO Workshop Spring Break

We’ve been covering a LOT of ground in our weekly workshops for the DIY SEO course on technical SEO, image SEO, Keywords, Ranking Factors, and more.

We’ll be taking a spring break from the live sessions for the next 2 weeks, which will allow folks to get caught up with the changes they want to make from the info they gleaned up to this point.

Then we switch gears and dive into our on-page content SEO series of workshops.

Now is a great time to get into the course, as there are replays on everything and you can get up to speed with us in no time.

Video SEO Update

Last week I mentioned that I’m tripling up on research, testing, and tutorials for all my courses by covering the how-to blocks.

The how-to block from Yoast is nice, as it does have a list type format for instructions. And it does allow you to add an image to illustrate that how-to step. Plus, it outputs sweet schema markup that Google eats like candy.

But, oh my, the how-to card in the Create plugin is amazing!!

It has way more fields that can have the juicy schema markup. And the formatting options are so nice too. There are ways to group things into sections and add links and so much more.

Plus, it has a section to add a video as well.

I just finished up the tutorial for it and am now doing all of the SEO tests for it.

That will include how the video acts with and without the Yoast Video SEO plugin’s schema markup too.

And this testing is at the very heart of the Video SEO course, as folks who want to embed multiple videos on their posts need to know how all of that interacts.

I did contact my video SEO tester group and will be working with 2 folks on specific tests. But the complexity of the Create plugin slowed me down a wee bit, and there is an issue on one of the tester’s sites with regard to video. So, I’m finishing up my SEO testing while they are working on that and hopefully we’ll dive into even more complex testing with video ads thrown into the mix this week.

Gutenberg Ninja Update

I’ll be adding these new how-to block tutorials to the Gutenberg course, as well as the DIY SEO course too.

And, I’ll be circling back to Reusable Blocks on the Gutenberg Ninja course soon too. But before I make those tutorials, I want to have a live session with my peeps to see the issues they are running into so I can address them in the tutorial. 

I may not be able to schedule that for this week, but I will as soon as I can.

Theme Testing Update

The theme team will be meeting live this week to get our first looks at both Kadence and GeneratePress.

We’ll be taking a tour of the backside and what it’s like to build a site on them.

And we’ll be looking at the initial Core Web Vitals tests on it too.

We are not too far away from starting our formal head-to-head testing, and I appreciate your patience with the process, and I’ll keep you posted on progress.

Chasing CLS Issues

It seems the hardest Core Web Vitals metric for folks to fix is CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift).

It has a variety of causes and they are not always easy to see in the testers either.

Last week I reported on how at least one of the testers has updated to show Google’s new CLS calculation for CLS issues happening after initial load. Those are mostly caused by rotating ads, and you will need to contact your ad agency for fixes with it.

Me and my webmasters are focusing on the initial load CLS, as that is usually caused by the theme itself in some way.

And this sort of thing is directly impacting theme framework coding, as well as coding for any plugins that load things above the fold.

It’s also being impacted by how caching/optimization plugins work too with how they minify and defer the load of things.

So, it’s a pretty big puzzle to work out, and please be super patient with whoever you have helping you with it. Some of it is not easy at all.

Site Services Update

Most of you have heard the news that Google has delayed the rollout of Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor by postponing it from May to June.

But that is just the start of the rollout and it will not go into full effect until August.

Even then, rankings won’t change overnight.

So, if you’re thinking about getting help, see the site audit page and jump on my wait list.

We’re still running a 3-4 month wait, which puts us into the July-August range.

This past week I onboarded a bunch of site audit checkup projects and have a whole bunch more of those coming up.

They are fast and cheap, as these clients have already had an audit and all of the major fixes done and they were educated on how to keep their sites fast and secure, so there are mostly just a few updates to do as I go.

Don’t Cut Corners on Core Web Vitals Fixes

This past week I’ve been getting inundated with consult requests from folks who are trying to piecemeal getting their Core Web Vitals issues fixed.

I won’t be taking those jobs because it won’t work.

What I do offer are full site audits that find all of the underlying issues so we can actually fix every one of them – not just put bandaids on them to hide them.

And if you have hired other techs to work on your site and you are unsatisfied with the results, then have them remove all of their trickery for free before you sign up for real fixes with me. I won’t be taking on the liability of removing all of that junk, as some of it could be done in hidden ways that I would not know to look for.

Folks, it costs far less to do things the right way, the first time, than the scattered way you’re doing it to try to save money and still not get results.

Boutique Hosting Update

And all of these folks returning for the audit checkups qualify for what we’re calling the HOA section of the new boutique hosting too.

We’re making super good progress with it and last I checked in, the host is setting up the legal and info pages and such, and just about ready to set up the mechanism for appropriating the hosting packages on purchase.

We already have our first folks lined up to make the switch too.

And then I’ll be inviting more folks in, and then we open the public side of this thing too.

I’m really excited about it.

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

Cyber Security Tips

Down site may not be your host’s fault

If your site goes down, I bet your first thought is that something is wrong at the host.

That’s actually not all that likely these days.

It’s a lot more likely to be the internet itself going down.

The nice folks at CatchPoint did a debrief on a big leak that caused the global routing system to go down because the internet hubs in play did not have proper attack mitigation setup.

Folks, the internet is just a bunch of wires, hubs, and routers. 

Any of them can be attacked and overwhelmed.

And that could clog up the main road from host out to the rest of the world.

Think of it as a bridge being out. No traffic can get to or from the destination.

And it’s not the destination’s fault.

There is NOTHING a host can do about it.

So, be super careful about being quick to blame them these days if your site goes down, or any vendor for that matter.

Host Disk Quota Overage – scam emails are rolling out

Last week lots of bloggers started reporting that they received an email that looked like it was from their host saying that they had a disk quota overage.

They wanted you to click the link to get more free disk space.

DO NOT CLICK THE LINK! 

It’s a scam.

The key clue here is that there is no such thing as free disk space at any host.

And if you get any email from any vendor with links in it, no matter how legit it looks, don’t click the links.

Log into that vendor and see if there are any messages or such from them first and/or check the offending thing yourself. And if you’re still concerned, open a ticket and ask about it.

Deter Comment Spam

Last week I mentioned that I was going to try an experiment to remove the Website URL field from the native WP comment form and see if that would eventually cut down on spam comments.

One of the reasons spam bots leave comments is to get the backlink to their URL. It is a nofollow link by default, but Google has been treating those differently for the last year or so and may choose to follow them anyway.

I also put a feature request on the Antispam Bee support forum to ask if they would consider adding an option in their plugin to remove the Website URL field. That way we would not have to deal with code or add another plugin to do it.

They replied that bots are going to still hit sites with spam comments no matter what, especially those that have any type of domain authority.

So, I’m guessing that my site is on spam bot lists to hit, and will be forever, and they don’t check or care if that Website URL field is there or not.

But, since I already have this code on my site, I’m going to leave it that way. At least I’m not giving any sort of backlink to anybody anymore.

However, this is not something I will be advocating that any site owners take the extra step to do. 

Instead, your best bet is to have an outside, 3rd party firewall like Cloudflare, that is fully configured to knock out bad bot countries, and for catching as many bad bots from everywhere else as possible. And then have a good comment spam filter plugin that is fully configured to only allow comments from your countries of choice. I use Antispam Bee, but am looking into more aggressive, paid solutions for us too, like ClearTalk.

Video SEO Tips

Video on Shopify – Yoast Podcast

Do you have a Shopify store? If so, you’ll definitely want to listen to a recent Yoast Podcast where he interviews the head of Shopify and they talk about SEO on Shopify as well as using videos to not only show the product, but demonstrate folks interacting with it.

Even if you don’t have a shop, or even products yet, I think it’s a good listen because it will open up ideas for you on how to present whatever you are delivering on your site for consumption.

WordPress Tips

Frustrations With Admin Notices

On the Post Status podcast they talk about some recent negative experiences with those pesky admin notifications you see at the top of your pages when you log into the backside of WordPress.

And they think that the situation is so out of hand with them that WP.org needs to step in and put some regulation on it.

I’m in complete agreement with that.

And here is what I strongly suggest that you do in the meantime.

Get into the habit of reading and dismissing those notices.

Do not just put them on ignore.

Too many site owners are missing critically important info that they need to take action on, like:

• Updating the database after a plugin update
• Clearing cache after a site change

And if you have notifications from a vendor that will not stay dismissed, by all means, contact that vendor and complain.

I’ve seen some themes keep a persistent nuisance notice posted about what other plugins they suggest using. Complain to them about this crap so you don’t have it taking up valuable space and time in your WP working day.

Full Site Editing Starts Rolling in with WP 5.8

Over the last 2 weeks, the WP team has decided that big parts of Full Site Editing will roll into the core on the next release of WP, which will be 5.8, and is coming in June.

There’s another big chunk of it that won’t roll into core until perhaps 5.9, though. 

This new code primarily affects theme and block developers.

And because you need a Full Site Editing compliant theme to use some of these features, most current site owners will never see, nor make use of, the new features for now.

But, that’s not to say the new code won’t affect current site owners.

Me and my webmaster designers will do our best to keep an eye on the code changes and see if any of them impact current themes or Gutenberg blocks.

So, just keep reading Tips Tuesday, and I’ll keep you up to date with it.

Block FLoC or Not?

Last week the buzz was all about a proposal for WP to block Google’s new tracking method that essentially replaces 3rd party cookie tracking. It’s called FLoC.

READ: WordPress Proposal to Block FLoC for details.

There has been a lot of discussion since the news broke.

WPTavern released a balanced report on the fallout of this proposal over the course of the week.

I was glad to see a quote in that article that WP is considering the impact of all this on site owners who make their living from ad revenue.

Even though there is substantial dev support for the block, it likely will not be treated as a security issue. And even if it does hit WP core, it may be an optional filter.

The dev team put it on their agenda for discussing in the April 21 live session and had representatives from Google on hand to answer questions. 

It will likely be later this week before we have a summary notes of that meeting to see what they decided, and I’ll keep you posted.

Wrap Up

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

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