Tips Tuesday – DIY SEO and Gutenberg Tutorial Updates, SEO in 2021, Site Success in 2021

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Welcome to the first BlogAid Tips Tuesday podcast of 2021, y’all, for Jan 5 and I’m your host MaAnna.

And it’s going to be pretty short and sweet today, as I think a lot of folks took off during the holidays and there aren’t a lot of tips to share or things for us to do on our sites this week.

And we can all use that kind of break now and then!!!

Tips this week include:

• Google’s priorities for SEO in 2021 as relayed by John Mueller directly
• Issues with the WP SMTP plugin
• Why to properly validate your email address for better delivery
• Last day to get your holiday discounts on BlogAid courses
• Gutenberg Ninja tutorials are updated for WP 5.6 changes
• DIY SEO standing tutorials are updated
• The survey coming to DIY SEO course members tomorrow
• Live chat for site success in 2021 on Thursday

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Join me Live to Discuss Tips Tuesday

I hope you’ll join for tonight’s livestream at 8pm ET / 5pm PT on the BlogAid Facebook Page. It’s a great way to get the deeper story on what’s reported in Tips Tuesday. And, I almost always have breaking news for the day too. So come join us live for the party.

Replay

Who I Help

All tips, advice, and suggestions in this, and all BlogAid posts and tutorials, are intended to empower DIY site owners who are serious about making money with their sites and are not on hosting that is restrictive in what you can and can’t do with your site and hosting setup. If you have any doubts about what type of host you are on and if the tips I give will work there, see this post on What is Managed Hosting?

BlogAid Happenings

Last day to get holiday sale discounts

Quick reminder that today is the last day to get holiday sale discounts on all BlogAid courses like

• Gutenberg Ninja
• DIY SEO
• Webmaster Training

I know some of you wanted the tax write off for 2021, so now is your last chance to put that to good use!!

Gutenberg Ninja tutorials update for WP 5.6

Last week I sent my BlogAid News subscribers the instructions for updating to WP 5.6.

And that meant it was time to release the updates for what changed in Gutenberg.

There weren’t nearly as many tutorials affected as I at first thought, so I was able to get them done in short order.

I sent everyone in the course an email with the list of updates, and you’ll find them on the Updates page in the Start Here section too.

DIY SEO tutorials updated

It’s almost time for us to start our Quick Checks in the DIY SEO course to ensure you have your foundation setup for:

• Yoast SEO
• Google Connections for analytics and search console

I got all of the standing video tutorials updated in the course last week, so we’re all ready for those Quick Checks that I’ll be sending out starting next week.

These will be emails with 5 minute checks so you’re sure that you’re all squared away and ready for our live workshops that will be starting soon.

For the Google Analytics connection tutorials, I did not include the new GA4 info, as I advise not using that yet. It’s beta and inaccurate and I just can’t see the reason for adding another 3rd party request to our sites that will be just one more speed hit right now.

DIY SEO Survey

Members of the DIY SEO course will get an email tomorrow with a survey link so you can share your 2021 SEO goals with me.

It’s a quick, 3-minute survey that will help ensure I have the courses and workshops you need to meet your SEO goals.

And it lets me know a bit about the SEO experience level of course members too.

I sure do appreciate you taking a moment to make your voice heard so I can continue to improve the course and deliver the info you need.

Live Chat for Site Success in 2021

Emails went out on Sunday to both my BB Hub site audit client members as well as my Webmaster Training members with an invitation to a live session this Thursday where we’ll take a peek into my crystal ball and the changes I see coming for 2021.

I believe it is critically important for all of us to pivot our online businesses to get ahead of the curves coming, and we must do those pivots early this year. 

Every prediction I have made in the last 6 years about online success has come true.

And I began pivoting BlogAid last year because of what I see coming. And now it’s time for all of my clients to start doing the same.

Plus, I’m looking forward to hearing thoughts from the whole village about what they are seeing and ideas and plans they have for 2021 too!!

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

SEO Tips

SEO in 2021

SEO Roundtable has a post with John Mueller sharing what Google says we should expect for SEO priorities in 2021.

And once you see that list, you’ll know why I’ve jumping up and down about Core Web Vitals and Structured Data (schema markup).

We’ll be diving into that kind of Technical SEO early in the live workshops too.

Plugin Tips

WP SMTP Plugin Issues

As y’all know, I use GSuites. And I use the Formidable Forms plugin for all of my contact forms.

Recently, when I received a form submission email, when I hit Reply, it was auto filling that in with my own address, not the sender’s email address.

So, I jumped on the Formidable plugin forum and reported it.

They very quickly replied with a link to a tutorial for how to deal with GSuites/Gmail issues. That wasn’t the problem, but below that was a section on how to deal with SMTP plugins.

I’m using the WP SMTP plugin on all of my sites to help ensure email deliverability. That’s especially important on my member sites, as the system auto sends renewals and such.

Turns out that the plugin had lost connection with my GSuites account and is no longer authorized.

This is another task that I outsourced, so I didn’t want to goof with the settings and try to fix it myself.

But I had to, as it took the owner of the account to re-verify the plugin and add the new URI redirect it required. So, it’s all good now. 

Properly validate your email for better delivery

It’s super important that you have the proper DKIM and SPF records for your email to ensure good delivery and to not have your emails go to the receiver’s spam folder.

If you use GSuites, there is an extra Google verification record that you need to add.

And many email list services, like MailChimp, have extra DKIM and SPF or other verification records that you should add for them too.

So, be sure you have all of your bases covered so that your subscribers actually see your emails.

Wrap Up

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

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