Tips Tuesday – DIY SEO Course Revamp, WP 6.8 Faster Load, Kadence Blocks Milestone 

Tips this week include:

• How one post from Denise Wakeman gave me a big breakthrough
• Pinterest Course links added to Resources page
• Complete revamp of the DIY SEO course – going beyond Google
• WP 6.8 Betas are rolling out
• What’s up with the new Speculative Loading coming in WP 6.8
• Congratulations to Kadence Blocks for their 500k milestone

Are you adjusted to the time change yet? I’m there and raring to go!!

The U.S. moved to Daylight Saving Time over the weekend, but other places in the world have not, or have not done so yet. So, please do keep that in mind if you want to attend live sessions hosted in the U.S.

BlogAid Happenings

I had a real breakthrough with the new courses and masterminds I want to offer you. So, let’s dive into the news for this week.

This post contains affiliate links. Thanks for using them to support the free and helpful info you get from BlogAid!

Course Happenings

Thanks Denise

I’m a big fan of Denise Wakeman. She was the first visibility expert I met online about 2 decades ago and I have followed her everywhere she is online since.

That includes her newest Substack Publication Your Visibility Edge.

There, she has a post on networking that literally blew away the boulder in my path that had me stuck with how to move forward with masterminds and courses that I want to offer you, plus how I want to promote those courses.

I suggest you go read the full article for yourself and see if it gives you an explosion of ideas, as it did for me.

Following are some of the changes and new resources I will be continuing to organize this week.

Pinterest Course Links Added

As you may recall, we had a joint live session with folks in both the site audit Hub group as well as the DIY SEO course to hear from Pinterest expert Amy LeBlanc. And that was a big deal, as Amy doesn’t normally do hosted live sessions like that!!!

She has an awesome Pinterest course that my clients rave about.

Folks in the course tell me they:

• Get 3x more traffic from Pinterest
• See tips and techniques that are not in any other Pinterest course they’ve taken, some being twice the price.

I’ve added links to that course on the Resources page on BlogAid so you can access them anytime.

Until now, those Pinterest course links have only been in the site audit Hub group as well as the DIY SEO course – and that’s where you’ll find a 50% discount. Thank you, Amy!!!!

FYI, folks who are in any of my memberships get discounts to all others. So, if you’re in those memberships, look there first for your links and discount codes on everything.

Complete Revamp of the DIY SEO Course

This year I’ve been talking about doing more mini courses and masterminds.

And I’ve asked y’all to let me know if you’re interested.

There most definitely has been enough interest in these things to do them. But not really enough for me to start a whole new, separate setup for each one at the more affordable price point I was hoping to offer them.

The one thing all of them have in common is getting more eyeballs.

And that has been the goal of the DIY SEO course all of these years that I’ve run it.

The problem now is that we need to look beyond Google for those eyeballs.

So, instead of all the work it takes to create, run, and promote multiple offerings, in multiple places, like BlogAid, eCreators Hub, and Substack, I think it just makes more sense to put that energy into a total revamp of the DIY SEO course, including a name change.

This is the map I’m working with right now:

• What’s in the course now will stay there.
• But, the section for the live workshops, that cover blogging SEO, mainly for Google, will become a static course section. I will go through them to ensure the replays on those lessons are still current, and update if need be. The section will have a new name, maybe something like WP Blogging SEO, or such.
• A new section will be created for blogging on Substack. And that is also where we will do more live workshops on that platform too. That will serve as our mastermind group for it as well. 
• And a new section on blogging/posting on other platforms, like Medium and Pinterest (though the Pinterest stuff will be light, as Amy covers it best in her courses) will be created. We can have live sessions like masterminds to compare notes and such with how we are all doing there.

Those are the definite changes coming to the course.

Following are other ideas I have, but I’m still trying to get clarity on how I want to map this out.

• We need a section on video. But the fact is, all of the platforms are in constant flux with that. So, I think standing tutorials would be a waste of time, as they would be obsoleted quickly. Maybe live workshops on video for any and all platforms would be best. And I think I want to focus these workshops on folks already doing video instead of trying to make a beginner course. The fact is, I can’t commit the time to do both. So, I’ve chosen to focus on the needs of folks who are already serious about making money and getting eyeballs with video. If you know of a good beginning video course, please let me know and I’ll list it as a resource.
• How to find your peeps. We need real, in-the-trenches info on how to do this, not just the line on every coach’s lips of “go where your people are”. No single person can be everywhere or should try to be. So, I think live, mastermind-type sessions, where we can compare notes and see examples is the best way to go.
• “Let’s try this” type workshops. Every few weeks I come across super articles from other folks that I think would serve as a good one-off challenge for us to do together. I don’t have the time to recreate and combine that material from all of these sources into new challenges/workshops for us. So, let’s just review them as is – together. We’ll take what is useful to us and all try it as a group, then do a follow-up to see what results we each got.

I’m happy to hear your ideas on how these extra sections/masterminds/workshops would be most helpful to you!!!

And, if you have ideas for a new course name, I’m happy to hear those suggestions too!

Price Change to the DIY SEO Course

None. 

You heard me right. 

None.

Here’s how I see it.

• We NEED this new info to survive online, me included.
• The fact is, if you don’t survive online, my businesses don’t either. I am totally invested in your success, and therefore my success. Plus, I’m starting a new marketing campaign and will be checking into, and trying out, all sorts of new things. Let’s do it together.
• We need one central location to log in and get the related info. I can’t see splitting this up into a bunch of smaller courses that are hosted all over the place, and at different price points. I can’t afford to manage that kind of setup either.
• Time management – we all need a way to do things in a reasonable order with reasonable time commitments to educate, execute, and confirm results. That means learning something one day. Then giving time for us to do it. Then giving time to see results. And then coming back together a few months later to compare notes and improve. To me, this is the real value of the course. And it depends on your input too. I won’t be the only teacher. We’ll learn from each other. It doesn’t make sense to have separate courses with separate payments that would discourage folks from joining in on ALL of these things.
• The cost of eggs. We’re all struggling to pay the bills right now on the most basic living expenses. I just don’t feel good about raising the price on what we NEED to survive online. I’d rather keep it affordable to encourage more folks to come into this village and participate with us.

Loyalty Discount

As mentioned, I won’t be increasing the price of the course for all this new help, but I won’t be lowering it for the general public either.

I’d much rather reward my loyal followers with a special $100 off discount code.

Simply contact me through the site or reply to this email and let me know you want the code.

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WordPress Tips

WP 6.8 Betas Out

The Beta 1 for the next release of WP, which is 6.8, became available last week. I expect Beta 2 will roll out today.

Since Matt Mullenweg pissed off the majority of the volunteer devs, he decided to personally take control of this release and do it in house with a much smaller Automattic staff that he pays and controls entirely.

And because of that, there were supposed to be far fewer changes in this release. But here’s what the news release says:

“WordPress 6.8 Beta 1 contains over 370 enhancements and 520 bug fixes for the editor, including design improvements, polishing the query loop, and more than 230 tickets for WordPress 6.8 Core.”

I’m grateful for the bug fixes, and wish to heck they would focus entirely on them in at least one release a year. Some of these tickets are several years old.

I’ll start my testing when the RC1 rolls out in a few weeks.

And I’ll have a post for you on the changes before the final release.

Speculative Loading in 6.8

This new feature is something I’m going to have to spend time digging into, including how to turn it off, if it will be on by default in WP 6.8.

Speculative Loading acts like the same sort of feature that Cloudflare introduced a few months ago called Speed Brain. But Cloudflare used RUM for it, which is something we don’t want. Plus, they had no way to control exclusions. (FYI, Cloudflare turned this on by default in free accounts. I reamed them a new one for doing that!!!!)

The WP version of this preload type feature has some built-in exclusions, mainly for cart clicks and such. But they may not be enough for some store and member site setups.

And that’s just one more reason why I hope to heck they don’t turn it on by default.

The speed gain is super. And that’s the hype you’re going to hear about.

We’ll use it if it works well and isn’t a pain to manage on certain sites.

I’ll keep you posted.

Plugin News

Congratulations to Kadence for hitting the 500,000 active installs milestone with their awesome Kadence Blocks plugin!!

That’s a big achievement.

And we’re so happy for them and thankful for all of the hard work they put into this plugin, plus their awesome support for it too!!