Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• 53 days until Universal Analytics stops working
• GA4 is NOT a UA upgrade – it is a whole other animal
• Is your global site SEO setup correctly?
• Links SEO workshop this week
• Cloudflare has a WAF upgrade
• Switch to Cloudflare annual plan to save money
• Why different social platforms work for different audiences
• SEO benefits of posting to multiple platforms
• Faster production with making videos
• Proof that Google is promoting review posts
• HTTPS lock in URL bar going away
• Canonical tag won’t work on syndicated content
• Kadence AI release
• WordPress AI trends

GA4 Happenings

Have you seen that big countdown timer on your Universal Analytics yet?

Yeah, that lit a fire under a bunch of folks that they need to switch to GA4 pronto!

And it spurred those of us that already have a GA4 property to find out how to turn that timer off and get rid of the various alert notifications we are seeing.

So, I was super busy last week getting out social media videos to let folks know what was happening.

And then super busy making new tutorials for the GA4 Course for Bloggers to help everyone get through the mess Google has made of this switch.

GA4 is NOT a UA Upgrade

GA4 is a whole other animal.

And the Standard reports don’t show you all the stuff you’re used to seeing in UA either.

If you let Google just do the GA4 setup for you, you’re missing a LOT!

It does the bare minimum of settings.

You won’t get any of your GDPR stuff taken care of with that.

53 Days Until UA Stops Working

July 1 is only 53 days away.

Time to get started with setting up your new GA4 Property fully, and the right way.

Plus, learn about the new reports, and how to make your own custom reports.

They are so easy to do.

I have 2 courses to help you do it.

The GA4 Lite course takes you all the way through the setup and the Standard reports.

The Ultimate GA4 Course for Bloggers gives you all that, plus Google Tag Manager Setup and how to make over 20 custom report that you’ll want to see what you were seeing in UA, plus see all the fantastic new tracking features in GA4, like your outbound clicks.

So, get in now and get your GA4 setup in one sitting.

Then do the things that Google now requires for connecting your GA to your UA.

DIY SEO Happenings

Is Your Global Site SEO Setup Correctly?

That’s one of the things we covered in last week’s DIY SEO workshop.

Did you know that both Yoast and RankMath have global SEO settings?

I bet not, and the reason why I think that is because 80% of my new site audit clients don’t have them configured.

That knocks out your schema markup – which are the extra descriptive tags that tell Google more about your content.

And Google eats those up like candy – it just loves them.

Plus, your theme may be outputting an older schema markup language and your SEO plugin is outputting the newer language that Google prefers.

That confuses Google.

There are standing tutorials in the course for how to check and fix your theme to turn off the old stuff it’s outputting.

You don’t have to hire anybody to do it for you.

Links SEO Workshop this Week

This week we’ll be diving into all things SEO with links.

There’s more to it than you think.

And Google is getting picky about how you do them too.

They want to see the proper text used.

And they want you to use the correct tags for sponsor and nofollow and such too.

Plus, you have more linking opportunities than just in your text content as well.

And, how you do your internal linking directly impacts your SEO ranking too.

Cloudflare Happenings

New WAF Upgrade

Last year, during the height of the DDoS attacks, Cloudflare made their WAF (Web Application Firewall) in their paid plans available to the free plans too.

Since then they have been making improvements to it.

Last week we all received an email to switch over to the updated ways of doing things.

I’ve been switching my site audit clients over to the new WAF and will be making tutorials for my Webmaster Training members shortly.

Borked Site Access

Some of my clients reported issues when accessing or logging into their sites last week.

We believe there might have been some network disruption as Cloudflare was rolling out the new WAF.

If it persists, please let me know.

Switch to Cloudflare Yearly Cloudflare Plan and Save

Cloudflare has not had a price increase in many years.

They have announced a meger $5/mo increase that goes into effect soon, like in the coming week or two.

However, they are offering a grandfather savings type deal to existing paid clients.

If you go yearly before May 14, then you can stay at your same $20/mo.

If you go monthly, the rate will increase to $25/mo.

So, be sure to check your plan this week and try to save yourself a bit of money.

Site Services Update

The wait list for site audits and new site setups and such is running about 2 weeks, and may get longer soon.

Spring is generally a heavy season as folks are wanting to get their sites all spiffied up before the kids get out of school or summer vacations start.

So, if you’re due for an audit checkup this month, now is the time to get that request in.

If you’re ready for a consult to discover how to make more money or take your online business in another direction, those are available on demand.

Video Happenings

Different Platforms for Different Audiences

Y’all know that I went all in with short-form video creation around February.

I wanted to give you a little update on how that is going.

For BlogAid, I was seeing an increase in views and conversions from Instagram.

And then the AI videos I did there went viral.

That’s what gave me the idea to start the AI Discover Hub.

But, IG pulled back on promotion of Reels, and the eyeballs and conversions have stagnated there.

BlogAid has been languishing on TikTok. 

In fact, WordPress is a dirty word on that platform.

So, imagine my surprise when the reel I did on the GA4 countdown timer blew up a bit there.

TikTok has been VERY good for the AI Discover Hub.

In fact, it less than 3 months it will likely surpass the number of followers I’ve gotten on BlogAid in 13 months.

Plus, most of my AIDH vids are getting saved to Favorites and I’m getting a LOT of profile views so folks can see more of my content.

The growth is slow but steady as long as I keep posting content.

And to my dismay, AIDH is basically crickets on IG.

I guess that is because I’m only posting reels.

I don’t have time or plans to do any other type of post right now.

I’m also seeing a bit more interest on LinkedIn now that I’ve done a combo profile for site and AI stuff.

And I have a blended profile on Medium too, and the AI stuff is starting to draw more interest.

And I’m picking up interest on Twitter for AI stuff a bit too.

YouTube is doing okay, but not going bonkers.

SEO Benefits

I’m also seeing more SEO benefits to all of the places I’m posting.

Google is indexing Twitter and even the Medium posts are showing up in Search.

So, while my new site is still catching on with Google, posting to these established platforms are getting me seen in search quickly.

Faster Production

The main thing is, after the first month of making videos, I have my video production method down pat and can crank them out much faster now.

I even talk about it on the AI Discover Hub and how using Nvidia eye tracking and Descript make creating videos faster.

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

SEO Tips

Google Promotes Review Posts

I’ve been telling y’all for a while now that Google is desperate for more review posts from folks who actually use the product.

The nice folks at SEMRush have put together a report on the State of Search 2023.

Scroll about mid way down to the infographic and have a look at the section that has a bunch of colored circles – they looked like P letters on my iPad.

It’s about the Distribution of Keywords Search Volume by Intent.

Look at the little SEMRush insight below it.

Google is offering up more reviews in search.

And this trend is still growing.

So, seriously consider doing review videos. And put your affiliate link on them.

If folks are searching to buy a product, let it be off your recommendation.

HTTPS Lock Going Away

Remember when Google made HTTPS a ranking factor just to get more folks to make the switch?

Well, now that most sites are HTTPS, Google has decided the little lock icon is not really representative of real encryption security.

So, they will be removing that lock icon on Chrome and replacing it with a Tune icon.

To me, the new icon doesn’t represent anything I recognize. Go have a look at it yourself and see what you think.

Canonical Tag Won’t Work on Syndicated Content

One of the ways that we ensure Google knows a post appeared on our site first is by linking it to the canonical whenever that content is syndicated, including us posting it on platforms that Google indexes, or when others scrape our RSS feed for reposting.

That way we don’t get a duplicate content penalty for posting the same thing on LinkedIn or Medium or such.

Well, now Google has said that the canonical tag trick won’t work anymore.

Instead, they say you should get the platform to block your syndicated content from search.

What the hey, Google!!!

Don’t they get that we want all the extra eyeballs that syndicated content can bring us as well as that link back to our site?

As I mentioned previously, my AI posts on other platforms are showing up in search results.

So, I’m getting more eyeballs on those posts in 3 extra places that I can’t get yet just from putting them on my blog.

And there is no way these other platforms are going to block those crawls, as showing up in search results gets more folks to their platform too.

So, I don’t know what will become of this.

What I hope will come is a ton of pushback on it.

Theme Tips

Kadence AI Releases

Kadence has released a new AI integration that allows you to create your theme layout and even get you started on your content.

You just tell it what your site is about and it generates starter copy, images, and then lays it all out for you.

There is a waitlist, and I got on it because you know I’m going to be doing some super deep testing on whatever it creates.

I’m also going to check into their privacy policy with it, and if all the info I give it about my site and content and conversion points are going to be used to help train their AI model.

WordPress AI Trends

I’m glad to see Kadence moving in this direction, as I’m seeing tons more interest in the WP universe for incorporating AI.

I just haven’t seen anything that is more than novelty with it so far.

But, if this new Kadence AI works well, and has privacy, it will be a game changer.

The reason I say that is because all of the other AI site builders I’ve seen create something that looks like 1990.

It’s speedy because it’s flat HTML.

There’s no real UX in play, and definitely no SEO or such.

So, the promo for them that you can create a site in 10 minutes is really the only perk. And it looks like a 10 minute, robot design.

Wrap Up

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

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