Tips Tuesday – GA4 Course Preview, PHP 8 Update, Video Music, Digital Downloads

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• PHP 8 update deadline reminder
• 3-part master class to design and deliver your lead magnet
• A story about Betty and why you should be proud of yourself
• What’s in the GA4 course and when it will release
• Why there will be a big focus change for BlogAid soon
• WordPress 6.1 releases Nov 1 and I’m making a video tour for you
• What art can you create with WP 6.1? See the Block Museum for inspiration
• Where to get royalty free music for your videos
• How to get similar pages ranking and what duplicate content really is

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BlogAid Happenings

Holy cow!!! Things are jumping around here. I think I’ve sent out more emails in the last 2 weeks than the whole year combined.

That’s because there is SO much info that my peeps need to know and I’m keeping them right on top of things and ahead of the curve.

And here are 2 of the big ones that you’ll want to know about as well.

PHP 8 Upgrade Deadline Reminder

Quick reminder that support for PHP 7.4 ends on November 28th.

PHP is the main coding language that WP runs on and PHP is always in development.

So you have to keep up with the current version.

Most sites are currently running PHP 7.4, but all support for it will end in November, including security updates.

That means that hosts will force all site owners to upgrade to PHP 8.0.

I took my Hubbers (DIY site audit clients) through that upgrade back in July – and boy are we glad we did it early!!!!

Sites on every host except (affiliate link) Iridium Hosting broke – every one of them – because most hosts have no idea how to set up a server correctly these days. And that’s why me and my peeps are at Iridum Hosting now too.

Plus, several folks found out that their old themes are not PHP 8 compatible either.

And a few folks found some unique plugins that weren’t ready as well.

We’re all good now, and we sure are glad that we took the time to get it done early.

So, while everyone else starts screaming come the end of November, we’ll be calmly going about our day and focusing on our busy season of posts and such, not our site tech.

FYI, be sure you upgrade to PHP 8.0, not 8.1, as it is not deemed stable yet, and WP and plugins have not been tested against it.

Spread the Word

If you’re in blogger groups, I sure hope you’ll let folks know who helped keep you out of panic with PHP 8.

I won’t be taking those panic jobs, but can help them avoid such things next time, and there will always be something new.

Masterclass: Design & Deliver Your Lead Magnet – 3 Part Workshop

Earlier this year, visibility expert, Denise Wakeman and I teamed up to do workshops for my Hubbers on creating a lead magnet.

It was AWESOME!!!!!

And now Denise is bringing that same master class to everyone as a 3-part workshop.

Folks, this is a “get it done” series where Denise takes you from “I don’t even know where to start” to a finished product.

She will help you discover what your audience wants, how to write it, how to create it, and more.

The first workshop starts Nov 8, so you want to jump on this.

(Affiliate link) 

Register now because this is the good stuff that works.

Site Services Update

As I reported in recent Tips Tuesdays, client work picks up significantly in October and stays heavy for the rest of the year.

The waitlist is now around 4 weeks – best guess.

So, we are well into Nov and running into Dec at this point.

If you have a site audit checkup due before the end of the year, now is the time to fill out the site audit request form.

Or, if you want to move to better hosting too, please fill out the migration/audit combo request form.

BlogAid Village Happenings

A Story About Betty

One of my long-time site audit clients shared a funny story with me recently and she gave me permission to share it with you.

We’ll call her Betty. And her family runs a small business in a specific industry.

When I first met Betty she was wanting to come out of the site she had with a company that specializes in creating sites for that industry.

And it was a good thing she did too because 2 days after we got her new site ready to go, that agency got hacked and so did all of their sites.

We were able to get Betty’s site launched a little ahead of schedule and get all traces of the SEO damage from that hack erased off Google in short order.

And Betty’s new fast, secure site hit page 1 of Google shortly after she took my DIY SEO course too.

Every single thing that Betty writes hits page 1 of Google now – everything.

Well, she and her husband were recently at a convention for their industry and of course there was a booth for an agency who did websites for that industry.

Honey, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall to hear Betty take those folks to task!!!!

She knew way more about it than they did!!!!!!

They told her she was going to get sued for not having an ADA compliance badge on her site.

Well, we all know from the super ADA posts that Michelle Phillips of Codefetti provided us exactly why we don’t want that badge from that vendor – it doesn’t work and it puts a target on your site.

And then they showed her one of their blog posts. And Betty asked them where their H2s were and showed them how to improve their blobs of paragraphs formatting.

Then they told her that she would have to pay them an extra $2,000/mo to get her site to the front page of Google.

Betty just laughed and laughed. She was already wiping the floor with them.

You Know More Than You Realize

When Betty told me this story, she commented on how much she has learned about site stuff and SEO and more over the 6 years we’ve been working together.

And she couldn’t imagine how much business she would have lost had she stayed with one of those site agencies.

And not to mention the savings of $2k/mo to do what she’s able to easily do for herself.

I hope all of my clients pat yourself on the back.

You know way more than you realize.

And you’re so far ahead of other bloggers because you’re spending less and saving more and getting the services that pay for themselves over and over for years.

Plus, you’re getting more traffic to your site.

Go read the testimonials on BlogAid site audit services and the DIY SEO course.

A 100% increase in traffic and page 1 of Google are not atypical.

BlogAid Course Happenings

Google Analytics 4 Course Update

Woot!!!!

The tutorials for the GA4 course are written – all 90 of them!!!!

I’m so excited about this course, and I’ll tell you why.

I had planned on this being a sprint and it turned into a marathon.

Once I got in there and saw all the stuff that was missing that you have now in UA (Universal Analytics), and then saw why none of the reports in GA4 match UA, I started digging in to find out why.

And that turned into a long, long, long rabbit hole.

When I tell you that GA4 is NOT a UA upgrade, it’s a whole other animal, I’m not kidding!!!

The BlogAid GA4 course will cover:

• Setting up GA4 and Tag Manager
• Tour of the default reports and the few of them that are in any way worthwhile
• Creating master reports for Acquisition, Engagement, and Click Tracking
• 20+ custom report examples with accurate info to report to brands and ad agencies
• Advanced tutorials on using Tag Manager and GA4 for custom click tracking, like showing what page a visitor was on when they clicked your affiliate link, and which one, plus clicking your optin

This course is made for bloggers because I know what you need, and I saw what was missing from GA4.

You’ll want every one of these custom reports.

GA4 Course Release Update

This week I’ll be setting up the actual course pages.

And then I’ll be turning into a tutorial recording maniac.

Once I get the first batch ready I’ll be opening up the course for purchase.

Because the research took far longer than expected, and because there are so many more tutorials than expected, it goofed up my release date and duration plans for the course that I mentioned in previous Tips Tuesdays.

So, here’s what’s coming.

I’ll be making the course available before I finish recording all of the tutorials.

And that will be at a substantial discount for a limited time.

The deepest of those discounts will be sent to my clients and other course members, and then to BlogAid News subscribers only.

As I release more sections of tutorials, the price will go up, that’s why it is for a limited time.

And then it will hit the discount I’ll be offering for my holiday sales promotions.

If you jump on these savings, you’ll get to take this like a drip course and complete little sections as they roll out. 

And you’re really going to appreciate that as there is no way to do this in one sitting like you did with UA.

BlogAid Focus Change

Y’all know that I had been working on a new “secret” project all summer and hoped to release it at the end of this year.

Well, this GA4 course took over my life and it’s all I have been working on for the past month, so I don’t see how I’m going to hit my target of launching that secret project by the end of this year.

And that’s okay, and here’s why.

It’s been a decade since I had to grow a new audience from scratch. And that’s exactly what I will have to do for this new secret project.

So, with this GA4 course getting way bigger than I planned, and the price having to match that, I decided to drop the price a bit, extend the access time, and go full bore into marketing it instead of just mainly selling it to the peeps who already follow me.

Extended access also means more work for me with updates, because GA4 is in active development.

But, the silver lining here is that I’m going to use this opportunity to establish the type of marketing campaign needed to grow an audience to super big.

I have really missed doing YouTubes and TikToks and other videos.

And you are going to start seeing a whole slew of them from me.

Plus, you’ll start seeing a slew of blog posts on GA4 too.

So, this will be my focus from now through 2023 so I can get established with gaining a GA4 audience well ahead of the UA deadline next summer.

I intend to own every platform I can with GA4 education.

I wanted you to know so you won’t think that I’m not doing client work anymore or such.

And Tips Tuesday will be where I post links to everything I released that week so you can watch too. I won’t be drowning you in emails every time I publish a new post or video on it.

And of course, I’ll be checking my GA4 analytics for BlogAid to see how this marketing campaign is working, and I’ll be sharing my own custom report layouts in the course for what I find to be most useful to me with this too.

And, I’ll be bringing all of those marketing campaign tips right back to you on BlogAid as well.

I’m really looking forward to taking this new journey and sharing it with you because I know you’ll want all the growth tips you can get too!!!

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

WordPress Tips

WordPress 6.1 Releases Nov 1

As much as I want to get going with recordings for the GA4 course tutorials, I will need to take time this week to test WP 6.1, as it releases on Nov 1.

I’ll be making a video tour for you with all the new features.

Get Special Update Instructions

We will not be upgrading immediately when WP 6.1 rolls out.

BlogAid News subscribers will be the only folks to receive my special update instructions when I deem it safe for us to upgrade.

If you are receiving Tips Tuesday in your inbox, you’re on that email list.

So be sure to check specifically for that weekly email to ensure you are subscribed.

If you’re not getting it, then you’re missing a LOT, like the deepest discount on courses and such too.

So go subscribe now!!!

What Art Can You Create with WP 6.1?

WP native blocks have come a very long way.

Most of them include all manner of styling features now.

So, if you’ve been using a specialty block plugin from Astra, Kadence, or GeneratePress, you may want to have a look at this post on the art you can create with WP 6.1 and try these features listed in this post next time instead.

And see their link in that post to the Museum of Block Art for inspiration, although I will say that the click through layout of this, and the list of materials used is a bit disappointing.

In that post, they also have a link to one that you probably ought to bookmark.

It’s a list of all the styling available in each block.

Keep in mind that the Gutenberg Ninja course will be closing at the end of this year.

But I’ll still keep you posted on what’s new with it in every WP release, and tips like this for where to find styling choices and such too.

Video Tips

Need Royalty Free Music for Your Videos?

WP has taken over the Creative Commons licensing site for audio and image/video use and renamed it OpenVerse.

The audio section just hit 800,000 files available for use.

If you’re looking for new music to use on your videos, this would be a good place to check.

SEO Tips

How to Get Similar Pages Ranking

Do you write about the same topic over and over?

That’s going to happen with me and this GA4 marketing campaign.

You have to be super careful about duplicate content and keyword cannibalization with it.

And Team Yoast has a nice post that defines what both of those things are, as there is so much misinformation about them, especially duplicate content.

So, go read that post.

One of the ways I’m going to avoid these issues is by building a Content Silo for that topic.

That’s something I teach in the DIY SEO course and it works fabulously on my woodworking site too – you know, the one I’m getting paid from YouTube on even though I haven’t created a new post for it in a year. And the one where folks stay on a post for 5-7 minutes and then click over to even more posts.

That’s something I’ll be showing you Engagement reports on in the GA4 course too. And yes, you can specifically track video engagement in GA4 as well.

Wrap Up

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

Thanks for sharing this podcast and post with your blogging buddies, and for leaving comments and reviews too.

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