Tips Tuesday – GA4 May Day Sale, AI for WP Event, Site and Page SEO

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• Why to avoid using old methods and tech that gurus recommend
• Universal Analytics ends in 60 days
• GA4 course May Day sale is happening right now
• Site and Page SEO workshop this week in the DIY SEO course
• Why you have to go beyond keywords for good SEO
• Time to update to WP 6.2
• How WP 6.2 starts a new era of performance checks
• WP admin notification chaos gets attention again, finally
• Big AI for WordPress event on May 25

BlogAid Happenings

Here we go – the rush to get sites all spiffied up before the kids get out of school and summer break starts.

I’ve been super busy with site audits and helping folks launch new sites and such.

But, a couple of weekends ago I changed out some kitchen light fixtures and it has resulted in a pinched nerve running down my neck into my right shoulder and some kind of over-use harm to my left thumb area. 

I’ve been taking measures to deal with both. But I’ve had to limit my desk time because of it too.

So, if I’m a little late replaying to you or getting something to you, that’s why.

Site Services Update

If you’re a current client and your site audit checkup is due in May, or you want to get your site fast and secure before spring is over, now is the time to get in your request.

Thinking about starting a new site? 

Get it set up the right way from the get go. In fact, it’s the only way to properly secure it as you only have one shot to hide that IP address from bad bots.

Ready for a change of direction to make more money? 

Contact me for a consult talk out your idea and then get a plan in place with all the right tech and offers. My consult clients make 4x more money and they avoid expensive mistakes and pitfalls, like using the wrong setup and such.

Don’t Use Old Methods and Tech

I was chatting last week with a current client who is moving into selling her own digital products.

She had signed up for a course on how to do it with a guru who had been offering this type of info for several years.

Let me tell you something about courses like that.

Those gurus may not know what it takes to start from scratch now.

Plus, they are all using ancient tech stuff too.

A good example is LeadPages – you can do everything you need for building that landing page with Gutenberg.

And then they tend to use some of the old cart systems that are super heavy on your site and may or may not be with us in another year or too because they are being replaced by better tech.

It’s not that these gurus are trying to mislead you. It’s that they use what they know and have spent time making training materials on. And they have little interest in spending the time looking at, or testing alternatives, much less spending all the time making new training videos on it.

What some of these gurus do have that does still work is basic strategy because selling is selling regardless of platform.

So, be careful who you consult with and especially who you hire. Ask them about the tech stuff they recommend.

If you’re one of my current clients, check with me before you put it on your site to see if it’s something that’s still good to use or not.

Otherwise you could totally bork all the speed and security work you just paid to have done.

That goes for new themes and such too, as well as the designer you hire to style it for you.

BlogAid Course Happenings

2 Months Until Universal Analytics Stops Working

Yep, time is running out on Universal Analytics collecting data for you.

It ends on July 1st, which is just 59 days from now.

But, Google did extend the time that you will have access to that old data. It will be available until July 1, 2024 so you can see year-over-year comparisons.

GA4 Course May Day Sale

It’s time to get your Google Analytics 4 fully set up and I’m going to make it even easier for you to do with a May Day discount.

Site and Page SEO Workshop

This week in the DIY SEO course we’re ready to dive into our workshop series for Site and Page SEO and then move on to your on-page, on-post, and image SEO. Plus we’ll be covering Content Silos and Keywords and such over the next few weeks.

Go Beyond Keywords and Basic SEO Stuff

Funny how it is that most SEO workshops start with keywords.

They are important, but the reason my DIY SEO course starts with the technical SEO is because all the keywords in the world won’t help if Google can’t crawl your site or if it it finds issues when it does crawl.

And we go way past just keywords.

We get into the structure of your content and way pages are different from posts in the eyes of Google.

Plus, we talk about all the spots where you need to use keywords, and how to not overuse them, and the importance of semantic search too.

So, if you’ve taken any other SEO course, just know that they likely scratched the surface. There is so much more to know that’s super easy for you to do and will yield far better results.

It’s always a good time to get into the DIY SEO course.

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

WordPress Tips

Time to Update to WP 6.2

I believe it’s finally okay for most folks to update to WP 6.2.

I sent special update instructions to my BlogAid News subscribers over the weekend.

The primary hold up has been an issue with titles disappearing in the editor on some sites running the Kadence theme.

Kadence has released an update that fixed it, though.

So, we should be good to go.

And if you’re using a theme that is still telling you not to update, switch to a better theme.

What’s New in WP 6.2

It has been so long since this release to the time I felt it was okay to update that I think it’s silly to spend time making a video tour at this point. (Everybody else put out tours back in November – so it’s super late in the game to do one now.) Plus, I’m covered up with client work and limiting desk time right now.

So, I’d like to refer you to other sources that cover what I would have covered, and have screenshots to see the changes on this release.

• WPBeginner’s 6.1 tour
• Kinsta’s 6.1 tour

Next time I’ll try to get out a video tour right after the release, even if we aren’t updating right away to have it ready for you to refer to later.

WordPress 6.2 Starts a New Era of Performance Checks

WordPress is 20 years old.

Google added speed as a ranking factor 8 years ago when they moved to mobile-first indexing in 2015.

And WordPress is just now taking that seriously.

Starting with the development of 6.2 they will now have checks in place to ensure that new changes don’t result in negative performance, which is exactly what happened with the release of 6.1.

In my mind, open-source code is great. But design-by-committee sucks.

I’m glad to see that WP is finally catching on to the fact that real leadership with design is required so that they deliver a product that has some consistency and has a well-documented changelog, which is something else they just started doing in a way that doesn’t waste 20 hours to read through.

WP Notifications Get Attention Again

Here’s another fine example of design-by-committee moving at a snail’s pace.

A project was started back in 2019 to get some control over the chaos that has been created with the way plugin and theme developers spew notifications on admin pages, including those that you have to dismiss every single time you log in.

Well, that project is finally getting some attention again and hopefully this time they will stay on it and force developers to adhere to certain guidelines. 

But, keep in mind that the only enforcement WP can bring to this is on the free plugins that are in the WP plugins repository. 

Let’s just hope that paid plugin devs will adhere to the same standards if/when they ever get put into WP core. 

Right now the whole thing is still a feature plugin.

AI WordPress Tips

AI for WordPress Event May 25

Over the past 2 weeks I’ve been researching AI plugins and integrations for WordPress.

I haven’t found anything beyond novelty, or they are not ready for primetime yet.

But, there are some tools that may be very useful down the road.

Human Made is the WordPress agency who is sponsoring an event to demo the AI products they are making for WP and what else is out there, plus the impact of AI on WP. 

The event is on May 25.

The page to sign up for the event is called Word on the Future.

I’ll be there and I’ll have a follow up report for you.

And does anyone else find the name of this organization as ironic as I do for hosting an AI event?

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.