Tips Tuesday – GA4 Mini Course, WebP Images, Search Spam, Helpful Content Update

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• Issues with the Cloudflare interface and plugin being out of sync
• A tutorial on how to do the Yoast SEO database optimization and when to check it
• I’m delighted to report that we are wrapping up our PHP 8 tests
• Results of the GA4 mini course survey
• What’s up with the new Video SEO report in GSC, and why not to act on it
• Cloudways hosting is being acquired by DigitalOcean
• Will foodie sites get hit with Google’s Helpful Content Update?
• What’s up with the serious problem of internal search spam and IndexNow
• How a lack of proper site security is contributing to poor SEO
• Why the breaks were put on WebP by default for images in WP 6.1

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BlogAid Happenings

Site Services Update

We are running a little ahead on the service schedule. That’s because so many clients are coming in for their annual audit checkup right now and those are so fast, cheap, and easy.

Current wait list time is about 4 weeks.

So, if you have a checkup due in early October, now is the time to fill out the audit request form.

And, if you’re planning to move to better hosting too, please fill out the migration/audit combo request form.

BlogAid Village Happenings

Cloudflare Interface and Plugin Out of Sync

Last week I sent an email out to my BB Hub site audit clients and to my webmaster designer members about critically important settings at Cloudflare that had been turned off on some sites when Cloudflare switched from one of the 3 interim interfaces over to the one that everyone is on now.

I expect there may be a plugin update coming down the pike for us, but that doesn’t mean it will pick up the right settings. And that’s why we needed to check them manually.

So, if you normally do some tasks in the Cloudflare plugin besides purging, you might want to do them in the Cloudflare account now instead.

Optimize Yoast Database

The notification for when it’s time to optimize the Yoast SEO database disappeared from the top of our admin pages and can now only be found within the Yoast > General settings.

Who checks there? Nobody!!

So, I sent an email out to my BB Hub site audit clients and to my webmaster designer members with details on when they should do this update.

READ: How to Start SEO Database Optimization for a tutorial on how to do it.

Wrapping Up PHP 8 Tests

I believe everyone of my peeps has either switched over to PHP 8 now or is in process of making a change with their theme or on my wait list to move to better hosting and we’ll do the PHP 8 upgrade after that.

We started these changes in July and I’m glad we hit our target of finishing around end of August.

That’s well ahead of the end-of-life support on PHP 7.4 that will happen in October.

We’re going to hear bloggers screaming about it when their hosts force that upgrade and things start breaking all over the place.

Me and my peeps will be calmly going about our lives because we took care of it early, and with the support of the whole village.

BlogAid Course Happenings

GA4 Mini Course Survey

This weekend I sent out a survey to all BlogAid News subscribers to ascertain interest in a mini course on switching over to GA4, which is the new Google Analytics that all of us will have to start using by middle of 2023.

It is VERY different from the Universal Analytics all of us are using right now.

Thank you to everyone who took the quick survey!!!!! Your replies were very helpful!!!

Here’s the survey summary:

• Only 1% of folks who have GA4 installed have any clue how it works.
• Nobody can find the analytics info that is most important to them. It’s either a chore to dig for it or they can’t find it at all.
• 85% of folks want a course that has all the info available so they can do it in one sitting compared to doing it as a daily drip of tutorials.
• Most folks want the info available for a longer period so they can reference it.
• It’s about 50/50 when folks prefer to take the course between the 2 options of mid/late October or first half of January.
• It’s also about 50/50 on whether folks want a Facebook support group dedicated to the course. 
• Everybody wants it cheap.

Here are my plans for the course, and why

Timeline – I’m going to start my deep dive into GA4 this week. Once I see the material I need to cover, I’ll decide if I can get it ready for you by mid October. If not, then we’ll push it out to January. My preference is mid October because starting in December I’ll be getting the DIY SEO course ready for the new pre-checks and workshops that start in mid January. So, I need to be finishing up the GA4 course for delivery prior to that.

Main Focus – the biggest issue everyone on the planet has with GA4 is finding the one-to-one correspondence of data in it that they are used to seeing, and rely on, in UA (Universal Analytics). So, making sure you know how to do that will be the main focus of the course, as well as how to create a custom dashboard so you can get to that info quickly and easily.

Secondary Focus – GA4 has several features that are not in UA, like a better way to do tag management. And GA4 collects info differently too, with a focus on privacy. So that means you lose some data. I’ll be diving deep into these differences with a focus on new data collection you will want to use going forward with it to make the info in GA4 useful again.

Course Delivery and Availability – The last thing I want to create is a standing course that has to be updated every time Google makes a tweak. It’s just not profitable, and is the reason why I chose to close my Gutenberg Ninja and Video SEO Booster courses. Recorded, daily live sessions are not profitable either, not to mention the inconvenience to our schedules, only to have most folks watch the replay anyway. The point of the live sessions was going to be for answering questions and compare notes and dig into those on the fly, if need be. So, that’s why I asked how folks felt about having a Facebook support group for the course, which most folks groaned about too. I’m sure there are going to be questions, so we need a place to ask and answer them.

Pricing – Yes, I get that everyone is hurting with inflation right now. Me too. And once I start my deep dive and see how much material there is to cover, I’ll decide on the price for the course. For those of you already in my other courses, you know they are a firehose of info that gets straight to the point and covers everything you need to be successful. I’m not trying to compete with cheap junk courses on other platforms that have 200 videos with 50 minutes of fluff and 5 minutes worth of useful info in each one. 

Every course I have ever delivered is underpriced for the value of the info it contains.

So, if you want bargain basement info, you’re welcome to it, or to the sweat equity of searching and watching outdated YouTube videos. 

Making the course open to the public is the best way I know to make it more affordable.

So, here’s how I’ll be doing my GA4 course.

• The tutorials will be recorded videos. 
• All tutorials will be available for the duration of the course, not dripped.
• Emails will be sent on a semi-regular schedule to help remind you to get it done, and to inform you of questions that are being asked and answered in the course as folks go through the tutorials.
• The course will close within 2 months of release. This was always planned to be a “get in and get it done” course. 
• There will be a separate Facebook support group for it as this course is open to the public. It’s too much of a burden to me to answer questions in 3 different groups, like those for the DIY SEO course, the BB Hub, and the Webmaster groups. And this special Facebook group will close after the course does. Comments will not be open on the tutorials either. We all benefit more when we can all see the questions and answers in one spot.
• BB Hub members and everyone who is already in one of my courses will get a discount. Plus, discounts to the DIY SEO course will be available to anyone who is taking the GA4 course and not already in the DIY SEO course.
• The tutorial for how to connect GA4 will be added to the DIY SEO course in the Google Connections set of tutorials. Analytics is not SEO. But Search Console relies on your Analytics connection for it to verify your site. So, that’s why the connection part is covered.

I’ll keep you posted on how my deep dive into GA4 goes and when I think the course will be released.

New Video SEO Report in GSC

As you may recall, I reported a few Tips Tuesday’s ago that Google Search Console was rolling out a new report for video.

Some folks are now getting emails about errors that were found, including me.

I would STRONGLY urge you NOT to take any action on those reports, especially the one for the video not being prominent.

Google has only recently started supporting the correct VideoObject schema markup. They are WAY behind in this area.

Plus, there are bunches of ways to embed the video that also impact the schema markup, and what Google is trying to decipher, not the least of which is not following Google’s recommendation to put the video at the very top of the post, which has all kinds of adverse effects on your speed and other SEO factors.

That’s just how ignorant Google’s video bots are at this point. They can’t tell what you are trying to rank your post for when it has a video somewhere on it. So they want you to totally bork the rest of your SEO factors to make it easier for them. 

Fat chance, Google.

And to top all this off, Google’s John Mueller said this about the video errors:

John was asked “For the “Google could not determine the prominent video on the page” issues…video schema isn’t mentioned as a potential fix. Would adding video schema help Google in regards to this?”

John responded on Twitter “If it’s not prominent on the page, then adding structured data wouldn’t make it more prominent.”

Thanks a lot, John. That just muddied the waters for everyone.

Trust me when I say that the proper video schema markup will do wonders for your post and video’s visibility in search – and I have the data to prove it.

Don’t touch your schema markup and don’t move your video, either.

Putting the Power of the Village to Work for Us

I asked the folks in my Video SEO Booster course to report what they are seeing so we can compare notes. The reason why is because there is so much variation in the way folks have embedded videos for both speed and SEO – and I cover all of those options in the course because you need choices for what best suits your goals and the way you make money from your site.

Once we have a look at what’s being reported across all of that variety, I’ll be able to share more info with the folks in that course on what those errors mean, including which ones are totally bogus and should be ignored for now.

Treat this thing like a beta, and realize that Google’s bots are still in the learning phase and don’t have things figured out yet.

Also realize that your video ranking on YouTube is what is going to get it featured in regular Search results – not the video in your post. The video embed is to help increase time on site and lower bounce rate.

So, don’t go borking your site with a bunch of changes based on a report that is just a first run and will be tweaked to death for the next year. Treat it like a child that is voicing an opinion based on very little knowledge and take it for what it is.

Also keep in mind that schema markup has to retain a proper top/down structure. Any video schema has to coordinate with the whole of the post.

Whatever plugin you are using to produce that video schema markup is being evaluated by its devs to see how they can improve what Google is making of it too. Give them time, including those of you who run video ads, especially those on Mediavine. Last I looked all of these plugins and such were doing better with their proper schema markup than Google is.

And the biggest take away for why to wait on changes – Google is NOT going to lower the rank of the post over this.

So, you can either wait for everyone to finish gathering data and then test tweaks, or you can jump ahead and make changes on your own, that you don’t even know how to evaluate the impact of it on all of your SEO, just to make a bunch of premature errors in a beta report go away.

Your choice.

Hosting Tips

Cloudways Being Acquired by Digital Ocean

I know a few of you who are not my site audit clients yet are using Cloudways. And I see this host recommended in blogging groups a lot.

It’s a fine host, but I think it’s a super poor choice for bloggers, especially those who like to call the host’s support for every little thing.

Cloudways, and Digital Ocean for that matter, are both better suited to site owners who know the tech and have a developer on staff.

SEO Tips

Will Foodie Sites Get Hit with the Helpful Content Update?

I don’t like spreading rumors. I like to verify data and sort through all the noise and help all of us to get clarity on what’s happening.

But, I have been seeing references to foodie sites from multiple sources now about how the new Google Helpful Content update may affect them, and I want to pass that on to you.

Social Media Today published an article about how TikTok is becoming the go-to search engine for younger folks. While 18-24 yr olds may not be your audience, they are a BIG part of driving what platforms do.

But the part of that article that I want to draw your attention to is a quote they republished from Mashable that was also covering TikTok and Gen Z.

Toward the middle of that article they said this:

“People are sick of the Google recipe algorithm that prioritizes obscure search engine optimized blogs. It’s been a running joke on the internet that in order to read a recipe you have to get through the blogger’s entire life story, but this is actually deterring the young people I talked to from searching for recipes on Google. Because a TikTok has to quickly grab your attention, recipe videos on the platform are to the point, putting the focus on the food, not the creator. “

If you’ve been following me for very long, you know my pet peeve is foodie posts that show me the same, finished apple pie from 15 angles with a lot of drivel content in between.

And the reason bloggers do that is to meet the content to ad ratio so it allows them to run more ads.

And the reality for users is that they have now been trained just to scroll as fast as they can to the bottom of the post to see the recipe – and they skip all of those ads.

So, do all those skipped ads make you any money?

If not, what is the point of having them?

You would do a lot better to follow my advice and storyboard your shots and post so that it actually teaches folks how to make the thing.

I do that on Heartwood Art and folks stay on one post for a long time because of it.

And of course, having a video that shows the same is part of that time on post too.

And time on site being high, and low bounce rate is why my posts rank well.

So, will this Google Helpful Content update impact foodie bloggers?

In the eyes of Mashable, it should.

But I don’t know if it will or not.

And here’s why.

Some of those foodie bloggers run Google Ads.

And the big ad agencies are Google partners and in compliance with how Google thinks things should be run.

In other words, Google has too much money to lose by trouncing these blog posts.

It’s the same reason they keep kicking the can down the road with dropping 3rd party cookie tracking.

On the other hand, last week I mentioned that Google is going after fake review sites.

And those are filled to the brim with Amazon affiliate links.

Getting rid of the Google Shopping competition may be what all of this is about.

It’s a “follow the money” thing.

So, we’ll see what happens over the next few weeks as this Google update continues to roll out.

What do you think about it?

Let us know in the blog comments or anywhere you see this post online.

Internal Search Spam and IndexNow

Last week I mentioned that I had included a tutorial in the DIY SEO course for how to connect IndexNow through Cloudflare.

And we will all be testing this together.

Plus, we have Team Yoast on our side helping us test it all and they connected the dots on what’s happening with some of the bogus search spam I’ve been seeing in audits and my clients have been seeing in their Search Console reports.

Please do read the whole article from Yoast to get the big picture of what’s going on, and to see examples of how these search spam things show up in your Search Console reports.

But in brief, here’s what’s going on.

Spammers are exploiting the native WP search feature.

They put in their keywords and get a return of any posts on your site that match those keywords. 

Then they append them with whatever they are promoting and that full link ends up getting crawled and sometimes indexed.

So, it looks like your domain is promoting some unsavory thing.

Plus, if you’re using IndexNow, those URLs get passed on to the search engines like Bing that get pinged by IndexNow.

And it’s not just the search feature either. It also includes the pagination and RSS feed links.

There is no foolproof way to stop it on your site with robots.txt or such.

The only thing that can be done at the site is already provided by the Yoast SEO plugin, and that is a noindex tag on search results.

But, that still doesn’t stop them from being crawled. It only stops them from being indexed on Search.

Team Yoast is now working with WordPress to shore up the output on

• Native search box results
• Pagination
• RSS feed

Team Yoast is also working with Cloudflare to have them block these URLs from going to the Crawler Hints, which is what Cloudflare calls their version of IndexNow integration.

And this is just one more reason why I suggest we use the Yoast SEO plugin and why I suggested that we do IndexNow via Cloudflare.

I’ll keep an eye on this for us.

But honestly, I don’t expect WP to fix these issues anytime soon as they have their dev heads up their butts with FSE (Full Site Editing) and likely will for another year, at least.

I have a LOT more faith in Yoast collaborating with Cloudflare to get this taken care of for us.

Lack of Site Security Is Part of This Problem Too

Sites that are not properly secured are getting the limited resources they are renting from the host chewed up by bad bot hits.

Last week I told you that if you’re site is not secured, how many ever hits you are seeing in Google Analytics, you need to triple that for the bad bot hits.

Even with fully secured sites some of my clients are still getting hit hard by these search spam bots. The more valuable your keywords are, the more they are going to be attracted to your site.

But, your security is keeping them from totally overtaking your site resources.

So, some are going to get through no matter what you do.

But, you need to do all you can to mitigate the impact of them so they don’t slow down your site speed.

And that’s the very thing I help you do in a site audit. 

We find those security holes and resource hogs.

WordPress Tips

WebP Default on Hold for WP 6.1

Y’all know how the whole WebP by default thing upset me earlier this year. And I left the WP Performance Team over it because despite over 500 objections from folks like me who know what they’re talking about, the devs behind it kept blowing everybody off and pushing for it to be put into WP core.

And it looked like it was going to be committed in the upcoming WP 6.1 release.

I sure was glad to see the post on WPTavern this week that said the lead WP devs have decided maybe this thing is not such a good idea after all.

What they cite is the enormous resource usage it will cause at the hosting level.

That is an issue, but was not the biggest issue in my book.

But, at this point, I don’t care what it is that keeps it out of WP core, just so it stays out.

And we can look forward to dodging that bullet for the rest of this year, at least.

Whew!

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.