Tips Tuesday – GA4 Webinar, AI SEO, Fast Site, YouTube Money

Hello Happy site owners!

Tips this week include:

• GA4 Last Chance Webinar is today – you must register to attend live or get the replay
• Keywords Workshop Part 2 is this week in the DIY SEO course
• AI SEO Workshop is next week in the DIY SEO course
• New AI group for my clients
• AI image course is in the works
• Site setup and security tutorial revamp is live in the Webmaster Training
• What it takes to make a site fast and safe
• YouTube lowers entry point to make money
• How-to videos will outdo AI
• Why content automization is the key to more content and how to do it
• Why you need to blog strategically and questions to ask yourself about it
• Are you capturing your audience?
• Alphabet is selling Google Domains

GA4 Last Chance Webinar Today

You have to register to get the replay, even if you can’t attend live.

We’re coming down to the wire for you to get your GA4 property set up, configured, and connected to your UA property.

If you haven’t started yet, or you think the GA4 property Google creates for you is enough, you definitely want to join us for a live webinar next Tuesday.

You’ll see real GA4 properties with real data and reports, including custom reports that show you what you’re used to see in UA.

We’ll also cover the important Google Signals settings that affect your GDPR compliance and more.

And yes, replays will be available, but you can ask your questions during the live event.

Tuesday, June 20 at 12pm ET / 11am CT / 10am MT / 9am PT

DIY SEO Happenings

Keywords Workshop Part 2

We’re in the middle of our keywords workshop series in the DIY SEO course.

This week we’ll cover where to place your keywords and keyword tools.

AI SEO Workshop Next Week

There are so many ways you can use AI to help you with your SEO.

We’ll be going way beyond just ChatGPT for writing and into Bing Chat and Bard to show you competitive analysis and keyword research too.

AI Happenings

New AI Group for Clients

This past week I’ve had the most wonderful conversations with a few of my clients about how they can use AI to make money.

I’m definitely going to start a new group for us to widen the circle on those chats.

If you’re a current site audit client, look for an email later this week with meeting info.

AI Image Course in the Works

This week I start my journey to broaden my knowledge on what we can do with all of the AI image tools now available to us.

I’ll be documenting that journey on the AI Discover Hub.

And I’ll be making notes as I go for a new AI Image course too.

I already have a good outline for the course and it will be geared toward folks who want to sell images or things that have images in them.

AI Productivity Journey

Woot!! I was finally able to find the bios issue in my PC that would not allow me to update to Windows 11. And Win11 is required to get all of the AI functionality in Microsoft Office products that’s coming soon.

I just got off the waitlist for Google’s version of those things in Workspace and I’ll be playing with the this week.

Right now you can do so many amazing things with spreadsheets. But you have to kluge together plugins and apps to do it.

But the worst part is, you have to share the info you input into them with the AI elements.

Uh, no thanks.

So, having these AI tools natively in the spreadsheets and docs and such is critically important to privacy.

And that’s why I’ve waited to use them with my real data.

I’ll be covering my exploration of all the tools over on the AI Discover Hub.

And one of the first things I’m going to build is a way to auto follow news on the topics I cover and spit out summaries for me, as reading time is the bulk of my non-billable hours.

And then I’m going to combine that with automating ways for me to get those news tips out to my followers on both BlogAid and AI Discover Hub.

I’m also going to look into ways to do graphical reports on our GA4 data. That’s a big task, though.

I’ll be starting with building smaller apps first.

Webmaster Tips

Site Setup and Security Tutorial Revamp

The site setup and site security sections of the Webmaster Training membership have been totally revamped.

There’s a new flow that starts with WHM and cPanel setup and use, plus a new Hosting section.

And then the tutorials for how to set up a WordPress site from scratch have been remade to cover the new interfaces and tools.

Plus, the site security tutorials have been remade so that they are fully up to date instead of all the notes that had been added above the tutorials for changes.

The flow is better so that you can go straight down the list for all the tasks you need to do for setting up and/or securing a site and making it fast.

What it Takes to Make a Site Fast and Safe

Site owners, go have a look at the Webmaster Training to get an idea of what all goes into making a site fast.

It’s not about throwing plugins at it.

Lack of proper security is a huge reason sites are slow.

And tons of junk in the database and file structure is another reason.

All those plugins you’ve used and deleted – yeah, they’ve spewed their stuff everywhere and left a ton of orphaned files, folders, and database tables behind. All of that junk needs to be cleaned out.

That’s what I teach designers and site techs to do.

That’s also what I find and clean out for you in a site audit.

If your designer or site tech doesn’t know all this stuff, or worse, if you’re paying for site maintenance and they don’t know all this stuff, you’re getting ripped off.

If you’re a designer and you want to offer maintenance to clients, consider the extreme liability you have with that. Get in the know with how to fully secure a site and deal with anything that comes up to cut down on that liability like cra cra.

You’re client will love having a faster site with less issues too.

Video Tips

YouTube Lowers Entry Point to Make Money

Woot!! This is great news!

YouTube has lowered the requirements to qualify for perks, such as joining their partner program and the ability to do a private membership and/or course there.

The qualifying subscriber count dropped from 1000 to 500.

And the qualifying watch hours dropped from 4000 to 3000.

This is going to encourage so many more creators to be consistent and get in on the money.

I’ve been making money from my Heartwood Art YouTube channel for years, even though I haven’t posted anything new for about 2 years now. That’s the power of evergreen content on that platform.

How-to Videos Will Out Do AI

One of the best ways you can compete with AI is to make a video to show folks how to do the things you talk about in your blog posts.

AI can spit out the same text. But it can’t demonstrate anything.

These can be faceless videos where you just show your hands doing the thing.

You can even get AI to do the voiceover from your text script.

And there are several AI video editors to help you put it all together too, like Descript.

Even a short video of still shots that show the steps is better than no video at all.

Content Marketing Tips

Content Automization is the Key

Content Automization – what the heck is that?

It’s a concept I first saw on the Convince and Convert blog.

Basically, it’s taking one of your pillar or cornerstone content pieces and strategically breaking it down into smaller pieces that can be made into bite-size marketing clips.

And they have a nice article on the steps for making it happen too.

In fact, doing this will help you storyboard your content in the first place, as it changes the way you think about it.

And that will help you storyboard videos for it too.

I did every single post on Heartwood Art with video in mind.

I’m doing the exact same thing with AI Discover Hub.

It makes writing and producing the whole content and the segments so much faster.

It just takes a little practice.

So, go grab one of your best posts, read this article on Content Automization and see how it works.

Strategic Blogging

Why did you start blogging?

I think that’s a question we should ask ourselves at least once a year.

What is your goal for site?

That’s another good question to ask.

And both answers will change over time.

This post over on ProBlogger takes you through all of the questions you need to ask yourself periodically.

If you’ve already established your canon of content and you’re past the new blogger phase, it’s time to grow beyond what got you to here. More of the same may not take you any further. 

And, worse, you may be hurting yourself by continuing to just crank out more content on the same topics. You’re literally competing with yourself when you do that. It’s called SEO cannabilization.

You need to blog strategically. 

And that’s what this post on ProBlogger is all about.

Conversion Tips

Are You Capturing Your Audience?

Getting enough traffic to your site to make money, however you do that, is a LOT of work.

You have 2 types of traffic. In GA4 terms, they are called

• New User
• Returning User

The New User is the one that costs the most money and time to get.

Once you get them, you need to keep them.

In other words, you need to convert them into a Returning User.

For example, it takes a lot of time to write Tips Tuesday.

It takes even more time to market it to new users.

But, it takes very little time to get returning users to read it. 

It’s more about nurturing than marketing when it comes to returning users.

They are here for the value.

And they buy everything I create – over and over.

Returning users turn into repeat buyers.

So, make sure that you’re doing all you can to convert new users into returning users.

Once you get them, make sure:

• They have a pleasant experience on your site
• You give them something they can actually use in that moment
• You put your optin and follow options in their face

I’m guilty of not doing that last one enough. It feels pushy. 

Get over it.

Do it.

Not convinced yet?

Go visit 10 of your favorite sites that you’ve opted into or follow. Notice that they do it.

Did it feel pushy to you?

Of course not.

You do it too.

Domain Tips

Alphabet is Selling Google Domains

Google has a super long history of offering “me too” products and then dumping them.

Google Domains is the latest one to leave the camp.

They have sold it to Squarespace. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that logic because domains are a “me too” thing for Squarespace too.

If you’re on Google Domains, for Pete’s sake get off it as it has always been a junk registrar and I doubt this move is going to make it any better.

Jump over to NameCheap.

And as I mentioned a few week’s ago in Tips Tuesday, you don’t lose any remaining time on your current domain renewal period when you transfer to a new registrar. You’re just buying another year with the new one. And your renewal will be adjusted for when all of that time between the two runs out.