Tips Tuesday – Google Creator Summit, AI SEO Workshops, GA4 Tutorials and Reports

Tips this week include:

• WP 6.7 Zoom feature may only work on FSE theme
• We’re still not updating to WP 6.7 yet
• New Figma Library for WP design
• New GA4 Checklist added to Shopify courses
• GA4 Key Events (conversions) tutorials underway
• Shopify Traffic reports underway
• Google just doesn’t get it – summary of Google Creator Summit
• AI SEO Workshops have started
• More SEO workshops on what is showing up on Google
• Request your DIY SEO course discount – it’s so big that I’m not making it public

BlogAid Happenings

This past week has been all about research.

First, I’ve been looking into GA4 changes, including the new conversion tutorials I’m making for EZ Metrix. More on that in a moment.

And then research into AI SEO, especially in light of what we’ve learned from the recent Google Creator Summit. More on that in a moment too.

And then research into integrating Shopify products into your WordPress site, plus other changes on that platform that impact folks who deliver digital downloads. I’m awaiting replies from 2 of my clients who already have Shopify stores about the App change I suggested before I send the eCreators Hub newsletter because I need to know all of the best options to a very serious issue I uncovered with an app there that is going to affect a lot of store owners who sell digital downloads.

And don’t worry, the folks in my Shopify Starter for Digital Downloads course are dodging this bullet. In fact, creating that course is how I discovered the problem.

WordPress Tips

WP 6.7 Zoom Feature

I was a little disappointed to hear that the new Zoom feature doesn’t work on all themes. I’ve heard that it only works on FSE themes. That’s also true of some of the other features that I couldn’t show you in the What’s New in WordPress 6.7 video tour.

Oh well.

I really don’t see a lot of other theme frameworks aggressively pursuing FSE, which is Full Site Editing for their themes. 

Basically, FSE brings block support to other areas of the site, like the navigation, header, footer, sidebar, etc.

Most other theme frameworks have their own version of that which is a paid add on or such. So, I don’t see them giving up those products or the revenue they generate.

Still Not Updating Yet

We’re going to hold off at least another week or so before updating to WP 6.7.

In fact, I think it would be best to wait until after the Thanksgiving holiday just so folks don’t have any issues while they are so busy traveling or preparing to receive guests that last week of this month.

And I want a little time off myself as I have something personally significant planned that weekend too. I’ll tell you about it afterward.

Designer Tips

New Figma Library for WordPress Design

Figma is a design tool that allows you to quickly build mockups to show clients before you do all of the actual coding.

And now Figma has released a new WordPress design system in their library.

Here’s a quotation from the WPTavern article about what’s in the library:

“The design library offers a comprehensive range of components, including buttons, forms, icons, and menus, bringing everything you need into one place. It also includes style tokens that allow you to easily manage visual details like radius, elevation, color, and typography. For added convenience, the library provides handy stickers for individual components, and more extensive UI elements like the full-screen editor and site editor.”

They have another update coming to align all of the design elements with WordPress 6.7 level of Gutenberg blocks.

And starting with the 6.8 release next year, they intend to keep it current with all WP releases thereafter.

GA4 Tips

GA4 Checklist

This past week I started making a new Guide to sell in my Shopify store that would serve as a checklist for getting your GA4 setup and fully configured.

But the fact is, that Shopify offers a wizard to make the connection and do some of the initial settings. So there’s no point in showing how to do that manually in GA4.

And there are only a handful of other settings that you need to configure beyond that.

Some of them are crazy important, like the ones that involve GDPR compliance, and the ones that affect data retention.

But, all of those extra settings only made for a one page checklist.

So, instead of a separate Guide, I decided to simply add that tutorial to the Shopify courses on eCreators Hub.

GA4 Key Events (Conversions)

Google changed what they call Conversions. They are now called Key Events. The change has to do with the way they use the word Conversions in Google Ad trackers.

All actions by site visitors are counted by GA4 as Events.

A Key Event is when a site visitor takes an action that you want to track, like clicking an affiliate link.

I’ve updated the tutorials from my Ultimate GA4 course that I offered in the past, for how to create Key Events for clicks.

But, I swear I read somewhere that there is now a way for setting more actions as Key Events in GA4 so you don’t have to use Google Tag Manager to do it. And that would save us from jumping through several more hoops. I just can’t find anything about it, or links to articles where I read it, in my notes. I’ll keep digging for that.

Right now I’m making a bigger list of the types of actions you may want to track, like more examples of different kinds of link clicks.

I’ll be making those tutorials available soon and asking EZ Metrix course members what other kinds of events they want to track.

And, I’m looking into how to best display them in an EZ Metrix report.

Soon I’ll be asking my peeps to do some specific click testing so I can see results and how they look on the new reports.

Shopify Traffic Reports

Once I get the Key Events reports settled, I’ll be making one specifically for your Shopify store.

Now, to be clear, these are the GA4 metrics of traffic to your Shopify store. 

It’s not the Shopify analytics of what folks do once they are in your store. That takes a connector that is used by a paid service for warehousing data.

The GA4 connector that we use for traffic coming to your site, and its source, is a free connector that is made by Google. It’s the same one we use in the EZ Metrix reports for your site.

SEO Tips

Google Just Doesn’t Get It – At All

Recently, Google invited 20 content creators to their headquarters for a summit on how the Helpful Content Update, and subsequent core updates, have wiped out their successful sites and businesses. The meeting was called the Creator Summit.

You’d be really proud of how those 20 folks represented us independent content creators!!!!!

But they were insanely disappointed with how the Google representatives reacted and/or explained away the changes to the algorithms that wiped these sites off search.

In fact, most of those creators felt like they had to explain to the Google reps how search works!

And they got no explanation for how some of their sites could be featured by Google as exemplary just the year before and then decimated later.

See for yourself in these 2 interviews on the Niche Pursuits Podcast with content creators who were invited to that summit.

Here’s the first interview with Jared Bauman.

And here’s the second interview with Morgan McBride.

When you watch, just be aware that they show several teaser clips of the interview at the beginning, which I found a little confusing due to the way they edited it. Just keep watching.

But the conclusion that these interviews, and other things I’ve read have made me come to is that Google is so out of touch with the real world that they can’t even fathom what these creators were trying to tell them, or how Google Search has been ruined.

And, if some day, Google finally starts losing real market position and revenue, they will just shake their heads in disbelief and never realize how they destroyed themselves.

AI SEO Workshops 

I think it’s time to turn our attention to how our sites are doing in AI search engines, especially with the one that OpenAI has released called SearchGPT.

This past weekend I sent an email out to members of the DIY SEO course with a new tutorial on how to see what AI bots are hitting their sites and what content they are crawling.

I’ll have new workshops for that info we’re gathering in the course soon.

Workshops on What Else is Showing

I’ve also got new workshops coming for how to get in on sites that are still showing up on Google still, like Reddit.

Request Your Discount

A week or so ago I sent BlogAid News subscribers an insane discount on the DIY SEO course.

Contact me if you misplaced that email and want in. I’ll send you the code.

This discount is so steep that I’m not even making it public.