Tips Tuesday – Google Helpful Content Update, GA4 Mini Course, IndexNow, Shopify Collabs

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• New way to disable theme schema markup tutorial so it doesn’t conflict with Yoast
• IndexNow via Cloudflare tutorial to ping search engines of new posts
• GA4 mini course survey coming soon
• Country challenge list updated to stop bot attacks
• Google’s Helpful Content Update will be HUGE
• AI Content Generators are still good for ideas, just not whole content
• Mix.co is TikTok for foodie folks
• Shopify’s new Collabs feature for direct purchase through link in bio

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BlogAid Course Happenings

Disable Theme Schema Markup – New Tutorial in DIY SEO

If you use a theme from Astra, Kadence, or GeneratePress, it is outputting Microdata schema markup that is directly competing with the JSON-LD schema that is output by Yoast.

And Google prefers the JSON-LD from Yoast.

So, you need to disable the schema in the theme.

We were creating child themes to do this rather than add a special plugin for it.

But now that the Insert Headers and Footers plugin is now WPCode, it also has a way to add this code snippet.

And most of us are already using that plugin for our Google Analytics scripts too.

So, I made a new tutorial for my DIY SEO course members on how to do it via the plugin, if they don’t already have it taken care of with their child theme.

This goes along with the tutorial I already had in the course for how to check your theme’s schema output – and no, the Google Rich Snippets tester ain’t it.

IndexNow via Cloudflare or Plugin – New Tutorial in DIY SEO

You may recall me mentioning in last week’s Tips Tuesday that I would be testing IndexNow. 

The best way I found to do it is via Cloudflare, which all of my site audit clients use.

So, I made a new tutorial for how to turn on IndexNow via Cloudflare for my DIY SEO course members, as many of them are my site audit clients.

There are ways to do it through plugins too, but I think this is way better.

And, if your site is not on Cloudflare yet, you’re missing a LOT of security and speed.

This is a service I offer, as you definitely don’t want to get it through your host because they will not configure the 30+ settings in it either at all, or properly.

GA4 Mini Course Survey

We all need to switch to GA4 soon.

I’ve been waiting for Google to act on the negative feedback about the GA4 interface and how hard they have made it to find the info that is most important to you. But at this point, I’m convinced that they are completely deaf to the complaints.

So, I’ve decided to stop holding out hope for that and will be making a mini course that will run for a limited time to get us all setup with it and set up with custom dashboards and such to ensure that we know how to find that important info and that makes the whole thing easier to use.

I’ll be sending out a survey to see when you want to take that course, with choices being around October or wait until after the holidays and do it the first half of January. And it will have to be in the first half, as we start the DIY SEO workshops and such in the last half of January and we don’t want to be running those at the same time, at least I don’t want to overlap them.

So, BlogAid News subscribers should look for a survey this week and the most votes wins, so make your preference known, as this will be a limited time course and then it’s gone.

BlogAid Village Happenings

Country Challenge List Updated

I’ve seen bloggers reporting that they are seeing hits from the Czech Republic and Seychelles in their analytics. That is due to a lack of proper site security.

And for whatever total hits you see in analytics, there are 50% more than that actually hitting the hosting and your site. So, if you’re getting 50,000 sessions on your site in Google Analytics, that means you’re also getting another 25,000-30,000 bad bot hits.

Think for a minute about how much you are paying for hosting, and how you’re running out of room for traffic hits on your current package because your site is not properly secured. At some point you’re going to be paying more for hosting just to give more room for the rats to run. That’s crazy!!

You can only see those bad bot hits in the server logs, which is something I check during site audits.

And we challenge all of those 20+ bad bot countries at Cloudflare. 

That way they don’t even hit your hosting, much less your site. And they can no longer chew up your limited hosting resources that should be reserved for your human visitors, and make your site slow to load too.

We were already challenging the Czech Republic. And I made tutorials for my BB Hub site audit clients as well as my webmasters for how to add Seychelles because this is something they can do themselves. 

SEO Tips

Google’s Helpful Content Update Will Be HUGE

Starting this week, Google will be rolling out their Helpful Content algorithm update.

This thing will be as big, if not bigger than the Panda update they rolled out a few years ago.

What they’re looking for is junk, AI spun content that is not at all helpful to human readers who are seeking answers to their queries.

This will impact all sites, but there are some that are more prone to have spun AI content than others.

Niches that may be more targeted include:

• Online educational materials
• Arts & entertainment
• Shopping
• Tech-related

These niches are rife with black hat, pro SEOs who have created 10 little sites with spun AI content to backlink to the main site they want to get ranked.

And, they are the same folks who create fake review sites where they pay folks to research the top products on Amazon and write fake reviews comparing them.

Those are the things that Google is really going after in this update, as those sites dominate the top of search results and aren’t really all that helpful to the person doing the search.

This algorithm update will make or break my sites for BlogAid and Heartwood Art.

But, the saving grace that makes me hopeful is that this algorithm will be applied site-wide, not on a page-by-page basis. I think all of the tutorials I have on both sites will help me do well.

As for the shopping niche, this may help continue killing those fake review sites that Google has been targeting all year. And that may give an even bigger boost to folks who do reviews on stuff they use because Google is looking for first-hand experience and deep knowledge.

And that has my attention for doing more reviews on Heartwood Art, just like I’ve been telling you for months to start taking more seriously, especially including a video review.

Be sure to read the Search Engine Land article because they detail the list of questions to ask about your content that Google is using as criteria.

And keep in mind that some legit sites are going to get trounced in this sweeping update too, so don’t panic if yours does. It will eventually come back. My big concern is that Google is doing this just ahead of the big holiday season. And if a legit site gets caught in it, that could kill their season.

Also keep in mind that it will take 4-6 weeks to roll this update out across the whole web. So, if you haven’t seen the effect of it, either up or down, while you are hearing others report what happened to them, don’t assume that your site has passed the test. It just may not have been evaluated yet.

I think we’ll see reports about it from now through the end of October, at least. And maybe into the turn of the year.

AI Content Generators are Good for Ideas

Since last year I’ve been inviting you to try different AI Content Generators.

That’s because they are fantastic for ideas, including variations on titles and for a fresh take on rewording your content.

But I also cautioned not to use them for the final copy.

I still stand by what I said.

So, don’t throw out the baby with the bath water because of this Google update.

Just take the good that AI gives you and don’t try to cheat Google with using it as a substitute for human-to-human written content.

Video Tips

Mix.co is TikTok for Foodie Folks

Hey, are you a foodie blogger? Here’s another reason to get into making videos and another place to repurpose them.

The new Mix.co site has the style and flavor of TikTok, but it’s just for foodie videos.

And this week, they are rolling out the beta of direct pay so creators can get paid from viewers tipping them.

Their long-term goal is to make you and themselves money through ads and partnerships and connecting grocery shopping lists and such. 

And for travel bloggers, you may want to keep an eye on this platform too as they hope to allow folks to book a restaurant reservation after watching your video review of it.

There will also eventually be a subscription model where folks pay to watch your bonus content. So, there is definitely incentive for building a tribe on this platform for fan based direct pay too.

Product Sales Tips

Shopify Release Collab for Direct Purchase via Link in Bio

Speaking of collaborating with merchants, Shopify has announced a new Collabs feature.

It’s in Shopify’s link-in-bio tool called Linkpop that allows you to add a buy now button for a merchant’s product.

And you get a commission when someone buys that product.

So, Shopify is not just for your own products. It could be a great way for you to do affiliate marketing too.

PSA – Update Chrome and Apple Devices

Both have a major security issue, so be sure they are at the latest software levels.

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.