Tips Tuesday – IG Carousels, Occasio Review, REACT 19 Punted

Tips this week include:

• REACT 19 punted – whew!
• Occasio metrics service – worth it?
• Brand deal update and new tutorial
• Grow your IG with Carousels

WordPress Tips

REACT 19 Punted

Whew!! I sure was glad to read that the update of the JavaScript language used in WP has been delayed and will not be included in WP 7.1 in August.

REACT is the JS language used in WP and the latest version is 19.

But, it was found that it and older versions, that most plugins are written on, don’t play well together.

This is the thing I was so concerned about with WP 7.1 breaking a bunch of our plugins.

So, we won’t have to be worried about it for this upcoming update.

But, it certainly has put all plugin devs on notice to get their wares ready for it. Let’s hope they do for next time!!!!!

Plugin Tips

Occasio Metrics Service – Worth It?

There’s lots of chatter in blogging groups, especially those for foodie bloggers about the Occasio content intelligence service.

One of my clients just started her trial of it. 

It required adding a special security bypass rule in Cloudflare, and you will need to be on the Pro plan to add another rule as all 5 are already taken on the free plan. (Their documentation for how to do that is woefully out of date. I hope they’ve updated it with the info I provided them.)

And I can’t say that I’m impressed with what it does. At best, it can only provide guesses as to what to improve or create based on year-over-year analytics. It’s not like SEMRush that provides current ranking data and trends.

Since AI Summaries and Search are now the norm in Google, I doubt that last year’s data is of real help.

I’m also not keen on the fact that they scan your site’s database every day for content and changes. That’s a big I/O (input/output) resource drain at the host.

Plus, I’m not keen that you will be sharing your GA4 and GSC data with them. Their documentation says they don’t share it with other users of their service, but that doesn’t address what they do with it themselves or how it is shared with the AI they are using.

Keep in mind that even Google doesn’t have access to your metrics.

It’s also expensive – like $55/mo.

My clients who are using the EZ Metrics reports I set up for them can get the exact same info, at least the GA4/GSC year over year info. And that’s free as it runs on LookerStudio.

What Occasio does differently is look at all the content on your site, not just what is showing in GA4 and GSC. But honestly, if you have content that is not ranking or getting traffic, that tells you all you need to know about it.

All that said, if you need help sorting through all of your content for what to update, you could manually do the same thing as that service by downloading the CSV files from WP All Export, and then a year’s worth of GA4 and GSC, and giving all of those to your own AI of choice, with it set to be a private chat, and asking it to give you suggestions.

You would have to set your own reminders of what to do and when, but that’s what editorial calendars are for.

Would anyone in the DIY SEO course be interested in a workshop on how to do it this alternative way? 

FYI, it’s very similar to the workshops that are already in the course for how to do a Content Revamp. The difference is how we would use AI to help sort the data.

Video Tips

Brand Deal Update and New Tutorial

You may recall a couple of weeks ago that I mentioned getting a Brand deal invite.

I had to let it go because their tool only worked with Android and I have an iPhone.

But, I did get my YouTube Partnership Page set up. 

I made a tutorial for it in the DIY SEO course on how to do that setup, plus tips on Brand deals so you don’t get ripped off.

Marketing Tips

Grow Your IG With Carousels

I’ve been using Reels on IG to help grow my Heartwood Art audience. In them, I just show what I’m up to in the woodshop that day.

But, you don’t have to film yourself to grow on IG.

See this post from the nice folks at Social Media Examiner for how to effectively use Carousels on IG.

FYI, all types of posts on IG are getting crawled by Google now and show up in Search too, so that’s double exposure for you.