Tips Tuesday – Image Formats, Gutenberg Tutorials, Recipe Listicles, Table of Contents

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• More Gutenberg Ninja tutorials have been released and the warning I put on them
• Will Block Patterns replace Reusable Blocks
• Update on the recipe video SEO testing
• Why all of your schema markup must be well-formatted
• Why to deeply vet who you hire for site services
• Our upcoming TikTok mastermind for making money with brands
• A story of how one of my clients is making real money with her sites
• What was in the WP 5.8.1 release
• Will your post get caught in Google’s recipe listicle removal from search
• Why not to use a Table of Contents plugin
• Preparing WP for the PHP 8.1 upgrade
• Automattic acquires the Social Image Generator plugin
• Are you using the right image format?
• Getting multiple levels of SEO on every image

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Spill the Beans Livestream tonight

Do join us live tonight at 8pm ET / 5pm PT on the BlogAid Facebook Page. We spill the beans on this week’s news, breaking stories for the day too, and special info just for those who watch. And the replay is available here on this Tips Tuesday post later too. But the live party is so much more fun.

Replay

Who I Help

All BlogAid posts and tutorials are intended to assist business-minded, hands-on bloggers and webmaster designers who are serious about making money and who want to stay up-to-date with site changes. And our BB Hub is a private member site and Facebook group for my site audit clients that has lots of extra perks and support.

BlogAid Happenings

Woowee!!!! I have to tell you how good it feels to be catching up on all of the backlog from delayed projects this year!!! 

I’m making fantastic headway on all sorts of goodies for you.

Gutenberg Ninja Tutorials finished for now

Woot! I’m delighted to share that I’ve finished up all of the Gutenberg Ninja tutorial updates for this round.

The Reusable Blocks section has totally been revamped with all new tutorials that will help you with the quirks of inserting and saving them now.

But, I also put a warning on some of the new tuts that RBs have become unstable of late.

If you made them in the past, the new tuts will help you.

But, if you have not made any yet, you may want to hold off until they become stable again.

Will Block Patterns replace Reusable Blocks?

This is all real shame. 

Reusable Blocks are one of THE most powerful features in Gutenberg.

And with widgets going away, we need a way to do optins and things we want to display globally.

I’m wondering, with the new emphasis on Block Patterns, if they will be poised to replace Reusable Blocks.

New Block Patterns are not something easy for end users to create.

But, I’m wondering if vendors who offer optin templates and such should start making Block Patterns that you can grab and modify to suit.

We’ll see what comes down the pike in the near future as Full Site Editing starts to become the norm by this time next year.

Recipe Video SEO testing update

Now that all of the Gute tutorials have been updated, this week I’m diving head first into the huge pile of data I’ve gathered from my recipe plugin SEO tests, including the video SEO testing.

You may recall that I recently reported that Google is getting confused when we have too many schema markup focuses on one post.

Google doesn’t know what we’re trying to rank for.

And that statement has radically simplified my testing for all of this too.

I’m now looking into THE best methods for you to have videos on your recipe posts and still have only one SEO focus for the post while getting all of the additional SEO benefits of having a video.

Get all the well-formatted schema you can

And there is some optional schema markup that most all foodie bloggers are missing that I’m looking into as well.

Folks, Google eats these rich result schema markup tags like candy.

You want to feed Google as much as you can to get an edge on your competition.

But, it MUST be well-formatted and coordinated to work.

That’s why I’m devoting a month’s worth of testing time to it.

You have to get it right, and I’m going to help you do that through both the DIY SEO course as well as the Video SEO Booster course.

Site Services update

Woot!! I’m thrilled to say that we finished up 8 client projects last week and I’m already onboarding new projects. 

Some of the projects we were working on through August were sites that were real messes.

One had been hacked and a couple of others had junk from other techs who had no clue what they were doing and screwed up things like the database that had to be put back to standard before I could even start on the actual speed issues.

Vet who you hire

Folks, before you hire a site tech, you need to check for references and see how they do their work and if it held up over time.

If they intend to just run a couple of speed tests and throw a few plugins at it, don’t waste your money.

If they are a developer, expect to pay a higher price for a bunch of stuff to be hard coded. And all that special coding will not hold up over time and will need to be removed before I touch your site.

I literally cannot take on the liability of hidden code, or stuff you can’t even identify as to why it is there.

Also, if you hire anyone, insist on getting a detailed list of every single thing they did and why. That includes your host.

Having no clue what’s going on with your site is one of the most expensive mistakes you can make. 

One-off fix it techs never have to check if something works over time, and they don’t tell you how to cooperate with it in the future.

You make a little change and POOF! Your whole site goes wacky.

I’m one of the few site techs left who offers a “done with you” service where you learn exactly what’s going on with your site and how to cooperate with it to keep your site fast and secure.

And my wait list is solidly into January at this point – for a reason.

It’s worth the wait!!

BB Hub Happenings

Great Printables and Downloads Mastermind

I want to thank all of my BB Hub folks who attended our live mastermind last week and for sharing all of your tips for making printables as well as how you deliver them.

TikTok Mastermind coming soon

Our next mastermind will be with a special BB Hub guest who has brands crawling all over themselves to have her do sponsored videos for them.

I’m really looking forward to that.

Getting my TikTok on!

Last week I got all of my TikTok accounts for my name, BlogAid, and Heartwood Art.

I haven’t set up the profiles yet. For now, I’m just surfing and learning about what’s on the platform.

And, I’ve been scoping out my competition who is already there.

Damn!!! TikTok is already full of horrible blogger and site owner advice.

I’m positive I can do way better for folks than that!!!

I’m also following several of my BB Hub peeps on Instagram and they are giving me all kinds of ideas for videos too.

Making real money blogging

I am so happy for one of my BB Hub clients that I just have to share this story with you.

She’s in the travel niche and has been making real money with her site for years, especially after getting her first site audit and getting into my DIY SEO course.

And I do mean real money, not side gig money.

So, when all travel stopped in 2020 she contacted me to set up a new site for her so it would be fast and secure from the get go.

It was all about cocktails. 

And because she knows exactly what she is doing with the SEO and content marketing, it took off like a bolt of lightning because that’s what folks cooped up at home were interested in.

It was a perfect CoVid pivot for her.

And now, a year and half later, she is in the process of selling that site for a tidy sum!!!!

She came to me to work out the details of turning it over to the owner, especially with all of the security I set up for her that has to be dealt with. 

Like the HSTS Chrome preload safe site list she’s on. 

That comes from one of the 5 HTTPS security headers that’s setup on all of my client’s sites.

Folks, if you are using any sort of free HTTPS trickery, you don’t have these critically important HTTPS security headers, 3 of which Google now requires.

So, there are things to consider if you sell a site, and I’m here to help you with it.

Plus, starting and flipping sites can be a wonderful way to make a living.

I have a few clients who do it. And we set up the new sites on their reseller account or another hosting package to make it super easy to migrate to the new owner’s hosting too.

So, lots to think about from the get go if you plan to start down that entrepreneur path.

And I’d be delighted to help you do it!!!

That’s all the happenings around here. Let’s jump into this week’s tips.

WordPress Tips

WP 5.8.1 released on 9/8

There were 60 bug fixes in the WP 5.8.1 release that came out late in the evening on Sept. 8th.

Most of them were for the new blocks and block editors or other new features that came with WP 5.8.

There were also 3 security fixes in this release.

Because this was a minor release, it should have auto updated for you.

SEO Tips

Google may remove listicle recipe posts from search

Do you have listicle recipe posts? Like “21 Easy Dinner Recipes”.

That’s okay as long as they don’t have the recipe schema markup on them.

What I’m concerned about are any posts that have more than one recipe getting caught in this purge. Like one for a cake that has a recipe for the cake and then one for the icing.

So be careful.

It’s in your best SEO interest to have a separate post for the icing anyway.

Don’t use a Table of Contents plugin

I don’t know what SEO ignorant blogger started this trend, but I’m seeing way too many of my new site audit clients using a Table of Contents plugin.

Don’t do it!!!

First, it will slow down your site. 

My site audit clients are more than happy to remove that plugin once they see the dozens of new requests it adds and how much it is impacting their post load time.

Second, it kills time on site and increases bounce rate.

You don’t want folks to hurry through your post. You want them to scan all of it.

You want them to see all of the internal linking to other posts you’ve done too.

Third, you lose followers.

Are you helping folks skip right past your optin with this thing?

Fourth, it’s bad for SEO.

Google can make its own ToC from your headings.

In fact, I show examples of it in my DIY SEO workshops.

Use it only when appropriate.

If you have an insanely long post, like 2500-5000 words, and it’s a guide or such, that post would be a good candidate for a ToC.

Don’t put it at the very top.

Google needs context for SEO. So do your readers.

Fill the top of your post with your summary, featured image, and a little more info about why this post is helpful and who needs this info or such.

Then add your ToC just above the actual sections.

Make it with Gutenberg.

It is stupid easy to make your own ToC with Gutenberg.

The Heading blocks already have a setting for the anchor.

And then you just use a List block for the links at the top.

And you can easily nest that into a Group block or similar for extra styling and such.

I even teach you how to make Jump links like this in the Gutenberg Ninja course.

Google changes how it generates titles in search

Holy cow, this is a big deal!!

We’ve known for a long time that Google can and will generate a title for your post or page based on the query, so it will show a better match if they think your original title doesn’t cut it.

Well, Google has a new system for generating those titles.

And it’s not based on the query.

It’s based on your post or page content.

They may also take clues from your H1s or any text on the page that is enlarged or enhanced in some way to stand out.

I’ll be watching what black hat SEOs do with this. And if they start stuffing their page content with alternate title text stuff, there may be an issue down the road.

I’m betting we’ll see more descriptive headings of all sizes as well as enlarged text that would make for a good alternative title too.

And honestly, none of that is a bad idea unless it is abused. And then Google will start devaluing posts and pages that they think are trying to game the new system.

PHP Tips

Preparing WP for PHP 8.1

At this time, I recommend that we keep our sites at PHP 7.4 as it is stable and WordPress and our themes and plugins all work on it.

But, PHP 8.0 has been out for some time and I already have a couple of clients on it without issue.

Team Yoast has folks working on the WP core to make it ready for PHP 8.1. And its release is scheduled for Nov 25th, which is just 3 weeks ahead of the WP 5.9 release.

PHP 8.1 is likely the version I’ll recommend updating to in early 2022.

We need to wait for our plugins and such to get compatible with it too.

I’ll let you know when and I’ll be making tutorials for my BB Hub members when it’s time, as this is something they can do themselves.

Team Yoast is also working on a new warning in the plugins list page for any plugins that are not PHP 8.1 compatible yet.

That’s going to be a huge help so we can look before we leap.

Thank you to Team Yoast for all you do for the entire WP community!!!

Plugin Tips

Automattic Acquires Social Image Generator

For those who struggle to create images to use on social media will want to keep an eye on this.

Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, has made a new acquisition by grabbing up the paid plugin Social Image Generator.

It auto creates an image for you to use on social media.

They have currently ceased to offer it for sale.

And rumor is that they may include it in a paid tier of Jetpack.

I’ll let you know what I hear about it down the line.

Although I will say that I’m not crazy about bloating WP with an image generation tool.

Image Tips

Are you using the right image format?

Speaking of images, in site audits I often see folks using an incorrect format for the logo or other images.

I think this is mainly because they don’t know which format is best for what type of image.

Or maybe other bloggers told them to use one or the other just because they may get a little decrease in file size.

The compression algorithms are completely different between jpg, png, gif, and svg.

And they do affect quality.

The nice folks at GTMetrix have an excellent post about the differences in the formats and when to use which one.

So go have a look.

Multiple levels of SEO on every image

And while you’re at it, ensure you’re getting all of the SEO possible on your images too.

That starts with the file name.

Time after time in audits I see folks forget to SEO the file name of their logo, which is THE most important brand image on your site.

This is the kind of stuff I teach in the DIY SEO course, as well as all the other types of SEO you can get on every image and when to use what.

Wrap Up

That’s a wrap for this week’s Tips Tuesday.

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