Tips Tuesday – Instagram SEO Mastermind, llms.txt File, Halloween Content 

Tips this week include:

• Halloween Content SEO Update
• Instagram Mastermind 2 this week
• Check your Updraft connection
• FluentForms Pro exhausting memory
• Clear Login Lockdown database
• Is using llms.txt a good idea?
• What is an llms.txt file?
• Testing new bot blocks
• Cloudflare security must be maintained
• Host security matters
• Hosts may have incentive not to fully secure
• Google Calendars used to hack smart home devices

BlogAid Happenings

My entire past week has been focused on 2 things:

• Site security – you’ll hear more about that in a moment
• Halloween decor videos and posts

Heartwood Art Update

I completed my 2 videos and posts for Halloween decor.

And I split these off from one of my new Content Silo pages that had home and holiday decor to one specifically for Holiday Builds that also has the wood jack o’lantern I made years ago. It will also have the Xmas decor things I’ll be building soon.

And then I made another Tier 2 page for just the Halloween Projects.

Plus, I got the 15 Halloween Line Drawings PDF made and available on Gumroad.

I’m super surprised, and a bit disappointed, that the videos did not take off on YouTube. Maybe it’s just too early there for them to be promoting them.

So, this week I’ll be getting into Amy LeBlanc’s fantastic Pinterst course. It is most certainly not to early for Halloween posts there!!!!!

DIY SEO Everywhere Happenings

Instagram Mastermind 2 This Week

Instagram is being crawled by Google in a big way. And that makes it even more important for our SEO.

In the DIY SEO Everywhere course, we’ve already had a couple of sessions on IG.

And this week, I think it’s a good idea for us to review those sessions and then have a live mastermind on Thursday to go over the new changes and features in IG.

We’ll sort out workflows for it too so we can all participate together and compare results.

WordPress Tips

Check UpdraftPlus Connection

If you’re using the premium version of UDP, go to its Settings and see if there is a message at the top that it is disconnected.

If so, go to the Premium tab and enter your UDP account email and password. It’s likely the password is the thing that’s borked. You may see dots there, but input your actual password again anyway. And then save the changes.

I’ve seen several disconnects in recent audits.

FluentForms Pro Exhausting Memory

I only have one client using this plugin, so I don’t know if this is widespread or not. During a recent audit, we found that it was exhausting the PHP memory.

She switched to Formidable for her contact form – see this tut.

And she switched to the Kadence Forms block for all of her email subscriptions.

To include Turnstile on the Kadence Forms, you need to check that box in the Turnstile plugin. And you also now need to use the Kadence Captcha plugin too. I’ve been informed that used to not be the case, and that the Turnstile plugin could do it alone. 

Clear Login Lockdown Database

I LOVE how the Login Lockdown plugin protects our login pages from bad bots that sneak through all other security.

But, with the bad bot situation worsening by the day, the database tables for the IPs this plugin has locked out are getting really big.

I’ve asked the dev for a way to clear old IPs, like ones that are over 90 days old and/or if he would consider adding a feature to turn on auto clear.

There is a way to do it and I’ll be including this on annual audit checkups and making a tutorial for my webmasters.

AI SEO Tips

Is Using llms.txt a Good Idea?

I’m hearing more and more amateur SEOs advocate using an llms.txt file to help AI make better sense of your content.

I’m not so sure that’s a good idea, and here’s why.

An llms.txt file only concerns itself with content. It helps separate the content from the rest of the HTML code and links that involve layout and looks.

The point is to lessen confusion for the AI bots.

I actively look at what the AI bots are crawling on our sites. It’s indiscriminate – like cra cra.

They are wasting billions of dollars with that splat type of crawling, most of which yields little useful info.

Until the AIs wake up to that fact, they will have zero interest in an llms.txt file that is worth about $0.10 to their crawl budget.

Plus, there is no standard for this file and it can do more harm than good.

What is an llms.txt File?

If you want to know more about what an llms.txt file is and how it has to be configured, see this article from the nice folks at Learn Woo titled Understanding llms.txt: A Complete Guide for WordPress Users.

Here’s the most important section in that article:

“Limitations and Challenges of llms.txt

The llms.txt help guide large language models on how to interact with your site. Let’s look into the limitations and challenges of llms.txt:

• The right away adoption of the llms.txt is not going to bring in a change immediately.
• For now, there’s no enforcement mechanism for llms.txt. So, AI tools may not take it into consideration and still choose the public-facing content.
• You need to keep on updating as and when you release new information. Or else, it will keep showing irrelevant information.
• No absolute privacy or exclusion of content
• Complex when it comes to websites with so much content and elements
• Uncertain Impact on AI Responses.”

Now do you understand why I’m calling out folks who say, “It’s low hanging fruit and can’t hurt.”

Yes, it can hurt.

When there is a standard for it, and when AI crawlers agree to use it, then I’ll consider it for our sites.

For now, no way.

Site Security Tips

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Testing New Bot Blocks

It has been nice to allow folks from all over the globe to visit our sites.

But the fact is, most of us only make revenue from a few countries that we target.

And, unfortunately, some countries are very lax about stemming bad bot traffic that proxies through servers in their countries.

I already have security measures for challenging the bad bots so that only humans from those countries can get through. But now with AI intelligence, I believe more bots are beating that challenge and I think that situation is only going to get worse.

I’m testing a new set of rules and rule order to block those countries, instead of just challenging them, while letting most, but not all of the verified bots still reach our sites.

Keep in mind that Google and other legit search bots come from servers all over the world, and we don’t want to block them. But there are other verified bots that are attached to SEO agencies that we do not want to allow.

I believe this will take about another month to test and I’ll make tutorials for my webmasters and offer it to my clients once we know all is well.

Cloudflare Security Must Be Maintained

There is NOTHING that is set-it-and-forget-it with site security. Nothing.

Take Cloudflare, for instance.

Having your site on Cloudflare is better than not having it on there.

But it is NOTHING compared to the 30+ settings and rules that I configure for my clients.

And those rules evolve, as do all of the settings at Cloudflare.

I’m logging into Cloudflare every week during audits. And EVERY week I see something new that has been added or improved.

We want some of those settings and not others. In fact, there are a couple of new ones they turned on by default that we promptly turned off.

I can’t imagine not having a real webmaster in your corner now, who is keeping on top of everything with site security.

Host Security Matters

The security at the host level evolves too.

Every week, I speak with Dustin at Iridium Hosting to ensure we are in lockstep with security measures on the hosting side and at the server.

And I can tell you for a fact that most hosts don’t have nearly the security that is at Iridium. 

In fact, I’ve recently had the opportunity to see parts of the backside of 2 hosts that I told my peeps to leave years ago. But some of my webmaster’s clients chose not to leave. 

OMG it’s bad!!!!!!!

Their race-to-the-bottom pricing has taken a toll and they certainly don’t spend any money making their servers as secure as they need to be. In fact, they look like default cPanel installs.

Hosts May Have Incentive Not to Fully Secure

On the other hand, some hosts likely have an incentive to not secure those servers any better than they do. 

When the bot waves come through and knock sites dead for hosting overages, they get those clients to purchase bigger and better hosting packages that maybe have a little better setup. But the situation will repeat until the client leaves for a host that has better security.

I believe we’re going to start seeing more and more of that soon.

AI Security

Calendars Used to Hack Smart Home Devices

Y’all, I’m not playing when I tell you that you need to be mindful about what smart devices you connect to your wifi router.

Researchers proved just how easy they are to hack. They used Google Calendar events to hack Gemini-controlled Smart devices.

Calendar events can contain links and hidden code that can be executed. It’s not that hard to slip something malicious into them.

So, when you sign up for an event, do not allow it to auto send that to your calendar for you.

While I seriously doubt that folks who hold such events would intentionally hack you, the fact is, you have no idea if their setup has been compromised and malicious code added to the event without them knowing.