Tips Tuesday – Last Modified Date and Media Replace Tutorials, Digital Downloads, GA4 Primer

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• New Limit Last Modified Date plugin tutorial
• New Enable Media Replace plugin tutorial
• Digital Downloads workshops start today in the BB Hub
• Ranking Factors Part 2 workshop on Thursday for the DIY SEO course
• WebP images by default in WP was killed in committee
• Cloudflare will deprecate Legacy CAPTCHA soon and what to use instead
• Why we won’t be using the new Cloudflare Images
• A primer on GA4 and why I’m holding off installing it
• The GA4 alternatives to just say no to
• A primer on how to get started with making videos
• How to turn your “Link in Bio” into revenue

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Spill the Beans Livestream tonight

Do join us live tonight at 8pm ET / 5pm PT on the BlogAid LIVE YouTube channel, which is a sister to the regular BlogAid YouTube channel. So, be sure to subscribe to BlogAid LIVE so you get notifications on live events and so you can join in the live chat. 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

Hallelujah!!! The warm weather has returned and it looks and feels like spring for real finally.

I spent 4 hours doing yard work Sunday which worked out all of my stress.

And I have been enjoying extended time on my deck while doing my weekly industry reading to bring you all of the best tips today.

New Limit Last Modified Date Plugin Tutorial

For the last 1.5 years, Google has started dropping rank on posts after they have been updated, even if it was a minor update.

Our best guess is that it is triggering on the Last Modified date, which is hidden in the code that Googlebots read about your site, along with other things in the code like the publish date. You don’t even have to display these things on the post for Google to see them.

There is a plugin that stops the Last Modified date from being changed. And I made a tutorial for us. 

It only works on posts, and that’s fine.

Plus, we’ll be discussing how to best use this plugin in the DIY SEO content revamp workshops so that you don’t abuse it and get yourself into trouble with Google.

New Enable Media Replace Plugin Tutorial

Another thing we’ll be discussing in the DIY SEO content revamp workshops is how and why to safely remove old images from your posts, especially posts you intend to delete.

And you really do need to delete images that are not in use because they take up a lot of your limited hosting disk space.

That can be a very labor intensive project.

So can changing out images on a post you plan to keep.

So, I made a new tutorial for you on a plugin that speeds up that process and gives you lots of choices with how to replace and what to do with the dates and such too.

BB Hub Happenings

Digital Download Workshops Start Today

I am so excited to do our first Digital Downloads workshop with you today in the BB Hub!!!!!

We’ve got 5 workshops in all.

And 3 of them are being presented by visibility expert Denise Wakeman.

At the end of this series we will have created a digital download that we are sure our peeps want.

BlogAid Courses Happenings

Ranking Factors Part 2 Workshop on Thursday

This week we’ll be finishing up our Ranking Factors workshops in the DIY SEO course.

And then we’ll be on Spring Break for a couple of weeks.

We’ll resume with our Content Silo workshop, which is the most powerful way to build your internal linking structure.

And then we’ll start the on-page content SEO series of workshops.

It is never too late to get into the DIY SEO course. 

The standing tutorials will help you get a solid SEO foundation for your whole site.

And all workshops have replays.

Plus we have our own Facebook group too.

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

WordPress Tips

WebP Images by Default Killed in Committee

Thank you to everyone who took the time to vote no on the proposal page for changing every JPEG image you upload over to WebP while keeping the original images too.

It worked.

And a LOT of speed professionals, theme developers, hosts, and site techs that run agencies to maintain sites for their clients showed up to the Performance Team live chat last week to express their concerns and how something like this needs to remain a plugin and not be included in core.

The devs of the idea don’t seem to be able to take no for an answer and seem dedicated to getting this into WP core down the road.

But with all the public dissents in the team and on the proposal page, I seriously doubt the main WP devs will consider it for inclusion.

So again, thank you for taking the time to post on the proposal page and to everyone who showed up for the live team meeting that following Tuesday.

That’s what it took.

My Future Involvement with the WP Performance Team

I will lightly be participating from now on, as there really is no “team” in this thing, and what is there is pretty dysfunctional and does not meet the goals for which it was intended.

I don’t need the stress of that chaos.

But, I will be keeping my eyes on anything that does get out of committee and is being considered for WP core to ensure it does not bork us and/or to prepare y’all for the change.

Security Tips

Cloudflare Will Deprecate Legacy CAPTCHA

You know those CAPTCHAs that make you click all the busses or airplanes?

Well, Cloudflare took a report on The Walrus pretty seriously about the millions of hours humans waste clicking those things.

And for the last year they have been testing a Managed CAPTCHA system to only show those busses and airplanes if the first set of hidden checks fail to prove the person visiting is human.

In other words, Cloudflare only wants to challenge bots at that level, not humans, even if another filter is set to challenge them, like the country they are from.

To be honest, I have not been impressed with Cloudflare’s betas and I’m never the first to jump on them.

But, this new way of doing it has been tested for about a year now and seems to be working.

Plus, everybody on Cloudflare is going to be switched to the new system sometime this year anyway, so I believe now is a good time for us to make the switch and ensure all is well with it.

I made a new video tutorial for my BB Hub site audit clients as well as one for my Webmaster Training members on how to do it.

And, if you’re not one of my clients and you’re on Cloudflare through your host or you’re thinking about setting it up yourself, just know that there are over 30 settings you need to configure to actually get the most security from it.

I do that for my site audit clients and can take anyone through it in a live session.

Images Tips

Cloudflare Images Announced

Cloudflare has just come out with a new service to host and deliver your images.

This is known as off-loading your images.

And it’s good for enterprise-level sites that have hundreds of thousands of images and concurrent connections on their sites, like the New York Times.

Although there are plugins that help you offload images to storage and delivery services like AS3 too, the setup is tricky.

And this is not something most bloggers would benefit from using.

So, it’s not a setup service I plan to offer at this time.

But, I am looking into it and video storage on Cloudflare for member sites to see how it compares to doing those things on AS3.

Analytics Tips

Primer on GA4

As I reported in a recent Tips Tuesday, Google announced that they plan to deprecate Universal Analytics in the summer of 2023.

And they are encouraging everyone to install GA4 in addition to UA now, so you have time to learn how to use it.

That’s super important as GA4 is a whole other animal and you have to use it differently to get any meaningful data from it.

The folks at Search Engine Journal have put together a primer to help you get started with GA4 and I suggest you bookmark it, even if you are not planning to install it right away.

Personally, I’m going to hold off installing it until at least next spring because it’s just one more slow, 3rd party request from Google that goofs my site speed. And I’m betting there will be 100s of tweaks on it between now and then too.

But, if you want year over year data from it, now would be the time to install it.

What I hear folks saying is that it’s practically useless without extensive customizing or 3rd party dashboards. And it only holds data for 14 months, so you need to be in the habit of exporting annually. 

GA4 Alternatives

There are plenty of folks who are super unhappy with GA4, like the folks on the Startup Hero blog who say Google is shoving this down our throats.

They also mention a few other Google Analytics alternatives.

One of them is Clarity from Microsoft, who also run the Bing search engine.

I checked into Clarity when it came out and there’s no way I want it on my sites.

They can see and use your data.

And as much as we may complain about privacy with Google, at least they don’t do that with Analytics or Search Console. Your data is your own.

Video Tips

How to Make a Video

I know some of y’all want to get going with making videos but you just don’t know where to start.

The nice folks at Yoast have you covered!!

They put together a great primer of all the important tips, plus lists of apps and software to use too.

Definitely give it a read and then give it a try.

Ecomm Tips

Turn Your Link in Bio Into Revenue

I’m sure you know exactly what “link in bio” means on social media sites.

And I’ve shown folks how to create their own landing pages for it in my Gutenberg Ninja course.

But more and more I’m seeing folks use better alternatives to LinkTree like StanWith.me.

Well, Shopify has come up with its own similar app called LinkPop.

Here’s what the folks at PublishPress said about it.

“Shopify has been leading the charge when it comes to e-commerce for years and they’re bringing Creators into the future with their latest tool – Linkpop.

Linkpop is a link in bio tool that’s shoppable. Creators can curate a selection of products that visitors can buy directly from their store without ever leaving the link in bio, all powered by Shopify’s fast and secure checkout.

You don’t need a Shopify store to start a Linkpop, which takes the friction out of not only the customer’s experience but the creator’s too.

Whether you’re on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok or Patreon, Linkpop works where you do. Best of all, it’s 100% free to use.”

What are you using for your link in bio?

Leave us a comment here on the blog or anywhere you see this post online.

Wrap Up

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

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