Tips Tuesday – New Tutorials for GA4, DIY SEO, UpdraftPlus, GPT 4 Releasing Soon

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• My focus on video is starting to pay off
• The new site I’m starting for AI tools and news
• New GA4 tutorials for folks who set it up prior or got auto migrated by Google
• 3 new DIY SEO tutorials on Search Position
• Content Revamp How-To workshop is this week
• New UpdraftPlus and AS3 tutorials in the Webmaster Training course
• How to ensure your backup is squared away
• Meta is building a decentralized Twitter competitor
• WP 6.2 Release Candidates are rolling out and where to get update instructions
• How the collapse of SVB affected Etsy and Shopify shop owners
• Bing might replace featured answers with Chat summaries
• How the upcoming release of GPT4 will blow the lid off AI by being multi modal

BlogAid Happenings

My Focus on Videos is Working

I’m delighted that my decision to let go of the podcast and spend that production time on video is paying off.

The analytics and engagement are telling me that I’m reaching more folks in a meaningful way.

And my bottom line is telling me that I’m getting conversions from it too.

However, something unexpected has shown up in my analytics, and I need to address it.

Splitting Off AI News and Tools

As you’ve seen, Tips Tuesday has significantly become an AI news report. 

And for good reason.

AI is moving fast and rewriting the online business landscape every day.

I’ve tried to keep my AI reporting focus on what my blogger clients need to know the most.

But the fact is, I’m spending more and more time every week reading about, and exploring all that AI has to offer, including tools that go way beyond ChatGPT.

And I can’t ignore that my AI videos are getting 2500% more views than any direct BlogAid related news.

I want to explore a way to monetize that interest.

But, I also want to keep BlogAid focused on blogger related news.

So, I’ve purchased another domain and I’ll be setting up another site that is totally dedicated to AI news and tools.

For BlogAid, I’ll be reporting on the AI news that directly impacts you, like SEO and content creation, plus the general AI news about ChatGPT improvements and such.

I’ll also be including Social Media news, as that affects your blog marketing efforts.

But, until I get this new site and such setup, I’ll still be reporting all the AI news I believe you will find interesting here.

And I’ll let you know when the other site is ready for you to visit and sign up for the newsletter, plus all of the social media accounts you can follow to get the latest scoop.

Web3 and AR/VR

In last week’s Tips Tuesday I also mentioned that Web3 is still very much alive and kicking. And I mentioned that big changes are coming with Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality.

I continue to read and keep up with the news on both.

But, I have not seen how they will be impacting us, as bloggers and content creators directly. Nor can I see how we can make use of those technologies for our direct benefit as online business owners directly either.

At best, I think Web3 and AR/VR tech will remain the purview of developers, and we will only make use of what they create. I don’t see how we’ll be able to create with these things ourselves, directly.

So, I’ve mostly gone quiet about it. I’ll report on them when I see news that does impact us.

Think of it like cell phones. There’s bunches happening with them, but not things I need to report here unless it is an app or such that you can make direct use of.

Review and Teach AI

However, I do see AI, and its tools, as something we can use directly, and in a variety of ways, to make money, including with our blogs, as well as all the other hats we need to wear as solopreneurs to help us be more productive.

And that’s why I’m leaning hard into AI compared to Web3 and AR/VR.

I believe I have the skillset to help you make sense of what’s happening with AI, and the ability to review and teach the tools that will be most helpful to you as bloggers.

But, AI covers a LOT of products and needs, well beyond that of bloggers. And I want to take the opportunity to explore a much broader set of tools and news too.

And that’s why I feel the need to split that info over into another site, as the focus is different for it, compared to the needs of those who follow BlogAid for content creator news.

BlogAid Course Happenings

New GA4 Tutorials

Last week I told you about Google auto migrating folks who use Universal Analytics over to a GA4 account. And I told you that they would start doing it soon.

I discovered the next day that they are already doing those migrations.

And I have met with some folks who either used the GA4 Setup Assistant or had an auto migration to see how it is connected to their sites since they didn’t input new GA4 tracking code.

It’s using their Universal Analytics tracking code.

It is fairly accurate, but they are missing so much of the info that GA4 can collect that UA can’t.

And none of them finished the setup.

No matter which way they did it, the Setup Assistant shows only 2 out of the 12 steps complete.

And there is no way I would trust Google to keep using that UA code once they cut off collection with it on July 1st.

You need to get GA4 fully connected the right way and get any of it out of the hands of Google’s automations because none of them are doing it right.

I made a new tutorial in the GA4 for Bloggers course so new folks coming into the course can check their current setup, and know what to do with it.

There is also a tutorial for opting out of Google’s automated migration, which you need to do no matter what.

GA4 Course for Bloggers Extension Coming

If you’re already in the course, but have not finished it, I’ll soon be adding a way for you to extend your course access.

Keep in mind that the course is set to 6 months of access, and that Universal Analytics stops collecting on July 1st.

You want to get your GA4 setup so you can compare to your UA as soon as you can.

So, if you haven’t finished the course, please mark it on your calendar to do so.

And you can still get the extension if you want it, as GA4 is under active development and I’ll be adding new tutorials as we go.

3 New DIY SEO Tutorials on Search Position

It’s super important to see what ranking position your posts show up in Google Search.

Last week I added 3 new tutorials to the Google Search Console section to see what the top Queries are that your posts are being matched to. And, then see the highest and lowest pages by Search position too.

The tutorials also cover how to use ChatGPT to write a regex (regular expression) for you so that you can easily filter those GSC reports into the topics or categories that you want to focus on.

Content Revamp How-To Workshop This Week – and Time Change

In last week’s DIY SEO workshop, we covered what to consider when going through your content list to decide if it needs to be deleted, reworked, or republished.

That included more on how to use those 3 new Search Position tutorials in conjunction with your Google Analytics to determine what to do with your content too.

And that includes seeing which posts are siphoning away rank from other posts, or which posts would be good candidates for a content silo, which is another workshop we’ll be doing down the road.

And this week we’ll be covering how to actually make those changes in ways that avoid getting you into hot water with Google, or dropping rank on posts that are doing well for you.

Quick reminder that the U.S. has now entered Daylight Saving Time, so if you are in another place in the world, the workshop may be an hour earlier for you than usual.

It’s never too late to join us in the course. Replays are available for all workshops.

New UpdraftPlus and Amazon S3 Tutorials in Webmaster Training

Amazon S3 is my strong preference for storing backup files from UpdraftPlus.

• It’s cheaper than any other option for the 5-6 month’s worth of backups you need to hold.
• The bucket, or directory where the files are stored can have isolated access from all other file storage.
• The data transfer from your site to the storage is encrypted.

AS3 is one of the Amazon Web Services offered. And the AWS documentation can be seriously difficult to follow, especially when they make a change.

And they just changed the way we set up an IAM sub user, attach a restrictive access policy to it, and get its unique access keys, which are all things needed to securely connect UDP and AS3.

But, no thanks to their support, I finally figured out how to do it again.

And I revamped all of the tutorials for both UDP and AS3 in the Webmaster Training Backup section of tutorials.

Let’s hope they don’t go tweaking on that setup anytime soon again.

If you already have UDP/AS3 setup, nothing about this affects you. It only affects new setups, which me and my webmasters do for our clients all the time.

Get Your Backup Squared Away

Your site’s backup is your most important safety net, no matter what bad thing happens to your site.

If you are not sure you have a full backup, including the critically important files below WP, or you’re not sure you could restore your site from that backup, contact me to get that squared away. 

It’s a fast and easy service to do.

And it will give you peace of mind.

Social Media Tips

Meta is Building a Decentralized Twitter Competitor

Elon is still figuring out what he wants to do with Twitter.

Plus, all the gafs and downtime is blood in the water that is attracting the sharks.

Meta has seized this opportunity to announce that they are building a decentralized, text-only social media platform.

Decentralized means that it will be a bit like Mastodon, which is a federation of independent servers. No single entity will own all of the servers.

That’s a great idea in theory, as no single entity can shut them down.

But, there is no single governing body either. And each server owner may be able to set their own rules of engagement.

Plus, what if a server owner drops off the planet? Not all of them will have a contingency plan in place.

I looked into Mastodon and reported on it in a Tips Tuesday a few months ago. It has its place. But I can’t see that it is a good fit for bloggers to promote directly to followers. But, if you get most of your followers by participating in Facebook groups or the like, then maybe you should check into Mastodon.

WordPress Tips

WP 6.2 Release Candidates Out

There was an extra beta 5 in this release cycle because they found an issue with the code that ran deep.

But, the dev team is back on track and the Release Candidates are coming out, which means there will be no new additions, only bug fixes.

The final release is expected on March 28, and I’ll be doing my tests and making a video tour for you soon after the release.

Get WP 6.2 Update Instructions

We will not be the first to do the WP 6.2 update.

That’s because they are changing request names in the core code.

What does that mean?

WP has to “fetch” things, and those things are called by name. The act of fetching is called a request.

So, when request names change, that means your theme and plugins have to match the request name, or they can’t fetch something from WP or vice versa.

There is a built-in bridge for the old to the new names coming in WP 6.2. 

But who knows if it covers everything needed, or how long it will be there.

And I expect most plugin devs won’t test or troubleshoot until they start getting reports of breaks.

So, we’ll let others be the guinea pigs with it and let the plugin and theme devs work out the bugs. And then we’ll update.

BlogAid News subscribers will be the only ones to receive my WP 6.2 update instructions when I feel it is safe for us to do that update.

Monetization Tips

SVB bank Collapse Affects Etsy and Shopify

On Friday, the Silicon Valley Bank collapsed and the FDIC took it over.

On Sunday they announced that all deposits would be covered, including those that were well over the insured amount of $250,000.

But, Etsy and Shopify do their banking with SVB and Etsy held payouts across the weekend.

SVB is not the only bank that Etsy and Shopify do business with.

And I’m sure all of this will get sorted out this week with the FDIC’s help.

But, it is a warning that you should make withdrawals frequently from your payment gateways, if you can, and not leave large sums sitting in them.

That’s true if you use a merchant service like PayPal or such too.

AI SEO Tips

Bing Might Replace Featured Answers with Chat Summaries

You know that Featured Snippet answer you get in a Google Search?

Bing has something similar, but it may soon be replaced with a ChatGPT summary, even if you don’t use the Chat feature.

And they are asking you to rate which provides the better answer, Bing Search or Bing Chat.

We will definitely keep our eyes on this, as it will most definitely impact our SEO, especially if Google adopts the same method.

AI Tips

GPT4 Release Soon and It Is Multi Modal

Microsoft Germany recently announced that the more powerful GPT4 AI will release in mid March, so we are expecting it any day now.

We are currently using GPT3, which was trained on a limited data set that was mostly books, and it only had info from the internet up to 2021.

The data set for GPT4 is thousands of times bigger, and it has current access to all info on the internet as well.

But that’s not the big news.

GPT4 will be multi modal, meaning that it can use and understand text, images, video and voice as both the input and output.

We don’t know exactly where GPT4 will be released, but we suspect it will first appear in Microsoft’s Azure, which is their public cloud platform that contains over 200 products and cloud services.

And it will likely hit the new Bing Chat next, but that’s just a guess.

I’ll be looking for this to hit Microsoft’s Office and other products in the coming month’s too.

However, if they open the API on GPT4, all AI tools that are currently running on GPT3 will be upgraded.

And this is going to blow the lid off what can be done with AI.

Wrap Up

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

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Be sure to visit BlogAid.net for more tips and resources and I’ll see you online.