Tips Tuesday – NFT Membership, YouTube Shorts, Keywords Workshop, XML Sitemaps

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• 2 new Gutenberg Ninja tutorials
• Keywords Part 2 workshop is this Thursday
• 2 Cloudflare tutorials updated
• Routine Site Checks series started
• Digital Downloads Action Plan update
• Duplicate XML sitemap issues
• How social media trends can affect your SEO
• The Block Pattern Creator goes public
• Plugin to write theme.json file in familiar YAML
• Video review of the new WP performance plugin
• How content marketing fits into Web3
• Using NFTs for member access
• Patreon’s role in the new Creator Economy
• YouTube Shorts confirmed not to count toward monetization

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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

Welcome to the end of Q1, y’all!! Are you where you wanted to be by this time of the year?

I almost am. And I say that because I got all but one thing done that was on my schedule, and that’s because I swapped around my priorities and got another thing done instead.

So, I’m close to meeting my objectives and I’m feeling good about that.

BlogAid Course Happenings

2 New Gutenberg Ninja Tutorials

Have you ever needed to move column content around in Gutenberg?

There is no in-built way to shuffle it like that.

But, there is an easy way to copy/paste it and I show you how in the new Change Column Content tutorial.

Plus, most of the block styling options are now available for all popular blocks. So I made a standalone Styling Blocks tutorial that shows them all and you can apply to any of the blocks.

Keywords Part 2 Workshop on Thursday in DIY SEO Course

Last week in the DIY SEO live workshop we covered the broad scope of keywords including why semantic search is so important and the role keywords play in creating a content silo.

Plus, we looked at some killer ways to do keyword research that many of my peeps are using to crush it.

In Part 2 this week we’ll be diving deeper into keyword research as well as all the places you can use them.

Cloudflare Tutorials Updated

My Webmaster Training members will find 2 of your Cloudflare tutorials updated, including:

• Cloudflare Tour – with all of the interface tool location changes and settings
• Bad SEO and XML-RPC Bot Blocks with a screenshot above the video tutorial of where the new tool locations are

I sure hope these updates hold for a bit, as Cloudflare has been changing the interface just about every day.

If you are a designer and you want to know more about the site tech, including the 30+ settings at Cloudflare that need to be configured properly for speed and security, this Webmaster Training is for you!!

And if you’re a site owner and you put your site on Cloudflare yourself, or worse, you went through your host for it, I guarantee you don’t have all the settings you need to get max security and speed. I can take you through it in a live session.

BB Hub Happenings

Routine Site Checks Series Started

I’m delighted to share that the monthly site routine site checks series has now started for my BB Hub site audit client members!

I emailed the first quick check on Sunday and I’ll be sending a new check out around the 15th of every month, starting in April.

This series is a compliment to the DIY Site Owners Guide that’s in the BB Hub member area and it’s a great way to ensure all parts of your site are working by getting checked on a regular schedule.

And these are things that I don’t check in your annual audit checkup – like this first one to ensure that your contact form is working.

Digital Downloads Action Plan Update

And I’m so excited to share that I have our action plan for digital download workshops all laid out.

Right now I’m working with a few trainers and coaches that I trust to present some of those workshops in our BB Hub.

And I’ll send out the full schedule once we have those dates locked down.

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

SEO Tips

Duplicate XML Sitemap Issues

You may have heard that Yoast SEO is having an issue with producing duplicate XML sitemaps.

Well, the problem is not with Yoast plugin.

It’s due to a change in WP 5.9 and all SEO plugins are having the same problem.

My guess is that all the SEO plugins will issue a bug fix, as it’s not likely that WP will change the new way they are doing the core code. But, we’ll see.

FYI, I first posted about this on TikTok, so please do follow me there for news as it happens.

How Social Media Trends Can Affect Your SEO

Moz has an interesting post on how social media trends can impact your SEO.

And when you read this article, I want you to pay close attention to how many times they mention TikTok. It truly is the leader in most all online trends now.

And the power of trends is something we just talked about last week in Part 1 of our Keywords workshop too.

I have folks in that course who are making $800/day by capitalizing on trends.

So, don’t just blow this off as a fad thing.

Trends and hot news can mean huge traffic for you.

Webmaster Designer Tips

Block Pattern Creator Goes Public

Woot!!!

I am so tickled to see that WP’s Block Pattern Creator has gone public!!

I strongly encourage all of my webmaster designers to check out this thing.

And I will be checking into it for the Gutenberg Ninja course as well, as I think it would be a better way to create your blog templates rather than use the Reusable Templates, which have been unstable for at least a year now.

Plugin to Write theme.json file in Familiar YAML

One of the huge changes with Full Site Editing themes is that designers now have to style them in the theme.json file. 

And writing JSON scripts is very different than the YAML directives they are used to.

Well, good news!!

Now there is a plugin that will allow you to create your styling in YAML and it will spit out the theme.json file for you.

I think this is a great way for you to learn how to write in JSON too, as you’ll be able to compare the two.

Performance Tips

Video Review of WP Performance Plugin

Y’all know that I’ve been involved with the new WP Performance team since it started about 5-6 months ago.

And y’all know that I have expressed my deep concerns with some of the changes that they want to make to help speed up your site.

For me, my site audit clients, and my webmasters, we have already taken steps to make our sites super fast and I think many of the proposed changes are going to bork our sites.

To my knowledge, the Measurement group never got their shit together enough to decide on anything, much less get something set for checking these proposed changes either. I literally just gave up trying to help with that group as I made multiple offers that were ignored by the group leader, who has since stepped away.

My last word to them was that I would run my own tests when the plugin with all these changes became available and I would make those results available to the whole team.

Well, the plugin has been out for about 3 weeks now and it was so full of bugs and lack of documentation that I decided to wait until it got on a more solid footing before beginning my tests.

I will be starting with the speed changes that concern me the most, which involves images.

I’ll share those results with you as I go through the testing.

For now, you can have a look at this video overview of it to see what all is included.

This is not from someone on the team, and when you see him install the plugin, you will also immediately see at least 2-3 things on his site that are directly contributing to how slow his site is that this plugin does not address.

FYI, this is NOT a plugin you want to put on a production site. It’s sort of like the Gutenberg plugin where they create and test things before rolling them into the WP core.

Web3 Tips

How Content Marketing Fits Into Web3

We are in the early days of content marketing moving from tons of free stuff online to the good stuff being consumer supported.

In other words, content creators need to start thinking hard about how to build tribe instead of just sending traffic to their sites.

In last week’s Tips Tuesday I posted a couple of articles about building community, including one that was practically a blueprint for doing it.

And this week, you’ll want to go read this post from the Content Marketing Institute for how owned content is moving into Web3, which will be the new platform for your paid content.

For serious bloggers, it’s time for you to start drawing up a plan for how to build your community of loyal followers so that you have an audience for when you move the good or bonus stuff behind a paywall where you are guaranteed member-supported income.

For me, I plan to start getting paid for this podcast and the associated livestream where I give even more info and breaking news, and where I can have direct interaction with my peeps instead of everything being a one-way broadcast.

Using NFTs for member access

Y’all know that I’m starting my deep dive into how running member sites has changed in recent years.

And one of the biggest new changes is using NFTs for member access.

The Tilt and a couple of other programs I’m in do it.

And I told y’all a while back that I expected Social Media Marketing to have a Web3 member area. And over the past few months they have been educating their audience in that direction.

Last week they published an article with an overview of how you can use NFTs as the access point to a member area.

One of the perks they mentioned is that the owner of the NFT can resell their monthly membership to someone else.

There are even now plugins for doing it, and these are the bridges I mentioned a few months ago that I would be looking into.

My greatest concern with setting something like this up right now is security, both for the site and for the members.

Also, folks keeping a wallet funded for monthly membership dues is another concern, as there is not an easy way to do it in the crypto world that doesn’t have an extra cost associated with it.

Like I said, we’re in the early days of this and I expect there to be rapid changes this year with the tech side, as well as more folks getting into crypto and it becoming the way they pay for everyday things.

But now is the time for me to start doing a deep dive on the current setups and methods so I can keep on top of it as it evolves and be prepared to offer this type of setup as a service.

Patreon’s Role in the New Creator Economy

Now, having a paywall for your tribe to get bonus time with you is nothing new. Patreon has been doing it for years.

But, Web3 and NFTs are changing the landscape fast and Patreon is going to get left behind if they don’t try to find a way to offer some of the perks that Web3 promises.

FastCompany has an interview with the CEO of Patreon about the changes they plan to make.

And honestly, the only news I saw was that Patreon plans to host uploaded videos in the near future, and they aren’t even sure exactly how that is going to work.

I think in another year this will seem too little, too late and Patreon will start becoming the old-school way of doing things in the Creator Economy.

Video Tips

YouTube Shorts Don’t Count for Watchtime Toward Monetization

Y’all may recall in a previous Tips Tuesday that I said I was giving up on YouTube Shorts as they were just not getting seen.

I put those same videos into regular YT and they are getting much more watchtime.

And now, the folks at Search Engine Journal report that YouTube has confirmed that watchtime on Shorts does not contribute to your ability to monetize your channel.

So, Shorts may get more eyeballs for some folks, and that may be good for ramping up your subscribers so that they will hopefully watch your long-form content.

But, you don’t want to only upload Shorts while thinking they are going to lead to monetizing your channel.

Wrap Up

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

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