Tips Tuesday – No to Default WebP Images, Digital Downloads, Ranking Factors

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• Tell WordPress not to make WebP the default image format
• My case study proving why the Performance Lab plugin misses the mark
• Ranking Factors Part 1 workshop is this week
• The Digital Downloads workshops start April 12
• WordPress 5.9.3 releases today and what’s in it
• Why I’m so happy Stripe is getting back into crypto payments
• YouTube will soon host podcasts and how to make the most of this
• Should you start with a newsletter instead of a blog?
• How to create a sidebar in an FSE theme workshop

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Spill the Beans Livestream tonight

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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

Wow, what a busy week it has been around here. I’ve got lots of goodies for you and some good news too.

Plus, now is the time to make your voice heard to keep a really bad new feature out of WordPress.

Say No to WordPress Making WebP the Default Image Format

Y’all have heard me talking about what’s been happening in the WP Performance Team for the past 6 months.

And you’ve heard my warnings about the stuff they are proposing that’s going to bork your site.

The proposal to make WebP images the default in WP anytime you upload a JPEG has been made.

And they want to ramrod this through in the WP 6.0 release, whose first beta is scheduled to release in just a couple of weeks.

Here’s what you need to do to stop this from happening.

Read my posts:

• Why WordPress Should Not Enable WebP By Default
• Performance Lab Plugin Image Tests Results

Then go to the official Proposal page and voice your concerns.

This will require a WordPress.com login and you likely already have one if you have a Gravatar. If you don’t, then get one – both the login and the Gravatar – and use the same email address that you use for your admin on your site.

We NEED your voice!!!!!!

Folks, I’ve already given up 80+ hours on this.

You can give 2 minutes to let WP know this should not happen.

The WP Performance Team has already summarily dismissed 40+ dissents in the Slack group and is doing the same with every dissent on the proposal page.

We literally need to overwhelm them with appeals not to include this change in WP else it’s likely going to happen.

And spread the word to every blogging buddy and group you can and ask them as strongly as you can to just say no to this.

Thank You!!

I appreciate everyone who has supported me through this process.

It has been insanely, and needlessly stressful.

Not to mention the loss of billable hours just in the testing and making the posts to prove the points.

And to be honest, I feel like I just threw gasoline on a fire that is going to burn me to a crisp with these posts, as BlogAid is syndicated and has a reach far beyond my regular readers.

Thank you so much for your supportive comments on the blog posts, or anywhere you see them shared online.

BlogAid Course Happenings

Ranking Factors Part 1 Workshop This Week

On Thursday we’ll meet live for the DIY SEO course to discuss Part 1 of our Ranking Factors workshop.

It’s super important to know not only what ranking factors Google uses, but you also need to know the weight of them because some are definitely more important than others.

FYI, next week we’ll do Part 2 of our Ranking workshop and then we’re going to take 2 weeks off for a little spring break before we do our Content Silo workshop and then get into our on-page series of SEO workshops.

It’s never too late to join the course!!!

BB Hub Happenings

Digital Downloads Workshops Start April 12

I am so excited!!!

I’ve got coaches and trainers lined up for us to start our Digital Downloads series of workshops in the BB Hub.

I’ll be sending out an email with more details and the agenda and first meeting info soon.

But go ahead and mark your calendars now for Tue, April 12 at 1pm ET / 10am PT.

And we’ll be going weekly on that same day and time for about 4 weeks straight.

Then we’ll likely take a week off to allow everyone time to do their homework, which will be actually creating your digital download at that point.

Site Services Update

We’re still plugging away at some really big projects that are taking far longer than anticipated because of what we found during the audits that is not up to par.

So, we’re behind about 2-3 weeks at this point from what I guesstimated when you made your initial site service request. 

I’ll be in touch as soon as I have a better idea when I’ll be bringing on the next projects.

So, if you’re due for your annual audit checkup in May, or you want your site all squared away before the end of spring, now would be the time to make your requests.

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

WordPress Tips

WordPress 5.9.3 RC1 Has Released

The RC1 of WP 5.9.3 released last week and the final version is slated to start rolling out today.

This is a minor release and it should auto update for you.

There are 9 bug fixes and most of them have to do with FSE themes.

There is also an Accessibilities fix that I’m glad to see, which is adding an aria label to the native Search box.

I didn’t see anything in it about fixing the change that caused all SEO plugins to start producing duplicate XML sitemaps.

So, my guess was correct that the WP change will remain and that each plugin will have to do an update on their side.

Web3 Tips

Stripe Re-enters Crypto Processing Again

I sure am glad to see this!

Stripe used to support crypto payments but dropped support for them back in 2018.

Well, they are bringing that support back.

And what I like most about it is that Stripe has fraud protection.

Y’all may recall in last week’s Tips Tuesday that my main concern with building hybrid Web2/3 sites was security.

And crypto payment options were a big part of that.

So, maybe this will take care of that issue.

Marketing Tips

YouTube Will Soon Host Podcasts

I’m pretty stoked about this!

YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine, right behind Google.

And in a leaked SlideDeck, we can now see their plans to build a podcast discovery section on the home page of YouTube.

Here’s what I know.

Google loves to promote its own.

So, if you have your podcast listed on Google Podcasts, it may now get more promotion on YouTube. And that may get you promoted higher on Google Search too, just like they do with YouTube videos.

If you have the kind of content that would lend itself to being an audio version, then seriously consider starting a podcast.

LOTS of folks simply listen to videos on YouTube anyway.

And this will give you a way to make the audio version without having to provide a video element with it.

Start with a Newsletter Instead of a Blog

Okay, I’m tilting my head in a curious dog pose with this article from The Tilt.

It suggests that you should start you content marketing with a newsletter instead of blog.

Really?

How do you get folks to discover your newsletter?

I mean, I don’t think The Tilt started in a vacuum. Joe already had tons of contacts in the online world. And I’m betting it was super easy for him to get publicity and word of mouth promotion.

But, for folks just starting out, they don’t have the luxury of those connections and influence.

Jump on over and read the article and let me know what you think.

And FYI, it is a blog post. And if you just go to the homepage of The Tilt, you’ll see that the only thing they promote is their newsletter. You have to hunt in the footer to find a link to their blog.

To be honest, I don’t like having to sign up for a newsletter just to get notification of a new post. I can subscribe via my Feedly feed reader to see those.

So, if you do have a newsletter, ensure that it has more to it than just a new post notification.

Now, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t include new post notifications in your newsletter – I certainly do with Tips Tuesday. But it is to say that new post notifications should not be the only thing you ever send your subscribers.

What do you think?

Webmaster Tips

How to Create an FSE Sidebar

Hey designers, have you started working with FSE themes yet?

Well, there’s a free MeetUp happening on Wed that you may want to attend online to see how to create a sidebar in an FSE theme.

It’s hosted by the Learn.WordPress.org folks.

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.