Tips Tuesday – Schema Markup, UpdraftPlus Backups, Affiliate Cookies, Video SEO

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• Ecommerce for digital downloads mastermind this week
• 2 new tutorials for testing and fixing theme schema markup
• A post on whether your theme is destroying your SEO
• New boutique hosting is open to the public
• WP 5.8 issues reported
• UpdraftPlus free version is not backing up for some folks
• Mediavine requires JS exclusions in WP Rocket
• Are affiliate tracking cookies being phased out?
• Is Kadence behind or ahead in their theme philosophy?
• A new way to get your videos into Google Search
• A peek into our future

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Spill the Beans Livestream tonight

Do join us live tonight at 8pm ET / 5pm PT on the BlogAid Facebook Page. 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.

BlogAid Happenings

Wow, what a week it has been around here!!

I’ve got all kinds of new goodies for you and a peek into our future to help you stay well ahead of the curves and riding the incoming waves.

Ecomm Mastermind for Digital Downloads

I’m so excited to be meeting live with my BB Hub members on Thursday!!!

Last week our 2 special guest speakers gave us a primer on

• MailChimp Shops
• Woocommerce
• Shopify

This week we’ll be hearing from our own Cath Hakansen about everything she has tried for digital downloads – and she has tried just about everything out there!!!

Then we’ll be doing more follow up masterminds to hear from more folks in our BB Hub village with what they have tried, including best ways to make printables and such too.

The BB Hub is an extra perk just for site audit clients and includes a private member area and Facebook group for support on WAY more than just your site.

2 new tutorials for testing and fixing theme schema markup

I am delighted to tell you that I finished up the SEO testing on all demo sites for the following themes:

• Genesis
• Kadence
• Astra
• GeneratePress

All of these themes output their own schema markup, which is the older Microdata language.

Both Yoast SEO and RankMath output the newer JSON-LD schema markup that Google and Bing prefer.

But only Genesis backs out its native schema so that your SEO plugin can output only its version.

All of the other themes output a mixed bag of both schema tags and that confuses the crap out of search engines.

There are now 2 new tutorials to test and fix these issues in all of these courses:

• DIY SEO
• Video SEO Booster
• Webmaster Training

And did you know that both the DIY SEO and Video SEO Booster courses are available for affiliation with a 45% commission? You just have to be a course member first!

Is Your Theme Destroying Your SEO Schema Markup?

If you’re not real clear on what schema markup is or does, or why all of this is an issue, see my post and discover how your theme’s native schema markup is directly conflicting with your SEO plugin and confusing the heck out of Google.

New boutique hosting open to the public

I’m thrilled to announce that our new boutique host, Iridium Hosting, is now open to the public!!!

In recent Tips Tuesdays you have heard me talk about the HOA section of a new boutique host that I’m moving qualified site audit clients into.

I’m calling it an HOA (or Home Owners Association) section because you do have to demonstrate that you are keeping your site current and coming in for regular audit checkups to get into this special place that is just for us, as we want to get out of the ghetto of shared hosting at all of the other big box hosts. We get superior server setup for speed and security with Iridium.

And now you can move to a better host too!!!!

These are lightning fast servers that are set up correctly.

You can even find WHM accounts if you have multiple sites.

And the VPS packages offer both cPanel and Interworx control panels.

So, even if you don’t yet qualify for the HOA hosting, you can still get superior service at a better host now.

And I know all of my webmasters have been looking forward to the public side opening so they can start moving their clients there too!!

The beauty of a semi-flexible schedule

Some of you may have noticed that I was working on my days off this weekend.

That’s because I had to meet schedules both planned and unexpected earlier in the week.

One was coordinating some yard work with a neighbor on a fair weather day instead of being out in the 105 heat index over the weekend that was later followed by storms.

And the other time away was an unexpected trip to the dentist, who is over an hour from me, to fix a repair that failed. And that took 4 hours out of my Friday.

I’m so close to getting caught up on all of the delayed projects I had planned for this year that I wanted to keep on track and make up the lost desk time during normal business hours and do them over the weekend.

And, I need to stay on track as I have deadlines coming up for the WP 5.8 and Gutenberg updates too.

So, this switcheroo is keeping me out of the stress of overwhelm too.

Isn’t it nice to have a job where we can flex our hours now and then and still get things done and stay on track?

I’m very grateful for it.

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

WordPress Tips

WP 5.8 issues reported

As you know, I’ve advised folks not to update to WP 5.8 yet.

I’m hearing complaints of folks not being able to select text properly to change colors or create a link.

Plus, it seems that the editor window collapses so small while in Full screen editing mode that new blocks are hidden behind things below it, like the Yoast SEO meta module and such.

And I’ve heard that the Genesis 3.3.4 update was supposed to make it so that you didn’t have to use the Classic Widget plugin, but there have been some issues with that and they are working on it.

I have not heard folks screaming that sites are breaking yet, though. But it’s still early, as I think a lot of folks have held off in doing this update.

I’ll be keeping my ear to the ground on it and will let you know when I feel that it is safe for folks to do the update and whether you will need the Classic Widget plugin or not.

Only BlogAid News subscribers will get my WP 5.8 update instructions. So be sure you are subscribed – that’s even if you are a BB Hub member.

Plugin Tips

UpdraftPlus not backing up

I’ve had issues with the free version of UpdraftPlus not backing up sites.

I’ve seen it on a client’s site after we migrated away from SiteGround and onto a Litespeed server and I’ve seen it on one of my test sites that I used to verify the issue, which is also on a Litespeed server.

I asked my webmasters to test, and they are on several different hosts, including Litespeed servers, and the paid UDP versions are working fine.

My paid versions are working fine.

And I put the UDP Migrator plugin on my client’s site that was having issues with the free version and it backed up fine.

Only one of my BB Hub members has reported an issue with the automated backup on her paid version so far.

I’ve been going back and forth with support on the free plugin’s forum and they’ve had me check a bunch of stuff. But we have no answer yet.

Be sure to check your backups no matter what version you use to ensure they are making and let us know here in the comments, or anywhere you see this post online.

For webmasters and BB Hub members, please report in the posts we already have running for this in our Facebook groups.

Mediavine requires more JS exclusions in WP Rocket

I want to thank BB Hub member Shannon Entin of The TV Traveler for the heads up this.

If you run ads with Mediavine and/or you use the Grow plugin, and you use the WP Rocket plugin, you need to add some additional exclusions for the changes they made to their Javascript code. See the tutorial I have linked for you.

If you are using the WP Fastest Cache plugin, you do not need to do anything. It auto detects and excludes that code for you.

And I want to thank BB Hub member Meg Hemmelgarn of Green with Decor for helping us test and verify that.

Cookie Tracking Tips

Are affiliate cookies being phased out too?

At the beginning of the year I started talking a lot more about the end of 3rd party cookie tracking by Chrome.

Firefox and Safari have already killed them off.

But, I was always thinking about the privacy issues with ad agencies, and how they can follow you around from site to site that you visit.

That’s why you look up something on Google, or visit a site from social media, and then see an ad for it on Facebook, or even on the next site you visit.

But I never really gave much thought to the end of affiliate link cookie tracking.

That’s the only way a vendor can give you credit for purchases made on your site using your affiliate link.

I posted this question to my BB Hub members and they said affiliate marketers have been in a bit of a panic about it all year.

What do you know for sure about it?

Have any of your affiliate vendors put out official word on it yet?

Please do leave us a comment here on the blog or anywhere you see this post online.

Theme Tips

Is Kadence behind or ahead in their theme philosophy?

As I mentioned previously in my post and tutorial updates for fixing your theme’s schema markup output, Kadence is one of the themes that doesn’t have an auto detection when you add your SEO plugin.

When I went searching for ways to turn off the native schema markup for each theme, both Astra and GeneratePress had tutorials.

Not Kadence!!!

Beyond that, they don’t believe a child theme is all that necessary either.

My webmaster designers all think it’s best practice!!!

Here’s what Kadence says about why they think you don’t need a child theme.

Basically, they have such a firm belief in their meticulous integration with the Customizer for styling that a child theme is completely unnecessary unless you need to add advanced code.

Well, if they would make an auto detection trigger for the SEO issue, maybe we would not need to add that code!

The Genesis framework requires that you use a child theme.

The Astra framework strongly suggests you use a child theme.

Kadence doesn’t even call itself a framework.

To me, it seems that Kadence is walking in the middle of the road between theme builders and theme frameworks.

And at this moment, I can’t really tell if they are behind the times or ahead of them with this.

I guess we’ll see when the rest of Gutenberg Phase 2 finishes rolling into the core and the base of all these themes change to become fully block based and to fully support Full Site Editing.

Video Tips

New way to get your videos in Search

Google now officially supports the SeekToAction schema markup in the VideoObject tags.

This is a great way to mark specific timestamps in your video called key moments.

And these new tags are a way for Google to pick up those key moments for search.

I’ve already been seeing videos that are in Position 0 at the top of Google start at a specific timestamp that is relevant to my search query.

And those videos did not have the SeekToAction schema markup tags. They were just going on the manually entered YouTube timestamp alone.

That’s something I teach you how to do in my Video SEO Booster course.

Yoast has been complaining that Google didn’t properly support everything in the VideoObject schema tag.

So, I’m hoping with this official announcement of support from Google that Yoast will make a way for us to easily do the SeekToAction markup in his Yoast Video SEO plugin, since it is supplying the VideoObject schema markup in the first place.

And I will be keeping my eyes open for that, as well as any other plugin that can do it because this is a really big deal for getting more of your videos featured in Google search.

A Peek into our Future

I was at WordCamp US when Matt Mullenweg introduced Gutenberg.

While that was fascinating, what really opened my eyes was the talk from Morten Rand-Hedricksen, who spends his time equally between WordPress and the rest of what’s happening with internet development.

He gave us a real look at the near future that will incorporate web design with both virtual and augmented reality.

And since then we have seen virtual reality gear for gaming come down in price.

Plus, we’ve seen exercise gear get more personal so that you feel the presence of another live person with you and a sense of place beyond just looking at a TV screen in your living room.

And then came CoVid and lockdown and the whole world got used to being together virtually.

I think that was the tipping point that will usher in what is being called “the metaverse”.

In a recent interview, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave details on the announcement he made to employees near the end of June about how he envisions Facebook’s role in building the metaverse.

His focus is not so much on it being a fully immersive experience as much as it is giving folks a sense of place and presence online.

For example, with the exercise equipment, you have a live instructor and you get a sense of the presence of them riding a mountain bike ahead of you through a mountain trail.

While you are not fully immersed in a virtual reality, it still transports you in a way that merely watching a recorded video does not.

And how fun would it be to take a virtual walk downtown and go shopping?

Besides being able to turn into a mom and pop and just see their wares, you could interact with the shop owner and ask questions about the product.

We are not far away from this.

And this is the way I see websites going.

And the funniest part about it is that Gutenberg has busted up the layout of sites and content into blocks that can be transformed into a virtual layout to accommodate this kind of augmented reality.

What Netflix did for on-demand streaming, Gutenberg is going to do for customized websites where the viewer can move blocks of info around and make it to their liking.

We will eventually come to a new way of laying out our sites for presentation in these virtual spaces and so that the end user can customize their experience.

Like Zuckerberg, I see gaming leading the way with this.

And next will be shopping for physical products.

And that will loop us back into affiliate bloggers who do product demonstrations.

And I think the path to being able to participate in that future is through doing videos now.

Right this minute videos of hands doing or making things are super hot on multiple social platforms, even more than talking head videos.

But, there is still a place for you talking to the camera too.

What if someone has a question and a video of you pops up answering them?

What if you can take that exercise example and walk someone through preparing a meal?

We’re actually not that far away from it now with Guided Recipes, especially those that have video.

I can see an augmented reality kitchen being a real thing in just a few years, kind of like what we have with the exercise gear now.

I know that living through this revolution with getting our sites onto Gutenberg has been messy.

But the seed that Morten planted at WordCamp US took hold with me. And it has helped me push forward through the changes to get us where I see the internet as a whole going in our very near future.

And I hope that me sharing this with you has inspired you to embrace what’s coming and the journey I’m helping you take in getting there by consistently pivoting BlogAid to keep us ahead of the curves.

Every prediction I have made in the last 7 years has come true.

Every one.

And today I’m predicting the need for all of us to get into offering our own products and to do video, including sponsored ones for brands.

That’s precisely why I started the masterminds for my BB Hub members and launched the Video SEO Booster course. It’s also why I’ll soon be partnering with other video how-to course creators too.

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.