Tips Tuesday – SEO and Schema Markup Issues, iFrame Video on Edge, Holiday Sales Coming

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• Free Gutenberg webinar coming in a few weeks
• How I’m splitting up the niche site metrics I’m watching
• Why you need to jump super fast on the holiday sales post coming soon
• What I found on my client sites during my recent video SEO research
• The SEO issue I found on BlogAid
• Why I may hire a schema markup expert from Team Yoast
• The schema checks and fixes coming to the DIY SEO course
• Why I have to check out new schema markup validators
• What the WordPress 5.6 Beta 4 signals to me
• Why I’m not crazy about the release of PHP 8.0 at SiteGround
• The very serious concerns I have about Microsoft Clarity
• Why Google is dropping the word Webmaster and changing its blog domain
• A fix for the Edge browser’s issue with lazy load on iFrames
• The speed challenge when using iFrames for video embed when you run ads

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Join me Live to Discuss Tips Tuesday

I hope you’ll join for tonight’s livestream at 8pm ET / 5pm PT on the BlogAid Facebook Page. It’s a great way to get the deeper story on what’s reported in Tips Tuesday. And, I almost always have breaking news for the day too. So come join us live for the party.

Replay

Who I Help

All tips, advice, and suggestions in this, and all BlogAid posts and tutorials, are intended to empower DIY site owners who are serious about making money with their sites and are not on hosting that is restrictive in what you can and can’t do with your site and hosting setup. If you have any doubts about what type of host you are on and if the tips I give will work there, see this post on What is Managed Hosting?

BlogAid Happenings

I feel so energized this week!

I took the weekend off to visit my brother who lives on a lake and boy, did that ever do me good!!

And I need all of that extra energy as we are now in a race to the finish for this year with lots of great happenings for you!

See the Power of Gutenberg – Free Webinar Dec 3

My new Facebook marketing agency made some stellar ad graphics from the new landing page I created with Gutenberg for the upcoming webinar.

I sent out an email to my BlogAid News subscribers letting them know, and asked that they not click on those ads as it not only throws off our metrics, I have to pay for those clicks too!!

So, to help us all keep track of who is registering, I duplicated that landing page just for you so you can see it too, as it is a great example of the power of Gutenberg and what you can create with it.

I’ll be making a blog post and sending it to you later in the week with the link to register.

You’re welcome to register for the event, but I would like to ask all of my peeps who are already in the course, or who have taken it, to not come to the live event and let those limited virtual seats be reserved for the new folks who have never taken the course.

By registering, you will get a link to the replay.

And this webinar will include new info on what we expect to see when Gutenberg Phase 2 is complete and it becomes a full theme builder too. But to be honest, it will be about this time next year before we are ready to make use of that. And you’ll be hearing my updates on it in Tips Tuesday as it progresses anyway.

Watching the Niche Site Metrics

Another reason that I also made a blog post for it is that my blog is syndicated, and that will get even more reach for me.

So, it will be interesting to watch all of the metrics and see where folks are coming from to the event. 

And that’s really what I’m after here. 

That data is a goldmine of info for who I’m reaching, and where, so that I can apply it to my marketing efforts for next year as I continue to focus harder on making my courses niche sites of their own.

Niche site marketing is very different from running a blog as the primary source of traffic to it.

Running ads and doing strategic partnerships are the focus.

And that’s exactly the steps I’ll be taking to promote my new Video SEO course when it launches too.

And, I’m already documenting all of this so that I can make a new course for how you can do it successfully too, as I know many of you are now focused on creating your own products as well and/or are looking for alternative ways to drive traffic to those products other than blogging and Pinterest or such.

Holiday Sales Coming – Act Fast!

This week I’ll also be launching my holiday sales post with all of the great savings you can enjoy on site services and courses and more!

BlogAid News subscribers will get first notification when that post goes live.

And that’s super important, as there are limits on availability and time frames for some of them.

In fact, all of the limited number of discounts on site services were gone in 24 hours last year!!!

So, do jump on it when you get that email later this week.

Video SEO research update

This past week I dove super deep into the research for placing video ads on a site, and how to coordinate that with regular YouTube videos and such.

I invited a bunch of my site audit clients to help with that research and what I found was that their schema markup was all over the place with it.

So, we are meeting live later this week to compare notes and get to the bottom of 

• how those video ads are being placed in their sites
• how it’s coordinating with their other SEO
• how to control placement of all the different types of videos better so that they don’t confuse the crap out of site visitors

I’m also testing a few YouTube video embed plugins that will give us more ways to combat the speed drag those videos present on a post.

They all work for that purpose.

But, the trick is getting them to work with the extra video schema markup we want to apply so that Google picks up on our embedded video too.

It’s a tall order, but I’m dedicated to finding the best ways to make all of this work.

SEO issue on BlogAid

During my research I also found a major SEO issue on BlogAid.

Something is knocking one of the important global settings in the Yoast SEO plugin stupid.

I’ve gotten no help on the Yoast community forum with this issue, so I may have to purchase the paid version of the plugin so I can get dedicated support for it, even though I have no intention of installing the paid version.

One of my clients had to do the same thing and it was not fun and took weeks.

And the problem ended up being another plugin causing the issue.

There was no easy way to troubleshoot that, as the problem only showed itself when traffic hit the site. So, we couldn’t selectively turn off plugins that would goof the look of the site while folks were hitting it.

The offending plugin finally had an update, and that resolved it.

On my site, this will be an easier troubleshooting task for me, as I should be able to see a change immediately as I turn plugins off.

So, if you see BlogAid looking a little squirrelly, that’s why.

Hiring a Schema Markup Pro

I may also hire someone from team Yoast to help me sort through the recipe schema that I’m seeing, as some of it seems odd to me since the last time I checked on it 2 years ago too. And I’m not positive that it is properly coordinating with the Yoast SEO plugin.

Google has changed what they are focused on with that schema, and I think that is why it looks odd to me now.

But, I also see this as worthwhile in that it will be the first step into me doing a new case study on all of the recipe plugins out there. I have a case study on them, but it’s 2 years old, and there are new players in the game too.

And, this will give me some support for figuring out the intricacies of the video SEO as well. And I’m betting the folks at Yoast may want to partner with me so that they can make their Yoast Video SEO plugin even better.

I’m the one who helped them improve it for supporting videos embedded with iframes. 

So, there’s a potential for collaboration here too.

And I’ve got a plugin update for you on how the Edge browser has been flagging videos embedded using iframes in just a bit too.

Checks and Fixes updates coming to the DIY SEO course

And you better believe that I’ll be documenting what I’m seeing in these video SEO checks and the issue with my own site.

I’ll be putting those things into new check and fixes tutorials when I have those answers, and when I finish finding a new tester for us to use.

Schema Markup Validators

I’m pissed beyond words that Google will soon be taking away their Structured Data Testing Tool and replacing it with a Rich Data Tester that is crap.

And Bing suddenly took away their super Schema Validator tool when they revamped their Bing Webmaster Tools interface. I contacted them and they have no timeline on when they plan to bring it back either.

So, this week, I’m checking out the few other schema markup validators that are available to us.

And when I find something that works well, that’s what I’ll be using for the rest of my tests, and for making the new tutorials for the DIY SEO course.

Folks, this is not stuff for lay people. This is at the level of an SEO pro.

And that’s why I don’t have tutorials on it now as it’s too much for most of the folks in my course.

But, considering what I’ve found in this video SEO research, I think I do need to at least make tutorials for how to run the initial checks so you can compare what’s happening on your site to a standard.

After that, it will come down to a few generic fixes listed in the course for the common things and/or paid sessions to fix, as every site will be different.

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

WordPress Tips

WP 5.6 Beta 4 released last Thursday

The final release will come in early December.

They continue to make tweaks and bug fixes, but no substantial changes to report in this release. And that tells me that they may be near to finalizing it. I expect we’ll see an RC1 soon, which is the first Release Candidate.

That marks a line in the sand saying there will be no additions or major changes, just continued bug fixes.

That’s also when I’ll start doing my tests and getting a first look at the new Gutenberg changes so I can prepare to make tutorial updates for the Gutenberg Ninja course. I won’t actually be doing those new tutorials or updates until after the public release, as I’ve been too burned before with major changes at the last minute that wiped out the new tutorials. And nobody has time to make or watch them twice.

I’ll also be making notes for my What’s New in WP 5.6 video tour that I will publish for you right before they release the final version.

Hosting Tips

SiteGround releases PHP 8.0 on their servers

There’s being ahead of the curve, and then there’s being too far ahead of it.

SiteGround has just released PHP 8.0 on their servers. 

This is a beta version. Don’t use it.

And SiteGround is ALWAYS too quick to declare a new PHP version stable and ready to use, in my opinion.

That will bite you if you’re in their automatic update system for it.

The way out of that is to manually set it yourself.

And you want to be on version 7.4.xx

You’ll need to see their tutorials for how to do it because it’s different on their 2 control panels, and sometimes requires doing it through the panel or doing it through the SiteGround Optimizer plugin.

This is why I have to give the disclaimer at the top of the Tips Tuesday post, as my tutorials can’t be followed when you are on goofy hosting like this.

Contact me for migration services when you get ready to move to better hosting. You’ll need that help, as any other host you go to is going to have a radically different environment than the goofy stuff SG does.

SEO Tips

Microsoft Clarity concerns

Team Yoast published a tutorial for working with Microsoft Clarity.

It’s a site analysis service that records user actions on your site.

I commented on the Yoast post that I’m pretty concerned about the speed toll to your site when using these recordings and heat/click map things. And I asked if anyone had tested that.

This is the Reply from Jono Alderson who wrote the post:

“Oh, great question! I’ve not tested this in depth, but I should. The Clarity docs claim that it doesn’t slow your site down, and, the JavaScript loads asynchronously so there shouldn’t be much impact on the initial load. But, that still leaves a lot of JavaScript recording interactions, mouse movements, clicks and so forth. On a low-end device with limited CPU, RAM and network connectivity, that might have a small impact.”

I’ve asked the folks in my DIY SEO course to hold off using it until we can do more testing, and that might be early next year.

In general, heatmaps will kill your load time and/or are super resource intensive. So definitely not something you want running on your site all the time.

And, what does Microsoft do with this info? 

Anytime the service is free, you are the product.

So, I had a deeper look into their privacy and data use policies.

And sure enough, Microsoft has access to the data collected on your site.

That, and other warnings about not using it on sites where sensitive data is collected can be found on the Microsoft Clarity FAQs page.

Conversely, Google does not have access to your data in Google Analytics, nor your Search Console data.

So, I seriously doubt Microsoft Clarity is something I’ll be running on my sites. 

Google branding to drop the word Webmaster 

The Google team is feeling restless and has nothing better to do than change their branding from Webmaster Central Blog to Google Search Central.

They wanted to drop the word Webmaster. They said it’s too old.

And it has a new site and blog too.

They will be porting over all of the articles that only have to do with search.

Too bad they won’t also be updating them to be less confusing while they’re at it.

If you are on their RSS feed, like I am, you don’t need to change anything as they will be doing a redirect for it.

Plugin Tips

Edge browser has issues with lazy load on iFrames

One of my followers let me know that he has started using the Microsoft Edge browser more and that it flags videos embedded as iframes as a security issue, or unsafe content, if lazy load is applied to them.

Because I use WP Fastest Cache, I contacted Emre, the dev, and he jumped right on a remote support session with me to get to the bottom of it.

Even though the Edge browser is Chromium based, just like the Chrome browser, it does have some distinct differences. 

Emre got it fixed, and it will be in the next premium plugin update, but that is not coming out anytime soon.

If you want the fix now, you can delete the premium plugin and download and install it again. It will have the latest version and this fix.

Videos and iFrames and SEO

For now, I’m not excluding iFrames from lazy load, as that is a big part of the speed improvement on any post with a video. And my Yoast Video SEO plugin can apply the extra schema markup to it this way.

But, site owners who run video ads have to exclude iFrames from lazy load anyway, as that would conflict with the lazy load already supplied by the ad agency.

So, as part of my Video SEO research, I’m looking into alternate ways to embed YouTube videos that help with speed. There are a few plugins that do this that look promising.

What I’ll be testing for is to see how they respond to extra video schema markup.

Wrap Up

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

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