Tips Tuesday – SEO Content Silo, Edits in Preview Fix, Schema Markup Workshop

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• Why you need to re-register your .eu domain so it won’t break
• What’s so important about the release of the fully block-based version of TwentyTwentyOne theme releasing soon
• Why you need to read my op-ed on the Trellis theme before jumping onboard
• What’s up with Liquid Web acquiring the Events Calendar Plugin
• Why you need to check that you’re Following the BlogAid Facebook page, not just Liking it
• What came from my live chat with my site audit clients and webmasters last week
• The fix I found for not being able to see edits in preview
• Today we begin the Quick Start Challenge in the DIY SEO course
• Why I’m adding a new schema markup workshop
• Why I’m planning to add a new content silo micro course and who will get the first invites to it

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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

Follow BlogAid Facebook page

Be sure that you click Follow on the BlogAid Facebook page because FB is taking away Likes for pages. 

If you are not a Follower of the page when that switch happens, then you will no longer see BlogAid posts in your Feed.

Live chat last week with site audit clients and webmasters

Last Thursday I was delighted to have a live session together with both my site audit clients and webmasters to share the big changes I see coming for our continued site success.

I also shared how and why I’m pivoting BlogAid as well as some of the suggestions for how I think different types of site owners and designers should consider pivoting right now so that they are well ahead of these big changes.

Out of that meeting we’ll be establishing new mastermind groups so folks of like interest and need can come together to share their village knowledge.

And, I can see some micro classes coming out of this too.

I’ll have more for you on all of this as I start setting it up.

Found Fix for Can’t See Edits in Preview

I wanted to give you a quick update on my tests for not being able to preview edits when making a new post or page.

The only site I’m experiencing this on is Heartwood Art. 

And I have the same caching plugin on it as I have on BlogAid and my other sites. And I’m using Gutenberg to make the posts on those other sites too.

The only difference is that Heartwood Art was not on the paid version of Cloudflare, like BlogAid is. I upgraded my plan and all of the WAF settings.

It didn’t matter. I still could not see previews.

But I did find an easy fix that worked for me.

SEE: Can’t See Edits in Preview on WordPress in the Hard Purge Preview Page section for my fix, and then the rest of the post for full details on what I tested and all of the things that can cause caching issues.

I still have zero explanation for why it is doing this on only one of my sites, but I’m happy that I found a reasonable way around it.

DIY SEO Quick Start Challenge begins today

Last week I put out a survey for my DIY SEO course members to let me know about their SEO goals for 2021. I livestreamed those results in our private Facebook group on Monday.

And today we begin our Quick Start Challenge with super fast checks for our Yoast SEO and Google Connections to ensure all of those settings are up to snuff with recent changes.

I take these quick checks right along with everyone else in the course because it’s the best way to ensure our SEO foundation is super solid and up to date.

We’ll finish these checks up toward the end of the month and then we’ll be diving straight into our live workshops.

It’s definitely not too late to join the party and get your SEO on track for 2021.

New Schema Markup Workshop added

This week I’m putting together a new workshop for the DIY SEO course so we can check our baseline schema markup that our theme and Yoast are outputting for us.

Even though schema markup is an advanced SEO topic, based on what I saw during my video SEO checks, we need to at least ensure we are getting the kind of schema Google likes and ensure we have no errors.

It will be added to our first 3 workshops where we also check our Technical SEO to ensure we don’t have crawl errors, and a baseline check on where our SEO performance is now so we can monitor our improvements as we go.

Content Silo Micro Class

On Sunday I was so happy to release my post and video on Heartwood Art for Zak’s new raised dog bowl feeder build.

It was the top end of a long content silo I created that included links to 4 other posts on how to find the center of a circle for the bowl, and then how to build a circle cutting jig for your trim router to cut it out, which was a small content silo in itself.

In my BlogAid 2020 Year in Review post a couple of weeks ago, I talked about these Content Silos and what worked and what didn’t with them.

I had also added a Content Silo Workshop to the DIY SEO course last year. It was a big hit.

And in the recent survey I sent to DIY SEO course members about their SEO Goals for 2021, Content Silos were mentioned several times.

So, I think I need to seriously consider creating a micro class on this topic for folks who want to go deeper into figuring out how to create content silos with their existing and new content.

I’ll still keep it as a workshop in the current course, to teach the basics. But that has to be necessarily generic.

With a micro course, we can meet live and do group discussion to help each other with ideas and game plans on your exact content.

I’m probably going to run it a bit like a mastermind and limit the size of the group too.

I’ll keep you posted as I work out the delivery and schedule for it.

And my DIY SEO course members will get first dibs on the limited seating for it.

Core Web Vitals hits in May

Just a quick reminder that Google’s new Core Web Vitals becomes a ranking factor in May.

If you are due for a site audit checkup, or you need your first audit, now is the time to fill out your audit request and get on my wait list, which is running right to the end of April or first of May. So, don’t put it off!!

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

We don’t have a lot of things for you to do with your site again this week. But there has been a slight uptick in the news you will want to know about.

Domain Tips

Your .eu domain may break

I have clients all over the globe, so wanted to get the news out there that if you have a .eu domain, you need to re-register it or it may break.

Please see the post I have linked for you to get all the details.

WordPress Tips

Block-based version of TwentyTwentyOne theme about to drop

WPTavern reports that WP is near to releasing the fully block-based version of the TwentyTwentyOne theme.

A fully blocked-based theme is required for Full Site Editing (FSE) so that you can use the Gutenberg blocks in what were traditionally theme-only or widget-only areas of your theme, like navigation and the sidebar, header, and footer areas.

This is ahead of the first of FSE features coming into the WP core with the release of WP 5.7 in March.

Genesis Pro, Astra, and other theme frameworks will be adopting this new native WP code into their block-based themes as we go through 2021.

But, I don’t see these as viable themes for us to use on production sites until the end of 2021 at the earliest.

For now, if you want to get a new theme, go with the frameworks we currently have. You’ll get at least 2-3 years out of them, and you’ll be ready for a new theme by then anyway, and the FSE stuff will be viable by then.

WordPress.com launches new site building service

The freelance site builder community was shook up last week when WordPress.com announced a new site building service.

Most bloggers know WordPress.com as a free hosting platform. 

But they’ve also run a pro service for enterprise level sites for over a decade.

Basically, this new build service is an extension of that pro service and is geared toward eCommerce, services, and educational or training sites.

If you are a blogger, this build service is likely out of your price range, with builds starting at $4900. So, don’t be swayed or confused if you see advertisements for it.

And I don’t think my webmaster designers have anything to worry about over it either.

Theme Tips

Check deeply before switching to Trellis

I know some of you have been getting invitations to switch to the Trellis theme from Mediavine.

Before you do, I hope you will read my op-ed in a Tips Tuesday from July 2020 on what I found in the theme and seriously reconsider jumping on that bandwagon.

Plugin Tips

Liquid Web Acquires the Events Calendar Plugin

I thought this was interesting.

The super popular hosting company, Liquid Web, acquired the Events Calendar plugin from the original Modern Tribes dev team.

What’s even more interesting is that they made the announcement on the iThemes blog. FYI, iThemes is also owned by Liquid Web, and Liquid Web provides the servers that NameHero uses.

The Event Calendar plugin devs will become employees of Liquid Web, and not part of iThemes, thank goodness. I’m not a fan of iThemes anything, so maybe the Events Calendar plugin will just get the revenue and support it needs to continue to become even better, as Modern Tribes has bigger fish to fry these days.

In 2019 we saw several plugin and theme acquisitions by hosting companies, specifically all of the good things that WPEngine acquired, like Genesis/StudioPress and Array Themes. We didn’t see too much of that in 2020, though.

So, I’m taking this recent purchase as a good sign that our vendors are seeing some stability returning and are simply shuffling their focuses and turning over good products to other vendors that are a better fit.

And I’m betting we’ll see more of these types of acquisitions in 2021.

Wrap Up

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

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