Tips Tuesday – Shorts Change, SEO Plugin Updates, MailerLite Update
We have lots of moving and shaking going on this week!
Let’s get into it.
Tips this week include:
- AIO SEO now has metrics
- Rank math adds AI tracking
- Yoast makes content readable for AI
- MailerLite releases major updates
- PHP version change next year
- I’m celebrating finishing 46 Shorts!
- Squaring out my Instagram accounts
- YouTube wants fresh Shorts
- What I’ll be doing with my Shorts
SEO Tips
AIO SEO Now Has Metrics
Recently I reported that Adobe will be buying SEMRush.
That was after Awesome Motive (the folks behind WPBeginner and All in One SEO) pulled out of the deal.
Well, Syed Balkhi, Founder and CEO of Awesome Motive, sure does know how to land on his feet!!
He just announced that All in One SEO now includes a built-in keyword rank tracking for Google and a very reasonably priced AI writing assistant that is powered by SEOBoost.com.
He considers SEMRush “bloatware” and is making AIO SEO a more affordable competitor.
I am not a fan of AIO SEO, and it’s impossible to come out of it and switch to any other SEO plugin. In fact, Yoast SEO dropped their support for helping folks switch from it.
So, don’t be too dazzled by the new offerings, as the base output is not as good as Yoast, IMO.
Rank Math Adds AI Tracking
Not to be left out of the change game, Rank Match just added an enhancement to its analytics suite. They are now isolating traffic from AI Search Engines.
Y’all, this is something you can do directly in GA4 with just a wee bit of code help.
And I even tried it in my EZ Metrix reports, but took it out.
Here’s why.
GA4 already shows AI traffic hits by platform name (like ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.) I found that isolating a report to just them was not at all helpful, as it’s far better to see them in the same report as all other traffic acquisitions. That way it’s also easier to dig deeper into that report to see what content is getting that traffic.
I’m not a fan of Rank Math either. Folks say the interface is easier than Yoast, and I agree.
But they use a different schema markup hierarchy. Yeah, it’s JSON-LD, which is what Google likes best. But, it’s not the same top-down hierarchy that Google prefers.
That is THE main reason we stick with Yoast SEO. The schema output is THE best of all the SEO plugins – and THAT is the main reason you need an SEO plugin.
Yoast Makes Content Readable for AI
This is a VERY big deal.
Yoast just announced a collaboration with NLWeb, which is the open framework for making web content easier for AI systems to understand and use.
NLWeb was developed by Microsoft.
Microsoft has a HUGE stake in OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT.
This is most definitely going to help us get our content discovered by AI, and understood by AI agents.
I’m definitely keeping my eyes on this, and for whatever comes into the Yoast SEO plugin because of it.
And you can be sure that we’ll cover it in the DIY SEO course too.
Email List Tips
MailerLite Releases Major Updates
If you’ve been on MailerLite for a while you may have gone through the change from the Classic setup to the new version. And you may still have 2 logins and such.
Well, MailerLite has now introduced Frictionless SSO (Single Sign-On). That means you now have one login for any service you have with them.
MailerLite has also introduced an update to their Automations.
You can now manually add subscribers and bypass the triggers for the automation too.
Security Tips
PHP Version Change Next Year
PHP 8.5 recently released with features like URI extension, Pipe operator, plus several speed improvements. But, it is not considered stable yet, and likely won’t be for at least another year.
In 2025, we completed getting all of my clients upgraded from PHP 8.1 to 8.3.
Even though 8.3 will be supported until the end of 2027, we will likely be upgrading to 8.4 starting in the last half of 2026, as it was released a year ago and is considered stable by most hosts at this point. WordPress, as well as most themes and plugins have finally declared that 8.4 is semi-compatible, meaning that it will work for most sites.
Keep in mind that PHP is the main coding language used by WordPress. And some folks are still using super old plugins. In fact, plugin updates is something I’ve been checking in audits for the last 1.5 years and we have been able to get rid of the ones that are no longer being updated.
It’s easy to check free plugins in the WordPress plugin repository to see when the last update was done. But for paid plugins, you need to check your account. We have found several where the plugin has not been maintained for at least 5 years and even one where the plugin site had been removed.
The plugins still work, you just don’t get updates anymore. So, be sure you check your plugins.
Video Tips
Finished All 46 Shorts!
Last week I completed all of the Shorts for my new YouTube channel.
Doing them in a big batch like that is a slog, but it is actually faster.
I only scheduled them to post through December as I don’t have the audience metrics to know the best times yet, so I guessed based on what I know about my target audience’s behavior.
After the second Short published, my Views doubled – in a single day.
And folks are clicking over from the Short to the associated long-form video – and that was the whole point of doing them – more reach, more clicks, higher engagement.
Squaring Out My Instagram Accounts
(I’m sharing this with you in case you have a similar setup.)
Of course I want to share these new Shorts on other social media platforms too.
I tried to create a new IG account that is related to my new YouTube channel, but IG would not let me. No error message or anything. Nothing happened at all when I clicked the create button.
Meta has made a confusing mess of my IG accounts due to the different ways they have allowed folks to create and manage accounts.
I did a bit of research and found that Meta only allows so many accounts from the same device.
I dug into my accounts and found that I had several under one email. One was my personal profile and the other 2 were related to courses that I had run years ago. I never used the IG accounts. I just wanted to tie up those handles. I poked all over and could not find a way to delete those 2 unused accounts.
I also have 3 other IG accounts, all under different email addresses.
So, I hired a social media manager to do a live session with me to sort all this out.
And wouldn’t you know it, during that session IG allowed me to create that new account!!!!! (I’m sure it was just because she was there watching!!!)
We spent the rest of the time trying to figure out how to delete those other 2 “pages” that were connected to my personal profile and under that same email address. They are “floating” and not actually active anymore, meaning that I can’t get to the back side of them to delete them.
But, they don’t count against me for having too many profiles, so we’re just leaving them be.
Later yesterday I was able to put the new Facebook page and connected IG account into Meta Business Suite so that I can easily post to both.
FYI, I teach how to properly set up both a Personal and Business Portfolio in the DIY SEO course. (That’s just one of MANY new workshops we did this year to ensure we get eyeballs on our content in spite of Google and AI.
YouTube Wants Fresh Shorts
And just when I finished making all of those Shorts, I read this news.
YouTube is deranking Shorts after 30 days.
The man who reported this is Mario Joos. He is the fractional CEO at Stokes Twins and former MrBeast retention manager. So, he knows a few things about tracking metrics!!!!
I think YouTube is shooting themselves in the foot with this move. It’s the same kind of unsustainable thing that Pinterest asked its creators to do.
Yes, Reels and TikTok need a constant stream of new content to keep folks on the apps.
But, creators who are super serious about making money don’t use Reels or TikTok, at least not much. The real money is on YouTube.
And the whole perk Shorts for these creators is to point folks to the long-form videos, which are the ones that pay the most.
FYI, I make about $0.23/mo on Shorts with Heartwood Art. You’d need a gazillion views to make any real money with Shorts. You’re doing revenue sharing with them as ads are not connected to specific videos like they are on the long-form content.
Plus, brands who want to run ads want to be specific with the audience they target. Shorts are splattered to a very wide, non-niche audience, which is another reason brands don’t pay much for those ads compared to placing them on long-form content.
What I’ll Be Doing with My Shorts
I’m only scheduling 2 Shorts a week for this new channel. So, it will take several months for them to finish posting.
And once YouTube deranks them, then I’ll take them all down and publish them again.
There is just no way I would want to remake them!!
Plus, I’ll have other long-form projects ready by then and I’ll make new Shorts for them.
That should give me plenty of constant activity on the new channel.
And maybe, just maybe, YouTube will reverse this decision as more big creators scream about it.
