Tips Tuesday – Shorts Thumbnails, Cloudflare Security Changes, GSC Workshop
Tips this week include:
- Why to check your WP 7.0.2 update
- WP 7.1 Beta 3 out
- How and why WP is playing catchup
- Double charge from Kadence
- More Cloudflare security changes
- Bug fix for custom cron jobs
- AI doesn’t know SEO – and what to use AI for instead
- Why you have to properly configure your SEO plugin
- New GSC workshop coming
- Customizable thumbnails for Shorts – yay!
- Why I’m doing related videos in bulk
- Are you creating anticipation to get more subscribers?
WordPress Tips
Check Your 7.0.2 Update
Be SURE your sites are already updated to WP 7.0.2.
It rolled out last week and should have auto updated. But the security fix on this one is so serious that we need to ensure it did that update. If not, manually update it.
WP 7.1 Beta 3
There are still 140 tickets open to fix issues with the next major release of WP 7.1, which is due in mid August.
It will have some MAJOR core changes that will affect many plugins.
And I guarantee we will not be the first folks to update this one!!
WordPress is Playing Catch Up
Gutenberg Blocks shipped with WordPress 5.0 in 2018. It required a massive rewrite of the core code leading up to that point. Specifically, WP started moving more toward running on JavaScript to “modernize” it and put it on the same footing as other CMS platform competitors.
That required some plugins to be completely rewritten. In fact, some devs just started over from scratch and built out their plugin’s entire functionality in JavaScript.
Things with WordPress have stabilized since, but then along came AI out of the blue and here we go again with massive core changes.
So, for the last 2 years, WordPress has been playing catch up to ensure that it has all of the integrations and security needed for this fast-moving AI landscape.
That means we’ve had to be a little more cautious and a LOT more vigilant about updating to the latest WP versions of late. But, some of these mass core changes are needed to keep WP, plugins, and themes relevant and safe.
So, hang in there with it.
And I’ll do my best to keep you informed of what’s coming and when to make an update or a change.
Plugin Tips
Double Charge from Kadence
You may recall a few weeks ago that I noticed I was charged twice, about 3 days apart, for my Kadence Blocks Pro subscription.
I finally received a reply from their billing support and they confirmed the double charge. They offered to refund it or extend my license for an extra year.
I’m sure this was caused by their migration to their new all-in-one system under Liquid Web / Nexcess. I sure hope they get that problem ironed out. They also said their delay in replying was due to an overwhelming volume of support tickets. I assume lots of folks had issues with this migration change.
So, be sure to watch for double billing if you have purchased any Kadence products.
Webmaster Tips
More Cloudflare Changes
Cloudflare has made some major changes to the controls for AI bot crawls and to the overall security settings in general.
I’ve been waiting for the new interfaces and settings to roll out to more folks and stabilize and I believe we’re there.
So, I’ll be making updated tutorials on them soon for the Webmaster Training membership.
Cron Bug Fixed
If you’ve had issues getting custom crons to run on all sites, I’ve been working with our favorite host and a bug was found in the server setups that was causing it. So, you may want to give it a try again.
I’ve also got a minor update to one of the caching bypass rules we use that includes the wp-cron.php call too. It will not be a required change, though.
I’ll have a new tutorial for webmasters soon.
SEO Tips
AI Doesn’t Know SEO
Some of my clients are using Claude to read their posts to help make marketing content from them – and they are having great success with that!!!!
They are also using AI, coupled with MCPs to other tools to grab their analytics metrics from several sources, like GA4 and Pinterest, to create summaries of traffic patterns and what posts need updates or more promotion. And that’s working great for them too!!
What isn’t working well is an AI analysis of your site or metrics to make SEO suggestions.
Keep in mind that regular Search Crawlers like Googlebot and BingBot are filtering out tons of URLs that are available, like pagination links, and links from plugins that suggest related content and such.
That’s because Google and Microsoft want to be profitable. They only focus on the canonical link to the original post, not these other duplicates.
But AIs have money to burn. They don’t filter out anything.
So those AI summaries are going to give advice based on irrelevant links and info.
Every day I see folks sharing TikToks and Reels on how to get your content seen in AI Search.
And if you do those things, you’re going to completely bork yourself with Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and all of the other major Search Engines.
What you actually need to get seen in AI search has very little to do with your site. It’s all about brand mentions from multiple sources.
So, if you use AI to help you, take what it tells you with a big grain of salt, otherwise your site will end up like those Frankenstein apple pie recipes that have sawdust as one of the ingredients.
Properly Configure Your SEO Plugin
You can’t just add an SEO plugin to your site and think that’s it.
The plugin requires configuration to get the most benefit. (There’s a whole section on the Yoast SEO plugin in the DIY SEO course, if you want to check your settings.)
Some of those settings impact what’s in your XML sitemap, which is a directory of your site that is specifically made for crawl bots to read and follow.
With proper settings, you can eliminate most of the useless/duplicate URLs output by your site, as mentioned above. They include things like date and author archive pages, among many others.
And then there are the bot crawl optimization settings that help cut down on the confusion too.
Plus, most SEO plugins output JSON-LD schema markup, yet most themes output Microdata schema markup. You need to turn the one in your theme off. Otherwise it’s like talking French in one of Google’s ears and then Spanish in the other. It can understand both, but why make it work so hard to figure out that both are trying to tell it the same info?
These are the kinds of things I’ve taught in my DIY SEO course for over 2 decades now.
You need a solid SEO foundation on your site, and then you need a solid SEO education about best practices. Both of these things keep my clients from falling for bullshit AI SEO assessments or suggestions.
New GSC Workshop Coming
Google Search Console has rolled out new reports to help us better see performance from our social media and video posts that show up in Google Search.
Now that these new metrics have rolled out to everyone, we need a new workshop on it. And I’m in the process of creating that.
Previously we did a workshop on all the new things showing up in Google Search. I was really surprised to see how many Facebook page posts and IG Reels are being featured. But we need to have a fresh look at what’s displaying now since Google is favoring AI Search above all else these days.
Video Tips
Customizable Thumbnails for Shorts
Finally!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YouTube now lets folks in the Partner Program customize Thumbnails for their Shorts – with the ability to do it from desktop.
This was a major hassle during the time I was releasing 47 Shorts to help get eyeballs on my new Unreal for Reels channel.
I would upload videos and do all the settings from desktop. But then I had to pick a frame from the video on my YouTube phone app to use as the thumbnail and it had zero customization ability. And the stupid app way of doing it didn’t even work on my iPad, which would have been at least a little more convenient.
I’m so happy with this change to be able to do everything on desktop. It has been the #1 requested feature for well over a year and I’m so glad they finally got around to adding it.
FYI, they plan to extend this feature to more creators over time.
YouTube Channel Update
Doing Related Videos in Bulk
While creating the CAD drawing and then building my new shelving unit this month, I had the opportunity to use some tools in both that I had never tried before.
So, instead of just a single CAD tutorial and a single build tutorial, I’m also making tutorials on the new tools for each too.
I’ll be publishing them in a certain order because of the way I reference each of them in other videos.
And because some will publish before others, in the Description area, I’m listing the ones that are coming, but asking folks to Subscribe to be notified of when they publish.
That is most definitely working!!!
I can see which videos are bringing in new subscribers. And the ones that have this suggestion bring in a bunch during the first few days of its release.
Are You Creating Anticipation?
How can you make more content that is related to the current thing you’re doing?
Are you asking folks to subscribe to your newsletter or channel so they can be notified of new posts/videos?
Anticipation is exciting.
And it makes folks feel like they are getting the inside scoop on your content.
