Tips Tuesday – Substack Guides and Workshop, Bitly Ads, AIO is SEO Killer

I have been on fire with creating new Guides and resources for you!!!!!

And I’m not done yet! There’s more to come.

Tips this week include:

• Substack Guides now available
• Where to follow me on Substack
• 3 new Shopify tutorials coming
• Free GA4 Guide –  you need to check your settings
• Substack workshop coming
• Substack mastermind may be coming – let me know if you are interested
• WP trademark lawsuit failed – but it ain’t over yet
• Bit.ly is running ads
• Alternatives to Bit.ly
• AIO is the new SEO
• How AIO is killing CTRs and what you can do about it

eCreators Hub Happenings

Substack Guides Now Available

I’m thrilled to share that the first 2 Substack Guides are live!!

• Substack 101 – for setting up your Personal Profile and creating Notes and Posts
• Substack Publications and Websites – for setting up your first Publication, either free or paid, and its associated Website

Save $10 when you get both Guides together

FYI, I’ve picked up more subscribers on Substack in the 2 months I’ve been there than I have to BlogAid News in 6 months.

New eyeballs on my content is working!!! Get in on this.

Follow Me on Substack

There are 3 places to following me on my Substack journey.

And I publish things there that are not on my main sites.

• Personal Profile – sort of like my social media feed where I highlight interesting Substack posts from others
• BlogAid Tips – posts for WP site owners, and other tips
• eCreator Tips – posts on ecommerce and metrics

New Shopify Tutorials Coming

Of course, I’m selling these new Substack Guides on my Shopify store using the $5/mo Starter Plan. 

And, I was able to put to use 2 free apps for:

• Bundles
• Affiliates

I’ll be adding tutorials for those to the Shopify Starter for Digital Downloads course.

In that course, I teach how to use the Shopify Buy Button app to pull in the products to my WP site. 

But I discovered it does not integrate with the Bundles app, even though it looks like it should.

While troubleshooting that with Shopify support, they told me about a whole other way to do the links on my WP site. So, I’ll be making a new tutorial on that as well.

Free GA4 Guide

Shopify, Printify, and Substack all give you an easy way to add your GA4 tracking code to them.

But, that’s where they stop with the instructions.

They don’t say anything about how to configure your GA4 settings.

And even if you already have your GA4 setup and configured, there have been changes and you need to check your settings.

That’s why I created a new GA4 Setup Guide. 

It’s free with your subscription to eCreators Hub News

NOTE: If you are already a subscriber, I sent the link to download this Guide to you last week.

BlogAid Course Happenings

Substack Workshop Coming

In the DIY SEO course this year we’ve put Google aside and we’ve been focusing on the SEO of other platforms like Pinterest and Medium.

Next, we’re going to focus on Substack in a live workshop on the 27th.

This is not a replacement for what’s in the new Substack Guides. 

It will be a look at what’s on Substack and ideas for how to use it in conjunction with your WP site and/or store/membership site.

Let me know if you’d be interested in this mastermind.

Substack Mastermind

I’m seriously considering starting a new mastermind group for Substack users – it’s that powerful.

And there is just no way to cover it generically.

That’s why a small mastermind with live sessions is the best way to go.

It will be paid, but I plan to make it inexpensive, at least for founding members, as I want to ensure the folks in it are serious about using it as a business tool.

In fact, I have one client that is going to let go of her WP site and go all in with her Substack and Shopify sites as those are the ones getting the eyeballs and making her money. And I’m going to help her do it!!

WordPress Tips

WP Trademark Lawsuit Failed

While the suit that Matt filed against WP Engine for trademark infringement failed, the battle isn’t over yet.

The last line in this news article from The Register about the WP trademark case is a little scary.

It says:

“Automattic, which has a complicated trademark licensing arrangement with the WordPress Foundation, notes that the USPTO determination isn’t final. “These are not denials,” a company spokesperson said. “They are typical requests, which we will respond to.”

So, on it goes. And I’ll keep you posted when there is something worth knowing to report.

Link Tips

Bit.ly Running Ads

If you use the free plan on the Bit.ly link shortener service, you may have received an email announcing “adjustment” to their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

They’re going to start showing ad pop ups before folks can see your link.

The only thing I use Bit.ly for is links on X. It’s habit we all had to get into due to their 140 character limit back in the early days of Twitter. But, that limit is no longer there, so I’ll just start sharing the whole link now.

Use Redirection

If you’re using Bit.ly as a way to cloak a link, you can easily do that for free with the Redirection plugin.

Plus, it will be branded with your domain.

See my tutorial on how to make links with it. And be sure to turn off the logs.

Why I Don’t Use Pretty Links

The Pretty Links plugin does exactly the same thing as the Redirection plugin.

But, it has extra features for helping you track links beyond just the number of clicks (which you can see in Redirection if you turn the logs on).

For the most part, Pretty Links is a favorite for affiliate marketers to cloak links, not just shorten them.

And that interface to help track clicks lets them compare to sales reported by their affiliate program.

But, all those extra logs and such take up a TON of space in your database.

So, if you don’t need those logs, and your tracking clicks in GA4 instead, then you don’t need all the extra bloat from Pretty Links.

SEO Tips

AIO is the New SEO

AIO stands for AI Overviews.

These are the AI summary results you are seeing at the top of Google Search now.

Having a link to your content in one is now the new Featured Snippet.

AIO are Killing CTRs

In his SEO TL;DR publication on Substack, Ian Ferguson lays out the data that shows AIOs are killing Click Through Rates (CTRs).

And it’s not just clicks to blog posts.

Some of these AIOs are so long that folks aren’t seeing ads on Google Search anymore either. Those clicks are down – and even on queries that don’t produce an AIO summary. THAT is going to hit Google in the wallet!!!

He also lays out 5 things you can adjust in your SEO strategy. Here are 2 that apply to us bloggers:

• Analyse your queries for which ones are at risk of AIO impact.
• Target no-AIO searches – keywords that have little chance to display in AIO.