Tips Tuesday – Technical SEO Workshop, AI SEO Workshops, CLS in Core Web Vitals

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters and Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all!!

Tips this week include:

• The AI Success Club doors are now open
• Why courses are worth paying for
• New tutorials in the DIY SEO course for how to track your clicks from search
• Our Technical SEO live workshop is this Thursday
• New AI SEO workshops are coming
• Why you need to make friends with AI
• WordPress 6.2 Betas are rolling out
• Core Web Vitals now emphasizes CLS more, and why it’s hard to test for
• The new speed testing I’m doing for an ad agency that is slowing sites down
• The new era and new names for AI SEO
• Over 1 million sign up to try the new Bing, and why we’re on the waitlist
• Google stumbles with their Bard AI release
• Why AI in Search Scares Publishers
• Why Google is being super slow to roll out their AI chatbots
• A new AI video editor called Dreamix that you’ll want to check out.

NOTE: This article contains some affiliate links to vendors I know and trust and have partnered with to help you succeed online.

BlogAid Happenings

This past week my main focus was on the revamp of the DIY SEO course and getting new tutorials and sending out emails for members to get specific AI accounts, more on that in a moment.

And, I’m investigating a specific ad agency that is suddenly slowing down sites, more on that in a moment too.

AI Success Club – Doors Are Open

Woot!!! I’m so super excited that the doors are now open on the AI Success Club!!

We got our first new prompt to try yesterday.

We also got some sweet bonus trainings on ChatGPT too.

The first live event is on Feb 21 and I’m looking forward to seeing you there.

The founding member discount ends on Feb 20.

So jump in now and save some money and learn some great AI stuff that will help you with your marketing and make you more productive, just like it has already done for me.

Site Services Update

The waitlist for all BlogAid services is running into late March.

If you are ready for your audit checkup, or you want your first audit before spring gets here, now is the time to fill out the site audit request form.

BlogAid Course Happenings

Courses worth paying for

This past week I spent every evening and the whole weekend trying to figure out how to take some hand drawings for my new secret endeavor and get them into an appropriate digital format for Procreate, which is an amazing iPad drawing app.

I need to be able to have super clean examples of them for the new merchandising and courses I’m creating.

I spent last week just learning the basics of the Procreate app.

And then I spent all this week trying to figure out how to do the specific things I needed to do with it, and without spending any more time in courses and tutorials that covered way more than I’ll ever do with it, and that don’t address the specific things I need to do.

It took over 20 hours of sorting through courses and YouTube videos that were mostly way out of date, and piecing together a snippet of useful info from this one, and then another snippet from that one. And then trying to order all of those snippets into a custom tutorial for myself.

Frankly, if I could have found someone to hire to teach me what I needed to know, I would have saved a lot of time and frustration.

And that is why I’m so dedicated to making sure that my courses are:

• Up to date
• Get straight to the point
• Stay focused on one aspect or feature per tutorial
• Teach you what you need and nothing you don’t

The GA4 Course is Worth It

I’ve gotten so many compliments on the GA4 courses for being just that way.

There is so much new to learn with GA4 and you can only take it small bits at a time so you don’t hurt your brain or feel overwhelmed.

And you can get through each section in one sitting.

So even if you only have 15 minutes to devote to it a day, you can still accomplish a lot.

And it’s easy to pick up where you left off too.

I saw all of the GA4 tutorials on YouTube. And if you want to try to pick your way through them, you’re going to spend 20 hours finding a snippet here and there and trying to piece them together.

And you’re still going to miss super important settings and info.

The Ultimate GA4 Course for Bloggers is one that is most definitely worth paying for.

Just read the testimonials from folks who have taken it. They all feel the same way.

Top Search Click Tutorials Added to DIY SEO Course

AI chatbots are here and we need to know how they are affecting clicks to our site.

So, I added a couple of new tutorials for how to document your current clicks in both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

And we’ll be checking these quarterly to see how AI chatbots are affecting our clicks.

Technical SEO Workshop This Thursday

A lot of SEO courses start with writing elements, like:

• Keyword research
• Titles
• Headings
• Content

But none of that will make any difference if you have technical SEO problems on your site.

If Google bots:

• Can’t fully crawl your site
• Finds errors on what it does crawl
• See schema markup errors, or 2 different kinds of schema language

Then you’re not going to do well in search.

That’s why my DIY SEO course starts with helping you create a solid SEO foundation on your site.

There are standing tutorials for:

• Yoast SEO – including the important global settings that 80% of site owners miss that totally tanks their schema markup, which are the extra tags Google eats like candy
• Google Search Console – for setup and errors and how to read the info it gives you
• Bing Webmaster Tools – for setup and errors

And our first workshop will go over the most important aspects of your SEO foundation to make doubly sure that it’s okay.

It’s never too late to join us in the course. All workshops have replays available.

AI SEO Workshops Coming

Besides reordering and revamping all of the current workshops in the DIY SEO course, I’m putting together a slew of new workshops on AI SEO.

I’ve asked all course members to get accounts with:

• New Bing
• OpenAI

These will be hands-on workshops where everyone will be using these tools to:

• See what they can do
• See exactly how they impact SEO
• How they may impact clicks to your site
• How your competition is showing up in them
• How to use these tools to generate your own content
• How searchers will be using these tools to get answers directly without going to any site

From there we will discuss how to ensure that AI SEO does not negatively impact your site traffic.

Make Friends with AI

Folks, this is not a battle you can win.

You need to make friends with AI and learn how to use it to your advantage.

This is why I’m so laser focused on AI SEO.

It’s also why I’m in Denise’s AI Success Club because she is laser focused on how to use it for your marketing.

It’s also why I’ve been exploring AI images and voiceovers and using what I’ve learned to diversify my income streams too.

I’m visiting every car on this train because each one of them has something to offer.

This is THE most disruptive technology since the internet itself was released to the public. 

And it’s gaining users fast.

It’s also improving fast, in fact, faster than any technology we’ve ever seen.

Any training that you can get is going to save you a ton of time trying to keep up and sort through what’s actually useful to you.

I’m already making money from what I’ve learned about AI.

And I’m happy to put that money back into learning more, like with Denise’s AI Success Club and my own DIY SEO course.

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

WordPress Tips

WP 6.2 Betas Rolling Out

Last week, the 6.2 beta 1 was released and I expected beta 2 to become available today.

I expect we’ll have at least 3 betas before they get to the Release Candidate where they close it to changes and just fix any bugs before the final release that is expected on March 28.

I’ll start testing in mid March and will keep you posted with what’s coming.

SEO Tips

Core Web Vitals Emphasizes Cumulative Layout Shift 

Google has 2 ways that it tells you what’s going on with Core Web Vitals:

• Lighthouse Tester
• CWV in Search Console

And now they are changing what each of them considers a CWV, and how they are weighted.

In the Lighthouse Tester, Google is removing TTI (Time to Interactive) from being a CWV score. And it is shifting more emphasis onto CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) instead.

TTI is not currently a CWV metric in Search Console anyway.

So, now the CWV metrics only include:

• LCP – Largest Contentful Paint
• FID – First Input Delay
• CLS – Cumulative Layout Shift

Keep in mind that all decent performance testers like WebPage Test and GTMetrix include the Lighthouse testers. So this change of dropping TTI from the CWV score will bring them more into line with CWV in Search Console.

However, the testers cannot accurately test for all CLS.

They can only look at it on the initial load.

Google looks at it through the entire post.

So, even if you have no CLS on initial load, as folks scroll through the post, things could still jump around and cause a CLS issue.

Most of the decent ad agencies now have placeholders for the ads. These placeholders specify the largest ad size that might appear there, and literally holds that much space for them, so the content doesn’t jump up and down when the size of the ad in that spot changes.

If you are not with Mediavine or AdThrive, you need to ask your ad agency if they have placeholders, else you could get popped for CLS issues.

And this is not something you can test properly for in any tester, including Google PageSpeed Insights, as all of them will just check CLS on initial load.

New Speed Testing for Ad Agency

I’m not going to call names publicly here, but one of the big, popular ad agencies has made a change in the last 2-3 months that is killing site speed. 

I’m seeing it in every site audit I’ve done that works with that agency.

And I have a special way of testing to be able to prove that it is an issue with not only the ads, but with another plugin that is tied directly to them as well.

Plus, I have independent verification of this from the devs that I work with too. And we are getting nowhere with the ad agency for fixing it.

So, this week I’m working with Emre, the developer of WP Fastest Cache, to hone in on the JavaScript that has changed and see if we can optimize around the problem without creating other issues.

I’ll be keeping my site audit clients informed of what we find and how to implement the fixes, if there is anything more they need to do other than update the WPFC plugin if the fixes are released in it.

Some site owners have jumped over to a different caching/optimization plugin to help with this, or worse, used trickery that will cheat the testers give a good test score, but not actually resolve the problems.

Both of those methods are loaded with problems of their own.

I prefer to find the issues and fix them without trickery, and in ways that won’t break or cause other issues.

And that’s the difference in the service I offer and in just about any other site tech out there.

It’s a real shame that most site owners think that getting a good score on Google PageSpeed Insights is all they need, or that’s an indication things are done well on their sites, or that it’s anything close to real-world speed.

AI SEO Tips

New Era of AIO and SEO 2.0

Morten Rand Hendriksen is one of my favorite folks to follow about all things site related.

He has coined a new acronym called AIO, which is optimizing your site for AI, not just for SEO, which is for regular search engines. See his TikTok explaining it.

I’ve heard others call what’s coming SEO 2.0.

This has everything to do with why I’m revamping the DIY SEO course the way I am.

We will be pulling back on how many live workshops we do that cover content, as most of that info has not changed much.

And we’ll be devoting more live workshop time to AI as it evolves and impacts SEO and traffic to our sites.

We’ll still be doing the content ones as workshops, they just won’t be live. And we’ll meet once or twice a month for open Q&A on them instead.

I think this will be the best way for everyone to still have the assignments and accountability for doing them, but make better use of scheduling live events for newer material where there are bond to be a lot more questions and live examples and such.

Over 1 Million Sign Up to Try the New Bing

As I mentioned previously, I asked members of the DIY SEO course to get an OpenAI account so they can access ChatGPT.

And I asked them to get on the waitlist to try the New Bing that has ChatGPT and more built in.

Over 1 million folks have already signed up for that waitlist.

For the past 2 weeks I’ve been collecting videos of folks who are already on it that show previews of what it can do, and it’s WAY more than just ChatGPT chatbot on OpenAI.

I’m making my AI workshops based on what I’m seeing so that we can do specific things with it that will show exactly how it’s going to impact search traffic to our sites, and to show ways that you need to optimize your site for AI search too.

To say that I’m blown away by all the New Bing can do is an understatement. 

Search will never be the same.

Google Stumbles with Bard Release

Google is, at best, in a “me too” race with Bing’s AI releases at this point.

And their current answer to the New Bing with ChatGPT is a thing called Bard.

They totally botched the demo of it by showing how it could answer questions right in the chatbot – that gave the wrong answer!!!

What’s worse is that over 1 million folks saw the ad before anyone even realized it was the incorrect reply.

Worse still, Google has not taken the article with the bad demo down.

They also totally botched their big announcement in Paris with wanting to show Bard on a phone, and they misplaced the phone that had the beta version on it.

These 2 missteps caused the market cap on Google stock to drop by $100 billion dollars.

Why AI Scares Publishers

One of the other ways that Google botched the release of its new search chatbot was to give answers without citations. Even Microsoft knew better than to do that.

And this has reopened the debate about Google’s Featured Snippets giving whole answers without the need to click over to the site they pulled the info from. But at least they gave the title of the article or video and the link where they got that info.

You can read more about it in the SEO Round Table article.

Why Google is Being Super Slow to Roll Out Their AI

I’m guessing folks think that Google doesn’t have the AI chops to compete with Microsoft.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Google’s DeepMind AI engine is one of THE most powerful AIs on the planet. It has even given governments cause for worry for one private company to have that much collected info on everything.

But it’s not that Google doesn’t want the public to have AI tools from them.

It’s that Google can’t afford to lose so much revenue from their use.

Think about it.

Google’s big revenue generator is from all the ads they run both in search on on sites.

If folks don’t need to look at search anymore because they can get an answer from a chatbot, then Google loses all that ad revenue. Page 1 of Google is mostly ads these days, right?

And then if searchers don’t click over to sites for deeper info, Google loses the revenue from the sites that run Google ads too.

Bing has nowhere near the ad revenue on its page 1. So, if folks don’t see those ads or click over to sites because folks get their answer directly from the chatbot, big deal.

Where Microsoft is going to make its money is by putting ChatGPT into all of its Office products, which corner the market compared to Google’s free Drive alternatives.

So, don’t think for a minute that Google doesn’t know what race they are in.

And don’t think for a minute that they give a damn about giving us chatbots that are all that useful or easy to use too.

They might have a reason for losing this part of the race to Microsoft and Bing.

AI Video Tips

Dreamix AI Video Editor

This is something you’ll definitely want to check out!

Dreamix is a new AI video editor from Google that can do some super cool things with your still images.

Jump over to the article on The Decoder and see the video examples.

You’ll want to pay particular attention to the one for Inputting Images.

It allows you to animate a bunch of still shots.

And keep scrolling to see the videos on what it does with the teddy bears.

As the article says, it’s novelty right now, but it is definitely laying the groundwork for a commercial product.

AI video is by far the hardest thing for AI engines to create. And this may be the one thing that Google may have a leg up on the rest of its competition.

Wrap Up

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

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Be sure to visit BlogAid.net for more tips and resources and I’ll see you online.