Tips Tuesday – Theme Design, Full Site SEO, Shopify Alternatives

Hello Happy Site Owner!

Tips this week include:

• Why webmaster designers are worth every penny
• How a design consult sets you up for success
• Full site SEO workshop series begins this week
• Why to get bad content off your site
• Why fixing content may not help you
• We’re still holding off on the WP 6.5 update
• 11 Shopify alternatives
• INP – how big a deal is this?

BlogAid Happenings

I hope everyone had a good eclipse day if you were in the path. I was in the center of the path for the last full solar eclipse and it was amazing!!! This year I was on the outskirts of it, but it was still pretty cool.

Did you know that there are between 2-5 full solar eclipses every year? Yep. It’s just that most of them happen over water, not land. Or, they are in some part of the world where you may not hear about it because you won’t get to see it where you are. So, they are not as rare as all the hoohaa on social media would make you think.

Services Update

The waitlist for all site services is about 1 week. If you’re ready to get your site all spiffy for spring, now is the time to get in your audit request.

Consults are still on demand too.

Theme Tips

Webmaster Designers Are Worth Every Penny

Full theme builders like Divi had everybody thinking they could be a designer. And then Astra and Kadence came along and took away the disadvantages that came with Divi, but they still had a bunch of styling options that also made every site owner think they could do their own.

This past week I had 2 jobs with new clients and got to see their new site drafts.

They were pretty, but there were also rookie mistakes everywhere.

Here’s the thing. Pretty is all you know. There’s more to building a good theme than that.

For example, the fonts you choose matter.

The theme will load default websafe fonts before any 3rd party fonts get loaded. If they are different in size and weight, that will cause a Cumulative Layout Shift, which is a Core Web Vital metric.

Plus, loading fonts from Google or other 3rd party sources is not GDPR compliant.

And you don’t want to preload them either, as that causes speed issues too, with the fonts loading in the wrong order.

In addition, the H2 on a blog post is different from the H2 on the home page, and those styles need to be inherited.

Nor would you want to use Headings just for styling choices in sections where a Heading is not warranted, and then do inline styling to change how it looks.

As a newbie designer, do you know how to overcome all of these font issues?

I bet you didn’t even know to think about it.

And they are important for speed, SEO, and mobile load – you know, all of the stuff that Google and users care about.

And then there’s all the default image aspect ratios that may be radically different in your new theme. Do you know how to fix that?

What about how to fix the way columns reorder on mobile, or goofy line breaks on different screen sizes? Do you even know how to test for those things?

That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to building a good theme – it has to be way more than pretty.

And it’s why a webmaster designer, who knows about speed, Core Web Vitals, SEO, Accessibilities compliance, and GDPR compliance, plus design to make it pretty are worth every penny.

Let me put it like this.

I started my first online business when you needed to have a coder to have a site.

And then I moved over to WordPress and did design for a while. But it because a specialty service and I went another direction.

There is no way I would waste a minute of my time doing my own design these days.

I’d either get a child theme that had it all done for me and just needed brand color tweaks, or hire a designer if I wanted something custom.

If you wouldn’t spend money hiring a rookie, then don’t spend sweat equity hiring yourself.

And don’t spend money on a graphics designer.

Get a webmaster designer who knows more than pretty.

Get a Design Consult

Most of what site owners who build their own themes spend so much time on, or get so nit picky over, doesn’t even matter.

What they miss are all the truly big things, like meeting the goal of the site.

Layout has EVERYTHING to do with your main conversion goals.

That’s exactly why all 6 sites I own have a different layout from one another.

And site goals change over time too. That’s why I’ve gone through layout changes with BlogAid about every 4 years.

Trends change too.

That’s why I have a completely different layout on my newest site for AI Discover Hub than for any other site.

Theme changes can also impact your SEO.

This is why it is so important to talk to a pro to help you get ready for the design process, no matter whether you are building it yourself or hiring a designer.

The webmaster designers I recommend LOVE working with my clients who have gone through that consult!!!!!

And the design process is super fast and inexpensive and zero stress for everyone because of it to.

If you’re thinking about a theme change, get a consult and get in the know.

At the end, you’ll have an exact plan for your site, and all the main details you need to start your design project.

In the end, you’ll have a site that works for you and looks good doing it too.

SEO Tips

Full Site SEO Workshop

In the DIY SEO course this week we’ll be starting our on-site SEO series of workshops.

First we’ll start with the global SEO settings that impact the entire site.

And then we’ll move on to SEO for pages and then SEO for posts, as they are different.

Then we cover SEO for images.

Between all those things, there are 30 SEO elements that you need to get right.

This is the stuff that those courses who start with keywords miss.

And frankly, all the keyword research in the world will not make up for these missed opportunities.

It’s always a good time to join us in the DIY SEO course.

Get Bad Content Off Your Site

One of the things that got highlighted in the Helpful Content Update last year was that Google took your entire site into its ranking considerations.

It didn’t just devalue or raise single pages and posts. It either raised your whole site or trounced it.

We’ve already been through our Content Revamp series of workshops in the DIY SEO course. And folks made a list of all the content they wanted to remove and/or rework.

I’m thinking that needs to become a priority over improving content you want to keep.

Nothing’s Wrong with Your Content

Thanks a lot for nothing, Google. This is not going to give anyone hope whose site got dashed in the last few months of updates.

Google said there may be nothing wrong with your content. They have just reordered the list of what they think deserves to be on the top.

The way I read this is that they are saying you can’t just improve your content to try to get your ranking back. They say to just wait around for another core update to see if they reshuffle your content back to the top.

WTF, Google?

If what I’ve been seeing ranked at the top these days is what Google thinks is good content, then none of us stand a chance of doing any better than where we are right now.

Looks to me like the cream didn’t rise to the top. What’s there now are super high DA sites with junk content – like Forbes doing blender comparisons.

Really, Google? 

Nobody at these companies have ever touched any of the products they review.

And Quara and Reddit can be full of junk advise too.

The only thing that is going to get Google’s attention is loss of folks using that search engine and then loss of the advertising dollars that follow.

Otherwise, they are going to keep thinking they are doing a good job.

WordPress Tips

Hold Off on WP 6.5 Update

We’re not ready to do the WP 6.5 update, mainly because of a few core changes.

Let’s give it another week for testing in the wild.

I’ll be sending update instructions to my site audit Hub clients as well as Webmaster Training members.

Everything WordPress 6.5

Thanks so much to Anne McCarthy for her WordPress 6.5 Word of Truth that covers EVERY aspect of this release.

Shop Tips

Shopify Alternatives

The nice folks at Blogging Wizard have a super post on 11 Shopify Alternatives.

If you’re considering products of your own, then this is worth a read.

But, keep in mind that discoverability is a factor they didn’t cover. Google crawls Shopify. And if you go with something like Squarespace, that would be crawled too.

Plus, Shopify and Etsy have discoverability on their own platforms, if you’re a hot seller.

I get that these 11 examples are for full-blown Shopify alternatives.

But, Shopify has a lite version that you can put on your own site too, and at a far lower cost. So, that’s something else you need to consider.

Etsy Star Seller

I’m delighted to congratulate Sharon Harding for becoming an Etsy Star Seller!!!!

Sharon is the one who asked me to create the AI Images for Profit course and she has turned that training into a very fun and profitable side hustle for printables, stickers, cards, and so much more.

She has done so well with it that she has been awarded the Etsy Star Seller badge!!!!

I could not be more proud of all the work she has put into her success and I’m delighted that the AI Images for Profit course has helped so many folks find both fun and money with AI images and the things they create with them.

INP – How Big a Deal Is This?

Following are my notes from one of the recent DE{CODE} sessions about what the new INP Core Web Vital is, how to test for it, and even what a Google spokesperson had to say about it – and everybody was pretty upset with what he had to say!!!

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