Tips Tuesday – TikTok Fan Money, IndexNow, WP 5.9 Beta, Product Review Guidelines

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• Get discounts on all BlogAid Courses during the holiday sales
• New DIY SEO tutorials are coming soon
• Code Name Ida tests are underway
• The first WP Beta 5.9 is out
• Update on a project I’m trying to stop in the WP Performance team
• Why we won’t be using the Cloudflare beta test of IndexNow
• Good news from Google for product review posts and affiliate marketers
• TikTok adds more ways for creators to get paid directly from their followers
• Facebook tries to copycat this TikTok move, and why it won’t work

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Spill the Beans Livestream tonight

Do join us live tonight at 8pm ET / 5pm PT on the BlogAid Facebook Page. We spill the beans on this week’s news, breaking stories for the day too, and special info just for those who watch. And the replay is available here on this Tips Tuesday post later too. But the live party is so much more fun.

Replay

Who I Help

All BlogAid posts and tutorials are intended to assist business-minded, hands-on bloggers and webmaster designers who are serious about making money and who want to stay up-to-date with site changes. And our BB Hub is a private member site and Facebook group for my site audit clients that has lots of extra perks and support.

BlogAid Happenings

Here ‘tis! The last few weeks of the year and I know you’re as busy as I am trying to get your year-end things done amidst the holiday hustle.

All BlogAid Courses on Sale

But don’t get caught up in the busy-ness to miss out on getting your online business set up for success in 2022.

Right now all BlogAid courses are on sale, including:

• Gutenberg Ninja
• DIY SEO
• Video SEO Booster
• Webmaster Training for Designers

New DIY SEO Tutorials Coming Soon

There’s a reason so many folks stay in the DIY SEO course year after year.

SEO changes all the time and you have to keep up.

And I help you do that!!

Besides our live workshops, there are several standing tutorial sections in the course, including:

• Yoast SEO
• Testing your theme for correct schema markup
• Google Search Console
• Bing Webmaster Tools

I’ve been working on the updates for the Yoast SEO tutorials and will have those out to you soon. 

And the Search Console and Bing tutorials are next on my to do list.

And we always do a Quick Check series of daily 5 minute checks prior to our live workshops to ensure folks who have been in the course a while are up to date on all of the changes too.

I’m going to be real honest with you.

Those SEO courses that focus mainly on keyword research are just scratching the surface.

The DIY SEO course helps you lay a solid SEO foundation for your site.

Why?

Because 80% of my site audit clients are only using the page analysis features in Yoast SEO and don’t even know that there are global settings that have to be configured. 

They are doing more SEO harm than good with that setup.

Many of them don’t have their Google connections for Analytics and Search Console setup right either.

Now, we do cover keyword research in the DIY SEO course.

But honestly, all the right keywords are not going to help if Google can’t crawl your site or finds mixed schema markup when it gets there.

THIS is why we focus on your SEO foundation in the course first.

And THIS is why we check it every year before we go into the live workshops. 

In fact, the first live workshop is on Technical SEO so you can see why your foundation matters so much.

So, if you’re already in one of those surface-level courses, now is the time to jump into the fundamentals and start making real ranking gains.

Site Services Update

We’ve been flying through site services projects this month!!! 

I’ve had several new site audit clients that have relatively new sites and they were a breeze to secure and make fast.

Plus, we’ve had a string of BB Hub members returning for their site audit checkups and of course those are super fast, cheap, and easy to do too, including their migration to Iridium Hosting and into our HOA section there where it’s just us with our super secure, fast sites that keep us and the server running at top performance.

So, we’re actually running a little bit ahead of schedule on the wait list, which is exactly as planned so I can taper off to my normal client load and have more time to make all of the new video tutorials that are due at this time of year.

So, if I guesstimated we would onboard you during December, we’re on track for that and I’ll be in touch soon.

The current wait time for new requests that come in this week is still holding for February too.

Wondering What a DIY, Hands-on Site Owner Is?

On BlogAid I talk a lot about catering to DIY, hands-on site owners.

But what exactly does that mean?

Well, I sat down and wrote a post about it with some clear examples of what a hands-on site owner should be able to do for themselves, and what they should expect to outsource. Plus, I covered why WordPress is different from 3rd party platforms where they do everything for you.

Please do let me know if I forgot to mention anything you think should be in the list by leaving a comment on this post, or anywhere you see it online.

BB Hub Happenings

Code Name Ida Tests Underway

I know everyone is crazy busy this time of year, but I do hope you’ll take a moment to see the email I sent last week for tests on our Ida project and post your findings in our BB Hub Facebook group. There are 2 posts for reporting the different things.

Our Ida vendors are finding all manner of things to fix and are honing in fast on the resolutions.

Your tests will help us see more variety of issues and will help us work with those vendors to make better wares for all of us too.

Thank you to those who have reported in already.

And for those of you not in the BB Hub and have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m being vague on purpose, but not to tease you. This is something every site owner needs and when I can go public with it you’ll understand why I had to be vague for a little while as we finish our testing so that we have solutions for you too.

What’s Coming in 2022

This week I’m also putting the final touches on my year-end posts including what’s ahead for and from BlogAid and what’s ahead for all of us who make money online.

And we’ll be having our annual What’s Coming live session for BB Hub members in January.

If you’re new to the BB Hub, be sure to jump into your member area and see the replay of last January’s meeting for perspective and the goals and pivots we’ve already been doing for 2021.

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

WordPress Tips

WordPress 5.9 Beta is out

Beta 1 released on Nov 30th. And they plan to have more betas and RCs than usual this time, it seems to me.

We are still on track for the final release on Jan 25.

And I’m still going to keep my tutorial schedule flipped to do the DIY SEO updates first, which I’m working on now, and then jump over to Gutenberg Ninja updates when the RC1 rolls out (that’s the Release Candidate 1), which will be around Jan 4.

It’s my hope to have the new Gutenberg tutorials ready when 5.9 releases.

WP Performance Team Update

I sure am glad I’m in the WP Performance team – they were just about to build something that will convert all images to WebP on upload AND have an option to convert all existing images.

Oh hell no!!

They gave ZERO thought to image quality from 2 compressions, disk space for doubling images, or inode connections at your host. (Most hosts limit you on inodes, which is how many files you have.)

Most of the discussion has been in a split off GitHub group, which is why I didn’t see it before now. Glad they had a lengthy discussion on it in the main Slack channel at last week’s meeting.

NOBODY is taking tests of anything. There is ZERO consensus from the entire group about testing and standards and gathering data. They just want to implement changes.

Somebody has to be there to look out for us – and I’d rather devote time to it BEFORE they do this craziness rather than help us all clean up the mess later.

The meetings are on Tuesday, so my updates to you are a week later, and I’ll keep you posted, as this is huge for us.

SEO Tips

Cloudflare Beta Testing IndexNow

IndexNow is the thing I’ve been talking about in Tips Tuesday for the past few months that I’m so excited about.

As a brief recap, I mentioned months ago that Bing released a new API that not only pings them that you have a new post, but it sends the entire HTML to them so they don’t have to access your site to crawl. I had that on my test list, but wanted to wait for an easier way to implement it.

In the meantime, IndexNow came out and it is the better method as it will ping all of the search engines.

Recently I mentioned that Google is now testing IndexNow and we are awaiting those results. If Google adopts it, my bet is that it will be incorporated into Yoast. That will be the better way to do it so that it integrates with our XML sitemap.  

So, we don’t want to use this Cloudflare way of doing it, nor the Bing API way of doing it, and why I took those things off my testing list for now.  Bing’s API is a far superior way of doing more than just pinging the search engines. And I’m waiting to see if IndexNow adopts that and then we’ll all switch to it, but it will be better than what is being offered in these betas.

So, it’s exciting, but hold your horses on doing it for a bit longer. This is in the early stages and easier ways of integrating it with our sites will be on the way.

I don’t know about y’all, but I don’t have time to do things twice.

Google Product Review Guidelines Updated

I am very pleased to see this!!!!

And I know all of my affiliate marketing clients will be overjoyed for it too.

Early in the year Google did an algo update that finally helped get rid of junk review sites outranking more in-depth product review sites.

Those junk review sites were created by SEO pros who hired cheap labor to go onto Amazon and collect up product reviews on hot sellers, and then from the product description and reviews, write a product blurb with pros and cons. The top sellers were always the number one recommendation.

These folks never actually used any of the products.

And they would use some black-hat SEO tactics to boost the site to make it look authoritative – like creating 10 other junk sites to point backlinks to the main site they were trying to boost.

Not a single thing about it was organic, or even real. It was all SEO trickery.

Well, Google finally got hip to that, and dropped the ranking on all of those sites lower than whale poop.

That’s why we aren’t seeing so many review titles at the top of search for things like “The Best Blenders for December 2021” anymore.

And now Google has updated their Product Review Guidelines to help them better promote reviews from folks who have actually used the product.

Affiliate Marketers, here’s what you need to do:

• Make a video of you using it.
• Create a transcript of that video and embed it into a post.
• Intralink that post to other posts where you used that product.
• Make a content silo of it.

FYI, I teach you how to do the SEO of all of this in my DIY SEO and Video SEO Booster courses.

Google also wants you to promote more than one place to buy the product, but that is of less concern than personal endorsements. It just helps separate your site from those pro SEOers who are only trying to drive Amazon sales.

And I think having a live chat in our BB Hub for affiliate marketing resources is a session I want to put on our calendar too.

I’ve also said in the past that if Amazon were smart, they would pay more to affiliates who do this type of public endorsement, as you are taking the extra risk of putting your reputation on the line for it. I’m wondering if this move by Google will help encourage that change as more reviewers will be presenting more buying options other than Amazon now too.

My guess is that the only thing that will get Amazon’s attention is the hit to their bottom line, and let’s hope they notice that already when those junk review sites fell at the top ranking positions already.

Oh, and another reason to make a video review is that you can put that video on Amazon if you purchased the thing from there too.

So, I hope this strongly encourages you to get into the habit of making more videos. There’s eyeballs and money to be had from it.

Video Tips

TikTok Adds Tips and Gifts Feature to Get Paid Directly

Speaking of getting paid to do videos, TikTok adds another monetization program from creators on their platform in the form of tips and gifts.

I’ve already seen folks making a bunch of money during their livestreams, as their fans send them gifts.

And now TikTok has added a tip/gift jar to recorded videos too.

I’m sure folks are making money with it, but it’s a lot harder to see how much compared to the constant rolling tips/gifts in the comment stream of a live session.

What’s most significant about this is that it is another indication of the cultural shift we are experiencing where creators get paid directly, and in the moment that they help their followers.

That is going to continue and get even bigger next year.

And this is why I’m trying to help you shift your mindset into thinking of your content as a product you sell, not just something you post on your site and hope you get paid by a third party for doing it.

Facebook Copycats TikTok Again with Stars to Earn from Fans

And speaking of getting paid from fans, Facebook is desperately trying to keep up with TikTok as it is encouraging page owners to do more livestreams.

To that end, they have a new Star system that allows fans to do the tip/gift thing directly to you as well.

This info came to me in an email, so I don’t have a link for you. But I will say that FB is getting super serious about trying to stay in this game, as I see the frequency of notifications in the app and in my email inbox increasing like crazy.

It’s great to do more livestreams on FB, as they are promoting them so much now. But they will lose at this game because they made no effort to develop a culture for all of this. And that’s why TikTok is blistering everybody – that platform has a very defined culture.

And culture is going to be THE biggest thing going forward for us too – and is why you need to start making videos, livestreams, and whatever else you can do to make more of a personal connection with your followers.

Why do you think I take the time to go beyond this Tips Tuesday written post to make a podcast and do a livestream too? Yes, it’s a time investment. But it works. And you better believe that I’ll be taking this to TikTok in the near future too, as well as to YouTube Shorts.

And I hope you will join me for the journey.

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.