Tips Tuesday – Video Recipe SEO, Instagram Videos, CleanTalk, Gutenberg Tutorials

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• Why I jumped on the Instagram video bandwagon with my first InShot video
• Video recipe SEO testing update
• Gutenberg Ninja tutorials underway – and a cool new thing I found
• Why I’m testing CleanTalk Anti Spam for both comments and forms
• What’s happening with my BB Hub members like:
  • How to fix ConvertKit optins showing at the bottom
  • Cloudflare block bot tests expanding
  • Why where you host matters for seeing what’s hitting your site
  • Upcoming mastermind for digital downloads
• Classic Editor plugin support extended and why you don’t need it
• The roadmap for WP 5.9
• Why you need to learn Gutenberg before your next theme revamp
• How the Customizer is causing load issues
• It’s time to get your free WordCamp US tickets for the online event

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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

Welcome to the last day of the third quarter of 2021, y’all!!

It seems to me that when we hit September we blink and it’s New Years. Do y’all feel that way too?

It’s been a VERY active week in the BB Hub membership, and I’ll tell you about that in a moment.

Plus, I’ve been super active with site audit client work this past week too, as I’m carrying double the load to accommodate folks returning from vacation while wrapping up the folks I bumped up into those spots.

First InShot Video

I’m so excited about this!!

My BB Hub folks suggested using InShot for making videos on my phone.

I tried it on Sunday while I was working in the woodshop and it was fun!!

You can see it on the Heartwood Art IG page.

There is a LOT you can do with this app and I’m looking forward to playing with it more in the coming months.

Folks, videos are the hottest ticket in town to getting more eyeballs. And, I’m doing all I can to fit making these fun videos into my schedule.

I’m focusing on Instagram right now, but I will be getting several Tik Tok accounts soon, and you’ll be seeing BlogAid tips on there, plus my woodworking.

Video recipe SEO sites setup

I’ve got 5 new test sites set up for new video recipe SEO testing.

One is for the Create plugin’s recipe card.

And the other four are for all the different WP Recipe Maker plugin levels, including:

• Free
• Pro
• Premium
• Elite

Each one gives you more options, and that also means more schema markup output too. So we want to test them all.

Two of my foodie clients with superior SEO everywhere, and the search traffic to prove it, are helping to create the recipes we’ll be using in all of the tests. That way I’m positive everything is filled in properly.

I’ll keep you posted on the tests.

Gutenberg Ninja Tutorials underway

This past week I started writing the scripts for the new Gutenberg Ninja course tutorials.

And this week I hope to finish those up so I have everything tested prior to making the actual video tutorials. 

I want to ensure I have no bugs and that there are no caveats with one new setting affecting another.

And, I just found out about how to combine a couple of the new features into an insanely eye-catching way too. So, I want to take a moment to explore what can be done with that.

I’ll be sending an email out to all course members as I start uploading new tutorials.

Testing CleanTalk Anti Spam

I don’t know about y’all, but I’m dang tired of spam comments and contact form stuff coming through. 

This weekend I got a paid CleanTalk account. It’s only $8 a site per year, and I got the 5 site license for $24/year. That’s just over $4/yr for each site.

Many of my webmasters who maintain sites for their clients use it.

It’s super easy to setup, once you get an account. But I will say that I have never seen a site make it so hard to skip their free trial and go straight to the purchase page before!!!!

I’ll let you know how my test of it goes.

BB Hub Plus Happenings

Here’s a brief recap on what’s happening in the BB Hub membership for my site audit clients.

Convert Kit optin showing at bottom

Have you had issues with your Convert Kit optin showing at the bottom of your page, like below the footer, when you use WP Fastest Cache premium?

Some of my clients have, and I asked Emre, the WPFC plugin dev to fix it for us by adding an auto detecting exclusion.

He did, and I sent the fix to my BB Hub members.

It will be released to the public in the next premium plugin update.

This is just one more perk of being a site audit client!! You get stuff before anyone else does.

Convert Kit speed testing flop

This past week I was also working with a couple of site audit clients to find the best way to place your Convert Kit optin so that it does not cause a speed load problem.

Keep in mind that there are multiple code options for:

• Shortcode
• JavaScript
• HTML

Plus you have multiple placement options, like high up in the post or at the bottom. And then you have widget areas like sidebar and footer.

All of it matters and we wanted to run tests to find the best options.

But, we simply could not get the JavaScript to save on the post no matter what security we turned off a the host or at Cloudflare.

So, we’re ditching this test and will stick with using the shortcode.

My WP Fastest Cache Settings tutorial has been updated with both methods, though. I did not include the HTML method.

Cloudflare Block Bot Tests Expanding

As you have heard me mention in the last couple of months, I’ve been testing ways to block the excessive search engine agency bots using methods at Cloudflare.

These bots crawl the web and deliver competitor analysis info to our competition, similar to what Ahrefs and SEMRush do.

And they are chewing our resources alive with 15k-30k hits a month. That’s more bot than human traffic for many folks!!!

The first method I used in July didn’t seem to work too well.

But the second method I used for August most definitely had an impact on cutting those bots out and giving my site info to my competition while chewing up my resources. Oh hell no!

This past weekend I sent out an invitation to my BB Hub members for 2 volunteers to run the same bot blocking tests on their sites. And we’ll have those setup by today so we can get accurate stats for September.

Where You Host Matters

And if you’re wondering where I’m seeing those bot hits, it’s in AWStats at the host level. And this is just one more reason that I promote the hosts that I do. I can see all the info I need to know what’s really going on with your site for both speed and security.

Keep in mind that you have limited resources available and you need to reserve those for your human visitors.

And that’s why I’m doing these tests – to help you put the full power of your hosting resources toward your site speed.

Mastermind on Digital Downloads

Next week we’ll be continuing our e-comm mastermind live sessions in the BB Hub.

In previous sessions we’ve discussed selling platforms and membership sites.

This time we will be talking all things digital downloads, including how to make them and how to deliver them.

I can hardly wait!!! I love hearing from all the peeps in the BB Hub. We have a SUPER rich village of knowledge and experience!!

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

Plugin Tips

Classic editor plugin support extended through 2022

When WP 5.0 was released in 2018, Matt Mullenweg said that they would continue to support the Classic Editor plugin through 2021.

And now they have decided to extend that support through 2022.

The fact is, you don’t need it anymore.

The same TinyMCE editor is available in the Classic Block, which is what becomes of all your content once you remove the Classic Editor plugin.

Most all of my peeps have deleted the plugin and have started using Gutenberg blocks for all new posts and pages.

And we still have old posts and pages that are in the Classic Block that we are converting to all Gutenberg when it is time to update that post or page.

And I’m positive there will be content on all of my sites that remain in the Classic Block forever, as I have no need to update them.

How about you? Are you doing all Gute for new posts and pages now?

WordPress Tips

Roadmap for WP 5.9

The Gutenberg Times has a nice post with a look at where we are headed with the future development of WP and Gutenberg Full Site Editing.

If you are not on the Gutenberg train yet, I invite you to take a moment and realize just how far behind you already are, and to start thinking about putting the switch to Gute in your schedule for 2022.

The Gutenberg Editor was released in 2018.

It became fully viable by 2019.

That was 2 years ago.

Last month, with the WP 5.8 release, Gutenberg Phase 2 with Full Site Editing started rolling into the core. And more of that will roll in with WP 5.9 at the end of this year.

By mid 2022 I expect all major theme frameworks to have released a production-ready Full Site Editing theme.

That means it will be all blocks – everywhere – including the header, footer, sidebar, and home page. 

No more widgets. 

No more being locked into a design layout that you can’t change.

Learn Gutenberg before you get your next theme

In fact, right now, I won’t send any client to one of my webmaster designers until they take the Gutenberg Ninja course.

Otherwise, they won’t know what their design choices are, or how to manage their new site.

I’ve got several sandbox sites running for my clients who are in the course so they can play to their heart’s content with Gutenberg and not be limited by their current theme’s lack of support for it.

They have designed their own home page, landing pages, and more.

Now they are going to the designer with something real to show them, and having the designer choose the base theme and add all of the fancy stuff, like proper styling to be ADA compliant as well as super fast.

There’s more to a well styled theme than just pretty. And a pro designer who knows speed, ADA compliance, SEO, as well as conversion are worth paying for.

Customizer Overload

One of the big changes WP made to lay a proper foundation for Full Site Editing was to create the Customizer where themes and plugins allowed you to hold your styling choices in the database.

Well, that’s great for end user site owners – to make it easy for them to change the look of their site.

But on the backside, it created a behemoth file because so many themes bloated the styling choice options.

And some themes are coded better than others for that to.

My webmaster designers are now reporting issues with running out of resources when you add in other bloated elements like Elementor and Woocommerce.

There is a fix for it, and it is currently being tested.

And I’ll have more info and tutorials for the Webmaster Training folks as soon as the test results come in.

This is the power of that awesome village at work. 

It took 3 of us coordinating to find the issue and the fix, and to properly vet that fix to be sure it would not cause another issue on the host side.

And the site owner client won’t have to spend more in hosting now just to get the resources needed to run their site too.

If you are a designer, or you’re a site owner who has a designer who needs this kind of site tech support, send them to my course. It’s made for designers.

And site owners, this is why it’s worth hiring my webmaster designers too. When I say they know speed, it’s not just in the styling. They know it deeply

WordCamp US 2021 tickets available

It’s online again this year and starts on Oct 1.

Tickets are free, but you must register to attend live and to get the replays.

I’ll be there!!!! Join me!!

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.