Tips Tuesday – Video SEO, Good Themes, Interworx vs cPanel, FLoC Testing, YAT Emojis

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• More digital downloads and masterminds coming
• What I’m bummed about in the Video SEO testing
• An update on my effort to stop SEO agency bot crawls
• Why new sites need security too
• Update on UpdraftPlus not backing up for some folks
• Why I’m excited that the Gutenberg Block Pattern Directory is live
• The death of page builders
• Automattic acquires Pocket Casts
• Google finishes first phase of FLoC testing for alternative 3^rd party cookies
• Why to set affiliate links to nofollow AND sponsored
• New list of approved Genesis child themes coming soon
• What designers think of the new theme.json styles file instead of CSS
• Which theme should you use?
• What to do before entering the design process these days
• A new look for cPanel that resembles Interworx
• Why me and more of my clients are switching to Interworx control panel
• Will we use YAT Emojis instead of URLs someday?

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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.

BlogAid Happenings

It’s been a super busy week of testing around here! And that means more goodies coming for you, which I’ll tell you about in a moment.

More Digital Downloads and Ecomm Masterminds coming

I want to thank Cath Hakanson of Sex Ed Rescue for being our special guest speaker at last week’s mastermind for the BB Hub members. 

The BB Hub is a private member area and Facebook group for my site audit clients.

We covered all manner of digital download topics, trip wires, member sites, and more.

We’ll be having more masterminds later this summer and hearing from more BB Hub members as there is such a wealth of knowledge in our village and we like supporting each other too!!

Video SEO Testing Update

Last week I reported that I was finished with all of the theme demo SEO testing and I had released new tutorials for how to fix each theme into my DIY SEO, the Video SEO Booster, and the Webmaster Training courses.

And now that I have all the theme SEO fixed I wanted to return to doing my video SEO tests and get clean results.

I’m using a Kadence theme that has been fixed to remove the theme Microdata schema markup and all of the baseline tests went fine.

Then I added the Yoast SEO plugin and ran another baseline. All good.

Then everything went to hell when I added the Yoast Video SEO plugin.

It’s as if the filter code to remove the theme’s schema markup is no longer there and it is outputting the schema from the theme and from Yoast.

I’ve contacted Yoast support and we’ll see what they say. They haven’t been all that helpful yet.

I will test Astra and GeneratePress for this issue too.

And if worst comes to worst, I’ll switch to Genesis for the rest of my tests. But that means starting all over with the baselines again.

I swear, I think these tests are cursed as there has been one delay after the other.

Courses worth paying for

On the other hand, this is precisely why I do the deep testing.

And you are NOT going to find this data, or the fixes, in ANY other site or video SEO courses either.

I’ve had a few folks remark that my DIY SEO and Video SEO Booster courses are a little overpriced.

When you see how many hours I put into actually testing things, and working with the vendors to get them fixed, I think the price is about right.

More video tests coming

As soon as I can get this issue settled, I’ll be working with Chas Greener, of Chas’ Crazy Creations and doing deep testing with the recipe card in the Create plugin. And then we’ll be moving on to the WP Recipe Maker plugin.

This testing is critically important to your video SEO success as many of my folks have multiple videos in a single post, including:

• YouTube embed in the post
• YouTube and/or Mediavine embed in the recipe
• Video Ads

Each of these is going to have its own schema markup and they all have to be coordinated with your post and site schema markup too.

Plus, as you heard me report in last week’s Tips Tuesday, Google is now supporting the SeekToAction schema markup with videos too. That will come into play if you plan to do step-by-step videos for the recipes. 

I suspect that it will play into Guided Recipe SEO as well.

And all of this, plus other tips and tricks I show you in the course are already impacting getting your videos featured in Position 0 at the very top of Google Search.

Plus, all of this will impact time on site and YouTube watchtime as well, which also contribute directly to your SEO ranking for both you blog post and your YouTube video.

These tests will take time, but the payoff is huge!!

Stop the bots update

You may recall in June that I reported I was testing new ways to block bots at Cloudflare.

These bots from all of the new SEO agencies are chewing our hosting resources up like cra-cra!!!

And then they are giving that info from our sites to our competitors!!

There are 3-4 different ways to do these blocks, including 2 ways at Cloudflare, which is my preference, as the other ways are at the host. And I want to stop these things before they hit our hosting because that chews up resources kicking them out too.

The most promising way I tried in June didn’t do much for me, that I can tell.

So, I implemented the next way on July 31st.

The AWStats that I’m using to monitor hits at the host accumulates them by the month. So I wanted to get this new way in so I will have a clean slate to monitor throughout August.

New Sites Need Security

If you plan to set up a new site, contact me first, before you even point the domain to the host.

The most effective site security you can do is to hide that brand new host IP address immediately.

I’ve also had folks with multiple sites contact me for an audit on only their main one saying that the other sites are too new to need one.

They need at least a security audit and fixes.

Security and performance go hand in hand. And you can’t afford all of those bad bot hits chewing up your hosting resources that should be reserved for humans.

Site Services Update

This week I’ve also been busy wrapping up open site service projects and trying to onboard new projects. 

But several folks are on vacation right now, or will be through the first of August, so they are delaying their projects by a couple of weeks.

That means I’m skipping down to the next in line and doing a little juggling on the wait list.

I’ve also been in contact with folks whose projects I think are about 3 weeks out.

So, if you haven’t heard from me yet, thank you for your patience as we continue to work as fast as we can through all open projects.

And my waitlist is squarely into the Oct range now.

So, if you’re thinking about any site service for the fall, now is the time to contact me.

WP 5.8 Update

We’re still hearing all manner of random goofiness with 5.8 and will continue to hold off on the update.

BlogAid News subscribers will be the only folks to receive my update instructions, including whether or not you will need the Classic Widgets plugin. 

So, be sure you are subscribed. And if you are receiving Tips Tuesday in your inbox, then you are on the list.

UpdraftPlus update

Last week several of us could not get the free version of UDP to run. And even a couple of my clients reported that their auto backups with their paid version didn’t run either.

I had one client site where we could not get the free version to run, so I installed my Migrator version and it did run.

I went back and forth with the free support folks and we never found a good reason for the issue.

But I installed the noabort code for fixing UDP on LiteSpeed servers and it ran. I removed that code and it still ran.

And now it’s running again for everyone even though they made no changes.

So, who knows what it was other than a major time suck for me to do a bunch of fruitless tests.

We’re all just glad it’s working and can move on.

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

Gutenberg Tips

Block Pattern Directory is Live

Justin Tadlock of WPTavern has been jumping up and down all year for Block Patterns to be one of THE biggest things in Gutenberg.

And WP has finally put some serious emphasis on them.

With the WP 5.8 release, the new Block Pattern Directory also went live.

Ever since these things came out I’ve been advocating them to theme designers as a fantastic alternative to demo content. 

Astra thought so too and they were the first popular theme to create bunches of them. Unfortunately, they are only bundled in the Astra Starter Templates package, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of downloading a bunch of junk you don’t need. And I hope they will see fit to include their 65 free patterns into the new block pattern directory instead.

Block Patterns are also a great way for designers to make money by offering them as templates.

The death of page builders

And I see this as the final nail in the coffin for Elementor and other page builders, as offering pre-made templates for those builders was their biggest appeal.

I have yet to see anything done with Elementor that I cannot easily recreate with Gutenberg. In fact, in my Gutenberg Ninja course, I show you how!!

But some of my clients have told me that it’s just more cost effective for them to simply download a sweet looking template.

Well, now you’ll be able to get such a thing as a Block Pattern instead.

And I’ll be beefing up the section for them in my Gutenberg Ninja course soon too!!

WordPress Tips

Automattic acquires Pocket Casts

As this post from WPTavern states, Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, has made a habit of buying up apps that folks love to use, but are struggling financially.

They have recently purchased Tumblr and Day One and now they just grabbed up Pocket Casts from NPR.

And, they are looking to do deep integrations with it and WordPress too, so that you may be able to more easily include podcasts in your posts.

I’ll be keeping my eye on this one for us.

Security Tips

Google finishes first phase of FLoC testing

You may recall me reporting back in April about the WordPress proposal to block FLoC.

FLoC was Google’s new controversial replacement for 3rd party cookie tracking.

And the backlash from privacy organizations and affiliate vendors and such made Google put the brakes on it, as well as delaying Chrome from dropping 3rd party cookie tracking until at least 2022.

They decided to do more testing of FLoC instead, and that first test ended on July 13th. They will analyze the data and I hope we get a public report on it well before the year is out.

According to this WPTavern article:

“Amazon, GitHub, Firefox, Vivaldi, Drupal, Joomla, DuckDuckGo, and other major tech companies and open source projects have already opted to block FLoC by default.”

Other browsers such as Firefox, Safari, and Brave have already dropped 3rd party cookie tracking.

I’ll be keeping close tabs on this topic for us. And please do let us know what you are hearing in your groups and such about it too.

SEO TIps

Set affiliate links to nofollow AND sponsored

Google will soon rollout a Link Spam update. Is your site ready?

You need to mark affiliate links as BOTH nofollow AND sponsored.

There are rumors that you can only mark them as sponsored. But, Google is the ONLY search engine that recognizes that tag. If you care about getting ranked well by ALL search engines you will do both.

And when you follow the steps shown in my Ultimate Guide for Creating Links in WordPress you will notice a drop-down that allows you to set them to both nofollow and sponsored. Those extra choices are being provided by Yoast SEO or RankMath, whichever you are using.

Don’t believe the rumors about only setting them to sponsored. Believe the SEO pros and their test results.

As for Amazon affiliate links, they say not to add sponsored to them, so do as they say so that you stay in good standing with that program.

And I want to thank Shea Walker of All Garage Floors for the article he posted in our DIY SEO Facebook group for why that is so.

Theme Tips

List of approved Genesis themes 

I’ll be adding a whole list of approved Genesis themes to my Gutenberg Ninja course when I do the WP 5.8 Gutenberg updates soon.

There are several themes that are fully up to par with all current WP and Gutenberg standards and are a good base for us to use.

New theme.json styles file

As you’ve heard me report in the last several month’s worth of Tips Tuesday, the main focus of WP 5.8 is to roll support for Gutenberg Phase 2 into the core.

Phase 2 is all about making themes editable with blocks everywhere.

That means you will have blocks beyond just the editor and they will move into:

• Header
• Footer
• Sidebar
• Menu

This is called Full Site Editing (FSE) and it requires fully block-based theme to do.

WP has already released a few block-based themes for developers and designers to start playing with.

And they include a new theme.json file that will hold all of the theme styling. This could eventually replace the theme CSS files.

What I’m hearing from my webmaster designers is that this Javascript is so much easier to use than writing PHP for the CSS file.

But, others, like Justin Tadlock, are saying that they are going to stick with doing it the CSS way for now.

However, Javascript is the way all of WP and themes and plugins are going.

So, we’ll be keeping an eye on this as we move into FSE and see which standards most theme devs adopt.

I don’t expect FSE to be fully viable for production sites until sometime in 2022.

But we will certainly be hearing more about them for the rest of this year as WP continues to roll in more support into the core with each new release.

Designers, you can give your feedback directly to WP on the new theme.json to help shape the future of that development too.

Which Theme Should I Use?

I know this is a big question that is on the mind of a lot of site owners who are concerned about site speed and revamping their current theme.

My theme speed tests have moved to the back burner for now as far as graphing all of the test results and getting a public post out to you.

But, I can tell you that all of these themes are equally fast enough to use:

• Genesis
• Kadence
• Astra
• GeneratePress

The real difference in them is on the design level.

And my webmasters are doing deep dives into each of them.

What I’m hearing is that they all have their pros and cons.

For those who already know that they want to hire a designer and/or start with a child theme that may just need a few tweaks, Genesis is still the front runner. It’s fast and stable. 

THE most important thing you have to be careful with in using Genesis is to avoid getting a bloated child theme. Not all 3rd party themes, or even those created by StudioPress are on par with each other. And some require an extra paid plugin to get all of the features.

BlogAid is on Genesis and I plan to stick with it for the foreseeable future.

But, my book site was on Astra and I had it switched to Kadence, and I’m happier with the stability.

For those who want to tackle design yourself, then the rest of those themes may be the way to go. Genesis does offer some tweaks in the Customizer, but nowhere near the level of Kadence and Astra. 

GeneratePress has Customizer options too, but again, not as extensive as Kadence and Astra.

Between Astra and Kadence, it’s a toss up. Astra has a few more styling choices even without getting the Pro version. With Kadence, you’re going to need the Pro version of the theme and the Pro version of Kadence Blocks plugin, and it’s still going to be slightly less options than Astra Pro for the theme and the free Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg blocks plugin.

But, Kadence has proved to be a bit more stable for updates than Astra so far.

And to be honest, I would still hire a designer for either of them to ensure you get a child theme that is fixed for the SEO issue, and to ensure that you don’t have a bunch of inline styling that will slow your load time or impact responsiveness for mobile, or give you a Core Web Vitals issue with your mobile menu load or such too.

Designers are very much worth paying for.

Plus, if you are on Astra and want to switch to Kadence, like I did for my book site, a designer can help you with that too, and it’s fairly inexpensive.

That’s the theme news I have for you today.

It will keep evolving as my webmasters get further into their tests and as the themes continue to change as we live through this messy revolution with Gutenberg Phase 2 and Full Site Editing.

My advice to you is to go with minimalist styling and don’t expect to keep a theme for more than 3 years max.

And as appealing as it might be to design your own, hiring a designer is going to save you time and money because they will get it right the first time, and they will be able to help you keep your theme current through these changes. 

I’ve paid to have my base themes tweaked for years to get the latest support for things like SEO and Gutenberg and more. And that was way cheaper than having to get a whole new theme. I just contact my designer and poof, it’s done.

Plus, a qualified webmaster designer can provide a staging site where you can approve the new look. And they can switch out the old theme for the new one without destroying your site security, HTTPS setup, and more.

Designers – get the site security and speed training you need

If you are a designer and need help with the technical aspects of site speed and security, be sure to check out my Webmaster Training.

It was created with you in mind!

Before you enter the design process

If you’re thinking about a theme change, be sure to take my Gutenberg Ninja course first.

It will completely change your mind about what theme to start with.

You won’t be looking at the home pages of child themes anymore either, as you’ll be able to create your own.

And if you do want to use a stock child theme, many of them have homepages that use blocks, not widgets now. So you will need to know how those work.

I won’t even send any of my site audit clients to my webmaster designers until they have taken that course either. Otherwise, they will be overwhelmed with choices and will lack the education to make a good decision on them.

That course pays for itself immediately too, as it makes the theme design process fast and cheap and super easy on everyone.

I did that same thing with Heartwood Art. 

I did the layout in Gutenberg and had something to show my designer.

She chose the child theme base that was the closest match to that structure, put all of my brand colors and nice fonts in and we were done!

It’s exactly what I wanted, is super fast, and fully Gutenberg compliant.

And now it’s also easy to tweak should some new Gute thing come along too.

Hosting Tips

New Looks for cPanel

cPanel icons are looking pretty tired these days. Like a throwback to the 90s, actually.

If you go to Preferences, you will see a few choices for layout. I use Paper Lantern for all of my tutorials.

Lately I’ve seen a notice at the top of all cPanels with an invitation to try the Glass layout.

I hate it. It’s just a bunch of linked text and I have to actually read through them to find what I’m looking for instead of just scanning for a familiar icon.

Now cPanel has come out with the Jupiter style. And the guided version of it looks a lot more like the Interworx control panel.

Switching to Interworx

Y’all may recall that I’m advising clients on VPS to drop cPanel and jump over to Interworx these days, as Interworx is finally viable and includes everything we need in a control panel now.

And there is just no need for VPS folks to keep paying $10-$15/mo extra for cPanel anymore.

Plus, cPanel has been responsible for a few of the fires I’ve had to put out this year and I’m tired of losing money and my sanity chasing those down.

I’ll also be moving BlogAid to a VPS on our new boutique host, Iridium Hosting, so that I can begin making tutorials on Interworx too.

Our Online Future Tips

Will we use YAT Emojis instead of URLs?

I’ve been delving into the cryptocurrency world this year. No, I don’t buy/sell Bitcoins or such. There’s way more going on with it than that.

And here’s an example.

Emojis are fun. They are all over social media and are now in site titles and comments too.

Our databases throw a PHP error over those, citing an illegal mix of collations. Maybe someday they’ll get that fixed.

In the meantime, the crypto world has invented a new use for emojis as unique identifiers for brand names.

And we may even start using them some day in place of URLs for our sites too.

In this post from the cPanel blog, they ask What is a Yat? Emoji Identifiers Explained.

Yat is a new icon naming service that has a waitlist so you can bid on a string of up to 6 emojis to use as your brand’s unique identifier.

A bid for $200,000 on the 2 emoji string of a lamb and a bikini has been made by the car manufacturer Lamborghini.

The golden key emoji has a bid for $450,000 from an undisclosed source.

These emoji unique identifiers can’t be sold yet. But that is coming.

And just like domain names, we expect all of the brand-specific ones to go quickly and for more money than we could ever pay.

Not all emoji strings are viable, and there are no customization options yet. But I’m betting more options will open up over time.

Here’s a link to my Google search for a list of emojis.

If you have a few minutes to kill you may want to see if there is a string you can put together for your brand so you’ll be ready to grab it up once YATs go public.

Wrap Up

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

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