Tips Tuesday – Walmart Metaverse, Web3 Jobs, Content Creators Summit, TikTok SEO

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• A critically important file at our hosting has been borked
• The changes I’m making for host recommendations and host and plugin support
• DIY SEO Workshops start this Thursday
• New name for BB Hub Meetings
• A peek into Web3 content creators and businesses to follow
• Upcoming summit for content creators
• What I found in the WP 5.9 release candidates
• Google is confirmed as crawling TikTok videos
• Yoast adds a new keyword rank tracking tool integration
• What having a fast site has to do with the health of the planet
• Adworld conference to feature a new Web3 track
• Why you may qualify for a Web3 job right now
• Apple’s plans for an AR/VR headset
• Walmart is getting into crypto and the metaverse

Listen to the Podcast

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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

Last week was stressful, on a lot of levels.

So, let’s get the icky stuff that happened out of the way.

Critical file borked

I’m not going to go into detail of how we found this issue, but it seems to be pretty widespread across several hosts – but not all clients on those hosts have the issue.

A critically important file has been overwritten with a new standard one that wiped out:

• Browser caching directives from their caching/optimization plugin, which impacts speed
• A superior HTTPS redirect
• Three important HTTPS security headers – including one that is required for all folks who run ads. 
• Important site-wide security.
• And custom redirects for things like permalink changes and change of domain or such.

At this time we don’t know if a plugin did it or something rolled through at the hosts that did it, but the latter is my suspicion.

I’m still checking into this issue at the time the podcast was recorded on Monday afternoon and will be updating my BB Hub and Webmaster folks with additional info as I get it.

Do nothing

If you are in the groups of folks I’ve asked to run tests and report in – then stop there.

Do not continue to run tests.

Do not make changes to your site.

Do nothing and await further instructions as any other actions you take will actually bork the investigation and make it far harder to troubleshoot.

Rule of thumb: When working with a tech to solve an issue on your site, most definitely don’t take matters into your own hands and try things yourself.

A Change is Needed

I’ve lost sleep, billable hours, and my only time off to this issue while also herding cats with clients who could not keep their hands out of the situation. To say I’m stressed is an understatement. And this is not the first time.

No matter what this issue ends up being, I need to make a change to the support I offer for choices site owners make and things that are beyond my control.

Host Choices

Anything can happen at any host at any time.

That said, from today forward I will be recommending the one host I still have confidence in for their setup and their support if it is a good fit.

If not, then I am making a doc that has the hosting criteria I need to be able to offer my services.

It will also contain a list of the hosts I can’t or won’t work at because of either their shoddy setup or because they are managed in such a way that it is against their Terms of Service for me to make the needed tweaks.

Then you can do your own research and make your own hosting choice.

And because I don’t know about, and can’t check into their security setup on the server side, nor into the competence of their support, I will make no guarantee that the performance and security work I do for you will be fully supported or cooperated with at that host, or that you can get good answers from them.

And yes, I can make your site faster and more secure than any super expensive managed host you might want to choose. All of my clients who moved off those hosts can verify what I’m saying, and can tell you how many hundreds of dollars in hosting they have saved too. Hosts like that are better for hands-off site owners, not my DIY, hands-on clients.

READ: What is Managed Hosting? To get an idea of how radically different the hosts are now these days and why each is a good fit for different types of clients.

Host Support

For anyone who chooses a host other than the one I most recommend, or chooses to stay at a host that I have shown clear evidence for why you need to leave – you’re welcome to do so. 

But, any issues caused by that host are things I will be supporting at a premium rate or outsourcing to a trusted webmaster at that same premium rate, or may decline to support altogether. 

That includes folks who have chosen to stay at SiteGround and A2 Hosting even though I have been telling you for over two years why you need to leave. For NameHero, that has been for the last year.

If clients choose to have the host make changes, those will not be supported by me unless authorized by me, and I may or may not be able to continue support at all if they make changes that goof with what you paid me to do for you in the first place, and/or are undocumented and/or hidden things that conflict with the setup you paid me to do.

Same changes for limited plugin support

This support line also holds true for plugins that go bonkers. I will investigate to a point, which will likely be to confirm we know it is a single plugin causing the issue. And I may choose to work with a client on it to get answers for all of us.

But I will not be giving unlimited support for free on something I can’t control. And I definitely won’t be supporting folks who decide to take matters into their own hands by contacting the plugin dev or host to fix such things while we are still investigating, as who knows what changes they may have made on your site which compromise the perfectly tuned setup you had from your last audit.

Bottom Line

I will make every effort to support my clients. I will be limiting support for hosts and plugins.

And that’s as clear as I can make the distinction. We’ll deal with things as they come up.

What do you think about the situation?

What do y’all think about all of this? I’m serious. I want to hear from you.

I know y’all don’t blame me when a host or plugin goes south. 

But you also don’t want to be stuck without support to get things fixed. 

And when it happens to a whole bunch of folks, like what’s going on right now, it’s not an individual billing situation even if you offer to pay, so I’m working for free to deal with it. 

Not to mention the stress for all involved.

Let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment here, or in one of our groups. But, please do not email me, as I already get an email every 7 minutes, 7 days a week now, and that’s just more non-billable hours gone. 

Comments on this post and group posts are the best way for me not to have to address the same questions and comments multiple times individually.

And for the chicken shit, keyboard brave asshole who replies to comments or sends an email every time I mention hosting, who also thinks you’ve cleverly disguised yourself with a fake email address, I know who you are. 

Okay, back to the fun and exciting stuff!!

DIY SEO live workshops start on Thursday

Woot!!! We finished with our Quick Checks to ensure we have a solid SEO foundation.

And this Thursday we start our live workshops.

The first one is SEO in 2022 where we’ll cover the major changes with Google indexing as well as what’s getting posts and even home pages deindexed.

The workshop schedule is posted through the end of Feb and I’ll be scheduling more soon.

BB Hub Happenings

We Have a New Name for Our Meetings

Thanks to everyone who voted on the new name for our BB Hub live sessions.

It’s Hubber Huddles.

Are You a Content Entrepreneur? – replay available

And our Hubber Huddle with Denise Wakeman last week was fantastic!!

The replay is now available in your member area.

A Peek into Web3 Content Creators and Businesses to Follow

I did some deep digging into more of the stuff Denise mentioned in our Huddle and found some super interesting stuff on Web3 content creator and business resources for us to maybe follow.

Hubbers will find my livestream on it in our Facebook group.

I’m not ready to disclose those findings publicly yet.

Just let me say that some of THE biggest content makers and social media pro influencers are going all in with Web3 and crypto.

In fact, I did some additional super deep crypto research and invested into the blockchain they are using for their social tokens because I believe in the project long-term for supporting the very type of creator community and DAOs these folks are building, and that will include what some of us will be doing in our future too.

I do have some Web3 Tips for you a little later. I just have a bit more digging to do first before I go public with these things.

All I can say now is that this stuff is coming quickly and I’m not kidding when I say you need to start your own Web3 research today. It will take time for you to get up to speed with it all and you’ll want to be in the know when it starts hitting big.

Just Google Web3 or any of the other words I’ve mentioned and that will start you down the rabbit hole.

Summit for Content Creators

There is a free summit coming up for content creators with 25 hours worth of livestreams for free.

Of course, none of us have that kind of time to devote to it, so we are going to coordinate and watch as a team, then report what we found interesting.

As y’all know, summits like this give you a little taste of what the presenter knows about a topic and it is a foot in the door to their bigger offers.

So, that’s what we are going to report on and see who, of all the presenters, we may want to follow more closely, or take their courses or such. And we may do that as a team too, which would be fun.

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

WordPress Tips

WordPress 5.9 RC3

I expect the 3rd Release Candidate for WP 5.9 to roll out today.

And then the public version will roll out on Jan 25, which is next Tuesday.

I did load up RC2 and I have my “What’s New in WP 5.9” video tour script written for you.

I hope to be publishing that video and post on the day when 5.9 releases, or next day if it comes out late in the evening, as they often do.

The big focus on this release is the rest of the Full Site Editing code rolling in.

So, there really aren’t many new Gutenberg things.

But, this week I am working on those new tutorials and will have them uploaded to the Gutenberg Ninja course around the time of the release too.

Get WP 5.9 Update Instructions

We most definitely will not be updating to 5.9 the day it releases!!!

I saw some underlying jQuery and other code changes that we will want to take a “wait and see what breaks” approach with it as more folks update.

BlogAid News subscribers will get an email when I feel it is safe for most of us to update, along with instructions and any special things we need to check.

So be sure you are subscribed.

SEO Tips

Google Now Crawling TikTok Videos

We know that Google has been crawling Twitter for a few years now.

Back in September, Google was working a deal to crawl Instagram and TikTok videos too.

I’ve been keeping my eye on this to tell you when it hits.

And the latest I’ve heard was last week with a report that Google plans to feature Instagram and TikTok videos in a separate carousel on the Google mobile app.

And then BB Hubber Gabrielle Arruda reported a few days ago that she got a Google alert for one of her TikTok videos that had been crawled.

So, that tells me Google is actively crawling.

But I have not seen that carousel when I Google stuff on iPad yet. Maybe I’m just not searching for the industries they focused on first, like Fashion, which is what Gaby does videos on.

Search Engine Roundtable reports it’s in the same carousel as YouTube Shorts, it just has a label of TikTok or Instagram on it.

Have you seen that carousel with these other videos in it?

Folks, this is just one more way to get your site on Page 1 of Google. It’s all about video. And YouTube is so starved for Shorts, and so desperate to be a video entertainment search resource that they are crawling every other hub now for them too.

But, if you have a YouTube Short, they will favor that, just as they favor longer YouTube videos in the Featured Snippet at the very top of the search page.

Get Your Video SEO Booster

And this is why my Video SEO Booster course is so important. 

It will help you get to the top of search – even higher than you can get a blog post these days.

Yoast Adds Keyword Rank Tracking Tool

Tracking your ranking in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools shows your relative overall ranking at that time.

And in other reports it shows the keywords folks are using to bring up that post.

But, it’s not always easy to see post rankings based on keywords.

So, Yoast SEO has added new integration for Wincher KeyPhrase Monitoring. This is a 3rd party service that does the actual monitoring. Yoast is just offering an integration with it.

And, he has another post for why monitoring your keywords matters.

This new integration is available in both the free and paid versions and I’ll be running tests with some of my DIY SEO course members who already do super deep data mining to see how well this thing works.

I’ll also be seeing what affects it has on our database and/or if it causes substantial extra bot hits on your site, as that is critically important to your resource usage.

Yoast already has integrations for SEMRush and such too.

But, I advise folks turn that and other such resource intensive features and integrations off as they are not truly helpful and/or cause way more bot hits than they are worth too.

So, I’m leaving it off on my main sites until after we finish our testing.

Speed Tips

Website Performance and the Planet

One of the most important factors in the success of a Web3 blockchain is how much energy it uses.

For the Ethereum chain, that’s called gas fees, and they are high on that chain – like super high when there is a lot of transaction congestion on the chain. You’ll pay substantially higher transaction fees during those periods.

And with the high energy costs in Europe, and the instability of delivery from oil reserves in Russia that bypass Ukraine and such, a global market like crypto has to remain concerned about how much electricity it takes to run the network. 

That means they are also inclined to find ways to do it with renewable energy. One city is doing all of their Bitcoin mining using thermal energy from their nearby underground lava flows!!

And now, this focus on being green is taking a real foothold with the hosts we use for our websites too.

The nice folks at WebPage Test have an article about website performance and the planet that addresses how one affects the other.

For our hosts to be more efficient, our sites need to be more efficient.

That means getting rid of all the resource hogs that contribute to slow speeds and poor security too.

Bad bot hits alone can account for 15,000-30,000 hits on your site a month. Those are not numbers you’ll see in Google Analytics, as it is only concerned with human visitor counts. 

But you can see these bot hits in AWStats at the host.

The additional security measures I spent 4 months testing in 2021 addressed those bad bot hits and we have been applying those measures on client sites for the last several months with no issues.

We have seen a 50-70% drop in bad bot hits!!!!

And if you think a security plugin will do this for you – think again. In fact, those things are resource hogs and chew up even more resources to do what little protection they do give you.

So, come in and get a site audit and make your site more green.

Web3 Tips

Adworld Conference has Web3 Track

I saw a promotion for the Adworld Conference that is coming up soon.

The top thing they are promoting is a new track for Web3.

Yep, that’s how much money there is to make on Web3 and the ad network is paying attention, and so should you.

You May Qualify for a Web3 Job Now

In your Web3 research, be sure to check out DAOs, which are Digital Autonomous Organizations.

They are great for networking.

But, they are also a great place to make money.

DAOs are in desperate need of:

• Social media managers
• Community managers
• Content writers

So, they are not just for devs and programmers. 

Seriously consider taking the skills you have already honed and use them to get your foot in the door with whatever DAO you find promising.

And who knows who you will meet in there that could lead to all manner of Web3 opportunities for you.

Apple’s Plans for an AR/VR Headset

Here we go!!!

Apple has announced plans for creating a very stylish AR/VR headset.

The concept one I saw looks like really cool snowboarder goggles, but even smaller and far less bulky.

And that’s WAY less bulky and heavy as the current Oculus, which is only for VR, or Virtual Reality.

The new Apple headset will allow you to look through the lenses and see AR, or Augmented Reality in the real world.

The initial price tag is around $3,000, which is 10x higher than Oculus, which is around $300.

But, that’s to recoup the staggering R&D costs, not to mention the bragging rights of being able to own the first version, which I expect will be a collector’s item someday if they have a limited production release.

Oh sure, they’ll refine it from the “concept car” version so they can mass produce it later at a lower price.

But like all things Apple, you’re going to pay more for the cool factor and the name.

And just like the iPhone, everybody will want one anyway because I expect it will have some super cool apps that only run on it, or get first release on it, just like apps for iPhone are now.

Walmart is Getting into Crypto and the Metaverse

Holy cow, here we go big!!

Walmart just announced that they made trademark applications for their own branded NFTs and cryptocurrency.

All of this will be supported in a special online community.

And my guess is that you’ll be shopping in their metaverse that mimics the products they offer online.

This is very different from the Nike and Adidas NFTs I reported on a few weeks ago where you buy their NFT sneakers that you wear in the metaverse.

Walmart will be selling real-world goods.

And they were super smart to jump on trademarks for a few phrases that will likely become common vernacular for us over the next year or so.

Some of those trademarks include:

• Verse to Home
• Verse to Curb
• Verse to Store

Besides the one story I have linked for you here, you may want to Google this because there are a LOT of different angles being reported on it, including some pretty dark ones.

The conspiracy theories are also running rampant – mainly because Walmart seems to be headed in the direction of developing their own crypto currency rather than using the stable coins we already have to trade with anywhere, like USD, USDT, and others.

Given the size of Walmart, that coin could end up being a widely traded currency itself, like Bitcoin already is.

And, parallels are already being drawn in some circles about Walmart creating its own currency just like China did – and speculation about that move is that the government intends to use it to control their people by having full control over their currency.

That particular fire is fueled by the fact that back in 2019, the price for VeChain spiked like crazy when Walmart used that blockchain for food safety tracking for its China stores.

Walmart is already using blockchains to resolve their supply chain issues. Just a week or so ago they released news about how Walmart US and Walmart Canada are using such a blockchain remedy.

So, investors are very anxious to know what chain Walmart plans to use for this new venture, as that will radically spike its price.

However, it’s just as likely that Walmart is building their own blockchain. We’ll see if it will be on top of Ethereum, or something isolated with its own rules and tech, though.

I have no doubt that the rumors are already running wild.

I also have no doubt that we’ll very quickly see more major chains jumping into crypto and metaverses because of this too.

So, what does this mean for you as a site owner?

EVERYTHING!

The metaverse is being normalized – quickly.

And you want to start learning about this stuff so you can start thinking about the bridges I’ve been talking about for how you get there as a community culture builder and a content entrpreneur.

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.