Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!
Tips this week include:
- How to Prepare for WordPress 5.0 upgrades coming to SiteGround this week
- You can now follow my new woodworking venture on Instagram
- A Flash Offer that ends Thursday for safely updating to WP 5.0 and trying Gutenberg
- More on my WordCamp US experience this past weekend
- 9 of the best headlines to get clicks
- What your blog post titles say about your brand
- Whether good blog posts are enough to improve your search rankings
- A new API that allows Google to index livestreams
- A rumor I heard about Gutenberg compliant themes coming to my fave framework
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Join me Live to Discuss Tips Tuesday
I hope you’ll join me live later today at 3pm ET / 12pm PT for the party and an interactive Tips Tuesday recap and breaking news discussion on the BlogAid Facebook Page. You can also catch the quick recap later that evening on the BlogAid YouTube Channel.
Replay
BlogAid Happenings
It’s been a rollercoaster week with WP 5.0 rolling out and WordCamp US right behind it.
I want to send a huge thank you to all of my site audit clients for following my suggestions and making the WP 5.0 rollout a calm day instead of us putting out all kinds of fires!! I was able to spend a little time in my woodworking shop.
How to Prepare for the WP 5.0 Update on SiteGround – Please Share
Due to all the potential issues with WP 5.0, SiteGround decided to play it safe by delaying the auto updates, that they inserted themselves into on everyone’s site, until later this week. I think that will be Thursday, but I don’t have confirmation.
I know there are a lot of niche site blogger groups that highly recommend SiteGround hosting.
Please be sure you share my post with them titled WordPress 5.0 Set to Release on Dec 6. It is a compilation post of all the steps folks need to take prior to that update rolling out.
They will thank you for it!!! Or at least they should!!!
And if you’ve been following me closely, you’ve already done these things.
Heartwood Art Creations on Instagram
As y’all know, I’m rebranding my carving site into a woodworking site.
I got the Instagram account going for it and I hope you’ll follow me there, as that’s where I’ll be telling the story as it happens on building out my new workshop and art room.
I’ll have compilation posts on the HeartwoodArt site as I go too, and I’ll be completely revamping that site in the coming months to take the focus off the carvings and onto the new, bigger projects.
And on BlogAid, I’ll be sharing what I learn as I rebrand and turn this from a hobby site to a money-making affiliate site, plus all the fun along the way.
Flash Offer on New WP 5.0 and Gutenberg Workshops
You need to jump on this quickly!!!! Registration for the new workshops on safely upgrading to WordPress 5.0 and then playing with Gutenberg, all on a cloned version of your site, ends at midnight this Thursday.
It’s only $10 too!!!
There are 4 workshops, and no live meetings. All of the instructions are on the workshop pages, so you can do them at your convenience.
I’ll start the daily emails on Friday, hence the reason to close registration on Thursday at midnight.
The workshop pages will remain live through the end of the month.
I know everyone is busy, but you don’t want to miss this limited time opportunity to know for sure if your site can be updated to WP 5.0 without issue and to play with Gutenberg while we have free tutorials available.
And please do tell all of your blogger buddies and groups about it so they don’t miss out either.
My WordCamp US 2018 Experience
I hope you had a chance to read my post on the sessions I attended via livestream at WordCamp US this weekend.
This is a super duper important transition period for WordPress and the community.
You’ll also want to read the comments on that post about a potential major split in the developer community as well.
I’ll be discussing this more in the livestream recap today on the BlogAid Facebook page, so I do hope you’ll join us, or at least watch the replay.
What’s happening right now will affect us for years to come, so you want to be informed so you can make good decisions for your site.
But, not all the sessions I attended were about WP stuff.
A couple were on marketing and I’ll be sharing more about that in today’s livestream as well.
That’s all the news from around here. Let’s jump into this week’s tips.
Blogging Tips
The 9 Best Headlines to Get More Conversions and Sales
You could spend a lot of money and time learning to write good titles for your blog posts that get you more clicks and all of it would be worthwhile.
Fortunately, the folks at Crazy Egg are giving you 9 of the best headline examples to help you get started.
I know some of you may see these as click bait, and you’re right.
You NEED some click bait, especially to get above the noise on social media platforms.
Go ahead, try a few of these out and see what happens.
And then start noticing how many things you click on that are like these examples.
This stuff works!!!
What Do Your Blog Post Titles Say About Your Brand?
And here’s another post on titles from ProBlogger about ensuring your titles reflect your brand.
What sets you apart from everyone else in your niche?
Ensure that your blog titles reflect that, and your personality.
That’s what folks latch onto and why they follow you.
Make it count right up front.
SEO Tips
Are Good Blog Posts Enough to Improve Your Rankings in Search Engines?
Oh hell yes, they are!!!
This post on BloggingPro covers exactly how all that blog content your write directly impacts your Google ranking.
Plus, it talks about the specific SEO considerations that go beyond the base content.
And I teach every one of them in my DIY SEO course.
That happens to be on sale for the holidays too!!
This is the kind of stuff most site owners hire an SEO agency for. But, you can and should do it yourself, as you are the one creating the content.
Hey, you’re already handling every item as you create the post. Why not get the most traffic you can while you’re at it?
Introducing the Indexing API and structured data for livestreams
Oh, you better believe I’m keeping my eye on this!!!!
I don’t livestream into a page or post on my site, but I’m seriously going to consider looking into how to do that now!!!
Getting my livestream featured by Google means one thing – more eyeballs, and that’s what it’s all about.
Right now this API is hard to implement, but I’ll be following devs closely who come up with a way for us to add it to our sites.
I know that Yoast has a premium plugin for video, and that’s the first place I’m going to check to see if he is on top of this.
I’ll keep you posted as this develops.
Theme Tips
Gutenberg Compliant Themes
I’ve heard a rumor that StudioPress may be re-releasing a few of their more popular themes that have been revamped to have even more native Gutenberg support.
Now, none of their themes will break with Gutenberg, but they don’t include native support for block styling and such.
I’ll let you know when this rumor becomes a reality and when I have a link for more info.
Wrap Up
That’s the news for the week. It’s a little short, as there wasn’t much else to report. I sure do hope you’ll come to the livestream for the rest of the skinny on what’s going on and what’s coming down the pike for us.
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