Tips Tuesday – WP 5.5 Tour, Astra, Bing, Sponsored Links, Video SEO

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• Why a Video SEO course is closer to on its way from me
• Kicking off BlogAid’s new Rebranding Services
• Why I’m checking into new member site and product platforms
• The Search Console tutorials are all updated in the DIY SEO course
• My Ultimate Guide for Creating Links in WordPress tutorial has been updated
• Why you need to use Sponsored AND Nofollow link attributes
• A video tour of what’s new in WordPress 5.5 and why we won’t be updating to it right away
• Astra got pulled from the WordPress theme repository and what it took to get them back in
• Bing has added image and video reporting
• My proof on why videos are fantastic for SEO
• And why I’m postponing the making of new Bing tutorials

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Join me Live to Discuss Tips Tuesday

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Who I Help

All tips, advice, and suggestions in this, and all BlogAid posts and tutorials, are intended to empower DIY site owners who are not on hosting that is restrictive in what you can and can’t do with your site and hosting setup. If you have any doubts about what type of host you are on and if the tips I give will work there, see this post on What is Managed Hosting?

BlogAid Happenings

I’ve been a post updating, tutorial making maniac this week. I’ll tell you about those in a moment.

But first, I want to share my delight in watching the Universe spin around to help me pivot BlogAid for all manner of emerging business.

Video SEO course coming

I’ve been talking about doing a new Video SEO course for the past few months. 

And right now I have a site audit client who is on Mediavine and she is super serious about making money with her site.

She’s adding every kind of video she can including in the recipe card, in the post, and on YouTube.

What a super timely opportunity for us both!!!!

We’re digging deep into it together to test all manner of video things, like:

• Ways to keep the site fast
• Schema markup around each of the videos
• Increasing time on post
• Increasing YouTube watch time
• Getting found on suggested YouTube videos
• Getting videos into the Google YouTube featured section
• How to make the video content for different metric purposes and end goals
• Making even more money with video ads

So, there’s a lot more to it than just slapping up a couple of videos.

My client is getting the extra tech help and testing she needs.

I get to test how all of the different SEO and schema markup things work together, or not, plus speed tweaks.

And then all of this will go into the new Video SEO course for you.

It’s a win-win-win.

And that’s how the Universe works when you put out your intentions.

Cooperative opportunities abound!!

Rebranding Services Kicking Off

You may recall about a month ago I had a super live chat with Kate Ahl of Simple Pin Media on what you want to consider when rebranding your site.

A couple of weeks after that aired I had my first rebranding client contact me.

The site side of things requires migrating the current site to a new add-on domain and then converting all of the links to that new domain during the migration process. 

Then deleting the old site and doing redirects there to take everything over to the new domain’s site.

And then updating all of your Google connections.

Since most of my Webmaster Training folks are designers, they do migrations all the time. 

And I teach how to do HTTPS conversions in the course anyway, and changing the links to a new domain are pretty much the same process.

So, I really didn’t consider making a new tutorial section for rebranding.

But, some of my webmasters are asking for that, as a way to have a handy checklist, so I’ll be documenting this first rebranding client project for those tutorials.

And I’ll be giving the client a break on the cost in appreciation for her patience with the job going a wee bit slower than normal. And she’s delighted to participate.

Again, win-win-win for everyone.

Checking into new member site and product platforms

A couple of weeks ago I heard a few of my webmaster peeps say that they really don’t like using Facebook anymore. And of course, that’s where our support group is.

So, I put out a survey to ask how many folks would want to either stay on FB or move to another forum/community app or such.

I also posted in a blogging group asking for alternatives for FB groups.

That got me to checking out several of the 3rd party member site platforms like MightyNetworks and WebFlow.

Years ago I used to offer a service to help folks setup a member site using plugins like WishList Member and MemberPress.

But when platforms like Teachable and such came along, those fell out of favor.

And now some of those platforms like Teachable are starting to fall out of favor and folks are looking to have a more comprehensive experience for their members, like the type of all-in-one platform MightNetworks offers.

It has a blog, member area, live events for webinars, and a Facebook-like community. Plus they have their own app so all of it is easy to access from mobile and such too.

I also believe that niche sites and selling products is going to be the next big wave of site ownership.

And several of my clients already sell their own digital and physical products.

So, I’ve been putting it out to the universe that I want to learn more about the site side of these things so I can offer that service and/or courses again.

And lo and behold, one of my long-time clients who has run a member site for years is ready to make a change to one of the more modern ways of doing it.

And she has digital products too.

So, we’ll be digging into that together.

Again, win-win-win.

And I am beyond grateful for all of the opportunities being laid in my path.

DIY SEO Search Console tutorials updated

While all of that up and coming biz opportunity stuff is great, my primary focus remains on what is already in front of me.

Last week, in the DIY SEO course,  I updated all of the Yoast SEO tutorials. Most were just minor tweaks and not worth the course members going back through.

And this week, I got all of the Google Search Console tutorials updated, plus a few new tutorials.

A few of the tutorials touched include:

• Discover report
• Sitemaps
• Core Web Vitals
• Security Issues
• Sitelinks Searchbox
• And more

There are now 20 videos in that one module alone that will show you everything you need to know about Google Search Console and how to use it to find crawl issues on your site, plus how to find the content that is doing well in search, and the content you can improve to do better.

Ultimate Guide for Creating Links in WordPress

While updating the Yoast SEO tutorials in the DIY SEO course, I also took the opportunity to update my guide for how to create links in WordPress. In fact, I republished it as part of my content revamp strategy of updating older tutorials.

That’s one of the workshops we did in the course for what to do with old content for better SEO.

Both Yoast SEO and RankMath plugins now have link options for nofollow and sponsored/nofollow in the drop-down when you create a link.

Most folks thought that addition was native to WordPress. It’s not. But it took me a while to figure out why folks who didn’t use Yoast SEO were seeing it too.

I believe that RankMath may have had it first, and Yoast just copied that feature, who knows.

But, either way, I’m glad to have that info and I updated the Ultimate Links Guide to show it.

Use Sponsored AND Nofollow

Google has publicly stated that all you need for affiliate links and such is the sponsored attribute.

Not true.

Google invented that link attribute and the Googlebots are the only ones that recognize it.

Google has way too long of a history of coming up with stuff, then complaining no one uses it, then dumping it, for us to trust them with our link status.

Plus Google is not the only search engine bot crawling your site.

You need to use sponsored AND nofollow on those affiliate links.

And that’s precisely why both Yoast SEO and RankMath made their handy interface the way they did, with both, to satisfy all search engine bot needs.

So, be careful about following un-vetted advice in blogger groups that tell you to do only what Google says.

Look before you leap

What’s good for Google may not be good for you.

And Google has a super long track record of just that, like AMP, which is about to turn into Google Stories, and will likely be just as bad for your site as AMP was.

I’ll be checking on their new plugin for it as soon as it comes out of beta and will keep you posted on that.

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

WordPress Tips

What’s New in WordPress 5.5

WordPress 5.5 is slated to roll out today.

We will not be updating to it right away.

Instead, go see my video and post on what’s new in this release, and what to watch out for.

And keep reading Tips Tuesday so you’ll know when it is safe to do this update.

Theme Tips

Astra pulled from wp repo for 5 weeks for affiliate link violation

Rut roh!!!!!!!!

You may recall a few Tips Tuesdays ago that I celebrated Astra for hitting a major milestone and becoming the only non-native WP theme to hit 1 million installs.

Well, they are learning a hard lesson this week!!!

Free themes and plugins in the WordPress repository cannot contain affiliate links within them.

In fact, there are all manner of restrictions and guidelines that theme and plugin devs have to follow about what they can even say in their repo listing about their paid versions.

Everything in the repo has to be free to use with no explicit promotion, including shipping the code with an affiliate link in it.

The inspectors at WordPress tried to warn and work with the folks at Astra over the violation, and it looks like Astra went into denial about it.

So, WP announced they would be punishing them for that by pulling the free Astra theme out of the repo for 5 weeks.

That would also mean that their 1 million users will not get update notifications for 5 weeks too.

Now, you could still download the Astra theme, and any updates, from the Astra site directly.

But what a pain that would be.

And then, just a few days later, the theme was back in the WP repo. So, I don’t know what’s up with that. And the damage to Astra’s reputation is already marred a bit over it.

Astra did post a public apology.

I just hope this wakes them up to how things are done in the WordPress community and play nice with the reviewers at WP next time.

SEO Tips

Bing adding image and video reporting

Woot!!!! Bing announced that they will be adding some filters to their Performance report so that you can see how your images and videos are doing in their search engine too.

Google Search Console has had this type of feature for a while and I love it, especially for Heartwood Art because videos are a huge part of its success both on YouTube and on the site.

Videos are great for SEO

In fact, I shared my July time on page stats with my DIY SEO course members and it clearly shows how well videos work to increase that metric.

The average time on site is over 3 minutes, with many of the posts getting 5-7 minute view time.

And that does wonders for my YouTube video rankings too, as that embedded video contributes directly to the watch time there too.

And that, in turn, gets my videos featured in Google Search up in the top video carousel.

So, it’s an amazing SEO circle of benefit.

And this is exactly why I want to release a new Video SEO course later this year.

It just works!!!!!!

Bing Tutorials postponed

Over the past couple of weeks, announcements have been coming out about new stuff that Bing is adding, like the new image and video reporting I just mentioned, and the URL Inspection Tool I reported on last week.

I’ve heard rumor that even more new things are on the way.

And all of that will continue to change the look and function of their Webmaster Tools interface.

So, I’ve decided to postpone making the new Bing tutorials for the DIY SEO course until this settles down just a bit. Otherwise, I’d be making them multiple times and you’d be watching them multiple times, and none of us have time for that!!!!!

So, we’d all rather just wait a few weeks.

Wrap Up

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

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