Tips Tuesday – SEO Workshops and Webinars, Invisible reCAPTCHA, Post Ideas Tool

Hello Happy Site Owners!

Tips this week include:

• Spring Cleaning Site Audit Specials
• The next SEO Workshop for Non-Geeks starting soon
• A free webinar no one else knows about yet
• Webmaster workshop surveys
• A great roundup for site owners from 95 experts
• Why I’m passing on Google’s new Invisible reCAPTCHA
• Why I’m passing on the new WordPress Google Doc integration
• Why old browser support is holding back WP development and HTTPS conversion
• Where did you learn about craft and lifestyle blogging?
• A tool to inspire new blog post ideas
• Skype hacked and what you should do about your account
• Why you need to reset all your passwords everywhere
• Why your blog needs SEO

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BlogAid Happenings

It’s been a slow week as far as site news and client work, thankfully, because I’ve been diligently working on awareness funnels. There’s a lot to creating those, but well worth it, as that’s the link in the chain that’s been missing from BlogAid. I’m great at service, but not so good with promoting all the helpful info I create. So, I’m doing something about it.

I’ve had to own up to the fact that most of my clients simply don’t have audiences where it’s appropriate to share what they learn on BlogAid. So, I have to find other ways to increase my reach. I think I’m the best kept secret of successful site owners.

That said, I want to give a big gratitude hug to everyone who takes a moment to Like and share and engage with me on social media and the blog. You are so encouraging to me and it lets me know that folks really are being helped.

I see you. Thank you!

Too Many Emails

With all these new awareness campaigns, I also want to address another concern I’ve heard from some of my followers – that I send too many emails.

Actually, I send 1/8th as many as most marketers do.

If you subscribed to BlogAid News, then you also likely left the little checkbox ticked to get my blog posts by email too. I see that most of y’all don’t actually read those emails and generally catch my social media posts.

So, if you want to, you can unsubscribe from the posts and still stay on the newsletter.

I used to offer just the Tips Tuesday category as a subscription, and maybe I’ll do that again, so you can get a weekly roundup.

Would that interest anyone?

And just to be clear, BlogAid News is the newsletter. Tips Tuesday is the weekly roundup podcast and post.

Thanks for a Great Webinar

Big thank to my co-host Mary Iannotti and to all those who came to the live performance and conversion site review webinar last week. I appreciate everyone who took the time to let us know how helpful it was to you. That really warms my heart to hear from you.

95 Experts Reveal Their 3 “Must-Do’s” for Solopreneur Success

I was honored and delighted to be asked to participate in this stellar roundup from Mike Allton with 95 experts revealing their top 3 must-do’s for online business owners.

It’s definitely worth reading through. You’ll get all kinds of tips from all different directions that will help you be a successful site owner.

Spring Cleaning Specials on Site Audits

There have been several security and performance changes recently. I’ve updated all of my sites with a some new code and plugin changes.

And I’ve been updating my client’s sites as they return for loyalty audits and HTTPS conversions.

So, I decided to run a spring cleaning special on site audits to encourage everyone to get their sites squared away with these new changes too.

You get $20 off, if you book in the month of March.

SEO Workshop for Non-Geeks Starts March 30

So, you’ve got an SEO plugin installed, and you do your best to optimize for a keyword or phrase, but it just doesn’t seem to be resulting in any additional traffic, right?

There’s so much more to optimizing your site for search engines. And you’d do it if you just had somebody explain it without all the geek speak and give you step-by-step instructions.

Well, that’s exactly what I do in my live SEO Workshops.

The next one begins on March 30th.

Each session focuses on one SEO topic and has a checklist that you can knock out easily.

And, we have a private Facebook group where you can ask questions anytime too.

I know several of you couldn’t make the last workshop, so be sure you get in on this one.

Free Webinar – 3 Phases of SEO for Non Geeks

I’m letting the cat out of the bag a little early on this one.

Y’all have probably heard me talk about the 3 phases of SEO and why you should most definitely DIY the first 2, which are technical and on-page SEO.

Well, if you want to know more about that, and get a taste of what I’ll be sharing in the workshop, join me for a free webinar on March 22nd where I’ll be covering all of it.

The link I have for you is to a little SEO self-assessment where you can get an idea about what you have SEO confidence with and what you’ll want to learn more about.

I’ll have a post announcing the free webinar to the public later this week, but wanted to let you in on it now.

Webmaster Workshops

I sent a survey to Webmaster Training members this weekend, asking what topics would most benefit them for live workshops.

They include:

• Secure site setup
• HTTPS conversion
• Site audits
• Security and performance fixes based on site audit findings

I may very well open these to the public too.

Is this something you’d be interested in learning?

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

WordPress Tips

Google Launches Invisible reCaptcha

You may have seen my MaAnna Minute video on how to Add Google reCAPTCHA to Contact Form 7  last week.

When I made that tutorial, I saw that Google had a signup form to be notified when they launched their new Invisible reCAPTCHA.

I almost delayed making the tutorial, until I had a look at just how non-invisible the new thing is.

WPTavern has a write up on it too, featuring the first plugin way of installing it. And like them, I don’t care for the sticky badge it puts on the right side of your site.

Basically, the whole idea is that folks no longer have to click on the reCAPTCHA field to prove they are not a bot.

I’ll take that click box over a sticky badge any day because I think my site visitors feel the same way and don’t mind clicking the box either.

Write in Google Docs and Publish in WordPress

Several years ago I moved my entire back office into GApps, now called GSuites and I love having a secure way to collaborate on docs and spreadsheets and such with my clients and teammates.

I also write all of my posts in Google Docs too.

WordPress.com has released a new, free Chrome add-on that allows you to publish Google Docs to your WordPress site as a draft post. It’s available natively on WordPress.com.

To use on self-hosted sites you’ll need to add Jetpack. And that also means that you’ll need to open up XML-RPC, at least half way, which I’m not at all a fan of.

Doing a copy/paste is not a big deal compared to keeping my site secure, so I’ll have to pass on it for now.

Old Browsers and the New WordPress

There’s a super interesting discussion happening on the WordPress core dev site about whether or not to retain support for older browsers as they try to move forward with sweeping changes to the WordPress editor.

If you’re a site owner whose analytics show that you have lots of visitors using IE, especially older versions, you’ll definitely find the survey in this post interesting, even though it’s more concerned with site owners instead of site visitors.

The fact that older browser support is still being considered is a statement all by itself. The numbers give them reason to do it.

I will also add that if you do have a lot of visitors on older browsers, specifically using Windows XP and any version of IE below 10, then you will not be able to use a free SSL certificate, as one of the elements of that is not supported by that XP/IE combo. So, watch out for that when you have your site converted to HTTPS.

Content Marketing Tips

Learn Craft and Lifestyle Blogging

For those of you who are craft and lifestyle bloggers, how did you get started?

How did you learn about running ads and all the other tricks and tips it takes to be successful?

I’m asking because I’d like to check out those resources and see if I can help more folks get good tech advice.

I appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment here on the blog or anywhere you see this post.

A Surefire Way to Discover Blog Post Ideas Your Readers Will Love

If you’ve been blogging for a while, some days it’s just hard to come up with new ideas for blog posts.

To help get you inspired at such times, Michelle Shaeffer found a neat free tool that will get you over that hump, and she even made a little video tutorial so you can see how it works.

Security Tips

Skype Hacked

If you have a Skype account, go reset your password. They have been experiencing hacks from Russian bots for the last several months.

This has been especially problematic on older accounts, prior to Microsoft purchasing Skype.

So, if you have an old account you’re not using much anymore, this is especially important for you to do, as those bots are sending out bogus meeting invitations in your name.

Thanks so much to Densie Wakeman for the heads up on this.

Reset Passwords

I’ll go one step further to say it’s a great idea to reset your password on all of your accounts periodically.

Security experts tell me every 3 months is preferred, but I know most of us aren’t going to do that.

It’s a chore, but so is cleaning up a hack. So, set aside about an hour and just get it done.

That’s especially important if you’re using the same password for multiple accounts. Don’t do that!!!!

Here’s my favorite strong password generator

And LastPass is a great service too.

SEO Tips

Why Your Blog Needs SEO

ProBlogger has been running a nice series on the What, How and Why of SEO.

This particular post explains how SEO is the most cost effective content marketing you can do.

That’s exactly what I teach in the SEO course and workshops. You can and should be doing this level of SEO yourself because you’re already handling all of those content elements on your site when you create posts and pages.

Just by knowing some minor tweaks, you could be significantly increasing your traffic, just like they show in this post.

Wrap Up

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

Find these tips helpful? Share them with your peeps!!!!

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Be sure to visit BlogAid.net for more tips and resources and I’ll see you online.