Tips Tuesday – WP 4.8.1 Coming, HTTPS Gets Top Traffic, Content Funnels

Hello Happy Site Owners!

Tips this week include:

• Live Open Q&A Chat for DIY SEO members
• What’s happening in the Booming Bloggers Hub
• How to migrate your site to a new host
• How and why to switch your site to PHP 7
• An update on HTTPS and CloudFlare settings
• Site revamp project updates
• Site audit project updates
• My first look at the new Custom HTML Text Widget coming in WP 4.8.1
• When we expect WP 4.8.1 to roll out
• Plugins that are dropping your visitors because they can’t handle IPv6 addresses
• What you should know about sites converted to HTTPS attracting top traffic
• The difference in how videos rank in Google search and on YouTube
• How to check if your content marketing efforts and strategy are working
• How to create top-of-funnel content that works
• Using GIFs as highlight images

Listen to the podcast

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Catch the Live Recap

Join me live around 4pm ET / 1pm PT on the BlogAid Facebook Page to discuss this week’s site success tips.

You can also catch the replay on the BlogAid YouTube Channel anytime.

BlogAid Happenings

Open Q&A Chat for DIY SEO Members

Thur 27 at 1pm ET / 10am PT

I’m looking forward to chatting live with my DIY SEO Course https://learn.blogaid.net members this coming Thursday. We’ll be having an open Q&A chat to discuss what’s up with all the new Yoast SEO features, and SEO in general.

If you’re in the course, look for an email invite I sent out on Sunday, plus the meeting info is in the course member page too.

There’s no need to register beforehand, just show up live.

There will be a replay available, but if you attend live you can ask questions.

Fantastic First Booming Bloggers Meeting

I’m thrilled with how our Booming Bloggers group got started with a BANG!!!

Thank you so much to everyone who attended the live meeting.

And, I love your suggestions for creating challenges and topic ideas for future meetings.

Members have already stepped up to lead projects and share resources that everyone in the group will benefit from.

What a very rich village this is for us!

Plus, some of the questions that have been asked resulted in new posts on BlogAid for everyone.

How to Migrate Your Site to A New Host

Moving to a new host is not as simple as requesting the migration and pointing the DNS.

That’s especially true when CloudFlare and PHP versions and email and other site elements are involved.

So, I created a detailed post on all of the steps you need to take in a migration, and caveats to watch out for so that your move will be smooth.

How and Why to Switch to PHP 7

Switching your hosting account to PHP 7 may not be all that straightforward for some site owners either.

So I created a detailed post with what to check everywhere, on both your site and hosting account.

And it’s filled with things I’ve encountered while helping others make the switch that will help you avoid those bumps in the road.

HTTPS and CloudFlare

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been mentioning a recent HTTPS conversion that was odd.

It forced redirection to HTTPS even before I input the regex code to do that.

It’s on SiteGround and their support was only moderately helpful in tracking down what was going on. That’s because some of the factors involved are outside the hosting and involve Cloudflare.

So, I’m still working with Cloudflare support and running my own tests to get to the bottom of it.

And, there’s a big difference in how Let’s Encrypt is set up on Apache with ngnix than it is on Litespeed servers. And that helps explain why tests on SiteGround and A2 Hosting were different as well.

The reason I’m putting in all these non-billable hours to dig into is because I may very well have stumbled upon a fluke that actually cuts down on the HTTPS redirect chain.

That’s significant, and well worth investigating.

I’m keeping my Level 6 Webmasters updated as I go, via livestreams into our Facebook group.

Secure Site Setup Webinar Replays Extended Access

Thanks to everyone who came to the Secure Site Setup Webinar!!!

I’ve been reading through your survey results as well. Those always help me improve the classes.

I’ve heard from several of you how much you enjoyed seeing a site setup and secured from scratch.

It made my day for several of you to tell me how easy you found it, and that you’re no longer intimidated by working directly with the database and other elements in the root of the hosting account.

The replays were available to webinar registrants for 5 days.

But, I’ve extended access to the replays for all Webmaster members who signed up for the webinar. So, you’ll have extra time to watch the videos as you set up and secure a site yourself.

Site Revamp Project Updates

Right now I’ve got four clients in big site revamp projects.

Two are in sandbox play sites as they learn all about Genesis. A couple of them are getting ready to enter their theme redesign project.

Two more clients are in sandbox sites as they create the sites they are going to launch at the end of their Scratch to Published 1-on-1 classes.

Those are always a lot of fun to do.

Site Audit Project Updates

Me and my world class hack specialist and fave fix-it guy, Makis of FixMyWP, are doing a super deep cleaning and restoration on a client’s site to bring it up to par with security and performance.

She had bunches of sites under one cPanel account. Plus, who knows who got in there created all manner of mess with setting up staging sites and nutty security patches based on the main site.

Even Makis said it looked scary, and he sees blown up hacked sites all day. I told him he should have seen it before I did the first of the clean up!

So, if you’ve been online for years, especially from back in the day when you had to have a domain and site for every new business idea, then your hosting account is probably a mess like this too. And you’re a sitting duck for security and performance issues.

Request your site audit and let’s get all that squared away.

That’s what is happening around here. Let’s jump into this week’s tips.

WordPress Tips

New Custom HTML Text Widget in WordPress 4.8.1 – First Look

WordPress 4.8.1 beta has been released.

I could hardly wait to get my hands on it and see what they did with that new Rich Text Widget meltdown in 4.8.

So, I made a quick MaAnna Minute video tour for you, so you’ll know what to expect.

When Will WP 4.8.1 Roll Out?

The initial rumor was at the end of July.

But now I’m hearing rumors of first of August.

I think they are being careful to allow as many folks as possible to test the new widget fix things and report back.

If you have not updated to 4.8 yet, then 4.8.1 will not automatically update for you. And you’ll jump from 4.7.5 to 4.8.1 when you do update.

If you have updated to 4.8 then the 4.8.1 release will be an automatic update for you. Be prepared to update your Text widgets right behind that, if needed.

Plugin Tips

Your WordPress plugins might be silently losing business data

As security across all aspects of the internet changes, more and more ISPs are issuing IPv6 addresses to their users.

Well, lots of plugins are supposed to record the IP address of the visitor for things like comments and such.

Some of those plugins have database tables that won’t allow for the longer IPv6 numbers, so the data gets completely lost.

One dev made a list of 200 such plugins that have this issue.

Among the popular ones are:

• Redirection
• WordPress Zero Spam
• CForms2
• WP Affiliate

You’ll want to have a look at the list yourself, as there are several plugins that have to do with security and visitors on your site.

I want to thank webmaster John Sawyer for the heads up on this post.

SEO Tips

HTTPS Attracts Top Traffic: What You Should Know

In 2014, HTTPS sites represented 30% of Google page 1 search results.

In 2017, HTTPS sites represent 50% of page 1 results.

See where this is going?

Getting your site converted to HTTPS is something you want to budget for sooner rather than later. You don’t want your competition getting ahead of you over this.

READ: 10 Reasons NOT to Use Free HTTPS Conversion

Get it done fully and right the first time and enjoy the benefits from them on.

Difference in How Videos Rank in Google and YouTube

THE reason I follow Eric Enge and Mark Traphagen at Stone Temple Consulting around like a puppy is because they believe in due diligence with their testing, just like I do.

The other reason I read and watch everything they post is because the conclusions they draw from their SEO tests turn out to be spot on.

Recently they conducted a test to see why there is such a radical difference in the videos that display for a topic when you’re searching or Google or YouTube.

Definitely worth a read so you can see what it takes to get to the top of both searches.

Content Marketing Tips

Is Your Content Marketing Working?

Content marketing is the long game for getting traffic to your site.

And the only way you will know if it is working for you or not is to gather feedback.

Collecting all that data and then analyzing it can seem both intimidating and daunting.

If you’re in that boat, go check out this post from Neil Patel with a super guide on gathering and making sense of feedback data on how well your content marketing and strategy are working.

How to Create Top-of-Funnel Content That Works

ToFu – this is an acronym you need to get familiar with.

It stands for Top of Funnel and it’s one great way to get new audience eyeballs on your stuff.

There is a super post on Vertical Measures that talks about how to create ToFU content that gets results.

For the past year I’ve been learning about funnels. And it is paying off.

Facebook ads are part of my funnel system. And the thing I’ve learned about making them successful is that specifying a target audience based on specific content topics works best.

That means that you have to create the content first. And that’s your tip top of funnel.

This article also covers creating the kind of introductory content folks search for when they first feel a pain point and realize they need help. You want to ensure they find you.

Once they consume that content and like it, they are going to be a lot more interested in seeing more from you.

And that leads to conversion of some type, like:

• Following you on social media
• Signing up for your blog posts via email
• Signing up for your newsletter
• Contacting you

It’s not likely that they will jump into a paid offer on this first visit, unless your top of funnel content is a landing page and all it offers is a buy button.

So, definitely give this post a read and start thinking more about how you can create funnels, and where your content marketing efforts fall into each funnel.

GIFS as Highlight Image

Something else I noticed while on the Vertical Measures site was their use of GIFs on their weekly roundup post. The GIFs and the text on them are related to the post they are near, and they are just on the VM site. They aren’t part of the actual post.

I think it’s super eye-catching and sure will make you keep scrolling to see all of them. But I’m not sure I’d have the time to source all of those video clips.

What do you think of this practice?

Go have a look at them. They’re pretty funny.

Wrap Up

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

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

Listen and Watch

Get the BlogAid Tips Tuesday Podcast on iTunes or Stitcher

Catch the Tips Tuesday recap and BlogAid Today Tips livestreams on the BlogAid Facebook Page.
Catch the replay on the BlogAid YouTube Channel

Subscribe to all BlogAid Posts via email so you never miss anything!

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