Video And SEO Blogs

Google’s March 2024 Updates: What’s to Blame for Your Rankings Drop?

Mindy Young — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 14:37:19 +0000

Google’s got some big updates rolling out, and already, webmasters are seeing noticeable impacts on their sites, both positive and negative. Since it could take up to a month for the dust to settle, you don’t necessarily need to panic quite yet, but you do need to take a hard look at what these updates are intended to do and whether your site might be at risk.

Part 1: The March 2024 Core Update

This is a content-focused update that comes on the heels of the September 2023 Helpful Content Update. Google says that there actually won’t be any more “helpful content updates” as such: They’ve been rolled into broader core updates. The March 2024 core update aims to improve on what Google has already been trying to do, so if you’ve been listening to what they’ve been saying in the past few years, you should already be on the right track. According to Google, “There’s nothing new or special that creators need to do for this update as long as they’ve been making satisfying content meant for people.”

Part 2: The March 2024 Google Spam Updates

Google is going after three types of spam in an effort to clean up the SERPs: scaled content abuse, site reputation abuse, and expired domain abuse.

Scaled Content Abuse (aka Reckless Use of AI)

So many webmasters have seen the rise of generative AI as an opportunity to throw thousands of pages online with no effort, hoping that something will stick in the rankings. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and similarly, if you throw enough auto-generated text at the SERPs, some of it is bound to rank. That doesn’t mean that it’s actually any good or that people want to read it, though, which is why Google is cracking down, clarifying that using AI to create content in bulk in order to manipulate the search rankings is spam.

Some sites are already getting manual “pure spam” penalties for this, so it’s clear that Google is aiming to send a message.

Note that they did not say that using AI is forbidden. It’s not the AI that’s the problem: It’s the flood of low-effort, low-quality results that AI can be used to create. Just like any tool, AI needs to be wielded responsibly, guided by humans to create content that’s then human-edited to make sure that it’s helpful, informative, and accurate.

Site Reputation Abuse (“Parasite SEO”)

This type of spam actually appears on websites that otherwise have a lot of good, authoritative information, like those run by credible news outlets or even highly respected universities. The “parasite” content lives in a subfolder or subdomain that exploits the parent site’s reputation to get better rankings. Google’s spam update is going after content that provides little or no value to readers and isn’t closely overseen by or relevant to the main site.

Interestingly, Google has given sites a two-month head start to fix this, saying that they’ll start penalizing sites for site reputation abuse after May 5. That’s certainly not their usual approach, but it makes sense that they’d be loath to penalize some of the Internet’s most respected sites because they also contain spam.

Expired Domain Abuse

Similar to site reputation abuse, expired domain abuse aims to exploit the authority of a domain to rank low-quality content. In this case, it’s an expired domain that used to host good content; some people have made a lot of money from buying expired domains that have a good reputation, then filling them with junk. That’s not to say that you can’t buy an expired domain and repurpose it, but to avoid running afoul of Google’s guidelines, you should use it for a high-quality site with useful content, not spam.

Hard Pills to Swallow: Accepting and Fixing Your Weaknesses

It’s common for some webmasters to rant about Google after an update, complaining that they did everything right and Google is just dumb/evil/crooked/etc. You might see people saying things like:

“But my content is all human-written!” (It doesn’t matter. Humans can write low-quality content, too.)
“I worked really hard on this site!” (You need to refocus that effort on a better strategy, then.)
“If you’re not a big company, Google won’t rank you anymore.” (Not true; being a big company does tend to mean that you’re more trusted, but authority can be built up over time, and expertise doesn’t require you to be on the Forbes 500.)
“But I publish X posts a week!” (It’s about quality, not quantity.)
“Google loves to kill people’s sites for no reason.” (There’s always a reason.)

The fact of the matter is that blaming Google because your site doesn’t offer what they seek to reward isn’t useful. You can complain and make up excuses all day, but that’s not going to fix your rankings or get you out of a manual penalty. What will help is reading Google’s guidance and taking it to heart. Create content that’s focused on providing useful information for readers, not gaming the search rankings. The path to better rankings is paved with helpful content.

The post Google’s March 2024 Updates: What’s to Blame for Your Rankings Drop? appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

How to Create Good Content With Help From AI

Mindy Young — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 23:35:33 +0000

The advent of generative AI has made it easy to create content for websites, but creating good content is another matter. Webmasters and self-described SEO experts have unleashed a flood of what’s basically website spam, using AI to churn out mountains of quick, machine-written pages in the hopes that some of them might rank well. It’s a lot like how email spam works: If they put enough junk out there, occasionally, one of their messages will convince someone that there really is a Nigerian prince looking to give them a million dollars.

But just because so many people are using AI to create lousy content doesn’t mean that there aren’t good ways to use AI for your website. In fact, even Google says that “our focus [is] on the quality of content, rather than how content is produced”: If you can use AI to help you create content that’s high-quality and useful to readers, it’s totally fine to do so. The key is to think of AI not as a replacement for human effort and expertise but as an assistant that can help you spot opportunities to improve your content and create that content more efficiently.

Useful AI Tools for Content Analysis

Anyone can create an AI-powered tool that claims to be useful for SEO, especially now that ChatGPT Plus lets you make a custom GPT with very little effort. But if you want useful results, you’ll need to stick with AI tools made by trustworthy sources with known expertise.

Custom GPTs

Here are a few GPTs made so far by highly regarded figures in SEO:

GSC Keyword Ranking Changes Scatter Plot by Marie Haynes: Export a CSV from Google Search Console showing your keyword rankings over a period of time overlapping the date of a Google update. Then, upload the file to the GPT and it will make a scatter plot to visualize changes in keyword rankings over time, which can show how much the site’s rankings were affected by the update. Depending on what kind of Google update it was, you’ll have an idea of what you should work on to improve your content. (Haynes also has a “Which Pages Impacted?” GPT that can show which pages you should start with.)
SEO: Search Query Analyzer by Ann Smarty: Give this GPT a keyword phrase and it will go look at the SERP for you, then summarize the types of pages ranking for that phrase and the likely search intent. It also provides suggestions for what should be on your page based on this information.
Content Helpfulness and Quality SEO Analyzer by Aleyda Solis: Give it the URL of one of your pages and a keyword phrase and it will analyze the page content using Google content quality guidelines. If you provide the URLs of competing pages, the GPT can also compare their content.

RivalFlow

There’s also a really interesting tool out there that can do a competitor content analysis on a larger scale. It’s called RivalFlow, and it was built by SpyFu, meaning that it can draw on all of that tool’s data to inform its output. Features include:

Content Gap Analysis: Plug in your domain and it helps you find competing sites that outrank you, then compares your content and theirs to determine how yours falls short. RivalFlow identifies questions that the competitor answers more thoroughly than you as well as questions that they answer but you don’t, showing you opportunities to expand and improve on your content.
AI Content Generation: Once RivalFlow determines what you need to add to your page, it will generate content for you to meet that need, which you can hand off to a human editor as a starting point for their work.

The first part alone has the potential to be a huge time-saver. We should be doing this sort of analysis anyway, but doing it manually on your entire website can be incredibly time-consuming, especially when you think about how many pages you have on your site and how many competitors’ pages you’d need to look at to gather all of this information. RivalFlow automates this process with AI, making it a potential game-changer.

Using AI Tools Responsibly

The most important thing to know about using any sort of generative AI tool, be it ChatGPT or another product, is that you shouldn’t use text that AI writes without having a human edit it. It’s entirely possible that the AI output will be inaccurate, irrelevant to your intended topic, or just boring and uninformative. You can get into all sorts of trouble when you post AI content without editing.

But you can use AI content as a starting point. Look at the text it gives you, then edit, rework, or completely rewrite it to get an informative, engaging piece of text that meets the user intent for your target keywords.

You should also be completely transparent with anyone you’re creating content for about your use of AI. Never try to pass off AI-written content as your own: That’s unethical, and besides, your clients will be able to tell the difference between machine-generated text and content that’s created by a human to be interesting and helpful to the reader.

The post How to Create Good Content With Help From AI appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

The New Most Important SEO Tool Is One You Already Have

Mindy Young — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 15:47:25 +0000

It seems like just about every month, the SEO community gets into a tizzy because there’s another Google update. Often, it’s a core update, a routine improvement to Google’s algorithms (though “improvement” can be subjective, depending on how the results shake out for your site). And usually, there’s nothing specific that Google can tell us about it, nothing actionable that we need to know. Gone are the days of Panda, Penguin, or even Fred, updates that targeted specific things that we could fix, like spammy links or thin content. But it seems hard for people to break the habit of obsessing over every Google update and looking for the one factor that they need to address to improve their rankings.

The problem is that SEO just isn’t a simple, straightforward world anymore.

For decades, we’ve all been looking for and following very logical, mathematical rules to get our sites to rank. People have been hyper-focused on how many words are on a page, or which exact-match keyword phrases have the highest search volume, or how many backlinks a page has, or outdated metrics like keyword density. But Google’s algorithm isn’t just a math-based formula anymore; it’s not a set of rules that we can suss out and religiously follow. Rather, it’s a lot more like a person — like the users it’s trying to serve.

Playing Catch-Up

While we’ve been constantly trying to get to where Google is, trying to figure out the answer to an algorithmic equation that represents how to get a #1 ranking right now, Google just keeps on going, walking right past us toward where it’s going. And where it’s going is a place where numbers don’t matter as much. What matters is satisfying user intent.

At a recent SEO conference, Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan summed it up this way:

“Our systems are chasing what people like. If you chase the algorithm, you’re behind. If you chase what people like, you’re ahead of the algorithm.”

Sure, some of the numbers we’ve been staring at still matter. Search volume does give us an idea of what people are looking for, after all, and more backlinks, provided that they’re good-quality backlinks, can only be helpful. But Google itself has said many, many times that it’s not just about search engine optimization anymore: It’s about people. As Sullivan says, “Just be the best you can for your readers. For people. Everything we do in ranking is meant to reward that.”

What we need now is not just SEO. We need HCO: human-centered optimization.

The Math-Based Perspective vs. the Human Perspective

When the most recent Helpful Content Update hit, it was met with the inevitable complaints from webmasters who saw their rankings drop. People would rant about how unfair it was on social media, and then experienced SEO minds would weigh in and explain why the site probably deserved what it got. Quickly, a lot of these situations started to sound the same.

First, the webmaster would say, “It’s not fair that my page is now below this other page. Their page is shorter/has a lower domain authority score/doesn’t even use this keyword phrase/etc.!”

And then, an SEO expert would take a look at those two pages and say, “Actually, though, the content of their page is more helpful and unique than yours. Your page is covered with ads/is filled with fluff content/doesn’t show your expertise/doesn’t say anything that everyone else hasn’t already said a thousand times/etc.”

The webmaster was looking only at metrics. The analyst they ranted to, though, was looking at their site as a human being.

So what’s the answer? Perhaps we need to stop spending so much time obsessing over the output of a thousand tools and start using the tools in our own heads.

Be a Person: The Key to Human-Centered Optimization

If we want to create people-first websites, we need to start by looking at things as people. That means putting down the spreadsheets and taking a hard look at the user experience of your site.

Think about the people you want to attract to your website. Imagine yourself as one of those people. Then, consider what might lead them to your site. What are they looking for? What is their goal? What do they want to know?

Take a moment to mull that over. Then, go visit your website. Start on the homepage, or start on whichever page you think that person would have landed on from Google. Now, pretend you’ve never seen your website before and be that person.

Can you easily find what you’re looking for?

Think about your overall experience as you look for the information you want. Is anything annoying you? Maybe you’re confronted by a massive wall of text that doesn’t seem to say much. Maybe you can’t find what you need on this page and you can’t figure out where to go next to find it. Maybe an annoying interstitial keeps popping up while you’re trying to browse the site. Whatever pain points you come across, write them down. And remember, you’re not an SEO expert: You’re just a person, a regular visitor to your website.

If you want to take this exercise to the next level, when you’re done, go do the same thing on your competitor’s website. Would the user be more satisfied with their experience there? If so, why?

It can be hard for some people to do this sort of analysis. It’s hard to put aside your knowledge of your own website and your feelings about what you’ve created and put yourself in the user’s shoes. You may need to have someone else do an in-depth UX analysis for you instead, someone with a fresh set of eyes who can be more objective. But the insights you can glean from viewing your website as a person, as the person you’re trying to reach, can be invaluable.

The post The New Most Important SEO Tool Is One You Already Have appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

By: Bidyut Jana

Bidyut Jana — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 07:22:16 +0000

All steps guide in your blog have been help me to learn write the article of Digital Marketing …

What Can You Bring to the Table? Looking at the Future of Ranking

Mindy Young — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 17:02:14 +0000

In the world of SEO, artificial intelligence is coming at us from both sides.

On one side, we have Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) and the new AI-powered Bing, both of which can generate answers to user queries that often don’t require a click: People can get the information they want without ever leaving Google or Bing.

On the other side, we have ChatGPT and all of its generative AI cousins. These tools have made it easier than ever to create content, and so we’ve seen a growing deluge of AI-generated pages being posted online in the hopes of scoring easy SEO wins. This approach is rather like throwing fistfuls of spaghetti at the wall: Sure, a few pieces might stick, but you’ve also gotten pieces of half-cooked spaghetti all over the floor, making a big mess.

The problem with leaning on AI to solve the problem of AI-powered search is that AI can synthesize information, but it can’t create it. People are creating a flood of content with AI tools, but these tools aren’t built to write good content. They’re word-prediction engines, sentence-rearrangers, fact-compilers, and grammar bots — as Rand Fishkin succinctly puts it, they’re basically “spicy auto-complete.” You can make a lot of content fast by having AI write it for you, but you can’t make a lot of good content that way. You can’t make the helpful, people-first content that search engines reward with good rankings.

Then again, maybe rankings aren’t quite what they used to be.

RIP, Ten Blue Links

The goal has always been to get our websites into the coveted “ten blue links,” the first page of Google’s search results. But the whole idea of ranking on the first page has been fading away in the past few years. The links have been getting pushed farther and farther down the page, replaced by featured snippets, “people also ask” dropdowns, image carousels, videos, maps, and just about anything else that Google thinks the reader might find useful. And that’s all below the ads, which haven’t gone anywhere, of course. If you scroll down below all of that to the traditional organic results, they’re still there, but there’s no real “first page” anymore; the results just keep on going as long as you keep scrolling.

Google SGE and the new Bing take this to a whole new level. Depending on your query, you might only find a handful of links in the results that are returned, buried below the AI-generated answer to the query. The only external links that are easy to spot in these results are the ones that the AI cites as its sources.

Ranking in the traditional organic results is still important right now, but it’s starting to look like it could be less important in the future. Someday soon, the best place to appear in the SERPs might not be in position 1; instead, it might be within the AI-generated answer, as a cited source.

So how do we get those positions?

Using ChatGPT to regurgitate the same information that everyone else has probably isn’t going to cut it.

Don’t Just Transmit Knowledge: Add It

In 2022, Google was granted a patent on a technique to measure information gain, the amount of new information in a document relative to what the user has previously seen. This then became part of the 2023 Helpful Content Update, which makes sense — after all, repeating the same things that everyone else has said doesn’t make your content any more helpful than theirs. But beyond thinking of information gain as a ranking factor, we should also think of it as a citation factor. When Google SGE and Bing generate results using information that’s present on a million different pages all over the Internet, the odds that they’ll cite your page as the source for that information are pretty low. But if you add knowledge that nobody else has or that you’re the authority on, you’re much more likely to get that coveted citation.

Adding new knowledge to the Internet is easier said than done, but there are a few different ways that you can go about it.

Give Them the Scoop

We may not all be journalists, but we may still have news to publish on our websites. This could be as simple as a press release or blog post announcing a new product, but it could also mean publishing regular updates about what’s going on in your field and your insights on those developments. For a clothing retailer, that might mean keeping your readers informed about the latest fashion trends or having contests or giveaways that you’ll need to announce and promote. For a lawyer, it might mean posting about your victories on behalf of clients or newsworthy legal decisions relevant to your practice.

Share Firsthand Experience

Nothing is more uniquely yours than your own firsthand knowledge, and nobody’s more of an authority on your experiences than you. Firsthand experience can provide valuable information that other people are looking for: You need look no further than the growing popularity of Reddit (and its increasing prominence in the SERPs) for evidence of that. Posting about personal experiences with your products and encouraging your customers to do the same, either in blog posts or on Reddit, can help to spread brand awareness as well as add unique information to the Internet that Google might find valuable and citation-worthy.

Reddit in particular can be useful in more indirect ways, too. Becoming a part of the Reddit community and then mentioning the value of your products when it’s appropriate can help to build brand visibility and drive traffic to your site. Note the most important words in that sentence: when it’s appropriate. That means jumping into threads about your products to answer questions, or maybe even hosting an AMA if your product is one that a lot of people might have questions about, or commenting on posts seeking product recommendations to suggest your products like any other person might do. Be a regular person: Don’t be a salesperson. People on Reddit want honest answers and advice, not a sales pitch.

While you’re building up your brand on Reddit, you might actually earn some of those coveted Google citations, too, in a way. You might be surprised how often online journalists turn to Reddit for story ideas, including roundups of product reviews. If a website writes an article about the best products for frizzy hair, or the best Valentine’s Day gifts, or the best herbal supplements to help with insomnia, they just might see a review of your product on Reddit and decide to include it. That article might then be cited as a source when someone asks Google SGE or Bing for product recommendations.

Be a Thought Leader

This is the most challenging way to add knowledge to the Internet, but the knowledge you add is more likely to earn citations. Simply put, you need to make original and insightful contributions online that draw on your expertise. Certainly, you know a lot about the industry you’re in; now, examine what you know and glean something new. Can you predict an industry trend based on the customer behaviors your business is seeing? Or can you think of a new approach to solving a problem that your customers might have? Maybe you have a good idea that contradicts common knowledge. Think about what unique insights you might have to contribute based on your expertise. Then, create a blog post or white paper and share it online. If you’re the first person or the only person to have come up with an idea, you may very well end up as a cited source if that idea is relevant to a Google or Bing user’s query.

The Future Is Now

So should we throw out everything we know about earning better rankings? Of course not. After all, a lot of what helps a website to rank better is just good practice in general, like publishing original and well-written content, making sure that it’s crawlable and understandable by search engines, and providing a good overall user experience. But giving more thought to whether the content we create is adding value or just adding words can only benefit both our rankings and our potential for earning citations in AI-generated search results.

The post What Can You Bring to the Table? Looking at the Future of Ranking appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

By: Easin Miazi

Easin Miazi — Sat, 18 Feb 2023 11:23:08 +0000

Thanks for sharing your wonderful thought.This is very helpful for me.

By: CloudContactAI

CloudContactAI — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 12:23:21 +0000

Thanks for sharing this post. It is an interesting post for everyone. When I read about this post then got more information. I like it.

By: shahmeer

shahmeer — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 18:07:57 +0000

This is really awesome blog!

By: shahmeer

shahmeer — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 18:06:10 +0000

very in-depth content with some great links, thank you.

By: depth world

depth world — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 21:01:43 +0000

Thank you very much for this unique information. I am really thankful to you for this concept. Highly recommend reading this post.

By: ucmpl

ucmpl — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 06:13:47 +0000

This is really awesome blog!!! I finally found a great post here.

By: Bryan Peart

Bryan Peart — Wed, 28 Dec 2022 23:26:01 +0000

Hi Erin,

Very in depth content with some great links, thank you. There are hours of content in here. FYI some of the links in the article don’t work anymore – thought you should know. It’s going to take me hours to read/view all this! Thanks again!

Let’s Talk AI and Google.

Jim Boykin — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 21:38:41 +0000

Let’s have a Talk about Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Ok…we must talk about AI….it is here NOW, and I predict that 2023 will be the year that AI will have a major impact on nearly Everything.

With the release of ChatGBT a few weeks ago, the world has moved into new era’s of information. AI will change the world as we know it today – I truly believe that, as it takes our intelligence to a new level.

But, for the sake of business today, and for the sake of Google, we must also look at the opportunities, and the limitations, and goods and the bads when it comes to AI.

AI can help give ideas for topics to write (ie, tell it something like, “I offer internet marketing services and I have a website. what are 50 potential services pages that we could write up that might appeal to prospective clients”…. and wa-la, out comes 50 ideas… some of those will be useful, and some will not… but AI can also take it a step further because you can then tell it to write articles about the ideas that it, or you, came up with that could be useful….. there are advantages to having something 1. come up with ideas, and 2, executing those ideas (by writing the ideas).

So, I know that we have several clients who want “As much content as possible, as quick as possible, as cheap as possible” and AI, at first glance, looks like a dream… so let’s dig in a little….

So, in relation to SEO, we need to talk about what Google thinks about AI generated content first. John Mueller has been saying over and over again, and even recently, that Google doesn’t like AI content, and says that it is against the Google Guidelines and can harm your website.

On August 25th and again on December 6th, Google released their first ever “Helpful Content Updates”. According to Google, this update, “generates a signal used by our automated ranking systems to better ensure people see original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results.” I added the bold to “written by people, for people” because finding and penalizing AI content was one of the main focus’s of those updates.

These are worth reading: .

Google Says AI Generated Content Is Against Guidelines , SEJ – April 6th 2022
AI Generated Content Google Guidelines: Will Google Really Penalize Your Auto-Generated Content? – July 28, 2022
What creators should know about Google’s August 2022 helpful content update – Google August 2022
More From Google On AI Content – It’s About If The Content Is Helpful – SER November 8, 2022
Google: We Have Algorithms To Detect & Demote AI Altered Plagiarized Content – SER November 30, 2022
Google Helpful Content Update 2 – SEL – December 6, 2022

So let’s talk AI programs – below are some AI content programs:

ChatGBT https://chat.openai.com/ – * Best AI tool that I’ve seen…can do a lot more than just content…it can also write code, and do more.
Jasper https://www.jasper.ai/
Writesonic https://writesonic.com/
articleforge https://www.articleforge.com/
WordAi https://wordai.com/
Ink https://inkforall.com/
AI Writer https://ai-writer.com/

Here are some AI Programs for Video/Image:

Create AI Videos/People https://www.synthesia.io/ and https://humanpal.io/
Create AI Pictures https://labs.openai.com/
Text to Image: https://www.fotor.com/features/ai-image-generator/
Image Editing: https://prisma-ai.com/lensa
AI Art Generator: https://creator.nightcafe.studio/
Open AI Examples https://beta.openai.com/examples
Jasper Art https://www.jasper.ai/art

Now, for the scary – and Super Import Part. Here are the tools that can detect AI content:

https://huggingface.co/openai-detector/ – ** this one I would recommend the most
https://writer.com/ai-content-detector/
https://contentatscale.ai/ai-content-detector/
https://www.poemofquotes.com/tools/ai-content-detector.php
https://originality.ai/
Percent Human: A list of tools for detecting lower-quality AI content – Glenn Gabe
How to Detect AI-Generated Content (and Can Google Do That) – Ann Smarty

So I’ve been playing with ChatGBT a lot, testing what it can and can’t do. I’ve had it write some simple programs, and also some songs (ie, I’ve asked it to write the words and music to another song on Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band album, I’ve had it write Ferris Bueller’s Day off – 40 years later, I’ve had it come up with viral bait ideas, video idea, website ideas, and so much more).

I even asked ChatGBT for what I should tell all of you about AI.

Here are the Instruction that I fed it:
I run an SEO company. if i was sending an email to my clients talking about AI for content creation. What are some of the things that you would recommend that I inform my client about AI content and how to use it or how to not use it for website content. Write this in first person, in the style of hunter thompson and mark twain. Include an original relevant joke. Tell an interesting personal story about AI as well. Put headings above important paragraphs with interesting title headings. Also, include a quote from someone, but get the quote wrong, and make that quote big.

Here are the Results that it gave me:

Hey there,

I wanted to reach out and talk to you about using AI for content creation. As you know, AI technology is constantly evolving, and it can be a useful tool for generating high-quality website content. However, there are a few things you should consider before jumping into the AI content game.

“AI is the future of content creation!”

Someone, probably

The Pros and Cons of AI Content

On the one hand, AI-generated content can save you a ton of time and effort. It’s fast, efficient, and free of spelling and grammar errors. Plus, it can generate content on a wide range of topics with ease.

On the other hand, AI content may not be as engaging or persuasive as content written by a human. It may not capture the tone and style you’re looking for, and it may not be as effective at converting visitors into customers.

The Importance of Human Oversight

While AI content can be useful, it’s important to remember that it’s not a replacement for human-generated content. It’s crucial to have a human review and edit AI-generated content to ensure that it’s accurate and appropriate. AI-generated content may contain errors or inappropriate language that a human would need to catch and correct.

Originality is Key

Google and other search engines value original, high-quality content, and they may penalize websites that use copied or spun content. It’s important to ensure that any AI-generated content is unique and not copied from other sources.

The Future of AI Content

As I mentioned earlier, AI technology is constantly evolving. It’s possible that AI-generated content may become more sophisticated and persuasive in the future. It’s important to stay up to date on developments in the field and to consider how AI may be able to benefit your content strategy going forward.

“AI is the future of content creation. Or maybe it’s just a fad. Who knows?”

Mark Twain, probably

I’ll never forget the time I saw an AI write a poem that was so good, it made me cry. It was about the beauty of nature and the impermanence of life. It was truly a remarkable moment, and it really made me think about the potential of AI as a creative tool.

I hope this information was helpful, and if you have any questions about using AI for content creation, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Best,

This piece of text, FYI, scored a 99.98% fake on https://huggingface.co/openai-detector/

When I asked ChatGBT to “talk about the history of google and ai content and if they might penalize a site for using ai content”

It said, “Google has a long history of using artificial intelligence (AI) in its search algorithms and other products. The company has always been at the forefront of AI research and development, and it has invested heavily in AI technology over the years.

In terms of AI-generated content, Google has generally been open to the use of AI as a tool for creating content. The company’s algorithms are designed to prioritize content that is useful and valuable to users, and this includes content that is generated using AI.

However, it is important to note that Google may penalize websites that use AI to generate low-quality or spammy content, or that use AI to try to manipulate search results in an unethical way. The company’s guidelines specify that websites should not use “automated programs or services to create links to your site or generate large amounts of content.”

Overall, it is important for websites to use AI in a responsible and ethical manner, and to focus on creating high-quality content that is valuable to users. This will help ensure that the website is in compliance with Google’s guidelines and is likely to rank well in search results.

So I guess the big question really is, “Will Google Hurt your site if you use AI for content generation?”
Well, currently, Google is saying “Yes, we will penalize your site for using AI content.”.

Will that change in the future?
…Maybe.
Can Google detect AI content today?
Probability yes they can most of the time…

Will they be able to detect new AI content in 1 year?
…I’m not sure.

AI is not going away, it’s very smart today, and it’s only getting smarter, and in a few month, when it’s connected to the web, and Google, and Amazon, and Microsoft, and others release their AI’s to the public, then a new day of knowledge will be upon us. I believe that AI will effect us as much as The Internet effected our lives.

In the end, AI is just a tool, and it’s how you use that tool that will determine “how smart you are because of AI”. Jobs will be lost, how we do things will change, and new opportunities will arise…there is no stopping what has started, and by the end of 2023, we will be in a new era, an era that takes the knowledge of the world, and the internet, and it will start to “think” and to write and to communicate back and forth with us. We will learn from it, and it will learn from us… It’s about to be a long strange trip into a new era of humans, an era beyond the Internet, and era of AI.

Happy Holiday’s, Peace, Love, and Respect,

Jim Boykin and the Ninja Team.

The post Let’s Talk AI and Google. appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

How to Detect AI-Generated Content (and Can Google Do That)

Ann Smarty — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 04:11:20 +0000

Artificial Intelligence is taking the SEO industry by storm, and as it often happens in our community, there have been lots of discussions about how to use AI to manipulate ranking signals scale, especially content.

AI tools can write original content, and, from the reader’s point of view, good content. In fact, some AI-written content is scary good.

The truth is a well-written copy could save SEOs much trouble by helping them add meaningful text content to database-driven pages, like product categories, city-driven pages and more.

So can AI be an SEO solution?

Not quite.

John Mueller has been saying that Google doesn’t like AI content, and has often been quoted saying that AI created content is against the Google Guidelines.

In August and also on December 6th, Google released the first ever “Helpful Content” updates. According to Google, this update, “generates a signal used by our automated ranking systems to better ensure people see original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results.”

I added the bold to “written by people, for people” because finding and penalizing AI content was one of the main focuses of those updates.

Here’s some coverage on how Google may be treating AI-written content:

AI Generated Content Google Guidelines: Will Google Really Penalize Your Auto-Generated Content? – July 28, 2022
More From Google On AI Content – It’s About If The Content Is Helpful – SER November 8, 2022
Google: We Have Algorithms To Detect & Demote AI Altered Plagiarized Content – SER November 30, 2022
Google Helpful Content Update 2 – SEL – December 6, 2022

But can AI-written content really be detected?

Yes, even if it’s very well-written.

In fact, I was genuinely surprised by that discovery because to a human eye, it often seems undetectable. It often sounds natural and flows well, and can even add a lot of value (to me, it is not really “fluff” content that exists for the sake of adding more keywords to a page).

And yet, it can be detected, and if the tools below can detect it, so can Google:

GPT-2 Output Detector Demo

GPT-2 Output Detector Demo is open, free and requires no registration. As a result, it is sometimes down, because a lot of people seem to be using it at a time.

However it is scary good. Make it your first choice when analyzing content for possible AI impact.

GPT – Writer

GPT – Writer is another free and open AI detecting tool. I have found it just a bit less reliable than GPT-2 but it still managed to identify that my content blurb was not exactly written by a human being.

Content at Scale

AI Detector – Content at Scale is another tool that I have found quite reliable. It gives your content a human score, so aim at higher percent!

AI Content Detector

AI Content Detector is a free detector but it has a limit of up to 200 words. When comparing it to the above tools, I didn’t find it reliable enough.

Originality.AI

Originality.AI is the only premium tool on my list. It charges 0.1 cent per credit and checks your content for both originality and AI.

It does a good job detecting AI-generated content, so it is a good option if any of the free tools is down. It also offers API access and saves your scans.

My Own Take

Overall, when running my tests, I didn’t find it too challenging to bypass those filters. It takes just a few minutes of editing to make the text sound the way I’d say it. One quick edit per paragraph got me past all those tests. It did take me a couple of minutes to edit about 300-word text, so it is not exactly effort-free.

There’s no way to tell if Google using more advanced tools though.

Manual detection

There are a few approaches you can take to try to detect AI-written content manually:

Look for stylistic quirks: Some (but, again, not all) AI tools have distinct writing styles that may be noticeable to a human reader. For example, they may use unusual sentence structures, or they may repeat certain words or phrases more frequently than a human writer would.
Check the content for factual errors: AI systems may not always produce accurate or up-to-date information, so factual errors could be a sign that it was written by an AI.
Analyze the language: Some AI systems create content that just don’t sound quite normal, so analyzing the language used in the content for any irregularities or inconsistencies could be a way to detect AI-written content.
Check for a lack of personal voice or perspective: AI systems may not be able to express personal opinions or write in a personal style, so a lack of personal perspective in the content could be a sign that it was written by an AI.

Obviously, these approaches are not foolproof and may not always be reliable for detecting AI-written content. So when in doubt (i.e. when you were not that one actually writing content), try the tools above!)

The post How to Detect AI-Generated Content (and Can Google Do That) appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

8 Crazy Useful Instagram Hacks To Try Right Now

Ann Smarty — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 09:30:57 +0000

Instagram has become one of the hottest social networks around. But did you know you can do more than just post photos?

Here are eight insanely, awesomely helpful hacks to try right now.

Change The Format Of Your Picture

Once upon a time you could only use squares for your Instagram photos. Which was a real pain if you wanted something that didn’t fit well within those confines.

Now you can choose between either portrait or landscape, using the little format selection button on each upload. This gives you more control over what shows, and the final image that is published.

Get Notified Every Time Someone You Follow Posts

Stay on top of new posts by your favorite IG personalities. All you have to do is go to the user’s profile and select one of their posts. On their photos there will be a little line of three dots. Select it and hit Turn On Notifications.

This will give you notifications in the app. If you want them on your phone itself, go to the Settings and to Apps, then select Instagram and allow push notifications.

Center Your Bio Text To Make It More Readable

Alright, this one is a little weird to explain. When you want your text to be centered in the middle of your bio, you have to use spaces to do it. You can’t use HTML or any kind of coding, so you have to go super old school.

Copy these spaces (⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀), then paste them in front of every line of text you want. You can do this either through the mobile or web app. Then save. Make sure you don’t add in the parenthesis, otherwise it will show in the profile. This will center your text on each line.

You can also beef up your Instagram bio by creating a branded link in bio and connect it to your multiple social media channel and pages.

See Your Liked Post History

I know I am a habitual “liker”. I use it to save posts for later, without having to link to them through bookmarks or Pinterest. To find the posts you have liked, just select Options from the menu bar.

Then go to Posts I Have Liked. It will have each one right there for you to view. To get them out of your history, just go to the photo and unlike it by clicking the heart a second time.

Show Off Instagram Feeds From Multiple Accounts On WordPress

Do you have a WordPress blog? Want to show off multiple galleries from yours or other people’s Instagram accounts?

There are a lot of plugins that help you do this, but my personal favorite is Instagram Feed. You can make gallery slideshows for each account, and embed them on your chosen pages.

Track Hashtags In Real Time

Tracking hashtags is pretty great. The way I tend to do it is by using Keyhole. It is my favorite tool thanks to its integration with multiple sites, allowing you to track hashtags on several networks instead of just one.

I use it for both Instagram and Twitter, so I can keep an eye on what is trending on both (and what I just like to watch, like popular social welfare campaigns or joke hashtags).

Remove Past Searches

Want to get rid of those embarrassing searches? Go to your profile, hit the menu button, scroll to the bottom, and hit Clear Search. It will ask if you are sure. Once you confirm, they all disappear, never to be seen again.

Remove Tags From Photos

You have a bit too much to drink at a friend’s holiday party, and you know that photos were taken. Your friend uploads and tags them before you are able to tell her not to, and your family, boss, and coworkers all know your Instagram screen name.

Don’t worry, that pic of you doing something you regret won’t show up. Just go in and click Photo Options, Hide From My Profile, and Remove Me From Photo. This will both take the pic from your feed, and remove the tag.

Have some hot Instagram tips to add to the list? Let us know in the comments!

The post 8 Crazy Useful Instagram Hacks To Try Right Now appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

By: Yale

Yale — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 08:52:42 +0000

Thanks for sharing !

How to Do Link Building in 2022-2023

Jim Boykin — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 20:21:24 +0000

How should we be doing link building in late 2022 and into 2023?

Jim Boykin, CEO of Internet Marketing Ninjas, and Ann Smarty, IMN’s analyst, discuss how link building should work (and how we don’t recommend it working).

Link building starts with creating something linkworthy. This could be a very useful tutorial, a niche report, a free tool or a visual asset (like an infographic).

If you own a big brand with a solid following, that linkable asset will likely attract some backlinks on its own.

However, more often than not, you will need to invest some time into bringing that asset in front of people’s eyes in an effort for it to be seen by those people (journalists and bloggers) who can link to it.

There may be different ways to market your content for it to start bringing links, inducing

Getting it hot on Reddit or other places that journalists frequent
Emailing people who have written on similar topics or linked to similar pages
Getting it rank in Google (which is used by journalists and reporters looking for sources to link to)

Some assets can bring in links quickly, others will take months or even years to attract links, and some will not bring any links at all.
Not each of your content assets will get linked.

But don’t give up. Sometimes it takes more time and new channels to find people who will link to it.

There is another way link building works: Business owners buy links from spammy blogs and blog networks (often not realizing those links are worthless). Google has already mapped these blog networks out, and links form them will hardly do any good to your site.

This is a link building method we don’t recommend.

The post How to Do Link Building in 2022-2023 appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

Many sites aren’t using their blog correctly – are you?

Jim Boykin — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 22:25:16 +0000

Every site we’ve ever looked at has content that is buried so deep into the architecture of the site that it has 0 chance to rank.

And the reason for important content getting buried is usually the inherent way blogs work: As you add new and new content, older content goes down its archive and provides less and less value to the site.

And that content can make an effective part of a conversion funnel driving sales and leads.

Jim Boykin, CEO of Internet Marketing Ninjas, and Ann Smarty, IMN’s analyst, are bringing up an important question: How to create a well-planned content strategy that never lets important articles get lost and lose its value?

One common problem with many business blogs that just about any content goes there. This results in that content never bringing desired results.

To surface your important ever-green content, keep your blog to newsworthy and seasonal content, and create a separate section for your ever-green how-to articles and tutorials:

Set up a Knowledge Center

A well-structured knowledge center keeps all the content on the same level without letting it get buried.

This “expert area” should be well interlinked with matching products and product categories to keep related commercial and informational pages tied together.

It is also a good idea to list your most useful content in the main navigation, in the same folder as your product categories solving the same problem.

Create more specific blog categories matching your product categories

If you decide to use your blog for all your content, make sure to set up specific categories that would match your product categories and provide a context for them.

This way you can separate your newsworthy content from ever-green tutorials.

Whatever you do, make sure to interlink your ever-green content with your commercial pages to create topical link circles and ensure that nothing gets buried.

To create a well-planned content strategy, contact ninjas. We have years of experience in identifying important sections of the site and creating both SEO and conversion strategy to make the most of them.

The post Many sites aren’t using their blog correctly – are you? appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

By: Peter Patrick

Peter Patrick — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 09:15:56 +0000

First of all thanks for the wonderful article. I found your article via google search. Its been very useful and help for our business. once again thanks a lot. Keep writing and inspiring! thank you

Using and Optimizing Images: Search and Social Optimization Cheat Sheets

Ann Smarty — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 10:07:01 +0000

If you are running a website, there are most likely going to be plenty of images there.

While image-specific SEO is very-well explained in a few detailed guides, let’s try to create a very simple and easily-organized guide to using images properly:

1. Free Images You Can Use

First things first: let’s see where you can find free-to-use images online. That’s a popular misconception that you can actually use any image you find online as long as you credit the source.

Mind that you can only re-use images with a certain license:

License	Icon	You Can Re-use	For Commercial Use?	You Can Modify	Credit
Attribution-NoDerivs License		Yes	Yes	No	Yes (Required)
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License			No	No
*Attribution-ShareAlike License*			Yes	Yes

The two popular (and most effective) sources of Creative Commons images you can re-publish are:

Flickr Creative Commons
Google *Advanced* Image Search (Oddly, there’s no “Usage Rights” option in the sidebar of general image search interface but luckily you can access it using the “Advanced” search option)

2. Image File Names

An image file name is crucial when it comes to ranking an image in Google Image search results. I’ve seen a huge boost of image search traffic each time I pick a good name for my image. Here’s what has always worked like a charm:

key-phrase.jpg

Mind that traditionally, search engines read a hyphen in URLs and file names as a “space” – that doesn’t mean Google won’t understand an underscore, an actual space or other characters there, but a hyphen is the most natural and straightforward way to go with.

3. Image ALT Text and Image Title

That’s another very popular question: what’s the difference between the ALT and the TITLE attributes when it comes to describing an image?

Most basically, here’s the difference:

		Image “Alt” Attribute	Image “Title” Attribute
Official rule of use		Describes an image for search agents	Gives additional information on what an image is about (when it’s required)
Screen readers (like JAWS or Orca)		“Read” it	Ignore it by default (it is mostly considered redundant*)
Browsers	Google Chrome	Is displayed when images are disabled	Pops up when you hover over an image
	FireFox	Is displayed when images are disabled
	Safari	Is ignored
	Opera	Is displayed when images are disabled
	IE	Pops up when you hover over an image if notitle attribute is present

Conclusions:

(Very important!) Use ALT text to describe the image you are using;
Use title if you need to give additional information: do NOT duplicate it with alt text! (*accessibility rules only advise to use TITLE tags for abbreviations, forms, etc, i.e. where an explanation is really necessary);
(If there are many images on one page) Use different alt text throughout the page as it will be displayed as “text” in most browsers (when images are disabled) and in the email newsletter (when remote content is loaded on demand):

4. Image Size and Type

The good old rule has always been to keep your images less than 100K. My own rule of thumb: as long as I don’t sacrifice on the image quality, I make it the minimum size I can.

Google also recommends: “the less, the better”. Here are Google’s recommendations as to file types and compressors:

	Best used for	Recommended compressor
JPGs	All photographic-style images	jpegtran or jpegoptim
PNGs	Logos, banners, etc (where you need transparent background)	OptiPNG or PNGOUT
GIFs	For very small / simple graphics (e.g. less than 10×10 pixels, or a color palette of less than 3 colors) & for animated images	N/A
BMPs or TIFFs	Don’t use

More great tools to try for any image file type you are using:

WP Smush.it – a WordPress plugin that uses Smush.it API to perform image optimization automatically. It does all essential image optimization tasks: optimizing JPEG compression, converting certain GIFs to indexed PNGs and stripping the un-used colors from indexed images (except for stripping JPEG meta data) automatically.

5. Schema for Images

ImageObject is part of many important schema types out there:

Article (Handled by Yoast)
Product
HowTo
Recipes, etc.

Do your best to include images into your structured data, and you will likely generate visual rich snippets as well as get extra visibility through other search sections:

6. Image Thumbnails in Social Media

An image thumbnail generated with the snippet when someone shares your post on a Facebook or Google Plus wall is crucial when it comes to click-through and further shares.

While Google Plus is generally very smart at marking up your page and finding the best thumbnail to go with the update, Facebook seems to only rely on what you “point” to it. Besides, when using Facebook’s “Like” button, your readers have almost no control over the shared snippet and often an image that gets to your reader’s Facebook wall is absolutely random.

To ensure your beautiful, relevant and eye-catching images make it to your fans’ Facebook streams and get lots of attention, we are forced to use Open Graph Protocol to point Facebook to what needs to be grabbed from your page.

This WordPress Plugin makes integrating Open Graph very easy for WordPress bloggers.
Also, this tool will help you identify how Facebook “sees” your page as well as refresh its cache.

Other “Obvious” Factors

The tips and tables above mostly list image-specific factors of making your images search- and social-friendlier. That doesn’t mean other commonsense practices don’t matter here:

Your images should be surrounded with relevant “text-based” content to rank well in image search results;
Your images should be located at powerful pages (in terms of link juice and on-page optimization).

Have I missed anything? Let’s help make is an actual “all-in-one” guide: add your image SEO tips in the comments!

For more useful SEO- and social-media-related content, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and join us on Facebook!

The post Using and Optimizing Images: Search and Social Optimization Cheat Sheets appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

By: Plumber Melbourne

Plumber Melbourne — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 13:01:26 +0000

Your article gives very clear data

By: Water Treatment

Water Treatment — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 12:44:08 +0000

I really like this post…. Well done

Web Design Agency Atlanta - Responsive Website Design

Wed, 16 Aug 2017 18:29:19 +0000

Web Design Agency Atlanta - Responsive Website Design

Video Marketing Agency Atlanta

Wed, 09 Aug 2017 14:37:08 +0000

Video Marketing Agency Atlanta

Local SEO Atlanta

Mon, 31 Jul 2017 15:29:33 +0000

Local SEO Atlanta

Digital Marketing Agency Atlanta

Tue, 25 Jul 2017 16:22:14 +0000

Digital Marketing Agency Atlanta

WPHierarchy.com

David Hayes — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 16:30:52 +0000

WPHierarchy.com →

If you read my recent article about the template hierarchy, you may have caught this tidbit. If not, you may not have learned that we here at WPShout recently purchased WPHierarchy.com and have been working to update it.

I’ve long loved wphierarchy.com, made originally by Rami Abraham, as the quickest way to get a template hierarchy diagram in front of me when discussing the concept with new or established developers. The diagram was initially drawn by Michelle Schulp, but had gotten a bit out-of-date.

So we took over the site to get it back up-to-date, fix the most obvious errors, and make it again the best possible way to access and understand the template hierarchy for WordPress developers.

The project is open source and on GitHub. Please file any issues you find with the product as it exists now. We’re planning more and better tweaks to come, but we think the current version is at least improved enough to share.

The biggest changes that have happened since the diagram was updated around WordPress 4.5:

paged.php is no longer a template that comes after archive.php.
comments-popup.php is no longer in the diagram, as support was removed. (And it hadn’t been used since long before.)
The way that attachment pages (which I never use…) look for templates has changed order.
Custom Templates can now apply to all post types. (This is the thing I’m most hoping I can rope Michelle back in to help us better explain and visualize.)

Good WordPress Tutorials from Jason Yingling

Fred Meyer — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 18:25:19 +0000

Good WordPress Tutorials from Jason Yingling →

I recently stumbled on jasonyingling.me, and found it a really nice resource of honest advice from a working WordPress developer. It covers everything from improving page speed to the author’s experience trying to sell T-shirts online. I also enjoy the site design quite a bit: clean, attractive, and content-focused.

The web could use more well-designed, well-written repositories of developer experience, so enjoy!

How to Install a Plugin ZIP File in WordPress

David Hayes — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 15:10:31 +0000

Sometimes you’ll be handed a plugin by a developer or seller in the WordPress ecosystem and it’ll be a zip file. If that happens, you may not be quite sure how to install it. WordPress strives to make it easy, but you might not know quite where to look. That’s what this Quick Guide is for: you’re wondering what you do with the Zip file to make WordPress install the plugin so you can activate it.

Zip files, as most will have experienced, are simply compressed folders of other files in a single new file. And since a plugin is just a set of (mostly PHP) files, you just need to hand WordPress that compressed zip file and it’ll decompress it and put it in the right place for you. To do how do that you can watch the video below, or scroll on for our text explanation.

How to Upload and Install a Zip File Plugin

Go to the “Plugins > Add New” screen.
At the top, right next to the work “Add New” is a button labelled “Upload Plugin”. Click that button, and a new area of the page should become visible to you.
Into that area you can either drag-and-drop of use the “Choose File” button to use your system’s file browser to find it.
Once you’ve got the file found, click “Install Now”. This will trigger WordPress to install the .ZIP file as a plugin on your site.
On the screen you will see, you can then click the “Activate” button to turn on the plugin.

This same procedure is very similar to that for themes, but you have an extra click. You’ll first go to “Appearance > Themes” in your sidebar menu, and then the button in the same location described above (at the top next to the page title) will be labelled “Add New”. On the page that button takes you to “Upload Theme” will be there. The following steps are the same.

Hope this helps you! :)

“WordPress Theme Shops that I Trust”: Curated List of WordPress Theme Developers

Fred Meyer — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 17:53:52 +0000

“WordPress Theme Shops that I Trust”: Curated List of WordPress Theme Developers →

Finding good WordPress themes can be really hard, because:

Smaller “boutique” WordPress theme shops often do the best work, especially in terms of not overstuffing their themes with a million badly built, fragile theme options.
Smaller “boutique” WordPress theme shops are the hardest to find.

I recently talked to another WordPress professional, and he swore by this list of good boutique theme developers, from a guy who’s one himself.

To be honest, I found the list a bit hit-and-miss in terms of visual oomph, but I was definitely impressed with some of what I saw here. (To see my own tiny lists of theme developers I know I like, look here and here.)

The next time you need a WordPress theme and you can’t even with ThemeForest, take a look at this list!

Take the 2017 WPShout Survey! (And Get $20 ManageWP Credit)

Fred Meyer — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 16:54:28 +0000

WPShout has been publishing WordPress tutorials since 2009, and we’re always striving to create the best possible content for you.

This year we’ve published a new in-depth WordPress tutorial every single week, and have been consistently producing new video tutorials and sharing our favorite WordPress links.

We’ve also, of course, updated our “learn WordPress development” course Up and Running and proudly helped readers take their first steps in WordPress development.

We want to make sure we’re putting out content every week which best serves you, so we’ve put together a very short survey to find out what you’re interested in.

The survey will take you under 60 seconds to complete, and as a thank you, we’ll email you a free $20 ManageWP credit which you can apply to your ManageWP account for use with their paid services (including new and existing customers).

The survey is below. Thank you so much in advance for your response and continued readership of WPShout, and enjoy the free credit!

Take the 2017 WPShout Reader Survey

Easily Write and Understand Regular Expressions with Regex101

Fred Meyer — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 17:59:45 +0000

Easily Write and Understand Regular Expressions with Regex101 →

Regular expressions or regexes—custom formulas for complex string pattern matching—are very useful, but also extremely opaque if you’re not used to reading or writing them. Just to show you how deep the nightmare goes, here’s the officially approved PHP regex for evaluating whether a string is a valid email address:

/^(?!(?:(?:\x22?\x5C[\x00-\x7E]\x22?)|(?:\x22?[^\x5C\x22]\x22?)){255,})(?!(?:(?:\x22?\x5C[\x00-\x7E]\x22?)|(?:\x22?[^\x5C\x22]\x22?)){65,}@)(?:(?:[\x21\x23-\x27\x2A\x2B\x2D\x2F-\x39\x3D\x3F\x5E-\x7E]+)|(?:\x22(?:[\x01-\x08\x0B\x0C\x0E-\x1F\x21\x23-\x5B\x5D-\x7F]|(?:\x5C[\x00-\x7F]))*\x22))(?:\.(?:(?:[\x21\x23-\x27\x2A\x2B\x2D\x2F-\x39\x3D\x3F\x5E-\x7E]+)|(?:\x22(?:[\x01-\x08\x0B\x0C\x0E-\x1F\x21\x23-\x5B\x5D-\x7F]|(?:\x5C[\x00-\x7F]))*\x22)))*@(?:(?:(?!.*[^.]{64,})(?:(?:(?:xn--)?[a-z0-9]+(?:-[a-z0-9]+)*\.){1,126}){1,}(?:(?:[a-z][a-z0-9]*)|(?:(?:xn--)[a-z0-9]+))(?:-[a-z0-9]+)*)|(?:\[(?:(?:IPv6:(?:(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){7})|(?:(?!(?:.*[a-f0-9][:\]]){7,})(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){0,5})?::(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){0,5})?)))|(?:(?:IPv6:(?:(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){5}:)|(?:(?!(?:.*[a-f0-9]:){5,})(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){0,3})?::(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){0,3}:)?)))?(?:(?:25[0-5])|(?:2[0-4][0-9])|(?:1[0-9]{2})|(?:[1-9]?[0-9]))(?:\.(?:(?:25[0-5])|(?:2[0-4][0-9])|(?:1[0-9]{2})|(?:[1-9]?[0-9]))){3}))\]))$/iD

If that doesn’t just scream “Email!” to you, you might enjoy Regex101. It’s a free web app that will actually interpret the functioning of simple regexes (the types you’d see in a Stack Overflow post) into human-readable words for you, and will also tell you what you’re writing as you try to write regexes of your own.

Enjoy, and have fun pattern-matching those strings!

Hey, Cool Widgets! or: What’s New in WordPress 4.8

Fred Meyer — Fri, 09 Jun 2017 18:51:12 +0000

Hey, Cool Widgets! or: What’s New in WordPress 4.8 →

WordPress 4.8 arrived yesterday. As WordPress releases go, it’s relatively minor—especially compared to the massive treasure dump that was WordPress 4.7—but it does have some very cool new features, most of which are clustered in the Widgets system.

Specifically, there are now WordPress core widgets that do:

Image embeds,
Video embeds,
An audio player, and most importantly:
A full-featured Visual Editor in the Text widget!

The Visual Editor one is really cool, and is so important that I’ve been installing a plugin with the same functionality on just about every WordPress site I work on—so it’s really wonderful to have it in Core once and for all.

Other than that, WordPress 4.8 is also putting some of the scaffolding in place for the Gutenberg editor, which I confess I don’t yet understand on an “I can reach out and touch it” level (is it like a page builder?), but which—whatever it is—looks like a serious improvement over the default WordPress editor.

Enjoy!

Deactivate a WordPress Plugin via FTP

David Hayes — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 14:40:49 +0000

The conventional method of turning off and on plugins in WordPress works 99.9% of the time. But sometimes, when you’re doing development work in a fast way (possibly “cowboy coding” in a sloppy way… :p), you’ll need to make plugin stop being loaded by WordPress in a different way. For that very small percentage case, it’s useful to know how to disable a plugin when you aren’t able to login to the admin area of a WordPress site. That’s where the (S)FTP hack we’ll cover today comes in.

Reasons you might need to use this non-standard way of disabling a plugin (or theme) could be:

You can’t log in to a WordPress site anymore (password was changed, you lost it) but you *need* to disable a plugin right now for a client
Your just “white-screened” your WordPress site, and you know the issue is that you broke a plugin file, but can’t quite figure out how to fix it (see our Quick Guide about a possibly-better solution to a WordPress “white-screen of death”)
You just want to to know if this trick works (it does, as the video shows)
Other reasons I can’t think of

Here’s the video of how you can deactivate a plugin without having access to the WordPress dashboard:

How to Disable a WordPress Plugin When You Can’t Log In

Connect to your sites file system via (S)FTP. (Technically this works on any site in any connection mechanism, but this is the most likely.)
Find the folder of the plugin (or theme) you want to disable.
Rename the folder of the plugin (or theme).

That’s it. If you take those steps, WordPress can no longer find the thing it was looking to load, and it’ll “fail better” by just skipping loading the problem file. It’s not the most elegant way to do it—when you finally get to login to the site WordPress will complain to you about the missing file—but it does work. And in a desperate pinch, it’s a great little trick to have in your back pocket.

Course: Working with the Command Line and WP-CLI

Fred Meyer — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 17:11:59 +0000

When we think about “using a computer,” we usually think in terms of graphical user interfaces, or GUIs: interfaces (like Microsoft Word, the Mac OS, or the WordPress admin interface) that are specially and attractively designed, that have programs and windows and tabs that visibly open and close, and that let you click things and drag things and drop things and hover things.

For some development tasks, the command line is still both significantly faster and more powerful than any GUI tool.

It wasn’t always this way. The original manner of interacting with a computer is through the terminal, also called the command line: a stripped-down, usually mouse-free interface for entering programming commands directly.

Well, the terminal’s not just a piece of history. For some kinds of tasks, the command line is still both significantly faster to use and more powerful than any GUI tool that exists. This is especially true for a WordPress developer, thanks to one of the coolest pieces of programming ever to hit the WordPress community: the WP-CLI project, which hugely simplifies all kinds of WordPress tasks—everything from “delete the 100 oldest comments” to “update all plugins” to “export the entire database.”

This course is a gentle and thorough introduction to the magical world of the terminal, and to the hypermagical world of WP-CLI. Let’s dive in!

1. What is the Command Line? CLIs from First Principles

What is the Command Line? CLIs from First Principles

Key Point: Defining the Command Line

The command line, or the terminal, is the original way, and still a very useful way, of interacting with a computer.

The command line, command line interface (CLI), or terminal is the original way, and still a very useful way, of interacting with a computer. It does not use a graphical user interface (GUI), and generally does not use a mouse. Terminal commands’ other differences from GUI applications include:

Terminal commands are simple programs running once.
Unlike GUI programs which are always waiting for you, most terminal applications run quickly and quit.
Terminal commands are often dense with meaning and short, because people wanted to type as little as they could get away with.

The fundamental advantage of the terminal/command line is that a competent programmer can often work much more quickly and precisely than if she were clicking and dragging GUI objects. The terminal is also generally the primary tool that gives you the most direct access into the inner workings of a given machine.

Key Point: Windows Users Will Need to Work Harder for a Unix-y Shell

Microsoft Window’s shell is the “odd one out” from the BASH terminal that most other operating systems (all of which are based on or similar to Unix) use. If you use Windows, your best route is to install a Unix-y terminal, but results doing so may vary.

2. Quick Guide: Navigating the Filesystem from the Command Line

Navigating the Filesystem from the Command Line

Key Point: The Three Essential Commands for Navigating a Unix Command Line

Navigating a filesystem in the Unix terminal makes heavy use of three fundamental commands:

pwd, which finds your “present working directory”
ls, which displays the files in your current directory
cd, which changes your current directory

3. Quick Guide: The Basics of Manipulating Files from the Command Line

The Basics of Manipulating Files from the Command Line

Key Point: File and Folder Manipulation from the Terminal

This Quick Guide introduces a number of Unix terminal commands for creating and modifying files and folders:

mkdir foldername: make a new directory.
touch file.ext: create a new file.
cp original.txt copy.txt: copy a file from an old location to a new one.
mv original-name new-name rename a file or folder.
rm file.ext: delete a file.

4. 10-ish Unix CLI File Commands Every WordPress Developer Should Know

10-ish Unix CLI File Commands Every WordPress Developer Should Know

Key Point: Breadth of Command-Line Options

This article reviews in detail some of the initially introduced terminal commands, such as mkdir, touch, cp, and rm.

It also introduces the possibility of editing the contents of files using a command-line-compatible text editor such as nano. Finally, it introduces command-line version control using git or svn.

5. Mastering the Unix Terminal: Working With Permissions, Networking, and Other Key Concepts

Mastering the Unix Terminal: Working With Permissions, Networking, and Other Key Concepts

Key Point: Working with Permissions

User file permissions control which of a machine’s users can do particular actions to particular files and folders.

User file permissions control which of a machine’s users can do particular actions to particular files and folders. Three useful commands for navigating permissions from the Unix terminal include:

sudo: temporarily makes the current user the most powerful “root” user, generally after correctly inputting a “sudo password.”
chmod: changes file and folder permissions using a three-number system that varies from 000 (most restrictive) to 777 (most permissive).
chown changes file and folder ownership between the machine’s users.

Key Point: Network Utilities For the CLI

Command-line network utilities relate to connectivity between machines.

This section quickly reviews command-line network utilities: functions that relate to connectivity between machines.

ssh: securely connect to other servers. (Requires first generating SSH keys, a separate process.)
rsync: remotely transfer files to and from another server.
curl and wget: download content from the internet without SSH authorization.

6. Quick Guide: How and Why to Make a Bash Alias

How and Why to Make a Bash Alias

Key Point: BASH Aliases are Keyboard Shortcuts for the Command Line

A BASH alias creates keyboard shortcuts for commonly typed commands, which can be as short as one letter. This video guide covers the multipart process to writing a BASH alias.

7. The What, How, and Why of WP-CLI: WordPress in Your Terminal

The What, How and Why of WP-CLI: WordPress in Your Terminal

Key Point: What WP-CLI Is

WP-CLI is a program that allows you to use WordPress on the command line.

WP-CLI stands for “WordPress Command Line Interface.” It is a program that allows you to use WordPress on the command line. The core advantages of WP-CLI include:

Speed: a keyboard-only interface is faster for experienced users than a mouse-and-keyboard graphical interface can be.
Automation: GUI-less commands are much easier for machines to execute. WP-CLI can be used to, for example, very quickly run a single command on hundreds of WordPress installs.
Specific powers: WP-CLI has a number of useful tricks that don’t have GUI counterparts.

Key Point: WP-CLI Tricks

The following are some early uses of WP-CLI that show some of its usefulness:

wp core update: Quickly updates the WordPress version on a specific install.
wp core download --force: Re-downloads the core WordPress files, even if the WordPress install is up-to-date.
wp plugin install plugin-slug: Quickly install a plugin.
wp plugin activate plugin-slug: Quickly activate a plugin.
wp plugin update --all: Update all installed plugins.
wp theme update --all: Update all installed themes.
wp db export []: Export the WordPress database, optionally specifying a filename.
wp search-replace : Find-and-replace in the WordPress database.
wp media regenerate: Regenerate all image thumbnails.

8. Quick Guide: Installing WP-CLI

Installing WP-CLI

Key Point: WP-CLI Installation Steps

This video quick guide walks through getting the WP-CLI software onto your machine. The steps are as follows:

Open BASH.
Paste in the command: curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wp-cli/builds/gh-pages/phar/wp-cli.phar and hit enter. This will download the file from the URL onto your computer and into your current directory.
Make sure the above command worked via a run of `php wp-cli.phar –info`. If you get output, keep going. If not, redo step 2.
Make the phar executable via `chmod +x wp-cli.phar`.
Rename and move the executable into your PATH, so that you can type wp to run the command, with sudo mv wp-cli.phar /usr/local/bin/wp.
Confirm that everything worked by running wp --info.

9. Anatomy of a WP-CLI Command: wp database import

Anatomy of a WP-CLI Command: wp database import

Key Point: WP-CLI Commands Can Hook in the Methods of Entire PHP Classes

Registering WP-CLI commands uses PHP syntax that is quite similar to WordPress’s existing hooks system. However, the WP-CLI registration process has one major innovation: it can register in all public methods of a PHP class at once.

The article gives this code example:

WP_CLI::add_command( 'db', 'DB_Command' );

This hooks all the public methods of the (previously registered) DB_Command PHP class into WP-CLI. So the DB_Command class’s public import() method can now be run from WP-CLI with wp db import, and similar things are possible for all the class’s public methods.

Key Point: WP-CLI Commands Are Specially Documented

The article describes a way of commenting the PHP class’s functions that is especially helpful to command-line users. The documentation for the DB_Command class’s import() function begins as follows:

/**
 * Import a database from a file or from STDIN.
 *
 * Runs SQL queries using `DB_HOST`, `DB_NAME`, `DB_USER` and
 * `DB_PASSWORD` database credentials specified in wp-config.php. This
 * does not create database by itself and only performs whatever tasks are
 * defined in the SQL.

This text is actually what will show up in the terminal if the user types wp db --help.

Wrapping Up

This course should offer you an accessible introduction to one of a serious developer’s most powerful tools—the speed, simplicity, and directness of the command line—and to the WordPress superpowers of WP-CLI specifically. Thanks for reading, and we’d love to hear thoughts or questions in the comments below!

Diff Checker: A Browser-Based Tool for Code Comparison

Fred Meyer — Mon, 05 Jun 2017 16:38:31 +0000

Diff Checker: A Browser-Based Tool for Code Comparison →

Human beings are good at lots of things: assembling in nomadic clans of 100 to 200 people, making crude paintings on cave walls, and hunting antelope with spears are only a few that come to mind. However, one thing human beings are not good at is finding one or two differences between two almost-identical blocks of code. That’s called a “diff,” and it’s best left to a computer.

If you ever need to do a quick diff and don’t have an easy text editor configuration for it, you’ll love Diff Checker. Browser-based, free, and easy to use, Diff Checker will help you find any and all differences between two text files.

YouTube Advertising And Video Marketing Marietta

Sat, 30 Apr 2016 10:49:45 +0000

YouTube Advertising And Video Marketing Marietta

Choosing Keywords With Buyer Intent

Thu, 28 Apr 2016 19:01:08 +0000

Choosing Keywords With Buyer Intent

Search Engine Optimization - SEO Agency Marietta GA

Tue, 05 Apr 2016 17:06:27 +0000

Search Engine Optimization - SEO Agency Marietta GA

Local SEO Consultant Services In Marietta GA

Sun, 03 Apr 2016 16:14:14 +0000

Local SEO Consultant Services In Marietta GA

Video Marketing - MD Internet Marketing Solutions

Thu, 24 Mar 2016 14:59:07 +0000

Video Marketing - MD Internet Marketing Solutions

SEO - MD Internet Marketing Solutions

Sat, 19 Mar 2016 15:45:08 +0000

SEO - MD Internet Marketing Solutions

10 Reasons Your Followers Will Leave Your Brand on Twitter

Fri, 26 Feb 2016 19:49:07 +0000

Building an audience on social media isn’t easy, but keeping one around is even harder. On Twitter, where the posts are short and the interactions are fleeting,…

10 Reasons Your Followers Will Leave Your Brand on Twitter

Fri, 26 Feb 2016 19:00:22 +0000

Building an audience on social media isn’t easy, but keeping one around is even harder. On Twitter, where the posts are short and the interactions are fleeting, this is even more of a challenge. Unfollowing is as simple as clicking a button, and without warning, you may find yourself shedding followers for an action you didn’t know you committed – or worse, something you should have done but omitted.

Related: What People Really Think When They See Your Profile Picture for the First Time

Fortunately, while there are some random departures due to mood swings or accidental actions, most follower departures are clearly motivated and can be understood. That means they can be prevented. If you’re trying to build and maintain the biggest, healthiest follower base on Twitter, watch out for these 10 reasons someone might leave your brand.

For the 10 Reasons: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/271308

And more on Internet Marketing: http://internetmarketingqna.tumblr.com/

Video And SEO Blogs

Google’s March 2024 Updates: What’s to Blame for Your Rankings Drop?

Part 1: The March 2024 Core Update

Part 2: The March 2024 Google Spam Updates

Scaled Content Abuse (aka Reckless Use of AI)

Site Reputation Abuse (“Parasite SEO”)

Expired Domain Abuse

Hard Pills to Swallow: Accepting and Fixing Your Weaknesses

How to Create Good Content With Help From AI

Useful AI Tools for Content Analysis

Custom GPTs

RivalFlow

Using AI Tools Responsibly

The New Most Important SEO Tool Is One You Already Have

Playing Catch-Up

The Math-Based Perspective vs. the Human Perspective

Be a Person: The Key to Human-Centered Optimization

By: Bidyut Jana

What Can You Bring to the Table? Looking at the Future of Ranking

RIP, Ten Blue Links

Don’t Just Transmit Knowledge: Add It

Give Them the Scoop

Share Firsthand Experience

Be a Thought Leader

The Future Is Now

By: Easin Miazi

By: CloudContactAI

By: shahmeer

By: shahmeer

By: depth world

By: ucmpl

By: Bryan Peart

Let’s Talk AI and Google.

How to Detect AI-Generated Content (and Can Google Do That)

So can AI be an SEO solution?

But can AI-written content really be detected?

GPT-2 Output Detector Demo

GPT – Writer

Content at Scale

AI Content Detector

Originality.AI

My Own Take

Manual detection

8 Crazy Useful Instagram Hacks To Try Right Now

Change The Format Of Your Picture

Get Notified Every Time Someone You Follow Posts

Center Your Bio Text To Make It More Readable

See Your Liked Post History

Show Off Instagram Feeds From Multiple Accounts On WordPress

Track Hashtags In Real Time

Remove Past Searches

Remove Tags From Photos

By: Yale

How to Do Link Building in 2022-2023

Many sites aren’t using their blog correctly – are you?

Set up a Knowledge Center

Create more specific blog categories matching your product categories

By: Peter Patrick

Using and Optimizing Images: Search and Social Optimization Cheat Sheets

1. Free Images You *Can* Use

2. Image File Names

3. Image ALT Text and Image Title

4. Image Size and Type

5. Schema for Images

6. Image Thumbnails in Social Media

Other “Obvious” Factors

By: Plumber Melbourne

By: Water Treatment

Web Design Agency Atlanta - Responsive Website Design

Video Marketing Agency Atlanta

Local SEO Atlanta

Digital Marketing Agency Atlanta

WPHierarchy.com

WPHierarchy.com →

Good WordPress Tutorials from Jason Yingling

Good WordPress Tutorials from Jason Yingling →

How to Install a Plugin ZIP File in WordPress

How to Upload and Install a Zip File Plugin

“WordPress Theme Shops that I Trust”: Curated List of WordPress Theme Developers

“WordPress Theme Shops that I Trust”: Curated List of WordPress Theme Developers →

1. Free Images You Can Use