Posting Regular is Good for SEO and Google Analytics

If you post regular on your blog its good for SEO which in turn is also good for user traffic in your Google Analytics.

Oh?, I hear you say. And, what exactly is SEO?

SEO is an abbreviation for ‘Search Engine Optimisation’. This means, you are making the most out of specific key words in your blog posts to draw traffic. Incorporate the keywords in your post but remember, not too much and not too little. There’s a little more to it than this but we’ll come back to those another day.

Most important of all, write about something you know. Study up and get the facts, actual hard facts that you can back up.

Tell the truth about a product or place or whatever is your chosen subject. Make it interesting and visitors will come back.

Posting Regular is Good for SEO and Google Analytics

It takes time to get visitors so don’t lose hope. It’ll start with a trickle and if you just keep going, that trickle will build. While you’re waiting, become a better writer and learn more. Make connections with people through social media, talk, share, promote, repeat.

People will share links to your posts with friends or on their own blogs. They in turn will bring traffic. I’ve been in this game ten years so trust me, I know what I’m talking about.

Sounds simple enough, right! Sure does.

But, it can be difficult to pull out the laptop every night after a hard days work. If the most you can manage is one post a day, great. After a year you’ll have a blog with 365 interesting articles.

Maybe you’re more suited to one post a week or even once a month.

Some topics require more work and more research. If one new article a month is all you can manage, that’s fine too. But make that article the best on the internet and if you do, people will trust you know what you’re talking about. They’ll be back.

Just as important as SEO is for you to enjoy the process. Write because you like to not because you dream of making a million.

Its exceptionally difficult to make money with a blog. And I wouldn’t advise monetising your site for the first year or two. Unless you have regular traffic in the thousands everyday, I’d hold off on the adverts.

That’s it for tonight as its late and need to get my sleep. You know how it is… its difficult to pull out the laptop every night after a hard days work 😉

100% Google PageSpeed Insights

Now there’s something you don’t get to see every day. 100% Google PageSpeed Insight result.

Now I’m sure you’re wondering how exactly did I get 100%? And, might I add, this website is on a shared server. To be honest, it wasn’t anything I magically did, WordPress has just got some really good developers working on this baby.

Part of the answer would also be, simply, the fact that I’m using nothing on this site right now. I’ve only two plugins installed and activated, Akismet Anti-Spam and Google Analytics Dashboard for WP (GADWP).

The Theme we’re using is the WordPress default Twenty Nineteen, the new Gutenberg-ready theme. It comes out of the box with an odd blue filter over the feature image in posts that looks, well, just rotten.

Either you’ve already guessed or, more than likely, looked up and seen that crappy filer is turned off. Just go to Customise > Colours and deselect ‘Apply a filter to featured images using the primary colour‘.

So that’s pretty much that! I’m off now to finish customising it…

Chow!

A Simple Solution When Updating failed Saving Post in WordPress 5

How to fix the Gutenberg ‘Updating failed’ problem.

WordPress is a wonderful opensource project. But now and again it throws up strange oddities and errors that will prevent an easy workflow.

Recently, after spending an age restyling and modernising a very old WordPress blog, I ran into one of these strange oddities. The newly updated blog wouldn’t save or preview new posts.

What was the point of making the old blog pretty when I wasn’t able to publish new posts? Search after search revealed the same problem was bogging down many others. Gutenberg, the new post editor in WordPress seemed to have been at the root of the problem, or so it seemed.

After spending many hours trying to work through the, ‘Updating failed’ issue it was time to get to bed. I closed the laptop and decided to battle another day.

You can accomplish anything after a good nights rest

The following afternoon I opened up the laptop again. Determined to find a solution to this Gutenberg thing. Why was it preventing me from saving a new post or from previewing the new post in WordPress?

Then I remembered having another unused blog already set up right here on Boardtalk.org. As both sites were on the same shared server, I would be able to see if it was the server setting causing the issue.

Some more experienced WordPress developers referred to the server settings as being the cause. And at this point, I had tried every other solution out there.

The Boardtalk.org WordPress blog was a clean, virgin installation. With no re-rights on the htaccess, no plugins and no custom theme – just what came out of the box.

Who knew the answer was this simple.

Success, writing a blog post caused no problems. I could write, save and even preview without any issue. So it wasn’t the server settings.

Then I remembered my old go-to fixer when it came to those strange oddities in WordPress that nothing else fixed. Here’s how that went…

First, I went back to the WordPress blog that couldn’t save or preview new posts using the new Gutenberg posts editor. I always use Google Chrome but this time, believe it or not, I opened Internet Explorer.

Amazing, I could post, edit, save and preview new posts in Gutenberg using Internet Explorer without any problems.

The answer was simple, all I needed to do was to Clear browsing data in Google Chrome. Yep, that did the trick! No more ‘Updating failed’ when saving new posts in WordPress 5.

Who would have believed it was that simple to fix the Gutenberg ‘Updating failed’ problem… Clear Google Chrome Browsing Data!