WordPress headaches? Consider them handled.

It’s now easier than ever for Mediavine publishers to tap into the trusted expertise of NerdPress, the go-to team for keeping WordPress sites fast, secure, and stress-free. 

NerdPress handles everything from speed optimization to updates to uptime monitoring — so you can focus on your content, not your code.

Thanks to our new partnership, Mediavine publishers get more than just support: They’ll unlock exclusive resources, smart site strategies, and a 15% discount on NerdPress plans built to help publishers grow.

Why We’re Partnering

Running a successful site today means juggling content creation, brand building, technical upkeep, and staying ahead of platform changes. We want our publishers to spend more time doing what they love—creating—and less time worrying about what’s happening behind the scenes.

That’s where NerdPress comes in.

With a NerdPress support plan, you gain a real partner in your site’s success, offering proactive, genuinely helpful WordPress support that leverages Cloudflare Enterprise and cutting-edge optimization features.

“As a longtime Mediavine publisher myself, I know firsthand how important finding the right partner can be. And ever since staying up until 2am with the Mediavine team playing Quiplash (true story!), I’ve felt like an “honorary partner”… so I’m thrilled to finally make it official.

Our teams work together daily, not only fixing problems as they come up on individual sites, but also identifying patterns and developing larger solutions for all their publishers. It’s clear that we share the same ethos of supporting independent creators, with some of the best technology available, and we’re excited to be able to help Mediavine publishers achieve even more!”

Andrew Wilder, Founder & CEO of NerdPress

What This Partnership Means for Mediavine Publishers

• 15% Off for 6 Months
  All Mediavine publishers who are new to NerdPress get 15% off any of NerdPress’s support plans: Sleep Soundly, Inner Peace, or Zen Master. All plans include Cloudflare Enterprise with Workers and are valid for all new customers.
  Mediavine publishers who are current NerdPress customers and interested in upgrading to a higher tier of support, you get 15% off the first six months of your upgraded plan! Reach out to the NerdPress team at support@nerdpress.net to get your discount.
• Potential Revenue-Enhancing Performance
  Sites running Cloudflare Enterprise tend to load faster and smarter. Plus, with Cloudflare Workers, you have the opportunity to test new features from Mediavine, designed to enhance ad revenue and performance. Like the cookie extender (in beta testing), which makes third-party cookies act like first-party data. 
  • When advertisers better recognize your audience, it helps drive higher bids and stronger revenue.
  • Site performance enhancements = better Core Web Vitals + SEO ranking
  • For publishers already working with NerdPress, reach out to their team to ensure you’ve got access to the Cloudflare Workers.
• Access to Exclusive Webinars and Trainings
  Learn from NerdPress’s founder and CEO, Andrew Wilder, and other NerdPress experts in Mediavine publisher-exclusive webinars.
• Expert Tech Support with a Human-Centered Approach
  If you’re looking for technical support, say goodbye to frustrating searches and guesswork. NerdPress’s real human experts are proactive problem-solvers, so your site stays smooth while you stay focused on your business.

TL;DR:

Stop stressing about your site. Our partnership with NerdPress gives you expert support, cutting-edge tools, and an exclusive discount, so you can do more of what you love.

➡️ Get Started with NerdPress Now (Mediavine publishers only) GET YOUR DISCOUNT

Mediavine has teamed up with Duett, the email marketing expert for content creators! The new partnership will provide discounts and exclusive resources to help transform how publishers engage with their audiences through email marketing. As part of this collaboration, Mediavine publishers will receive a special discount on Duett’s done-for-you email marketing system, Ready, Set, EMAIL!, as well as educational webinars.

Why Email Marketing Now?

In today’s digital world, social media changes frequently, and search engine results can be unpredictable. Email marketing remains a reliable way to connect with an audience you OWN. Email is a proven method that delivers consistent results and drives high-value traffic to your site. It also allows you to build strong relationships, share your unique voice, and tell your story directly.

Why Duett?

Duett is a boutique email marketing agency specializing in helping bloggers and content creators build strategic and sustainable email systems. Duett was founded in 2018 by email strategist and copywriter Allea Grummert and specializes in developing welcome and nurture sequences. They’re also experts in the content, systems, and automations that support content creators as they grow. 

With a proven track record of working with hundreds of six- and seven-figure creators, Allea and her team provide high-touch service and strategic insight, crafting on-brand emails that make subscribers want to stick around. They empower creators to drive traffic, grow revenue, and deepen their connection with their audience, without the overwhelm of doing it all themselves.

Duett is your go-to partner if you want to make a lasting impression through automated processes that engage your readers, build brand loyalty, and optimize conversions for sales and site traffic.

A Special Offer For Mediavine Publishers

Mediavine publishers receive a $200 discount on Duett’s Ready, Set, EMAIL, a comprehensive, done-for-you email marketing system designed to help you grow your audience and drive traffic to your content—FAST! Whether you’re just starting or looking to elevate your existing email marketing strategy, this 6-week service has got you covered. The first step is booking a discovery call with the Duett team to explore your needs and goals.

Here’s what you can expect:

• Two Ways to Capture Email Subscribers: We’ll help you grow your list effectively with tailored opt-in forms that resonate with your audience.
• Custom Welcome Sequence: Enjoy a personalized Welcome Sequence email that introduces your brand, aligns with your goals, and addresses your audience’s needs.
• Engaging Copywriting: Duett’s professional copywriters will craft content that engages your readers and maintains your unique voice, making your emails feel authentic and compelling.
• Seamless Automation Setup: Duett ensures a smooth operation for new subscribers—from sign-up to receiving newsletters—making the process as effortless as possible.
• Newsletter Strategy: Simplify your weekly email process with a well-thought-out strategy that allows you to share content with your subscribers effortlessly.

Who Is This Offer Made For?

Duett’s Ready, Set, EMAIL service is perfect for creators who want a solid foundation in email marketing without the hassle. If you need help setting up opt-in forms, a tailored welcome sequence, and a strategic newsletter plan, Duett is there for you. While you focus on creating fantastic content, Duett will handle the logistics, allowing you to easily grow your email list and drive traffic to your most important work—all in just six weeks!

Are There Other Partnership Benefits?

Mediavine publishers will also gain exclusive access to educational webinars aimed at mastering email marketing. Our first webinar will take place in mid-August, exploring “3 Ways to Leverage Email Marketing in a Time of AI.” These webinars are an incredible opportunity to enhance your skills and learn best practices from the experts!

We’re excited to help you elevate your email marketing game and look forward to seeing how this partnership benefits your journey as a Mediavine publisher. Stay tuned for more updates and get ready to take your email marketing to the next level with Duett!

In an increasingly complex digital world, it’s crucial to diversify website traffic sources and meet your readers where they’re actively engaging. Grocers List, Mediavine’s new partner, makes driving meaningful website traffic from social media easier through automation. Plus, their cutting-edge suite of tools helps food creators grow their email subscriber list and better monetize through affiliate marketing. Top food creators are already leveraging Grocers List to engage hundreds of millions of followers through innovative features like “comment for DM,” “save to email,” and “Amazon deep link.”

Through this partnership, Mediavine publishers receive a special 25% discount on any Grocer’s List offerings for their first six months.

Why Grocers List?

Grocers List is designed to help food and lifestyle publishers generate traffic, enhance email capture, and facilitate more affiliate sales. Its automated process seamlessly integrates with social channels.

• Automated Traffic Generation: Achieve an up to 75% click-through rate from DMs by bundling traffic and email capture.
• Email Capture & List Growth: Leverage DMs on social media to gain an up to 5% opt-in rate, establishing a reliable communication channel with your audience.
• Boost Affiliate Sales: Easily integrate Amazon deep links into your content, enhancing the buying journey for consumers and significantly increasing conversions.

Here’s How Grocers List Works

• Create Branded Link-in-Bio Pages: Customize your link-in-bio to effectively showcase your brand.
• Highlight Affiliate Content: Showcase your recipes, blog posts, or other affiliate content to boost visibility.
• Email Capture Integration: Embed smart email capture features that seamlessly connect with your email provider.
• Analyze Traffic and Conversions: Track your performance to see how these tools enhance audience engagement.

Key Grocers List Features

• Comment for DM: Automate direct message responses to drive traffic and user engagement with high click-through rates.
• Save to Email: Grow your email list with a one-click feature that allows followers to save recipes directly to their inbox, free from the uncertainties of social media algorithms.
• Amazon Deep Links: Enable seamless shopping experiences that reduce friction and maximize your affiliate income.

Special Offer 

For Mediavine publishers, this partnership means significant savings! Enjoy 25% off all Grocers List offerings for your first six months—whatever you add to your cart qualifies for the discount. You can test drive Grocers List features and add more anytime during this period.

Additional Partnership Benefits

Mediavine publishers can also look forward to a series of educational webinars featuring Grocers List founder, Ben Jabbawy. Starting in July 2025, the first session will focus on “Monetizing Your Social Traffic” and effective strategies for driving readers back to your site, providing valuable insights to enhance your online presence and revenue potential. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from an industry expert!

Success With Grocers List

Join the ranks of creators like Julie Pollitt of Back To My Southern Roots, who gained 75,000 new Facebook followers and 8,000 email subscribers in just three months with Grocers List!

Get Started

If you’re ready to maximize the value of your social audiences, visit Grocers List to access your discounted offering. 

We’ve teamed up with Grocers List to give you smarter tools, stronger support, and better results. Take advantage of your discount now.

If content creators have learned anything recently, it’s that the only constant in the blogging industry is CHANGE.

As we usher in the privacy-centric era for the web, the winds of change are blowing more strongly than ever, but what does it all mean for publishers?

On this Teal Talk, Jenny is sitting down with Mediavine CEO Eric Hochberger for a no-holds-barred conversation about the state of the blogging industry and everything Mediavine is doing to ensure that content creators not only survive the coming shifts but THRIVE.

Make sure to let us know what you think and check out the helpful resources below!

[powerpress]

Helpful Resources

• Helpful Resource Slide
• Grow and First-Party Data
• Exclusive Content with Grow
• Grow Product Tour
• Mediavine x Slickstream

Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING] JENNY GUY: Hello. Howdy, friends. Welcome. Welcome, one and all, to another episode of Mediavine’s Teal Talk. For any of our first-time viewers, welcome. This is our live program where we feature experts from around the blogging industry on any and all topics that could help content creators build sustainable businesses. So basically if it concerns publishers, we are talking about it here.

I am with you as always as your host, Jenny Guy. So happy to have you here today. We have a very big show for today, so we are just going to kind of speed through our little opening. But I did have to say that believe it or not, however you feel about the various memes announcing it, like it or not, it is already May. Mother’s Day is Sunday. 2022, I have to say, is winning the award for Bat Out of Hell years. Like, I don’t– I don’t know if anyone– like, how is it already May? That’s insane to me.

This is our final episode of Teal Talk before we go on our hiatus for our fifth annual Summer of Live. So I don’t know how that happened, but it is happening. It is the truth. And in a world this crazy where time has no meaning, it can be comforting to rely on traditions. And from Mediavine, for Teal Talk, for this show, we traditionally start things and end things with a certain guest. He’s here with me today. He’s Mediavine CEO and co-founder. Please welcome the one, the only Eric Hochberger back to the program. Eric, welcome.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Thanks, Jenny. Good to have my usual anchor spot.

JENNY GUY: It is.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: That’s the anchor, right? Yeah, OK.

JENNY GUY: Yes, anchor. You’re batting cleanup, for all you sportsball fans out there. Eric, is this year happening in a bananas, like, flying by crazily to you, too? Are you in shock?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: I feel like the last three years, so why make an exception to this year. Don’t even– is it May? That’s great. Awesome.

JENNY GUY: What does time mean anymore? It doesn’t mean anything. And I also– I’ve said this repeatedly. I’m sorry for people who are hearing me say it over and over again, but I feel like anything that has happened in the last three years, like significant milestones, shouldn’t count. Why? I turned 40. Why? That shouldn’t–

ERIC HOCHBERGER: That means I’m not turning 40? Is that the good news?

JENNY GUY: That’s what that means. That’s what that means. It’s crazy. OK, everybody. We are going to be talking about some important stuff today. We know you have questions about all of this stuff, because I certainly do. All of us at Mediavine do, so please post those questions for Eric or myself in those comments. We will get them to you. But let us without any further ado, Eric– we usually have you here to talk specifically about Mediavine updates, but today we have really widened our scope to talk about important things that are impacting the whole blogging, content creation industry.

There are some big changes on the horizon for publishers, and we wanted to break them all down. So I want to just start here at the top. I don’t know, again, with anyone else, it feels like we’ve been talking about the deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome for thousands of years, definitely since dinosaurs walked the Earth, and the rules keep shifting and changing.

Now there is no denying that it’s an incredibly complex issue that will impact multiple industries and requires a multifaceted solution and collaboration like never before from people who don’t typically like to collaborate. So to start out with, Eric, will you just give us the TL;DR version of where we are right now? What’s Google’s current deadline for the deprecation? Will it stick?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Well that last one I cannot predict, but I can tell you the stated goal for Google is still mid-2023. So in the middle of next year they’re going to start a gradual deprecation of third-party cookies that will be completed before the end of next year. So we have– I don’t know where we are. In about one year from now, since we did establish it is May, right? That is the month we’re in?

JENNY GUY: It’s not going to be May, it is May.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: OK, it’s May. Good. Then yeah, starting about a year from now Google is going to start deprecating third-party cookies, again, assuming that everything is alive and well in the Privacy Sandbox.

JENNY GUY: OK, so it’ll kind of be like what it was with Core Web Vitals, like a slow roll. We’ll start a little bit, and then we’ll just kind of expand out from there.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: So it’s going to be a little more interesting, because it’s going to be almost like an individual cookie is going to be– so as you start to set third-party cookies, the ones you set then are going to have a certain length of lifetime to them. So you won’t be able to set anything that will last longer than that year. So yeah, I mean it’s a very clever way of slowly putting an end to them without an overnight drop in third-party cookies.

JENNY GUY: OK, question that we have up there is for our audience. Are you currently taking steps to prepare yourself for the Cookiepocalypse? Let us know in the comments. And we have a perfect question from Paul Stamp. Our audience is honestly, the best, because they always predict where I’m going. It’s so good. I love them. But Paul said, “Uncertain times are ahead for display ads. How worried are you about third-party cookies going away? Can you give a percentage drop on revenue?”

And that is actually what I was going to ask you. We have heard some pretty dire predictions about what’s going to happen to programmatic advertising revenue from Google themselves. So what is the scoop? What can we potentially expect, understanding that all of this is prediction? We’re all gazing into our crystal cookie balls.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Right, so I think we all like to start with the scary number, and that is the 60% number that Google quoted. And that is 60% drop in revenue if third-party cookies go away and there are no mitigation efforts or no solutions or no alternatives. So if tomorrow we turn them off and nobody came up with any other solution, revenue would drop 60% on Chrome traffic.

So I’ll reiterate. I think the state of blogging is awesome and alive and well. And one of the reasons why is because first off, none of us have 100% Chrome traffic or Android traffic. Most of us have Safari, where third-party cookies are already gone. So you really only have about 50% of your revenue is at-risk from a third-party cookies go away. So that’s really a 30% drop, even using that Google number. But again, we’re working on a ton of mitigation efforts as an industry. Mediavine’s working on mitigation efforts as a company. Hopefully our publishers are working on some of their own.

And combined, we think all of these solutions mean an opportunity. Because again, remember, Safari already has no third-party cookies. So we can come out of this better than we were before as an industry. If we solve for a lack of third-party cookies, we don’t just unlock Chrome traffic in the future. We unlock that Safari traffic that we previously have not been monetizing well. So we can all use this as an opportunity to make more money, not less.

JENNY GUY: We are getting some of the best comments in here. When we asked what are people doing to prepare, Adrian said, “sure, working with the best ad network.” Adrian, we love that. Sarah said– Sarah, who I just saw last week in Los Angeles– said, “I’m taking the step of watching this video.” Nice. Michelle says, “I am just avoiding thinking or worrying about any of this cookie stuff and trusting Mediavine will have this covered.” All right, all right. This one– I feel, Susan. “I’m ready. I think I’m ready. I’m sure I’m ready.”

I feel you, Susan. We all feel you, because it’s been confusing. And one of the things I think that has been so confusing for everyone is Google’s solution has been a little nebulous. Things have been kind of shifting quite a bit again with the timeline has been moving around, but also we had– the birds were really big last year, the FLoC birds. They were in the Privacy Sandbox. So the birds are gone, but the Privacy Sandbox is still there. What about Topics? What is FLEDGE? That’s the newest thing I heard about, too. What are all these things? Where did the birds go, Eric?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Yeah, I think Google even got sick of the birds. So the Privacy Sandbox, for those who don’t know the bird jokes, are that they named every one of those solutions after a bird, and they use an acronym. And they were extremely complex, like FLoC was a Federated Learning of Cohorts, but the really cute name of FLoC instead. And they did this with a ton, including FLEDGE, formerly known as– or, I guess, TURTLEDOVE.

So there are lots of bird names still around from the ones that have not been killed off, but FLoC, which is not going to see the light of day, is being reborn as Topics, because I guess they’re getting away from the bird theme. So what is Topics? Topics is not really FLoC, but it is the replacement. So the idea is without third-party cookies advertisers will be able to learn what the topic of your site is about. And as a user browses multiple sites, it will pick out their top topics without necessarily giving away all of their browsing history, not having any sensitive categories, and sharing the limited data.

So Topics is still in its, really, testing phase or proposal, mostly, and we are working with Google on that. There are some issues. I think even Google will admit it’s not going to be a full replacement for third-party cookies, just one part of the solution. So that is one that will hopefully be live before that 2023 date of next year.

JENNY GUY: And we’re planning to– we’re working with all of these Google solutions, correct?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Absolutely. We work very closely with Google. We’re in the W3C, where these discussions are happening. So we are working actively on everything in the Privacy Sandbox.

JENNY GUY: Pause. What’s the W3C?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Do you want me to define every acronym? This is going to be exhausting. Or maybe I should stop using them. That would be the better thing.

JENNY GUY: Not a bird.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: So the W3C is actually who sets the standards for most of the web. So you’ll see W3C mentioned not just when it comes to ads, but W3C is who defines things like HTML and the things that actually power the web. So it’s a big deal. Google is very vocal and active in there, as you can imagine, on all aspects of the web, and now with ads. And it’s not just Google, though. This is where companies like Mediavine can join and have these discussions. And most of it’s in a public forum, even.

JENNY GUY: OK, so we are in the room where it happens, for anyone– I was listening to Hamilton before I came on. So we’re definitely where the decision makers are, and I know, and I can say this, because I’ve been listening to the conversations behind the scenes at Mediavine. Our goal is to ensure through all of this that independent publishers have a voice as we move into this new era for the web, yeah?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: No, 1000%. I think we are uniquely positioned. Again, we are– so there was a recent internet giant article that we posted on, but we are the only internet giant that is an independent company. We actually are still started with the same founders that started this company, I don’t even know how many years ago. In 2004– someone else could do the math who’s better at that. 18? Does that seem like 18 years? Again, time has no meaning anymore. So 18 or so years ago we founded this company, and it’s still been the same founders. We are still an independent company, which is why I think more than anyone we care about independent voices.

And we are making sure that’s why everyone– we all have a seat at the table through Mediavine. That is our goal. We are making sure that the independent voice does not get lost. Because I can promise you a lot of the other voices there who have the money to join these boards are not small, independent publishers. They are the largest names. They are The New York Times, they are The Washington Post, people who are a little less concerned about third-party cookies, and I could explain why, but they don’t necessarily have all the same interests as Mediavine Publishers, and we are here to help represent the voice of the independent publisher.

JENNY GUY: Their business models are totally different. Their audiences are totally different.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Exactly.

JENNY GUY: And what we’ve talked about a lot of times is that switching to a paid model or a paywall, like The New York Times, it’s just not going to work for all of the independent content creators necessarily that we work with, so we have to look for other solutions.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Exactly.

JENNY GUY: OK, I’ve got a few questions here. This one is from Teagan, and we’re going to shift to– well, let me take a look at where we are. We’ve talked about revenue. Oh, before we get into these. We’ve talked about how we’re cooperating with all of the privacy solutions. We’re more than cooperating, we’re testing. We’re working on incorporating it. We’re doing everything that Google has coming out. Is there anything else other than Grow, which we are going to talk about, that we are doing? What else is out there that we are– I talked a little bit about collaboration. What collaborations are we working on?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Sure. I mean, I can tell you one collaboration is there are what we call the authenticated traffic type solutions. And as we have partnered with names like The Trade Desk, which may not be the same household name as Google to a lot of people. But The Trade Desk is actually the second largest buyer of ad inventory, and it’s slowly actually becoming the number one for some of our sites, even. So if you haven’t heard of The Trade Desk, it is a publicly traded company. It is large, but again, not the household name of Google.

And we have partnered with them on a lot of their initiatives, including Unified ID 2.0, which, as an industry, The Trade Desk is pushing to help support the independent web. And that’s making sure that when a user logs in to any of these sites with either Grow, or we can talk about the Identity API, or our integrations with things like Slickstream, if a user logs into your site, we can make sure through Unified ID 2.0 we can get a lot of the power of third- party cookies, thanks to that initiative. So we’re partnering with big names like The Trade Desk, and we are also working on our own initiatives of first-party data and, of course, our Grow product.

JENNY GUY: Is it OK if I rewind and go real basic here for a second?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Sure.

JENNY GUY: Because I just want to– OK.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: I live this stuff, so you need to make me–

JENNY GUY: I know. You, too, and I do, too, to a certain extent, but not nearly to Eric’s extent. So what is the problem with third-party cookies? Why is those going away going to impact independent publishers so much?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Yeah, so third-party cookies are what power personalized ads as we know them today. So a third-party cookie is what gives an advertiser the ability to say, hey, this user browsed both, or whatever you do, and “The Hollywood Gossip,” so maybe they’re interested in cooking even though they’re on “The Hollywood Gossip.” That has been what has allowed what’s called third-party data, or the ability to give advertisers the ability to target.

When they’re on your site without third-party cookies, when a user is browsing an article on “The Hollywood Gossip,” all an advertiser knows this is a user on “The Hollywood Gossip.” They can’t guess their age. They can’t guess gender. They can’t guess income. All the things that advertisers love to buy against, they won’t have any of those abilities without third-party cookies. All they can say is, well, this person’s browsing a Kim Kardashian article, so they’re probably x. And that’s really what they’re going to be losing a lot of, that powerful targeting that they’re used to.

JENNY GUY: OK, so that’s the problem. The problem is– because we talk about that all the time with programmatic advertising. It’s not related to what your content is– the content creator’s content– it’s related to what the user is browsing.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Exactly. And in programmatic advertising they’re buying on the user, not the content. And they’re going to lose that ability, which is how most transactions are today. So that’s a drop in revenue.

JENNY GUY: And why they pay, because we know that they’re talking to somebody who’s a hot lead. If I’m Honda and I’ve seen someone searching for tires, car safety, all of those things, oh, this is a hot lead for me. I’m going to serve my ads to them, so I pay more.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Absolutely. It’s why you can see– this really exists in all forms of advertising. There are certain sections in newspapers that are more valuable, because you know what a reader is reading at that time, so the same concept. We need that ability to offer a premium that advertisers are willing to pay. Otherwise to be able to find their user, they’re going to have to spray and pray, if you will, or blanket the entire internet with ads, hoping to reach that one user, versus before, they were able to say, hey, I found my user. I’m willing to pay a lot more. They’re not going be able to do that without third-party cookies.

JENNY GUY: Thank you. That’s helpful. So everything that we’re doing, all of these different mitigation efforts, are looking at ways to maintain the privacy that audiences and everyone is demanding but still give advertisers the ability to have some targeting in what they’re doing?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Absolutely. So that is the delicate balance that we’re all trying to walk. And where we see things like Topics that maybe aren’t as powerful I think as advertisers want, or even what publishers want, but because we have to recreate the web in a privacy-centric way. Users have made it clear they don’t want to be tracked. They don’t want all the creepiness that was third-party cookies, where I put a shoe in my shopping cart, and then I go to a website, and I have an ad for that exact shoe telling me to check out.

Those were the types of ads that made users uncomfortable. They thought their phones were listening to them when they were on Facebook, all sorts of things that weren’t necessarily happening, but that was where users’ minds jumped to because we weren’t transparent as an industry. So that’s the idea. Let’s be more transparent. Let’s offer some form of targeting but not the full, more privacy invasive ways.

JENNY GUY: We definitely have all had conversations about how everyone is being listened to. And I just talked about cookies, I didn’t even type cookies, and yet I’m getting ads for cookies. How did that happen? Why do people– how do they know? This is actually a great question from Noreen. She said, “I understand privacy, but wouldn’t the user prefer ads that are of interest than generic ads?”

ERIC HOCHBERGER: So 100% agreed. It is a better experience to have ads that are more targeted to you. Nobody wants to see the gross, untargeted ads. We’ve seen them. If you browse your own site, as many of you do, for hundreds of hours a month as you’re looking at how everything is on your site, you start to run out of ads. Mediavine ads are very premium.

But as you start to get to the bottom of the barrel, you start to see things like a toenail fungus ad, or gross ads you certainly don’t want. And I promise you that’s not what a majority of your users see, but that could be the future of the web if advertisers have no targeting. You’re going to get lower quality ads that you don’t want to see. I just think users want that balance, protecting their privacy but still seeing ads that interest them.

JENNY GUY: Absolutely. OK, here we go. We’ve arrived at our favorite topic, Grow. Please give us our elevator pitch. And what I want to really target in on here is why we are devoting so many resources to this and talking about it so much. We’ve already said we’re doing things with Google in Privacy Sandbox. We’re working with The Trade Desk in UID. We’re doing a lot of mitigation efforts. Why is Grow so important?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: So Grow really puts the power that a lot of large publishers have always had in the hands of small, independent publishers. And remember kind of what we talked about before. Something like The New York Times has the ability to generate millions of users logged in. We know we can do that with Grow as a combined effort. So Grow really gives the ability for independent publishers to build authenticated traffic and first-party data, and we all do it together as a community. So we’re giving you tools for your website to help you generate first-party data while at the same time actually helping you build up your audience of users that will come back. So it’s a suite of engagement tools that help your users stick. They help them come back to your site, all while making you more money.

JENNY GUY: OK, you said a couple of terms in there that I want to talk more about. So Grow is designed to help independent publishers collect first-party data, or authenticated data, or traffic, or both, or what?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: So both. So I think a lot of the times those two get conflated. So authenticated traffic is simply the idea that a user logged into your website. And that is really the start of your ability to create first-party data, or using partnerships like the Unified ID 2.0 I talked about, to give advertisers targeting abilities. Those are going to be your most valuable users, because they are logged in.

You know who they are. You have a relationship with them that hopefully is a long-term relationship. You could be able to send them emails in the future, get them to come back to your site. That is the idea of authenticated traffic, your most valuable traffic. But that’s probably only going to be our ambitious goal of 5% to 10% of your traffic. So what about the rest? That’s where first-party data really comes in.

So if you can get a reader to accept personalized ads but not maybe give you their email address or log into your site, we can still start to build privacy-centric profiles about that user. So it’s no longer going to be hey, this user put this shoe in their shopping cart, but again, they browse a shoe site that’s running Grow, we can suddenly start to serve them shoe ads when they come to your site because they agreed, again, to these kind of personalized ads without necessarily saying, hey, I’m willing to log in and do everything you want me to do.

JENNY GUY: OK so it’s not just my site, though. That’s the beauty of Grow. If all of these different publishers are using it and then you come to my site, you don’t have to sign up individually for every person’s site. Is that right?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: That is the most beautiful part about Grow, it’s that it is a community, that we’re building all of this together. So we have millions of users, when previously if we were all doing this on our own, the most successful Mediavine publishers maybe have tens of thousands of readers. Most of us probably have tens of readers, if we were to build our own login system. It’s very hard to get people to create an account.

But all of us together, times the 8,500 publishers here at Mediavine and soon growing even beyond Mediavine, Grow allows us to hit millions of users in a much quicker rate. So our goal is to hit in the tens of millions of users, obviously, by the time third-party cookies go away and have a meaningful amount of users able to log in with one click. They don’t have to create an account. It’s very easy. They’ll see Grow. They’ll be comfortable logging into your site.

JENNY GUY: OK, helpful. All right, I’m going to start hitting some of these user questions. We have a ton. This is Teagan. “I already have thousands of registered users on WordPress, my most dedicated readers. How can I make sure these are first-party for the purposes of serving Mediavine ads?”

ERIC HOCHBERGER: So there’s going to be two ways to do this. That’s a great question, Teagan. You can use what we call the Identity API today. So that’s been live for over a year, and that is the idea of want to own the login system for your site. You want the users more siloed to your site. And that’s great if you have a following of tens of thousands of users or thousands of users, and you can already use that Identity API. We can put in a link for that, and that is the idea of simple, little code. You can make sure when a user is logged in. You communicate with us, and we’re able to make sure they’re served those personalized ads. You’ll make more money on those users.

There’s the alternative approach, where you could actually move over to Grow. This is something we’re working on when you’ll be able to import your users over. They won’t lose anything that they had. The idea is they’re just going to upgrade their account, if you will, to a Grow account. So it doesn’t just work on your site but across the thousands of other sites that are running Grow. So you have both solutions you can use.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. Julie. “Is there any way to compare Safari traffic revenue versus Chrome traffic revenue from within Mediavine?”

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Not yet, but that is something we definitely want to be able to show you guys, because I think that’s important. I think once people start to see that’s where Google is getting its 60% drop, it’s real, I think that should help a lot of publishers realize the importance of why things like Grow are so urgent to install now and not just wait until third-party cookies are gone. So short answer, no, not today, but in the future.

JENNY GUY: We have a lot of questions floating around about revenue. The 60% that Google said, they’re wanting– I think everybody is wanting you to give a percentage with all the mitigation efforts. What might it mean? And are we talking about only Chrome traffic losing the revenue, or is it all traffic? Is it your total RPM? Help us.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: So again, that’s only going to be on your Chrome and Android traffic and Chromium browsers that currently have third-party cookies. So things like Edge are actually just built, are just reskinned Chrome. So Microsoft Edge, formerly known as IE, is now just Chrome. So there are going to be other browsers, but they’re a small percentage of the market.

We care most about is what’s happening with Chrome and what’s happening with Safari. Those are the two main players. Safari, again, third-party cookies are already gone, so when third-party cookies go away in Chrome, your Safari traffic isn’t going to be worth less. If anything it might be worth a little bit more, again, because of all these mitigation efforts. Can I give you an exact percentage? Not entirely, because that’s all going to depend on sites and how involved everyone gets in Grow.

So I can tell you that users that are logged in to Grow are worth just a ton more when there’s no third-party cookies. They might be worth two to three times as much as a user who isn’t logged in. Are you going to make two to three times as much money if you get everyone to log in? Sure, but that’s not realistic unless you have a site that, again, has an incredibly dedicated base.

Maybe you have some sort of exclusive content that users are willing to log into, but if 5% to 10% of your users are making you three times more, that can be very nice towards mitigating a 30% drop by making 30% more money. We don’t have exact figures because it’s going to depend on site, but we think that this is an opportunity to make more, not less.

JENNY GUY: OK, this is a great question, and we already talked about this a little bit, but I want to get really granular. If I can’t get– Tanya says if I can’t get a significant decent portion of my users to authenticate via Grow– not a lot of people seem to sign up create accounts from what I’ve seen– how does grow still help with the Cookiepocalypse?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: So that’s a great question. So again, first we’re going to say that Grow, where it is today, is not necessarily where Grow is going to be in two years. I think you’ve seen a ton of developments coming to Grow just really over the last year and a half or so we’ve had this product. But over the next two years it’s going to change even more, not just because we’re developing it but because the internet as a whole is going to be changing.

I think users are going to come to expect to log in, consent to personalized ads, or something more similar to what Grow is already introducing today. We’re just very early on in what the future of the web is going to look like. So don’t stress when you can’t get a ton of users to log in today. This is going to be a slow build. So your goal is to try to slowly introduce them to it.

You’re going to be adding more and more features that Grow has today, and again, more features that it adds in the future to encourage these readers to log in. So it is still going to help, and one of the beauties, again, if other sites are all running this together, those are shared users. And hopefully some of them can even come logged into your site automatically with some ideas we have in the future as well.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. OK. We’ve got more questions, but I want to break in with this one. Who is Grow for?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Grow is for everyone. So this is going to sound crazy. Our goal is not just for Grow to be for Mediavine publishers, but we really think Grow should be for the web. One of the reasons why is our industry as a whole has not come up with a lot of great solutions to third-party cookies. The Privacy Sandbox, as we mentioned, has one real proposal right now, maybe two, and none of them have gone live.

So there’s been a lot of outside interest– you’d be surprised– to run Grow, even from names you wouldn’t think. So not a traditional Mediavine lifestyle blogger, but large-name publishers don’t have their own solutions to this. So we partially want to offer Grow to help more of the web monetize with this first-party data.

But really because as a user, if you want Grow to be successful, you want to Grow on as many sites as possible. You don’t just want your login to work on 5,000 sites that are running Grow. Let’s get that login working across the web. So that’s one of our goals, getting Grow as universal as we can across the web so that a reader gets more benefit from creating and logging in with Grow.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. OK, so what that means– can you take that from the high level into a more specific level? What does it mean with people not– so first, Mediavine publishers can use it right now, yes? Anyone can be using Grow?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: If you’re a Mediavine publisher, go right in your Mediavine dashboard. You can toggle it on, and you’ll be running Grow within minutes, maybe seconds if you’re already logged in. If you are a non-Mediavine publisher or you have a second site that’s not yet with Mediavine, we are introducing Grow for the entire web, for the entire world. It is coming soon. It is actually being actively tested today on non-Mediavine sites, and we hope to have that live as soon as we can for more people to be able to sign up for it.

JENNY GUY: And if you’re interested in that today, we have a link that we’re going to be sharing that you can put your name down if you– so if you’re a Mediavine publisher and there are non-Mediavine sites that you’re interested in having Grow on, or if you’re not quite ready for Mediavine yet, or you’re working with another full service ad management company– whatever your circumstances are– if you’re not working with us for ad management, we are going to share a link towards the end of the live and again in the resource doc that you can sign up for.

We are pulling names from that as we move forward and expand our testing efforts to make Grow for non-Mediavine publishers. So just signing up doesn’t mean that you’re immediately going to get an invitation, so don’t expect that. But do put your name down if you’re interested, so as we’re adding more testers we can consider you. All right, lots of questions on Grow. Here they come. Are you ready? Do you need to take a sip of that coffee?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Oh, it’s almost gone. That’s why I’m so excited right now.

JENNY GUY: All right, Samantha Ashley, “if we have Grow installed right now, what does that mean?”

ERIC HOCHBERGER: It really depends on how you’re using Grow. So just enabling Grow, what it’s going to do by default is turn that widget on in the bottom right-hand corner, allow users to favorite things across your site and across the web. That’s a great set of features to run, and it also enables social sharing and so many other things that are just built into that widget.

But really to use Grow you’re going to have to look beyond just turning it on. You have to look into features like Spotlight Subscribe. Spotlight Subscribe is the ability to grow your newsletter and logged in users at the same time, and that one does extremely well. It is a non-pop-up that converts nearly as well as a pop-up through a really good user experience.

So without necessarily having the bad user experience of a pop-up you can get near those conversions. And of course we have recommended content, search, and a lot of other features as well that you can opt into right from your Mediavine dashboard just by, again, simple toggles you can start opting into these things, and they’re all free.

JENNY GUY: I want to rewind, because you said Spotlight Subscribe. We’ve seen incredible results, and I can attest to it. We have it on the Mediavine corporate site, and it does incredibly well. But what if I don’t have a newsletter? Should I not turn on Spotlight Subscribe?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: So one of the things we say is turn it on now and set up a newsletter in the future. One of the things we’re actually working on is the ability for publishers that don’t have a newsletter to kind of get a newsletter lite– name still pending. The idea is Grow will be able to send emails on your behalf if you don’t have a newsletter today. So another thing you have to run– so if you have a great email list set up with something like ConvertKit– you can continue to work with ConvertKit and not even turn that feature on. But this is for publishers that don’t have a ConvertKit account, don’t have their email series set up. Let us help you build it with Grow. That’s going to be our goal in the next few months.

JENNY GUY: Awesome. Love to hear that. OK, Terra or Tara, I’m not sure. She says, “What are your top tips for getting readers to log in with Grow? Exclusive Content? Something else?” I would love to talk about Exclusive Content. I don’t think we have yet.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: So that is the number one way to get users to log in definitely is going to be Exclusive Content. It’s also going to be the number one way to drive your newsletter growth. If you thought pop-ups had good conversion, you have no idea what’s in store for you when you turn on Exclusive Content. I think Nicole, or whatever you do who works here, on her personal site I think she saw like a 500% increase in her newsletter sign-ups just by locking down about 30 of her top posts. So not every post, not all of her new posts, just some of her more evergreen content, she made it so you have to log in order to be able to see.

Has she gotten complaints? Only a few, and meanwhile her newsletter growth has been explosive. And a lot of us run into these issues where our newsletter growth gets stagnant over time as people unsubscribe. Are you growing more than you’re losing? And that’s why a lot of us hit a wall. We might have 10,000, 20,000 subscribers and never be able to get to more. This is your chance. Exclusive Content is live now, and it’s something you can test. And again, test it on just a few of your posts. You shouldn’t see necessarily any drop in rankings, because we tested and conform to Google’s SEO standards, and see how it does with your audience. It might do as well as it does for Nicole, so it’s something worth testing.

JENNY GUY: Even if it doesn’t do quite as well as it does for Nicole, it’s still pretty darn worth it. There’s a big margin here. All right, Jessica, “You mention that Grow will change in two years, but how will we expect that to help in one year when Google implements changes? Are there more changes sooner that will help us keep on top of these transitions?”

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Again, definitely. I think Grow is changing before your eyes. So when I say it’s changing over the next two years, I really mean by the time that rollout of third-party cookies, I guess the phaseout, is complete. I think then all of these features will begin to make a lot more sense. Exclusive Content, or what is really called a freewall across the internet, is not common right now. Most sites require you to pay or just give you the content for free.

In the future you’re going to see more of this, or more exclusive content. We’re just really early on into the industry. So if Exclusive Content is working for you now, awesome. But in two years it’s probably going to be a lot more expected of your users, and they’ll complain a little bit less. And so that’s kind of what we mean by it’s going to change over the next few years. You’re going to watch a change before your eyes. So it can help you now run these features today and run the new features that we continue to build.

JENNY GUY: Well I was going to say that one, it can more than help you now in terms of a preparatory way. It can help you now in terms of earning more money because advertisers are paying premium for these users, yes?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Yeah, so again I’m going to keep coming back to Nicole’s site. She’s already at nearly our goal of that 5% of users logged in, which is insane. She’s there almost a year and a half to two full years early just by running Exclusive Content on a handful of her posts.

You make more money when a user is logged into your site, even when third-party cookies exists, because you have that one-to-one relationship with that reader. And you’ll make a lot more on Safari, where there are no third-party cookies. These are live solutions today that the industry has already created. You’re already going to make more money when third-party cookies exist and when they don’t. So if you start adopting these things now, it’s going to increase your RPM today.

JENNY GUY: So you’re going to start making more money now. You’re also going to be getting your readers used to these new features and building up that authenticated traffic as we go through time, yes? We can’t just flick it on when Google does it and go, shazam. That’s not how it works.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Right, which is why, again, places like The Washington Post and The New York Times, not as nervous when you’re in these boards– these meetings with them. They have been doing this for years. They know as well as anyone, you can’t do this stuff overnight. You have to start now. It is a slow process. Even with the explosive growth I’m mentioning for Nicole’s site, that 500% increase is still going to be a small overall percentage of her traffic. So grow it today so by the time third-party cookies disappear, you’re in very good shape.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. All right, another question. Oh, there are people saying all sorts of great things. We have somebody who says I have it on my non-Mediavine site. It works great. I just want to be able to offer a download upon signing up.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: So that is a great champ. OK, well first off, thank you for running it as a non-Mediavine site and helping us test this. In terms of downloads upon signing up, so there are ways you could do that today. We have a Zapier integration where you could email them that downloadable right now.

We’re working on a direct ConvertKit, API Integration, where you would be able to do the same thing, and that will allow you to instantly send your user the download. But we’re actually working on through a feature similar to Exclusive Content, building downloadable directly into Grow. So that’s going to be one of our goals, hopefully later this year, is be able to offer downloadables directly to your users in Grow in exchange for them signing in to your website and, again, that you get it for free.

JENNY GUY: It’s the same thing with the email list. It’s an opt-in. It’s a freemium. You’re offering people– we’re doing that value exchange with your readers. If you will consent to being served personalized ads, give me your email address, I will give you the 15 best places to go in Italy backpacking. I’m just saying that, and that maybe that was just on the top of my mind. I don’t know why, but–

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Woo, Italy backpacking. That’s going to be fun.

JENNY GUY: I’m ready. Let’s do it. Maria says, “Is Grow fully accessible?”

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Is that in terms of accessibility features?

JENNY GUY: I’m not exactly sure what she means. Maria, can you give us some clarification there? All right, I’m not sure who this user is, but it says it has blog articles suggestions too, and Spotlight Subscribe’s amazing. Love hearing that. And I’ve got another beautiful question that our readers are leading us right where we wish to go. Do you have visibility into how many users are actually using Grow to save articles, revisit them later, et cetera?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: So one of the things that we are working on as we go to unveil Grow for non-Mediavine publishers, is a Grow dashboard. And that’s one of the reasons why we have not previously released this to non-Mediavine publishers because it’s in the Mediavine dashboard today.

So I think once we open up this Grow publisher portal or the dashboard, we’re going to be able to offer more analytics and show you more of this data. Today the best way you can get is through Google Analytics, and we can show you a help article that’s not going to give you a full picture. So we’re working on making sure you get the full picture of how Grow is helping your site today. So it’s something we working on.

JENNY GUY: Happening. It’s coming. It’s coming soon. Don’t worry. All right.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: I’ve seen it. It’s real.

JENNY GUY: This is a great question from Sarah. Can you tell me more about Exclusive Content? Sounds like it doesn’t have to be paid, just behind a sign-up wall. Is that right?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Correct. So today the way we’re launching Exclusive Content as what you would call a freewall. So all they have to do is sign up for Grow and subscribe to your newsletter, where applicable by law, and they get access to your content. So when I do that quick little disclaimer in the EU, they are able to get your content without signing up for your newsletter. It becomes optional, and that is a requirement of GDPR. But everywhere we can we’re going to lock down your content with an email subscription. So they don’t have to pay, but in the future we are exploring the idea of memberships or the idea of allowing you to lock down content as paid content.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. Is it possible to have more than one Spotlight Subscribe form? I have several different email funnels and currently have to turn off Spotlight Subscribe and therefore Grow for my minor funnels and sub niche pages.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: I have great news for you. You don’t need to turn it off. Yeah, Spotlight Subscribe does support multiple widgets. Right now it’s a little manual in the way that you’ll have to target them on your different pages. And I know– again, I’m going to keep pointing to Nicole. She does this on her own site. She just uses Grow so well. Great example. She has done this, I think, with a plugin called Ad Inserter as a way of inserting that code.

But one of the things we are working on is the ability to do category targeting directly inside of Spotlight Subscribe. So you’ll be able to pick a category and assign this widget to it and then complete your funnel that way. But you can do it today. You can create multiple widgets. You can manually insert them. They’ll come through differently in Zapier, so you can do the rest of your funnel appropriately.

JENNY GUY: Awesome. All right. Samantha. When you say logged in, it’s logged in with Grow, correct? Are there any tutorials we can see about using Exclusive Content?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Yeah, I think we have help articles today, but yeah, when we’re saying logged in, we mean logged in with Grow. And remember, when they logged in with Grow, it’s that Grow account they could have created anywhere on the web. It’s very easy for them to pretty much click one button if they’re already logged in. And even with third-party cookies, they might come automatically logged into your site today and just be able to click one button to subscribe. So it’s not as intrusive as it sounds, especially as more of us begin using this feature.

JENNY GUY: OK. We got some clarity from Maria. She said is Grow fully accessible for people with disabilities, the visually impaired, et cetera? Great question.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: As much as we can be we definitely focus on all things accessibility here at Mediavine. So small examples, in Grow when you pick the widget, we make sure your colors that you choose are accessible, so making sure for the visually impaired that you have enough contrast. We work wherever we can. If you find something that’s not accessible or you run into an issue, please let us know. But absolutely everything we’ve built here at Mediavine, we try to do to accessibility standards. Very important.

JENNY GUY: Can I put a download link behind the login option so that I’m giving away a PDF that way?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: That’s actually one of the ways we see people using Exclusive Content today. So they’re locking down download links, so that is the way you can get it today, before we even build a downloadables feature. So you can have it right now. Again, go to your dashboard, set up Exclusive Content. It can be marked around anything. So in Gutenberg you could do it around any block. In non-WordPress sites, even, you can do it with just HTML around any content you want. So a download link is a great example. And in the future we’re working on ways to make downloadables like a first-class citizen or built right into Grow.

JENNY GUY: Excellent. Byron. If a user gives their email via Spotlight Subscribe, will they be authenticated, identified if they return to your site?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Yeah. As long as they consent to personalized ads and hopefully create that full account, they will be authenticated or identified. We’re working on ways to make sure that that will happen more often than not. So to shortly answer that, yes. Our goal is to make sure as soon as they complete Spotlight Subscribe, they are going to be authenticated in the future. That is our goal with that product.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. All right, so if someone has signed up for Grow on another website and they come to yours for the first time, they’ll still need to click something to sign up for your/our newsletter?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Yeah, so again, one of the things we’re building with Grow in mind is for this privacy-centric web. So we don’t just want when a user shows up on your site you get access to their email. That would make users lose trust in Grow, and I think this is one of the things we tried to explain the best at the beginning of this product. Grow is about not just the publisher but also the reader.

So one of the things they’re going to have to do is consent to having that email address shared with your site. So that’s where Spotlight Subscribe is incredibly beautiful. If a user is logged in, Spotlight Subscribe gives them a one-click button to subscribe to your site. They don’t have to type in their email address even, because we know it as a Grow user. So yes, if they’re logged in with Grow we make a lot of really easy ways for them to subscribe to your content, including some new features we’re building soon. So Spotlight Subscribe built in with that exact idea in mind, Ashley.

JENNY GUY: All right. “A while ago I set up a Google Analytics for the Grow feature. Is there a tutorial to understand what each element is in that Grow dashboard in Google Analytics?”

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Yeah, I think in the help article we define what all of those obscure event names are for that exact purpose.

JENNY GUY: We definitely do, and we’ll make sure that we share that. OK, question for all of our audience. If you are using Grow, which feature performs the best for you? Give us a little feedback on that. And while our audience is talking about features, I want to talk about features as well. So let’s go through what is available currently in Grow. Because as you mentioned and as we talked about, just flicking it on is not the end of it. What you have to do is go in and look at all of the different things that are available, choose them, and test them on your site. So what’s available, and is there something can’t miss that you want people to use?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: So Grow really is a tool kit that is designed to build Grow into your site as natively or organically as possible. You want it to fit in with your particular audience, which is why we offer so many features, to make sure we can find the ones that resonate best with your users. And no one’s going to know your users better than you. So try out a lot of these tools and see what works best.

So some of the tools that we have today, again, built in. Everyone’s going to have Favorites and Social Sharing. Those are built in to Grow into the widget. You turn on Grow, you get those. But some of the things you can opt into. We have Recommended Content. We have a lot of great experiences of Recommended Content, whether it’s the What’s Next feature on mobile, whether it’s In Line that performs the best, whether it’s the carousel at the top. There’s a lot of different ways you can show content to your readers, and that performs really well.

JENNY GUY: Time out. What is Recommended Content? Can you tell us a little bit more?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Yeah, so Recommended Content is similar to something like Netflix where after you watch a Netflix show or a few Netflix shows, they get to learn what type of Netflix shows you watch, and they start recommending things to you. So they’re not always really related to the show you’re watching, but they are going to be recommended for you.

And that is the beauty of Grow’s Recommended Content. If the user is logged in it’s personalized to them. If it’s not, it uses users like them to figure out, OK, you are most likely to want to click on this next, which is why it performs so insanely well compared to Related Content, especially as you run it for a long time. It’s going to get to know your site, get to know your content. So I encourage you, if you run Recommended Content, don’t just turn it on and be like, oh, I hate the content this thing is recommending. Give it some time. Let it learn your site, and I think your users are going to love it.

JENNY GUY: And also if there are pages for sure that you don’t want recommended, like privacy policy, like that, you can go in and exclude those, right?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Yeah, absolutely. You can list any individual pages. Coming soon in the new dashboard are ways to even do mass blocking of different pages. So there are a lot of ways in which you can block content you don’t want showing up.

JENNY GUY: Can you tell us more about why Netflix thinks I should watch John Wayne Gacy documentaries? Because I don’t know what I’m watching, but that’s what they keep recommending to me.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: You should give one a try. Let’s see what you think see.

JENNY GUY: See if they’re right. Let’s test the algorithm OK, we have a lot of Spotlight Subscribe fans in the audience. And talking about features, you’ve already said that Spotlight Subscribe is probably your top. Why do you love Spotlight Subscribe so much? Why is it for everybody, not just for people who are currently focusing on newsletters?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: I just love Spotlight Subscribe because I’ve never been a personal fan of options, or sorry, pop-ups, I should say. I don’t love pop-ups as a reader. When I get to a site, I’m struggling to find the ax as quickly as I can. I get those convert very well, and it’s certainly not a thing I’m going to say no one should use. Obviously if you want to run those on your site, go for it, and maybe a thing we’re even exploring in Grow itself over time.

But what Spotlight Subscribe does is get you near those conversions without having to do that to your user, and that’s what I love most about it. You can still get insane newsletter growth without upsetting your readers, which is really the best balance you can have. And again, if you don’t have a newsletter today, we’re working on solutions for you. So turn it on. Start building that list now for your email in the future.

JENNY GUY: OK, this is a question for me. What if I don’t want to use Grow? Are there alternatives to moving forward on this if I’m using something else that I like, maybe like a similar product. Is there something– what are the alternatives?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Thank you for interrupting what’s become a 30-minute pitch on Grow, so yeah. So going back to– obviously we do want everyone to be able to use Grow. It’s a great community effort. It’s an awesome tool. And it’s a tool that pays you, as opposed to a lot of the other tools that you’ll be paying a lot of money for. So isn’t it better to get paid? So I certainly would love you to run Grow.

But if you don’t, we’ve had the Identity API out for over a year now. So Identity API is the idea that you can integrate with any tool you’re running today. So that could be whether it’s OptinMonster, or whether it’s Slickstream, who we have an official partnership with, again, over a year old. If you prefer to run Slickstream, you can do so and know that those users, if they log in, are coming in logged in through the Identity API automatically for you. So you get those integrations, whether it’s Slickstream or whether it’s something you want to build yourself, and we’re continuously trying to make that easier for publishers as well who don’t want to run Grow.

JENNY GUY: What is the difference if I want to keep paying for Slickstream, or like you said, OptinMonster or something like that. What is the difference between a tool like OptinMonster or Slickstream in Grow.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: So I think the biggest difference, hands down, it’s going to be the fact that grow is a community-based thing. We’re all in this together, the idea that we’re all building one pool of authenticated users. There’s nothing else like that right now. It is very tough, again, as I’ll keep saying, to get a user to log into your site. So if you are running Slickstream, I encourage you. Go into your dashboard. How many members do you actually have on your site? I challenge anyone to have more than– even at the largest of sites here at Mediavine– more than 1,000.

So we’ve seen even smaller numbers than that. Again, you might have eight users, for all you know, and you’ve been running this product for months. What Grow is built around is that exact purpose. How do you get a user to log into your site? These other tools are great. They’re great at what they do, but they’re not designed as a first-party data solution. So if you run Slickstream and you love its search, awesome. You should continue to run that product search. But what you should really look into is running Grow as your first-party data solution, because it’s going to be the one that gets you the most logged in users.

JENNY GUY: And that’s the whole purpose of it. Every feature that we create, everything that we do is trying to funnel towards this one common cause, denominator, while at the same time you’re getting paid more, and you’re keeping users on your site for longer. You’re strengthening that relationship with your readers. You’re gluing them in to you and to other Grow sites. All right, what do we have coming up for Grow? Because I know we’d said that this is going to be– when we released Grow we released it with– OK, I’m going to drop an acronym. Is it MVP? Is that right?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Yep, minimum viable product.

JENNY GUY: I’m such an engineer. When we released Grow we did it with a very low minimum viable product. There wasn’t a whole lot of there there. But over the past 18 months, two years, we’ve been growing features, Grow adding features, compiling, taking feedback, changing, all of that. What’s coming up, though, because I know that we actually have quite a few things that are on tap in the next couple of months?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Yeah, so I think one of the reasons we did this as such a minimum viable product was to learn from our publishers.

JENNY GUY: That’s an MVP. I would like for you to just call it the right thing.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: As an MVP, we want your feedback. Again, nobody knows your audience as well as you, and that has what’s been driving the Grow roadmap so much. So that’s where these features are coming from. You see it even in this live. We talked about Exclusive Content. People are asking about Downloadables. It was a natural fit for us to start working on Downloadables, so that’s one of the features that will hopefully be coming out soon.

So again, if you have a downloadable, you’ll be able to upload it, lock it behind Exclusive Content, automatically all through Grow and easily show that on your site, get users to log in, make sure they subscribe to your newsletter to get access to that downloadable. And previously you probably had to work together with a ton of different plug-ins and get them all jumble together to hopefully do this on your own. But now it’s going to be done beautifully and easily, directly through Grow.

Another one I’m extremely excited about, and I know our publishers are, are some ESP or email sending provider integrations. So I know a lot of people don’t like paying for Zapier, and they don’t like how a little complicated it can be. But remember, Zapier got us hundreds of email-sending providers with one integration. But now we’re looking at the top email sending providers our publishers use and working on integrations with them, including ConvertKit, which is the first one we have coming, and that is coming very soon.

JENNY GUY: And Samantha just asked a question, “does the subscribe with Grow integrate automatically with any email providers?” That is what we are working on in the mean, so ConvertKit will be first. Then we have others coming after that. In the meantime you do have Zapier to get those email addresses zapped directly into your ESP. We had a question here. “Is there a way to use Grow.me non-WordPress sites?”

ERIC HOCHBERGER: One of my favorite things about Grow is that it uses similar technology to our ads, and that is what’s called software as a service, or SAS, if we’re going to play lots of acronyms today, and the idea being you put one line of code on your site, and you can run Grow. By launching it that way, the same way Mediavine ads work on non-WordPress sites, Grow works on non-WordPress sites.

So you can run Grow on Vlogger, on Squarespace, on SBI, whatever fun other CMS you have, it will work with Grow. And one of the greatest parts again about Grow, though, is that it can be enhanced by Grow Social, so our plug-in. If you are running Grow Social, you get some cool things out of WordPress, but not required.

JENNY GUY: We actually had some feedback here. One of the questions that we asked our audience is, what is Grow missing? The best way to help us shape this product is to be using it and to give us feedback. Give us all the feedback and tell us what is it missing. Ellen said, “I use Grow, but what I like about Slickstream is the heart feature on the search.” So OK–

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: –that’s great feedback.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: There you go.

JENNY GUY: We’ll take it all in. We’ll take it all in and be looking as we go forward. Eric, how is the best way, what’s the best way for people to provide feedback on Grow features or ideas that they have?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Well we got to ask the product team. I believe–

JENNY GUY: They’re here.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: –we have– yeah, we have a link that they can submit feedback through. Worst case scenario, you can always send an email to grow.me@mediavine.com. But we have a feedback link, and we’re going to have that feedback link directly in the dashboard, hopefully soon, that new Grow dashboard.

JENNY GUY: It’s coming. OK, we always like to close everything out with action items, and we are closing out Teal Talk for Summer of Live with this episode. So Eric, if you are a Mediavine publisher, what should you do? What is the thing you need to go do now as you leave?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: If you are going to be worried about third-party cookies, then the first thing you should be doing is building up that relationship with your readers. And there is no better way than signing up for Grow or enabling if you’re already a Mediavine publisher, running things like Spotlight Subscribe, and start thinking about owning that relationship with the reader yourself.

So rather than having your following live on things like Pinterest or Instagram or Facebook, things that are very fickle in nature, and you could lose your entire following in a day, instead think about owning it yourself. And that is the beauty behind Grow and owning your own newsletter. So really own that relationship with your audience. Start running Grow today so that your audience is used to this idea, and they’re excited by this idea and it’s a long-term relationship with third-party cookies go away.

JENNY GUY: If you are not a Mediavine publisher, what’s a good thing to do today?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: You should definitely sign up for that link that we provided earlier so that you can begin running Grow. Because again, we want to make sure that non-Mediavine publishers can run Grow and find ways that they can monetize that audience as well, even with other ad providers, as crazy as that sounds.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. Love it. All right, everybody, this is the part of the show where we talk about the next Teal Talk, but the next Teal Talk isn’t until after Labor Day because the Summer of Live starts in June. Please stay tuned for an amazing lineup. We have so many great guests coming your ways, all the topics. We are also still looking for a couple more guests later on in the summer. We’re pretty booked up at the beginning. But we’re going to drop that link into the comments so that you can– if you are dying to come on a Summer of Live episode and talk about– you’re an expert in a topic. All of our publishers are experts in various topics, so please come on and share your knowledge with us. We’d love to consider you, so we’ll drop that link in as well.

We’re also going to be dropping the link to our resources document that will have everything together that we’ve talked about on this blog post– help docs, the sign up for Grow if you’re interested and you’re a non-Mediavine publisher. It’s all going to be right there. So we’re going to drop that in. Thank you so much for making this a absolute delight every month and every week in the summer to get to come to talk to you guys. Eric, thank you for coming and enlightening us on everything that is coming for our industry. We are excited and ready. We’re going to be ready, right?

ERIC HOCHBERGER: We’re definitely going to be ready, and thank you for having me. And more importantly, thank you for translating me, which is always very important.

JENNY GUY: It’s what has to happen in my brain when you talk. It goes beep, er, beep, er. Those are the sounds that it makes.

ERIC HOCHBERGER: Making me define every acronym is appreciated. Thank you.

JENNY GUY: It’s acronym soup. It’s alphabet soup around here with ad tech, and I love to, I love to define it. Guys, thank you so much again. We will see you in just a few weeks for the Summer of Live. Have a great rest of your day, everybody.

Spring is here and winter is DONE! Well, sort of.

But that’s not going to stop us from our favorite annual tradition: spring cleaning!

Whether it’s your office or your bedroom, it’s important to stay organized, clean, and throw all the clutter away. As a content creator, your website is no different.

On today’s episode we have Mediavine’s Sr. Support Engineer Manager Jacob Feltner and Once Coupled’s Lauren Gray. Jacob and Lauren are talking spring cleaning for your site, with everything from auditing your plugins to their favorite tools to use.

This episode is packed with actionable tips so if you learn something, make sure to let us know and share what stood out to you!

[powerpress]

Helpful Resources

• Once Coupled
• Our Help Guide to Site Speed
• Lazy Loading Ads
• How To Do A Plugin Self-Audit

Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING] JENNY GUY: Hey everybody, welcome. It is Thursday, March 12. It is a little bit crazy in our world right now. But we are here. I am Jenny Guy. I’m the Director of Marketing for Mediavine and the host of Teal Talk. And I’m very grateful that you are joining us today.

In current events, daylight savings time started for most of the US states over the weekend, which coincided with International Women’s Day and resulted in more confusion and deprivation for females, perfect. And then in other news, spring starts officially one week from today, the season of rebirth, and fresh starts, and green grass. And I think that that’s something we could all do with right now in our lives.

I know that on everybody’s minds and thoughts right now is what’s going on in our world and in our country. But what I’m excited about is we can have a whole hour to just sit in our home pods and talk about our websites and not the big elephant in the room, the virus elephant in the room. I’m so excited.

So as I was saying, spring, rebirth, green grass, fresh starts, which means it’s time for spring cleaning, which could be your closet, your pantry, pockets of your winter coats. Unless you are me, and you love the dollar pocket lottery to happen when the next year– you know, when you put on your coat that you haven’t worn in eight months, and you stick your hand in the pocket, and you’re like, $5. It’s– it gets me every time.

But what we’re talking about today, us being Mediavine, is your website. Have any of you guys ever done this? A deep and thorough cleansing to get rid of the things you don’t need anymore that are just taking up space and weighing and slowing you down. It sounds like a great idea. But how do you make this happen? Enter my amazing guests.

Lauryn Gray is the founder of Once Coupled and believes in doing everything with passion and transparency, which mostly means she sends really long emails riddled with exclamation points. Girl, same. She’s worked with over 500 plus bloggers on projects from reducing above the fold white space, to taking a site from a zero-page speed optimization score to green.

When she’s not making your site faster and easier for you to manage, Lauren enjoys crime TV, mojitos, and long walks on the beach with her dog. Hi, Lauren. Welcome back to Teal Talk. It’s been a while.

LAUREN GRAY: It has been. I think we did a spring talk like this last year.

JACOB FELTNER: We lost Jenny. She was the glue. She’s what kept it together.

LAUREN GRAY: She is. I can’t even tell if we’re still live.

JACOB FELTNER: Yeah, I don’t know. Andrew just waved at us. So–

LAUREN GRAY: OK.

JACOB FELTNER: –potentially.

LAUREN GRAY: So that might mean we’re still here. We don’t know where Jenny is.

JACOB FELTNER: No.

LAUREN GRAY: Jacob, should I introduce you? I’ve got your–

JACOB FELTNER: Dude, that’d be awesome.

LAUREN GRAY: –info here. Great. Well, I’m here with Jacob Feltner. He is a Support Engineering Manager at Mediavine, as well as a husband and dog dad. He’s an expert in all things Mediavine ads, more specifically what plays nicely with them and what breaks them.

He spends his day trying to make publishers all the dollars and his nights adding to his knowledge as a movie buff and all around info junkie. Welcome Jacob to this Facebook Live.

JACOB FELTNER: Thank you Lauren. This is– it was a good recovery, very good recovery. We’re doing great.

JENNY GUY: That was super new.

JACOB FELTNER: Ooh, there she is.

JENNY GUY: I am– my computer legit went black screen for no reason.

LAUREN GRAY: Well, we made the best of it.

JENNY GUY: I’m sure you guys were brilliant. And I’m sorry that I had to come back and wreck whatever awesome conversation flow you had happening just now. But I am here, hello.

JACOB FELTNER: It was perfect timing.

JENNY GUY: And I apologize for that. I was about to introduce our amazing intrepid Jacob Feltner, who is our support engineering manager at Mediavine. He is also a husband and a dog dad.

JACOB FELTNER: Let’s do it again. Let’s do it again. Let’s do it again.

JENNY GUY: He’s an expert– I’m so sorry.

LAUREN GRAY: I did technically read his bio out for you.

JACOB FELTNER: You know, Lauren actually already did that but if you want to do it again–

JENNY GUY: Oh, you read his bio.

LAUREN GRAY: I did.

JENNY GUY: Oh my gosh. Awesome. Girl, you don’t need me.

LAUREN GRAY: Couldn’t have him not having an intro here.

JENNY GUY: I don’t even need to be here. This is awesome. OK. So I’m glad– I just got all the comments that I’m reading all the things. We’re so glad you’re here. OK. Let’s talk about– let’s dispense with the formalities. We’re going to be doing some fun stuff here where we ask a good audience interactive question.

So the one we’re going to start with is just a pretty simple one, which is how is your site speed right now? Post your late– your last mobile score in GPSI in the comments, if you dare. And then any other questions you have for Jacob or Lauren, please feel free to post in the comments. We will be talking about all the things.

So to start out with, let’s kick off with telling me a little bit about yourselves and why I’ve asked you– why you think I’ve asked you to share your expertise on this particular episode of Tale Talk– Teal Talk, other than the fact that you’re lovely humans. I love hanging out with you and spending time with you. So Lauren, will you start for me please?

LAUREN GRAY: Yeah, absolutely. I’m Lauren with Once Coupled, as my bio originally introduced me. I just love working one-on-one with clients, personally. I really like getting to build relationships with my clients. I’m personally very intrigued by complex problems.

So I love bigger projects where we get to solve stuff and a big part of that has been site speed. And I’m personally a perfectionist. So as high as we can get your scores, with as much compromise on functionality as possible, really what drives me. And I don’t know, kind of what I like to do in my day-to-day.

I’ve got a team of another three to developers, depending on the projects, that work with me. And they are experts– their expertise is either in custom themes or in site speed. And we’ve done a ton of site speed projects. I mean, all of my custom themes focus on that.

But Eric, a couple of years was like, site speed’s going to be big. Get into site speed now. And when Eric tells you to do something, you better do it. So we started doing site speed. And it did become a big trend. And I’m so excited there’s so many other– because it became such a big trend, so many solutions have been put out to help everyone do better with their site speed.

So we’ve done a lot of audits and a lot of work with clients. And we love to see that clients have come, not even just clients but through blogs in general have come so far.

JENNY GUY: I mean, there’s so many things there. But it’s so wonderful to hear that people outside of those that he is paying are– do the thing that we do, which is when Eric said something we do it. It’s good to know, good to know. We– yes, I don’t live in a world, I’ve never lived in a world where speed was not a thing.

It just is, the need for speed Hochberger lives that life. OK, Jacob, same to you. Tell me what you do on– on the daily, and why I invited you to be here, other than your delightful beard.

JACOB FELTNER: Oh boy, well, yeah. I joined Mediavine just under two years ago. And I came with a background in web development for a couple of years. And that was my initial, kind of, professional goal in life. But, you know, I’ve always loved helping people.

I’ve had a job since I was about 15. And the vast majority of those jobs were about helping people in some way, shape, or form, you know, directly connecting with people and helping them out. It’s always something I’ve enjoyed, that I’ve had a passion for.

And this opportunity came my way. And with the time that I’ve been with the company, I have become pretty familiar with not only our technologies, our plugins, our script, all the fun tech. I’ve also seen how it interacts with the myriad of possibilities, whether it be other plugins, other themes, just every situation imaginable, how it interacts, how it can affect site speed, how it can affect ad performance, you know, all those fun things.

And typically when it comes to people thinking, you know, oh, my site speed’s gone down because I’ve done this. It usually ends up in my lap or my department’s lap, and same if, you know, something changes and the ads go bad, or it’s not performing as well. So get to troubleshoot the Wild West of the world wide web.

JENNY GUY: Wow.

JACOB FELTNER: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: That is an–

JACOB FELTNER: That just came to me.

JENNY GUY: –awesome tag line. Holy cannoli. That– you’re flowing. I’m not going to stop you. And marketing team, brand team be writing this stuff down. We’re hitting gold. OK. So we have– we’ve got some brave folks who are sharing their site speed scores with us.

We have, let’s see, we have Andrew Eaton said, 44 mobile, 94 desktop. Janice Luke Smith said, 64 on mobile, 97 on desktop. And Mary Elizabeth, I think it’s Woita, said “63 on mobile and 92 on desktop.”

And then just for another comment that caused both Lauren and I to smile while you were talking. I think that’s what she was smiling at. YoriNo said, “who is this delightfully bearded man? I need his digits.”

JACOB FELTNER: Oh, boy.

JENNY GUY: So you’ve already got people watching that are asking for your phone number so.

JACOB FELTNER: She said she was going to do that.

JENNY GUY: And should we tell them who she is? Or just let everyone know that you’re the stud that you are?

JACOB FELTNER: Oh, that’s my lovely wife.

JENNY GUY: All right, well.

JACOB FELTNER: That’s my lovely wife, partner in crime.

JENNY GUY: I was going to let it ride with just the fans asking for your digits. Because–

JACOB FELTNER: No, no, nobody needs my phone number.

JENNY GUY: Well, I have it. But I work with you.

JACOB FELTNER: Oh, Oh, OK. All right.

JENNY GUY: So OK, Fay Osborne said, “56, 93.” And she has a sad face with that one. OK. So what– let’s talk a little bit about what are some of the most common site speed issues that you’re coming across, Lauren, and how can we fix them.

We’ll start with Lauren. And then Jacob will kind of take that from an ad perspective. But let’s start with speed. What are some of those most common things we’re seeing?

LAUREN GRAY: I mean, the biggest thing that we always see is images. There’s always more that can be done with images. At the simplest form, you can turn on lazy loading for images. And that can make a big impact on your speed scores and how quickly your site can load initially.

It’s kind of like a– I don’t know, it’s kind of like putting a blanket over a problem. Because if you’re not actually optimizing your images, you’re just kind of ignoring it. And it looks a little better and things are feeling better. But there’s always more that can be done with your images.

So ShortPixel is a good optimization tool. There’s a whole bunch of them. ShortPixel is just the one that I used, I did a bunch of tests with a few years ago. Who knows if it’s still the best now, but it’s the one that I typically refer to. But ShortPixel can compress your images. If you’re inserting really large images and you can insert smaller ones, that makes a big difference.

Andrew Wilder from NerdPress has talked about– I don’t know if it was on the talk here, but has talked about how because images are you– if you– I don’t know how to do this math. I should not talk about math. The larger–

JENNY GUY: I love talking about math, my favorite.

LAUREN GRAY: I don’t believe you. You’ve said–

JENNY GUY: It’s a lie.

LAUREN GRAY: –a lot of things now, beforehand, that now I know not to believe anything you say.

JENNY GUY: Oh.

LAUREN GRAY: But essentially, if you multiply width times height, you get a larger number if it’s two times the square– OK, you know what? I can’t do math. Let’s not talk about it. Exactly, the image size is twice as large, but it will be four times larger in file size.

I’m sorry I sent us down that rabbit hole. But what I’m trying to say is that a smaller image is better. Compressing images with ShortPixel is better. Lazy loading is better. We see huge gains. That’s always the first thing we work on with clients is images. So–

JENNY GUY: So size does matter, period, definitively. Size matters. And size mat– smaller is better. And you heard it here. So that’s just the way it is. OK. So we had a question. But then I want to go to– we’re getting a ton of questions. OK.

Wiktar says, “hi, what’s more important, a better score at PageSpeed Insights or the actual speed of site measured with Pingdom?” So for example, I get a score on PageSpeed Insights. I can see it by eye or by measuring that website is actually slower.

We’re going to talk a little bit about where’s the– from what I’m gathering, Wiktar, is that you’re asking where is the best place to measure page speed. And we actually have a question about that. But Jacob, tell them where we like to measure page speed please.

JACOB FELTNER: It’s primarily Google PageSpeed Insights. The best thing about that is it’s basically hitting two of the most important groups of people that can impact a website, which are the readers and Google themselves. These are the metrics that Google likes, that they want people to judge against.

So you always want to make Google happy. But it’s also a way of better replicating the user experience. Because a lot of other site speed tools, they kind of wait for literally everything to load, including the ads, which can kind of skew the scores a little bit to make it seem drastically worse than what it is. Because all of our ads are lazy loaded.

So when a user experiences it, when they go to the site, you know, they’re seeing it as they see it, as they scroll, as it comes into view. Whereas some other site speed tools, they don’t view it the same way. So overall, start with GPSI. You’ll be in good shape.

JENNY GUY: I mean, exactly, yeah. No user cares what’s loading on the bottom of your site when they’re visiting your site. I’m not scrolling to the bottom and being slow, I don’t not like this site. That’s not something I do. I don’t check the bottom of a website when I’m trying to get something to load on my phone.

So it’s measuring what a user actually does. Lauren, do you have any thoughts to add to that on Pingdom or anything?

LAUREN GRAY: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s interesting, because a lot of those other tools will take into account those ads, like Jacob was saying. So there can be variation based on how optimized an ad campaign that’s being tested is. So you’ll see larger amount of variations.

We get a lot of questions from clients that are asking why Search Console or Google Analytics is telling them that a site, that a page on their site is suddenly loading much slower. And , I can’t tell you why because I’m not testing it with ads.

So if you haven’t done anything different on that site, it’s probably not that the page is loading any different. It’s probably at that different ad is being tested. And we don’t really see the impact of those ads. Because we’re using PageSpeed Insights, and it doesn’t use those. It doesn’t analyze those. And also because of the changes that they made to ads to make them more user friendly.

But I know beforehand, before Google PageSpeed Insights changed six times and got updates every month to make our lives harder–

JENNY GUY: Lighthouse.

LAUREN GRAY: I used to email Mediavine regularly. Because I would see an unoptimized campaign that would be crazy pulling scores down. And I think that those could be factors. And I know Mediavine is always working, if they see those campaigns, to reach out and ask them to optimize this. Don’t try and upload a giant image, et cetera.

But, you know, that’s a factor, too. It’s like you’ll see those warnings. But you can’t just take them at face value. You’ve got to be monitoring those scores on your own, looking at your site, and– one other thing I want to mention, based on this question, was kind of, they were asking if they should be looking at their own site and kind of seeing how it feels to them.

And I think that that’s a little difficult. Because throughout the world and throughout the different internet connections and whatnot, if you’re looking at your site at a really good– if you have a good internet connection and you’re looking at your site, it’s going to load really quickly. But you’ve got to consider people that are on mobile devices and things like that.

And as much as possible, optimize for those connections that they don’t have the same resources. And that’s part of what PageSpeed Insights does, too, is they have throttled connections. So they’ll tell you your site is slower than you’re seeing it. Because they’re throttling that connection to something that they find to be more of an average user.

JENNY GUY: Right. That’s a lot designing your site or create writing content based on a desktop, when most of your readers are doing it on mobile. You’ve got to think about what the experience that your reader is having, as opposed to the experience that you’re having when you’re sitting at your laptop or desktop doing the creating.

Jacob, you mentioned lazy loading. And I know that we have 800,000 blog posts, help docs, various things about it. But I think that it’s possible that there are some of our audience who do not know what you’re talking about and why it matters. And I think that there are also some people who think that that is the norm, that all ad companies use lazy loading for their ads.

So why does it matter? What does it mean? Why is it good to be lazy?

JACOB FELTNER: Well, it’s great to be lazy. But it’s primarily, you know, it’s the whole idea of if you just let everything on a site load at once, it’s going to take much, much longer than it needs. And all of that content, you know, people are going to be seeing a fraction of your website at any given time. So you might as well just be giving it to them piece by piece.

You don’t need to do that with a lot of other things, like text and stuff like that, but with images and especially with ads. You know, since ads can be relatively heavy compared to everything else, you know, you only want to deal with it when it’s necessary, when it’s within view, when it needs to be on the eyeballs of people.

And so it’s crucial. It’s absolutely crucial. Because, you know, you have a nice beautiful website with amazing content. And things are coming in to intrude on your space and give you money. And we want them to be as friendly as possible. We don’t want there to be a true give and take.

You shouldn’t have to sacrifice user experience just to make a little bit of money or a lot of money. So doing lazy loading is just getting closer to the world where you can have your cake and eat it too. It makes the most sense.

It’s the modern, kind of, approach to web. It’s kind of crazy to not have ads that are lazy loaded. It just makes all the sense in the world. It’s best for everyone involved.

JENNY GUY: And I know that when you are– so the story of Mediavine and why we have lazy loaded ads, and we were the pioneers on that technology for advertising. And the reason why we did it was because we built– when we designed the ads, when Eric designed ads, he built them for our own sites.

Meaning he knew that if he put on ads that tanked page speed and killed user experience, we would lose all the traffic that we were attempting to monetize. So there would be no purpose. There would– playing the short game was never for us, because we were putting it on our own site.

So we would have– we’re eating our own dog food, that disgusting developer term that Eric says every time he comes on to talk about a new plugin. He’s like, we have to eat our own dog food. I’m like, I don’t need you to say that.

JACOB FELTNER: No.

JENNY GUY: We need a– that’s not. But that’s why. It’s because we knew that playing a short game and making our viewers say, I don’t want to be here anymore. There’s no point. OK. We had a– Ben Heath said Squoosh apps. S-Q-U-O-O-S-H dot app, have you guys heard? He said it’s from Google Chrome Developers. He said it’s awesome. It sounds for images, I’m guessing.

LAUREN GRAY: I have not personally heard of that.

JENNY GUY: Haven’t heard of it.

LAUREN GRAY: I don’t know, if it integrates WordPress, then I’m generally a fan, as long as you can easily revert your images. So ideally I recommend clients to take the extra time, it’s not even time. It’s really just a little bit of money to save their original size images on their site, on their server, so they can always revert if they want.

That way if they ever decide they need a higher quality or larger size in the future, then they can always revert those images and recompress for whatever reason. Generally, if you’re compressing images beforehand and then uploading them to WordPress, it’s generating thumbnails from those, and they’re OK.

I like ShortPixel, they are plugins that integrate with WordPress. Because once those thumbnails are generated, it will also tend to compress those. So those images are auto-created by WordPress. WordPress, kind of, sort of, limits image quality to reduce file size.

But you can save, you know, you can get a better file size if you also have an app that’s compressing the thumbnails that are generated from the original that you’ve uploaded. And most sites have 10 or more thumbnails that are being generated by their theme, or plugins, or whatnot, being used throughout the site.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. OK. No, that’s really helpful. Then he says, it’s for optimizing images. But there is no plugin for WordPress currently. We have a question from Luke Ward, who is asking if ZergNet ads are lazy loaded, too. Chico.

JACOB FELTNER: That is a good question. I honestly don’t know. ZergNet is a pretty rare thing that comes across us. I know someone asked about it not too long ago, so I could probably just do a quick search. But honestly, I don’t know.

JENNY GUY: Well, Eric is lurking. He might know. He’s commenting in the comments. And he thinks your new project– he is always lurking. I can feel him like a presence in the ether. He said, you need to coin a new term for eating your own dog food. So that is your new assignment.

JACOB FELTNER: All right.

JENNY GUY: And then if you coin in and come up with something as good as the last one you just said, the Wild West on the world wide web, then we can ingrain it into him. And I don’t have to hear that again. So please get on that. Thank you.

JACOB FELTNER: Fair enough.

JENNY GUY: OK. So we kind of started to go down this trail a little bit. But when we’re talking about testing for page speed, we talked about why we should use Google PageSpeed Insights as a starting point to test. What are– what exactly are we testing?

When we’re– when we’re going to get a good overall thermometer, take the temperature of our site and figure out how site speed is, what are we testing? What exactly? Lauren, will you start with that please?

LAUREN GRAY: I don’t know what you’re asking. What do you mean what are we testing? We’re testing your site speed.

JENNY GUY: So I think that a lot of people– what I’m trying to give– to get you to– Jacob, do you know what I’m trying to get her to say?

JACOB FELTNER: Yeah, I mean, it’s basically, you know, it’s measuring– I think I know what you’re saying. It’s measuring pretty much every user experience. It’s not just taking desktop into account. It’s taking mobile into account. It’s testing different kind of experiences, whether it be with throttled speed or not. Is that what you’re getting at?

JENNY GUY: Partially. But I’m also just getting at, you can’t just test your home page through your page speed. You need to go into your popular poll. A lot of times I’ll have people that are like, my speed is rockin’. It’s bangin’, lightning fast. You’re like, it’s your home page. And no one is there.

So you need to check– check your most– I think checking your most popular posts would probably be smart. That’s what I would say. But I’ll leave it to the experts.

JACOB FELTNER: Yeah. It definitely makes a lot of sense. I mean, usually a lot of people’s home pages are going to be fancier than their blog posts, probably a little more intense. So they might have things on there that they don’t have anywhere else, larger image sizes, who knows, maybe some fancy animation and whatnot.

But if you’re getting a lot of traffic to your home page, take it into consideration. But really, I think simplifying your site overall, even the home page is worth doing. You know, people– you’re making great content. That’s why people are coming to your site. That’s why they typically stay on your site, not because you have a fancy slider on your homepage. Because that will just kill speed.

JENNY GUY: They’re not just there for my slider.

JACOB FELTNER: I know, right.

JENNY GUY: What?

JACOB FELTNER: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: Dropping knowledge bombs.

JACOB FELTNER: But yeah, definitely– definitely focus, you know, if you don’t know where to start, in terms of which exact spot on my site do I test, start with your most popular post and just kind of build out from there.

JENNY GUY: So you are saying, simplify. I think that would be a really great– quote from Eric Hochburger, ZergNet is not lazy loaded, according to him. So that’s–

JACOB FELTNER: There you go.

JENNY GUY: There you have the answer. So when you say getting started, I know we talked about images would be– is there any other place to get our teeth into on our sites to start, Jacob, where you would recommend starting with page speed?

JACOB FELTNER: Yeah, I mean, it’s, you know, it’s a big thing. That’s why we’re– that’s why we’re here. That’s why we’re talking about it. But I think another thing, especially as it relates to our ads, is probably asset optimization, script deferment, CSS deferment, stuff like that.

Which is basically just a fancy way of saying, shrinking the size of the scripts that are loading on your site. Or basically telling them, you know, let your page load before the script has had time to fully load. You know, you don’t want anything blocking your script or your site from actually loading. You don’t want to wait on a specific script to load.

Because sometimes that can just completely destroy a user experience, because all they see is a blank screen. But if you look in the network tab of DevTools, I’m using fancy words right now. But you’ll see something is just taking forever to load. And that’s just because it isn’t being deferred.

But the big thing to keep in mind with that is, while it is important, the asset optimization, the minification, the shrinking of these scripts will, and often does, impact, whether it be– it could potentially affect our ad script. It could affect grow or create. It could alter it in some way.

So while you do want to do that, you know, like with anything that’s pretty powerful, and it’s going to make your site quicker. And it’s going to affect other things functionality. And you have no kind of insight into it. You know, just tread softly. You know, turn it on, test all the functionality on your site.

Make sure ads are loading properly. Make sure your create a card looks good. Make sure your opt-in forms are behaving properly. Because you just never know what’s going to happen when everything is kind of smashed together and shrunk.

And you want to plugin that gives you leeway, that gives you access to say, OK, don’t touch Mediavine stuff, or don’t touch jQuery. Because a lot of things are dependent on jQuery and if it doesn’t load in a certain way, it’ll cause things to go hooey.

So just anytime you get into that world, don’t be afraid of it, just be logical about it. Be kind of clinical about it, step by step. If something doesn’t go right, there are ways to make it better, if you have a good plugin. By excluding it from being optimized, and you still get the benefit of shrinking everything else.

It’s just a lot of plugins are really good about telling you that upfront. If you turn this on, this could break something, you know, tread softly. But they’re not always that nice.

JENNY GUY: Speaking of plugins, let’s segue. Actually no, I wanted to grab one more quick question from our audience. OK. Amelia Meier says, question for you, my team is pumping out awesome content. Good to know. We are using Pinterest and SEO best practices. My site speed is fast.

My question is, my blog is eight years old. I deleted hundreds. And I’m slowly going through the rest of them. But what do I focus on as far as updating them, tags, photos, length? Could old content still be, quote, weighing down my site? And as I am making these changes, how long do I wait before I should see a big difference, a couple of months, a year?

Who wants to take it? Who wants to jump in? Lauren, you got it?

LAUREN GRAY: I mean, I would say that old– like delete– are we talking about deleting old posts?

JENNY GUY: I believe that’s what she’s referring to. She’s saying she’s got an eight-year-old blog. She has deleted some old posts.

LAUREN GRAY: And she deleted–

JENNY GUY: And we actually have a question about that further down. Because it’s a hot topic always when people have been blogging for a long time and had a lot of content they may not be as proud of in the past. Right.

LAUREN GRAY: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: So what do we– I mean, the dark photos of the food that you took. You know– you know, it’s OK. We all have things that we’re– like I look at some of my middle school ensemble choices and I’m appalled. So do you– do you– Lauren, can you talk to that a little bit?

LAUREN GRAY: Yeah, I mean deleting posts is– your site speed is going to be like independent on every individual page. So like every page has its own speed. And if we’re saying that Google is considering that page speed, it’s only considering it per that page. So if you’re deleting old posts, then it’s not going to hurt or improve the page speed of other pages on your site.

Like removing old content, in terms of updating old posts and inserting smaller resized images, or basically deleting old embeds that might be in there that you don’t really need anymore, like a lot of people used to embed the Pinterest widget for their, like to follow them. And like that’d be in all their old posts.

Well, if you don’t need that and you go back and you remove it, that’d be great. But I don’t think deleting old posts is really going to be helpful. And there are some cases where like cleaning up your database, like getting a smaller database, would be helpful. But usually deleting old posts is not going to be the impactful way to do that.

Like just removing some posts isn’t going to make a huge difference. Like we’re– my team is literally working on the database of one client. We’ve gotten her down from 8 gigabytes to 3.5. And it’s not because we’re deleting old posts. It’s because there’s plugins that are being used, like Thrive Leads was huge.

Because it records like every action that people– every time something pops up on your site, whether people do or don’t opt into it to generate statistics for you. And as far as we could tell, there was no way to turn that off. So like we dropped that table and deleted that plug-in.

There was one other. Oh, she was running contests through Gravity Forms. So she had– if she had 10 contests running at a time, and they each had 70,000 entries in them, there were a ton of roads in her database related to that, old plugins, stuff like that that were really increasing the size of her database.

So on older sites, we’re more likely to see something where either plugins you’re not using anymore, or just like plugins that are adding a lot of data you probably don’t need could be increasing your database size. But I wouldn’t say that deleting old posts is going to be impactful for speed.

JENNY GUY: Very helpful. Jacob, do you have anything to add to that, based on that question?

JACOB FELTNER: No, no that really well covered it. It’s kind of adjacent to making sure your database isn’t bloated or out of control. But really the posts in and of themselves, removing them probably won’t do too much. But it could, you know, leave a trail of breadcrumbs to something you should be doing.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. OK. A question from– this may be a comment. I don’t know if anyone– either one of you has anything to say. Andrew said, when I click defer render blocking JavaScript in SG optimizer, it breaks the ability to leave a star review on WP Recipe Maker.

JACOB FELTNER: I mean, that’s definitely possible. You know deferring– you know, it– there’s just– sometimes it works great. Sometimes it doesn’t. So really, as long as SG optimizer has a way of excluding individual scripts, there is likely a way to resolve that conflict.

I don’t know exactly where the conflict is. But, you know, there is an avenue of fixing it. It’s not unfixable, potentially.

LAUREN GRAY: I mean, I haven’t seen it with a lot of other plugins, that same issue. So I’d say, well, I don’t want to get too technical. But there’s probably something in the configuration, like Jacob’s saying, that could be adjusted. Or that plugin isn’t taking into account that another plugin might.

So like if it’s deferring jQuery but not deferring the WP Recipe Maker script, then that– yeah, that was the technical stuff I was trying to avoid. I apologize.

JENNY GUY: No, it’s good. It’s helpful. And we’re having questions on it. So you guys can– you guys are rock stars and know those answers, so it’s very helpful to have. OK. So audience participation question number two, true or false, it is bad to have a lot of plugins. True or false, it is bad to have a lot of plugins.

There is no wrong answer, except there is a wrong answer. And you will be judged for it. So we’re going to talk about plug-ins now. Because when we talk about spring cleaning and removing weighty things on our site, Amelia, who was asking the question a moment ago about deleting old posts, said she went from a hobby blog to a business and deleted a lot of old, old stuff that was not relevant.

Understandable, I will say that I’m going to guess that they probably weren’t prominent those– the old posts weren’t prominently displayed on your home page or easy for people to find. So if they are still getting traffic, they’re probably not hurting anything other than your own personal aesthetic, knowing that they exist and are ruining your flow or your feng shui on your site.

But I do understand that. OK. Question on plugins, so what– are there some that are just consistently causing problems in your guys’ world? When you look at a site and you see a problem, are there some that are just consistently like, oh, that is always a thing? Jacob, we’ll start with you. Because you get to deal with these things a lot.

JACOB FELTNER: Sure. I mean, it’s a big question. But I think anything that is basically running services in the background, that you have no kind of direct input over, like something that is just constantly running and checking and running a lot of database queries, saving a lot of database records, something like a broken link checker or something like that, just anything that is just persistently running in the background that you honestly don’t really need to run, you know, there’s always different ways of approaching the solution.

But typically the ones that take up a lot of space are ones that are just consistently running. And sometimes you can just run it for a little bit, get your information, and deactivate it. Get on with your life. Use the information that you get– that you’ve gotten. But anything that just kind of lingers in the background and does stuff, it usually has the potential of really slowing your site down.

JENNY GUY: And how would I identify that?

JACOB FELTNER: That’s the tricky part, right?

JENNY GUY: Oh, yeah.

LAUREN GRAY: You know, sometimes it’s just using kind of good sense, kind of logic to look at it and be like, OK, what is this thing trying to do, and how is it accomplishing it? Is it because it’s just magic and it’s just happening in the background? Or am I telling it to do something?

You know, and if it’s logging a lot of redirects, per se. Like one prominent issue that we warn about in one of our health pages is some sites that have redirection plugins, that log every time someone gets redirected, but they don’t have the ability to only do it on kind of internal links.

And so, you know, our ads are doing stuff in the background that sometimes do involve redirects or 404 errors. It doesn’t impact anything. It doesn’t hurt anything. But each one of those is being logged. And it’ll log. And it’ll log. And it’ll log. And it’ll log. And it’s just– it is too much.

So that’s another thing to keep an eye out for. If your redirection plug-in, like as long as you have a way to kind of target specific kind of 404 errors or specific posts where you’re wanting to monitor the redirection, those are great. But if it’s just an all encompassing plug-in that just catches anything and everything, that’ll definitely slow things down for you.

JENNY GUY: Awesome. Great feedback. OK. Same with question to you, Lauren. Are there any perpetual offenders that you’re seeing or things to look out for?

LAUREN GRAY: Um, those are really good ones Jacob. I just want to say that. Because those are really hard ones to identify.

JACOB FELTNER: They are, yeah.

LAUREN GRAY: So that’s a good one to call out by name. I’d say, with us, I don’t see any as problematic. Google’s being a little more forgiving with some types of features that we see a lot, like sliders. Those plugins we try and recommend against. We try and say, like, here’s the compromise that you’re making to have this sort of experience that you want for your users or this visual. Here’s the impact it’s going to have on speed.

Usually it’s not too big of an impact anymore. It used to be like it would crazy drag your scores down. Now that could be the one compromise you make on your site. But like sliders is something, pop-ups. So a lot of external scripts, like your convert kit, and I’m not saying to remove this.

But your convert kit pop-up, like it uses a JavaScript call reference that is pulling that up. And you’re usually going to see that, because it’s an external script. So you don’t have control over optimizing it. You’re going to see it in your PageSpeed Insights, your Waterfall analysis, anything like that. Again, it’s not a huge impact.

So the benefit, I think, outweighs the impact that’s there. But that’s the sort of stuff that we are generally regularly talking to clients about is like, where do you want to make these compromises? Do you need something similar to sliders? Is there’s like the tab. There’s like– I see this a lot. It goes up and down in trend.

But it’s like, there’s like three tabs at the top. And you can switch between recent posts and those like three categories. That’s based on JavaScript, sliders are JavaScript, pop-ups are JavaScript. Hotjar is something we see clients use a lot. It’s JavaScript. And it’s– like Hotjar is something I would definitely say only use it while you’re using it. Don’t just let it run in the background forever.

But anything JavaScript based, which if you’re pasting in code that ends with dot JS, that is JavaScript. And it’s going to have an impact on your site. And a lot of functionality is, unfortunately, JavaScript based. So if you can be plain, plain is cool.

JENNY GUY: Plain Jane. OK. We actually, in talking about sliders, which we’re referencing a lot. I’ve heard tell that potentially our WordPress framework Trellis might have that option to include some really righteous sliders that won’t drag your site speed down. Jacob, is there anything you can share on that?

JACOB FELTNER: I actually haven’t seen it in action. One of my teammates, Matt Howe, is really spearheading that charge and starting the onboarding process for the people in beta. But like with everything that Mediavine tries to solve, it is with page speed in mind.

And particularly with this theme, it is the pride and joy of so many engineers in our company. And we don’t want to give people the most boring web site in the world just to fulfill the promise of site speed. So some of these things that have always given people a headache in the past, that’s kind of our goal.

Recipe cards gave people a headache. Social share gave people a headache. Themes gave people a headache. And, you know, we’re going to address it with the slider.

JENNY GUY: We’re trying to create a unicorn for you. So we know it’s taking a while, but that’s our goal. And then I also know that a lot of the things we’re talking about that are causing some of the page being slow with a convert kit, I know that there are plans to develop in that way as well, to solve the email– email equation.

So that’s happening, too, just so– just so everyone knows. OK. Amelia said, if we have old Gleam widgets for giveaways, is it worth it to get rid of those? And should she stay away from Thrive Leads? Follow-up question on that is, can tons of comments on a blog post be slowing it down?

LAUREN GRAY: Those are three questions.

JENNY GUY: Yep. So let’s start with the first one, Gleam widgets for giveaways, is it worth it to get rid of, yes or no? Lauren.

LAUREN GRAY: Are those posts ranking? Does it matter? Do you want the page speed– I mean, yes. If you want your page speed to improve, those widgets are loading JavaScript that you don’t necessarily need anymore, because no one can enter those. But unless those posts are ranking, which might depend on where you tend to insert your giveaways, I’m not sure it’d be worth it or not.

JENNY GUY: OK.

LAUREN GRAY: It will improve your score, may or may not be worth your time though.

JENNY GUY: Thrive Leads, opinions on those. Jacob.

JACOB FELTNER: Thrive Leads, the only thing that’s jumping out to me with that is that this is a kind of a side point to make. But only because I only have– I have ad performance on my mind.

JENNY GUY: And we’re about to get into it like whoa.

JACOB FELTNER: No, it’s more, there’s one particular Thrive Leads option where it doesn’t in line form, which basically places the form in the content. And what that will do is actually nest all of your content into an additional div, which can kind of essentially hide all of your content from our script.

So our script will just see one big fat div, and it won’t see all of your content. So if you run Thrive Leads and you’re like, wait a second, why did my in content score suddenly fall off a cliff? Why am I only seeing one in content ad now, at the very, very bottom? That is because of that.

Very fixable. We’ll make the adjustment. But if you then walk that back, you’d have to come back to us. And we’d have to readjust it. But yeah, when it comes to whether you should remove it or not, I mean sometimes you just have to take a hard look at it and figure out, are people actually using this. Is it, you know, greatly benefiting, you know, the goals for my site.

And what is the kind of sacrifice that I’m making in terms of site speed. Disabled it, see what your scores are, compare, contrast and just make a value judgment. That’s not the most glamorous answer. But, you know, a lot of it does come down to what makes the most sense for you.

JENNY GUY: And we can’t make that determination for you. We can just let you know what the options are and give you the data. And you fly– fly from the nest with your data. OK. Then finally, I don’t– whichever one of you wants to jump in with this one. But can tons of comments on a blog post be slowing it down?

LAUREN GRAY: Yeah.

JACOB FELTNER: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: OK.

JACOB FELTNER: I’m sorry, go. Go ahead.

LAUREN GRAY: You can go. You can address it if you want.

JACOB FELTNER: OK. Yeah, it’s just, I think the big concern with that is probably just how many database queries are going out and if it’s well optimized. I mean, I don’t know how much of an impact it would really have, because I haven’t really dug into that too much. But there are ways to see how much a given plug-in or a given thing is setting out database queries.

And if it’s pretty extravagant, it can definitely slow down your site. That’s kind of related to– related to post plug-ins as well. Those can sometimes send out a lot of unnecessary queries and slow down your site in a way that you may not really anticipate. Because you look at a related post, and it’s just three things.

You look at comments. It’s just plain text. Why would it be slowing things down? But depending on the implementation, it definitely could.

JENNY GUY: Luke Word is actually jumping in and saying that there is a great basic plug-in for lazy loading comments. It’s actually called, aptly, lazy load for comments by Joel James. They really spent a lot of time on that title. But that is– there’s that.

And then Rose, who is one of our publisher support, she said, if you have Gravatar enabled, more comments can slow things down more because of the images. Jacob, will you talk about Gravatar real quick? Oh, he just ate a groan. Tell us about the Gravatar groan you just let out.

JACOB FELTNER: Oh, no, no. I just remember what Gravatar does. I mean, it’s just– it’s adding a lot of unnecessariness, basically–

JENNY GUY: Extra.

JACOB FELTNER: –to the comments. Yeah, it’s just– it’s just extra. It’s one of those things, it– it feels like a bell and a whistle. But really it just– it’s adding unnecessary load. So definitely don’t use Gravatars. Plain text is great. People will still be engaged. They don’t need to be represented by an icon or an avatar.

JENNY GUY: You also can’t really see them. So it’s not–

JACOB FELTNER: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: You’re squinting at those little tiny round picture. Like it’s not– it’s not necessary.

JACOB FELTNER: No.

JENNY GUY: Also Heather, our publisher– Director of Publisher Support just said, Trellis lazy loads comments so, just saying.

JACOB FELTNER: Like I said, there’s a solution. They’ve got a solution for everything.

JENNY GUY: There’s a solution. So Lauren, what are the features of a, quote, good plug-in? What– if you’re shopping for plug-ins or you need– you know you a need, and you’re going through the WordPress repository, what are some of the things you should look at, that earmark something that is– could– we can’t have every eventuality but giving us, in general, rules.

LAUREN GRAY: Yeah, generally you’re looking for a plugin that’s been updated recently. I wouldn’t say that’s always the case. But in most circumstances at least, especially for functionality that’s happening on your front end, or something that’s maybe more like trending, you want something that’s had an update recently.

So recent updates, I’d say responsive support. Or like some indication that the person that’s writing the plugin cares about anyone else other than themselves. Because plenty of people write plugins that they need. And then if it doesn’t work for other people, you’re out of luck. You don’t want to be in that situation, if you’ve heavily relied on a plugin.

So you can, in the WordPress repository, you can look through like, there’s a reviews tab and there’s a support tab. And there’s just a lot of people giving feedback in there. And I’d say that’s really, really representative of where the current status of the plug-in. Because people will definitely share their opinion in there. They won’t be shy about that.

And then personally as a developer, I like to look for documentation on a plugin. I wouldn’t say that it’s like really a requirement. Like you can have good plugins without documentation. But plugins with documentation, so there’s a long description. There’s images at the bottom. There’s like question and answers.

You’d go to an external site, and it’s got a whole page on how-to. They’ve got hooks and filters, if you want to get a little nerdy, that sort of stuff. If you see that, and they’re writing it out, it generally means they’ve got a longer term plan or like a more, like a stronger foundation that they’re writing that plugin on when they’re thinking about it at the beginning.

So I would say those are something when I see, I’m like, OK, this person is taking this seriously. This is higher on my list. But that’s a developer thing. I get it.

JENNY GUY: Jacob, anything to add to that?

JACOB FELTNER: Yeah, this is a little more advanced. So if you want to dig into it, the opportunity is there. If you’re looking at a site, you can right click kind of in the margins of your site and view the page source, view the kind of raw code on your site, the HTML and everything.

And from there, you can see if a plugin is only applying scripts and loading things when it actually needs to. One of the things in particular about Create is that Create won’t load its JavaScript or its CSS or anything. It won’t reference it in the background. It won’t even be loaded unless there’s actually a card on the post or a list.

So, you know, it’s nice when plugins don’t try to just apply itself everywhere, unless it actually has to. Something a little more intelligent, smart about how it uses itself.

JENNY GUY: Love that. Great advice. OK. We just shared– yeah, Jacob, get it. We just shared a great blog post that Lauren did for us about how to do a plug-in self-audit. It’s a great post. it gives you step-by-step what to look for, what to make notes on, how to diagram your thoughts and put it all on paper or however you want to do it, Google doc, whatever, whatever floats your boat.

But to put everything out so you can see it in black and white and really make a plan, then, of attack on how to get that plugin, get out the things that are just bloat on your site. Jacob, question for you. I know that there– we already talked a little bit about how Thrive Leads can play nasty with Mediavine, our ad script.

What– do we have any other ones that are conflicts that can cause some tricksy trouble on the back end of your site if you install?

JACOB FELTNER: Mm-hmm. I mean a great place check is definitely our help pages, you know, conflicts. There’s a particular– there’s a Mailchimp pop-up that causes issues. But it really all comes down to– there’s also a Rocket loader from Cloudflare that we’ve seen have issues in the past.

It’s really just anything that promises to make things optimized or faster that affects JavaScript, particularly as it relates to ad performance. You also want to watch out for CSS as well, if say your grow buttons are displaying weird, or not clicking or doing things properly, or create looks really messed up.

It might be because either one or both the JavaScript and CSS are getting optimized. So really just keep an eye out for anything that promises that. And if it doesn’t offer an option or a common sense option or an easy option to kind of exclude specific things from it, then try a different one. There’s a lot of different options out there.

Some of them are great. Some of them are less great. But really, you just want something that is– that you have a lot of control over and that you have a lot of insight into. Even if you don’t have direct control over it, you know, just shoot us an email, we’ll take a look for you. We’ll tell you.

JENNY GUY: Always, they’re honest. They’re painfully honest. They’re going to tell you. They’re going to tell you what’s up. So outside of plugins, what are some– and this is unfortunately you guys, and I know I was gone for like probably 60 seconds, the longest 60 seconds of my entire day and maybe my week when I–

And I apologize. So you guys handled it though, you’re amazing. For our last question, I wanted to have you guys talk about some areas outside of plugins on the page speed that we’ve already talked about, that people can focus on if they are committed, right now, to spending some time cleaning up their site and improving the speed and the weight of it.

And I’m going to let you guys think about it for a second while I make a couple of quick announcements. For our next episode of Teal Talk, it is two weeks from today. That is Thursday, March 26th at 2:00 PM. I’m being joined by the wonderful and very intelligent Amy Norhard. She is a CPA and the accountant for Creatives.

What are we going to talk about? Taxes. You’re just going to be a few weeks out at that point from the deadline. And we’re going to talk about if you’ve waited until’ the last minute, we will not judge you. We will just talk about it and help you.

And then we’re going to get into some things that, if you’ve just done your taxes, and you’re already in good shape for this year, stuff you can start doing now while things are fresh and you’re starting all over to keep yourself in great shape moving forward.

Please like us on Facebook. That way you can get all of the updates on our Teal Talk. And subscribe to our YouTube channel. Because I don’t know if you guys aren’t subscribers to our YouTube channel, you don’t know that we have a ton of video content. Not only do we edit all of our Teal Talks and upload them, we also have Eric’s video series.

One is Go for Teal, which talks about ad optimization and media products. And then the other which started a few weeks ago is SEO like CEO where he’s offering great SEO tips and digestible chunks, so you’re not overwhelmed. And you’re getting those coming every week or every other week. So that’s a great place to subscribe.

And let’s go back to my awesome guests who steered the ship while I was off in the ether somewhere. They’re amazing. They’ve given so many great tips and actionable items. Lauren Gray from Once Coupled, let’s start with you really quick. If there are some places outside of plugins where people want to focus their attention, where would they go?

LAUREN GRAY: Like I said before, images are my first to go-to. After that, it’s probably any sort of script or embed that you’ve got, either site wide or on a post by post basis. So someone mentioned Gleam. But there’s a lot of other plugins that get added into your posts, like RewardStyle or Pinterest.

Or there used to be like the fancy tweet like little call out and stuff like that. Any of those things that you don’t need anymore, especially if they’re site wide, like header, sidebar, footer, removing those would be my next big go-to I’d say.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. Same for you Jacob. Is there anything people can do not only to reduce the weight of their site or speed themselves up but earn more?

JACOB FELTNER: Yeah. In terms of speed, like Lauren said, you know, like not too long ago, we dealt with a site where they had just a simple kind of Amazon tracking script hanging out in one of their widgets. And this was causing everything to load very, very, very, very, very slowly.

And sometimes it’s working great. Sometimes it’s not. That day it wasn’t working great. So sometimes you just have to be aware of whatever script you’re putting on your site that isn’t coming specifically from a plug-in, not like Google Analytics or anything like that, but you know just anything that you’re throwing into your sidebar, into your footer.

But also see how well your theme is performing. You know, switch to 2019, the 2019 theme in WordPress and see how much of a difference it makes just by switching the theme. You know, all the plug-ins stay the same, but the theme changes. Is there a dramatic difference? Sometimes there definitely is.

And also talk to your host about what they’re caching options are. If it can integrate with your WordPress admin, fantastic. So you don’t have to keep calling them. Just see what your options are. Because you don’t want to put four caching plugins on your site, because it won’t make your site quicker, I promise.

But just in general, you know, any kind of duplicate functionality, it won’t make it X times better. So just be a little judicious. Pick which works best, you know. And then look for another avenue to pursue to make things a little faster.

And all of these things will help because people will stay on your site, and they’ll see ads. And they’re going to keep coming back. And Google will love you. And everything will be awesome. At least– the last thing on my mind, at least when it comes to page speed, turn on desktop page speed optimization in your Mediavine dashboard.

And just, if you don’t see both of your sidebar ads after you do that, just email us. And we’ll be able to either help get the ads re-targeted so that they display properly, or we’ll advise you on what to do. Basically, the end goal, especially with that setting turned on, is to have all of your– have enough space so that all of your sidebar widgets will load. And then there is at least one widget fully out of view, under the page, under the initial view when you load the page.

And if you do that, then we can put both ads underneath there. And you’ll get better desktop page speed. And you won’t sacrifice any revenue, unless you’re running leaderboard. But you shouldn’t be running leaderboard – if you don’t know why, we’ll tell you.

JENNY GUY: So all of those things to be said, email Jacob if you have questions on any of the amazing things that you just heard. And we are here to help. Also Lauren is available at Once Coupled if you need a little more personalized attention. And I mean, let’s be real, who doesn’t.

You can reach out to her as well. Guys, you’ve been amazing. I so appreciate you being here. And everybody at home, thank you for joining us. If you’re joining us on the replay, howdy. How’s it going? Hope you’re having a great day. Everybody stay safe out there. And we will see you in two weeks. Bye, guys.

It’s a new year. Which means our favorite thing is coming up…

That’s right: taxes!

Jokes aside, whatever the due date, we ALL must eventually pay taxes. And it’s no joke that taxes for freelancers and creative business owners are often more complicated.

Last year Amy Northard, CPA, joined Mediavine’s Senior Director of Marketing Jenny Guy on Teal Talk to walk us through taxes as a content creator, and how to start off the new year on the right foot.

You don’t want to miss it!

[powerpress]

Helpful Resources

• The Accountants for Creatives
• Amy’s Youtube
• “How Do I Reach a Real Person at the IRS?” Article
• Amy’s Instagram

Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING] JENNY GUY: So that’s a great answer. But I have gotten word from my team that we just showed up on live. I don’t know why it took five minutes for us to get going, but we are just now going. So we were having a fun private conversation just about a minute ago.

Guys if you are just– you’re not just joining us. We’ve been here. But we just got live. So that was a fun thing that just happened that has never happened before.

I am here with Amy Northard. She is a partner at Amy Northard CPA, the Accountants For Creatives. And she was just explaining how she works with bloggers. We’re here to talk about all things taxes. The question I ask you guys to post on if you’re here with us in the comments is, have you already done your 2019 taxes yet? Or are you more or are they wait till the last minute kind of person?

And Amy was explaining what it means to be an accountant for creatives. And can you just go a little bit more over about how you do work with bloggers? And some of the specific things that, questions that they bring to you?

AMY NORTHARD: Yeah. So we work with bloggers virtually, bloggers all over the US. And we do it through video calls, phone calls, emails, those sorts of things. But we work with them to work on things like cash flow, savings for taxes, saving on taxes– not only being prepared for taxes, but also how can we reduce that, how much you’re paying on your income. So we try to help in all aspects of things related to taxes, bookkeeping, those sorts of things. Because you never want to get to the end of the year without knowing or having an idea. Otherwise, it can be really stressful. So helping them throughout the year, instead of just being that one– the account that you just talk to once right around April. Prepare people a little bit.

JENNY GUY: OK. So we just got a comment from Melissa Greeley Olivieri, I just want to make sure I’m saying it right. She says, no, she has not done her taxes yet. She’s in Canada. And this is her first year doing them as a blogger. She’s terrified. And she doesn’t even know where to start.

So we’ll get to you in just a minute. But let me start out with this question that might kind of address everyone broadly. Since we’re all creatives, pretty much everyone that’s watching is a creative in one sense or another, most website owners of their own. Could you tell us any common struggles or mistakes that you see content creators making regularly with their taxes or just general accounting.

AMY NORTHARD: I think, two big ones. One is not worrying about your bookkeeping throughout the year, and just saving that for once the year wraps up. And the reason I think that’s a big mistake is, like I just mentioned, you want to throughout the year what you can expect for taxes.

So forcing yourself. Getting in a good habit of maybe once a month, or at a minimum once a quarter, sitting down giving yourself a chunk of time to get that taken care of. And just kind of like make that the day. You act like you are your business’s SEO or CFO. And spend time really treating it like a business. Even if you consider your blog a hobby, treat it like a business. Because the more you treat it like a business, the more you could potentially bring in through that venue.

So even if you don’t have to sign up for QuickBooks and spend a lot of money on that sort of thing. A simple spreadsheet, a Google doc, or a Google Sheet will work just fine. It’s just putting the numbers into a usable format so you can see what’s coming in, what’s going out, and then plan for things. Especially right now, like having a visual of like what’s coming in, what’s going out, and potentially what can you cut– that is I think it’s really comforting to actually have that information in your hands rather than always being unknown. So figuring that out is the first thing.

And then the second thing is actually making yourself send in those tax payments each quarter if you expect that you’ll owe more than $1,000 to the IRS. And for most states, their threshold is about 500. So what that means is if you were to make $10,000 and you multiply that by 25%, that would mean you estimate you’re going to need to pay in about $2,500 to the IRS for that income. So that’s kind of like your indicator that you need to start actually sending money in.

Right now, we’ll talk about the due dates for everything as far as like the extensions. But you can hold onto that money. The IRS doesn’t pose underpayment penalties if you don’t pay in throughout each quarter. Their way to try to get you to comply with that is to assess any penalties if you don’t pay in throughout the year. So doing that is a good idea.

But if you need to hold onto your cash right now, which is understandable, you can wait until the end of the year to pay in quarterly taxes. But still maybe have it in like a separate savings account so that you have it ready. And then you’re not really hit hard next tax season, with not having that stuff available.

JENNY GUY: So your top recommendation then is to just start estimating your taxes throughout the year, what you’re going to owe. And then setting up a separate account to start siphoning that money off to make sure that it’s there no matter what. And you actually recommend paying it quarterly as opposed to waiting and paying it in a lump sum at the end of the year.

AMY NORTHARD: Yeah. As long as you feel good about your cash flow situation, I do think it’s a good idea to go ahead and send it in throughout the year. That way it’s out of your hands. And you know that the IRS has it. And it eliminates or reduces potential underpayment penalties.

One thing I just thought of also along that topic. You don’t need to have a separate business savings account to put that money in. You can open up something like an Ally savings account personally and move that money there so that you’re at least earning a little bit of interest rather than sitting in your business bank account not doing anything. So keep that in mind. Because income taxes are technically personal expenses, you can move that money into that type of account.

JENNY GUY: Excellent advice. And it would much prefer to be earning even a little bit of interest over just sitting there not doing anything. OK, so let’s talk a little bit to Melissa and in general as well. Essentials, what you absolutely need. It’s time to do your taxes.

And I think most people, if they haven’t adjusted to your way of thinking– which is a great way. Which is less of a one time. It is now the time to do the taxes and make all the adjustments. But treating it more like a year round process. That you’re constantly doing your taxes and making sure that you’re in compliance and in good shape. But what do you have to gather together? Let’s help Melissa. It’s her first time, or first time doing them as a blogger. What do you need to have to have your ducks in a row?

AMY NORTHARD: Yes. So the general process that I’m abut to explain would apply to Canada and the US, essentially any country. But then some of the tax forms that I might mention are going to be US specific.

So in general, what you want to do is what practical steps I would do if I hadn’t done any bookkeeping for all of last year. I would go to my bank account. If it’s a business account, great. If it’s a personal account, that’s fine too. But export all of your transactions for last year into a spreadsheet. They usually have a way for you to select the whole year. And then export it into CSV file.

And then from there, I would delete a lot of the extra stuff. You really only need to have the date, the amount, and the description in there. If your stuff is mixed with business and personal, delete out all the personal stuff. And then add in a column for the categories. So just go line by line. If it was income, call it income. If it was supplies, go work through down through your list. Don’t get hung up on what to call something. It’s not super important.

And the reason is because you’ve already determined that it’s a business expense at this point. So the IRS isn’t going to audit you just to change the title of something. Like they’re not going to say, oh, you listed that as supplies. We want it to be called office supplies. It doesn’t matter what category, really. So work through that.

And then you can either do like a sort within Excel. Or if you want to get crazy, do a pivot table. There’s a lot of options for sorting that information which will tell you the total income and then all of the expenses. If you’re using a tax program like TurboTax, or an online program, you can plug those totals in for your business income and expenses and that’s pretty much it. So that takes care of your business side of things.

You want to make sure when you’re doing your own taxes that– in the US we have 1099s. So you want to make sure that the income that you report on like a Schedule C, that gross income– before any expenses are taken out, that number is equal to or greater than the amount that you’re reporting on your Schedule C. Or the amount that you have been reporting on 1099s.

So if I got a 1099 for $10,000 but I only saw $9,000 of deposits into my bank account, if I only reported $9,000, it’s like an instant letter from the IRS. You will get one so fast. Because they see a mismatch. They see someone said you made 10,000 and you’re only reporting 9. So that’s one of the huge things that can really freak people out. Even if the net amount is the same, you have to really be careful of that.

JENNY GUY: No, but yes, I would definitely say that no one is happy with a letter from the IRS. As much as we all like mail, that is not the kind that we want. So Matt Hawford came in and said hi. He said the biggest area of taxes I struggle with are what I can and cannot write off, especially with family members who are part of a, quote, work trip. Conducting research is so vague. And I tend to write it all off. But it does keep me up at night sometimes.

AMY NORTHARD: Yeah. So the IRS is not, they’re not really black and white about this type of thing. So it’s really on you to determine. And I kind of, like for my own business, I kind of do a gut feeling. Like does this feel more like a personal trip that I’m trying to disguise as a business trip? Or is part of it business?

So if you’re doing a work trip and a few days of it are to speak at a conference or attend a conference. But then you tack on extra a few days at the resort to hang out with your family. You can deduct your travel there. You can deduct your travel home for yourself. And you can deduct your hotel nights or Airbnb or whatever while you’re there for the business meeting. Everything else, meals, hotel, those that are incurred when you don’t have a business purpose need to be left off.

And I know that can be that’s a really black and white example. And I know there’s a lot of examples out there where you might be– I’ve had photographers tell me like they went on their shooting images to be sold as prints. So they wanted to just part of their trip to Europe. There’s a lot of different scenarios. And you really want to make sure you’re only deducting the business portion.

So I wouldn’t deduct your entire family meals. If you’re bringing kids, they’re probably not there for a business purpose. Even if you are taking their picture for the blog– just because it’s documented for blog purposes doesn’t necessarily mean it should be a business expense.

JENNY GUY: That’s helpful. And maybe not what everyone wanted to hear, but definitely helpful. No, it’s better to be safe than sorry than to have someone come back. And have you ever seen the IRS come and say come back on someone deducting something like that as a business expense? Like a trip, a work trip that ended up being– and I think that I can see travel bloggers getting into that all the time. They’re bringing their family in some blogs. We have several that we work with at Mediavine that are family travel blogs. So the brand is about having your whole family with you when you travel. So have you seen the IRS–

AMY NORTHARD: I haven’t personally had any of my clients have any problems with it. But the more income you make, the larger those deductions get, the bigger chance you have to be selected for an audit. So you just need to be really, really careful the bigger that gets that you’re documenting all of that. Like if you are traveling all year long, you need to have– I would have a spreadsheet of like what the purpose was of this trip. And the more documentation the better for that type of thing.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. OK. Melissa had another question for us from Canada. We’re going to get to more on this, but let’s get her in now. She said which TurboTax would you suggest for us bloggers?

AMY NORTHARD: So I’ll be honest. I’m not like, I don’t know a lot about all the different types of TurboTax. I think if they have the option, I would start out with their base option. And then they’re going to ask you a bunch of questions and it’ll lead you into their more expensive plan. So start with the baseline and add what you need.

Since I’ve been a CPA and work a tax room, I haven’t had the opportunity to go through and use something like TurboTax or H&R Block. I just have kind of a vague understanding. Yeah.

JENNY GUY: Start out with your base. Start out with a minimum. And then add a la carte or answer the questions to get where you need to go, Melissa. OK. So the giant elephant in the room of every room of every life of every conversation is what’s going on with COVID-19 and the coronavirus? And due to that, we have had tax day postponed from April 15th to July 15th of this year. Which is awesome for some procrastinators.

But what impact will this have on small business owners? What if you’ve already done your taxes. Good job everyone that has done that. Will everything be delayed, including potential refunds? What is this going to mean?

AMY NORTHARD: So actually, if you have already filed or need to file, they are really prioritizing getting those refunds out to people. Because that’s kind of a form of stimulating the economy, is getting that money back out so that you can use it to support yourself.

So if you are a procrastinator but you think that you’ll get a refund, it’s at least worth getting your return prepared. If you aren’t ready to file it, that’s fine. But it can give you an idea. Now if you’re going to have to owe, you can make a plan for it. If you are getting a refund, then get that filed ASAP so they can start processing that.

The deadline is for federal taxes that got extended. A lot of the states haven’t matched that or posted anything about it. So you want to check with your state because you don’t want to get dinged there with failure to file penalties. If you want to wait, you may need to at least file an extension in your state so that you don’t get hit there. Some states are still requiring that you file by April 15th, and then you have the extended time to pay. It just really varies by state. So check on your state’s department of revenue website and confirm before you just brush it off to the side.

JENNY GUY: I’m going to keep baking bread. I’m not going to worry about it until July 15th. Amy and I were talking before about baking bread, and we’re both getting into that more now that we’re all home. OK. So how does the new deadline affect quarterly tax payments specifically?

AMY NORTHARD: So right now, the way things stand right this minute, the first quarter payment has been pushed to that July 15th deadline. The weird thing is, though, the second quarter payment is still due June 15th. So that means it’s a month ahead of the first quarter.

From what I’ve seen, the stimulus package they’re working on passing right now addresses that and will probably update that second quarter payment so that it’s not in a weird order. So just keep an eye out for when that eventually passes. And if you are one of those people that pays quarterly, habitually keep an eye on that. Because that will allow you to keep more cash in your pocket if things are tight.

AMY NORTHARD: Fantastic. OK. So you mentioned filing an extension. For those of us who’ve never done that, what does that entail? What do we need to do to file an extension? And are they separate for state and federal? And how do I do this?

AMY NORTHARD: So some states do accept the federal extension. A super, super easy way to file a federal extension if you get to July 15th, and you’re like, there’s just no way. Maybe you’ve had a bunch of other stuff going on and you just can’t get it done by that time.

If you go onto IRS.gov/payments you can file an extension. You can put in– I think maybe the minimum is $10. But you can make a payment towards an extension on their website and that automatically files an extension for you. And then when you go to file your taxes for 2019, however much you paid with that extension, you want to make sure that shows up as an extension payment on your taxes. So that’s the easiest way that I found if you aren’t working with an accountant on your taxes to get one filed. And you have that confirmation right there for you.

Once that’s sent in, then I recommend googling does my state, insert your state, accept the federal personnel extension. A lot of states accept it. But there are still quite a few that don’t. And you have to physically file an extension form with the state. So to get like for that, if you need to file one with your state, google your personal income tax extension. That should bring up the form. Some of them will have an online filing option.

Some of them, you’ll have to physically print out the form. If you’re going to make a payment with it, write out the amount you’re paying, send in a check, and get it in the mail. And you need to have it postmarked by the date that your taxes are due. So if your state is still sticking to that April 15th deadline, you need to get that extension sent in by that time.

JENNY GUY: Speaking of the fact that we have an extension. How do we get our taxes done while in quarantine? What do we need to do? It’s going to make it a lot more complicated. Do you have any tips for people that are stuck at home and trying to do their part to flatten the curve and self isolate.

AMY NORTHARD: So there’s a few options. We’ve already talked about Turbo Tax, H&R Block. There’s tons of online DIY options out there. So take some time if you want to go that route. Gather up all of your documents. I think it’s really helpful if you want to have them in a Dropbox folder. Have them all in one place so that you’re not doing part of it, and then you have to set everything down and go find your W-2 and that sort of thing.

So gather everything up. Get all your business numbers in order. And then sit down to work through all of their questions. So that’s probably going to be the most accessible.

If you traditionally work with an accountant that you’ve had to go into their office and sit down with them, some of them have been able to transition to an online or virtual format. So check with them about how they want you to deliver your tax documents.

If that’s not the case, there are a lot of virtual accounting firms out there like mine who are already set up to work virtually. So we use online file sharing. We don’t deal with any paper. We’re a paperless firm. So we send in your documents. We prepare the return. We ask any questions. And then we send you a return to review. And then we e-file it. So it’s pretty easy. Whether you do it yourself or you decide to hire somebody, there are a lot of options still to get it taken care of.

JENNY GUY: Excellent. All right. So we’ve given you some ways to get yourself still taken care of. Don’t wait until July 15th if you can avoid it. But if you are having a situation where there’s some tight cash flow– which we all feel that right now– it’s OK to not, to be holding off and to be looking for those different ways that you can defer.

OK. What are the best ways as bloggers and content creators, like our audiences, to better prepare for taxes all throughout the year versus waiting until tax time? Are there any specific programs or systems you can recommend? The best accounting software, maybe your favorite spreadsheet tool, just give us the whole shebang of everything. I know you mentioned Quickbooks, so I’m excited to hear about that.

AMY NORTHARD: Yeah. So if you do find yourself with some extra time at home, besides breaking bread and starting a garden or whatever you want to do. Now could be a good time to actually take some time to learn how to use Quickbooks. It’s usually one of those programs that I tell people, if you have the time– you need to have a significant chunk of time to go through some tutorials, and learn how to do reconciliations, and essentially learn how to use it appropriately, because it can get really hairy really fast if you don’t have an accounting background.

So they have a couple different levels of it. Their QuickBooks Self-Employed is the one that they’ve really taken away all the bells and whistles and tried to simplify it so that you don’t make a mess of it. And so if you are worried about that, that’s the one I would go with. And I think sometimes it’s, like, $5 a month. It might be a max of $10 a month. So that one’s pretty affordable.

Another program that is actually free is called Wave apps. Their website– they have invoicing, just like QuickBooks and a lot of the other ones. So if you’re not willing to take on any additional expenses, theirs is a great program to look at. They have tons of tutorials. But that’s another one you really need to spend some time figuring out, like, how do the transfers work? So that you’re not duplicating your income.

When I started my business, I was fully into spreadsheets. I loved just how easy they were to manipulate. I still use a lot of spreadsheets in my business. So if you feel the hives coming on when we’re talking about QuickBooks, don’t feel like you need to go that route.

I already talked about using a spreadsheet if you’re in a pinch to figure everything out for last year, but it can also be just a really good tool for planning for this year. We’re using it to clean out future months for our clients. We can see how much money we have left over after expenses are taken out, and kind of plan budgets for the rest of the year to make sure that we feel comfortable with being able to keep the business up and running.

So I’m a huge fan of spreadsheets. I know there’s tons of different kinds out there. We use a lot of Excel, Google Sheets. There’s Airtable out there. So tons of free options for you to look at. And make them as fancy or not fancy as you want, as long as you’re able to get the information that you need from them.

JENNY GUY: That’s great advice. I love a good spreadsheet, too. And I also have become an Airtable convert in recent months. So I love both of those. And I think they’re both awesome and can do a lot of really powerful things for you to take some of the guesswork out of all this.

So Matt Hoppert says, “Are there any tips for creative write offs beyond the basic things we all usually write off. But I’d love to have more deductions to offset taxes. This seems harder to do when you are the only employee and work from home.”

AMY NORTHARD: Yeah, it’s tough. And usually, my go-to one is to tell people to try to contribute to retirement. But in this type of economy, contributing to a retirement, if it’s far off, might not be your best investment right now. It might be good to invest back into your business in terms of education, growing your offerings, and those sorts of things so that your income can grow exponentially in the upcoming years.

So my go-to of retirement contributions isn’t necessarily the best option. But if you do have enough cash flow available, a good SEP IRA is a good option. It reduces your taxable income. So it doesn’t reduce your self-employment income, but it does reduce that income tax that you would pay. So that’s something to look into.

Let’s see. If you use your cell phone for business purposes, you can deduct the business portion of your cell phone bill. So we probably all still use our cell phones for at least a little bit of personal use. So unless you have two separate cell phones– one where you’re only using it for business, and then one you’re only using for personal– you want to estimate, to the best of your ability, how much are you using that cell phone for business purposes? And then that’s something you can deduct. I don’t see it being provided very often, because people just think of it more like a personal thing. So that’s one thing.

And then even for us work-at-home people, if you are having to go to the post office, or if you are a food blogger, and you have to go to the store to get groceries to make a recipe, every little business-related trip away from your home base can be deducted. So use a spreadsheet. If you find yourself doing a lot of those trips and it’s hard to keep up with a spreadsheet, MileIQ is another good option for tracking that. So that’s another kind of hidden one that a lot of work-from-home people don’t think about, is just those little trips that seem normal and not deductible. Those can be deducted, too.

JENNY GUY: Very helpful. And who would think that you could deduct just a trip to the store? But that’s fantastic. So you said MileIQ is a good system for keeping track of those trips. Do you have any other expense tracker tips, or software that might be great, or apps, even, to put on the phone?

AMY NORTHARD: So I wish that I was sponsored by QuickBooks, but I’m not. But they have apps for their different levels of software that you can have on your phone. I think Wave has an app, too. But it’s nice, because they have little in-app cameras that you can take pictures of your receipts.

Another free option would be– I have Dropbox on my phone, and they have a scanning option. So you can have a receipt folder and just scan your receipts right into there. I would put a date on them so that they’re easy to find. But you don’t need to go crazy and have a bunch of folders and subfolders for your receipts. You just need to be able to have them accessible if the IRS were to request copies. And digital is completely fine. They understand that we live in a more paperless world, and they’re completely fine accepting digital copies of things.

JENNY GUY: That is good to hear. It is a digital world. Matt said, “This live session has been super helpful. Learning a lot. Thanks.”

AMY NORTHARD: Good.

JENNY GUY: Yeah. Thank you, Matt. OK. So for people who have full-time jobs and the side hustle, which is typically when we’re dealing with Mediavine and our audience– their side hustle would be their blog– is there anything special they should do when they’re preparing their taxes?

AMY NORTHARD: So one thing to keep in mind– if you have a full-time job, and then this is just a side hustle– is, your full-time job may pay for some or all of the taxes that you generate from your business. So what I would do is I would look back at your prior year return.

If you have the business on there for that year, check and see how much of a refund, if any, that you got. That can kind of give you a hint as to, do I need to actually send in the typically recommended, like, 30% of your profit for taxes? Or can I back that off a little bit, because my day job is paying for some of that tax? So that’s one thing to keep in mind.

Also, the home office thing– if you are regularly and exclusively using a space in your home– it doesn’t have to be an entire room. It could be a little corner in your basement or something like that. But as long as it’s not part of your kitchen or your living room where your family lives, you can still deduct a home office space.

They might come back eventually, but they got rid of that home office deduction for day jobs. So if it’s related to W-2 income, they got rid of that a couple of years ago. But you still have that opportunity as related to your blog. So that’s a good way to deduct an expense you would be incurring anyways, but now you get benefit from it.

JENNY GUY: Love that. That’s our favorite kind of thing. OK. If you are deep in the weeds of procrastination– like, in the forest. It’s far. It’s dark– and you don’t have any good systems in place, what are some small steps to make accounting seem like a less daunting task for you?

AMY NORTHARD: I think the very first– and I think, probably, the easiest thing to do– is, if you don’t already have a separate business bank account, set that up. If you’re a sole proprietor, then you can even use a separate personal checking account where you only have all of your business transactions flow through. If you’re an LLC, S corporation, you’ll want to have a separate actual business account with your bank.

JENNY GUY: Hold, hold, hold. Tell us what all those things are, and what that means, and why we would be one and not the other.

AMY NORTHARD: So the three statuses I mentioned– sole proprietor, single member LLC, or just a regular LLC, and then an S corporation– sole proprietor is what you are as soon as you open a business, basically. As soon as you start making money, that’s the default. You are a sole proprietor, whether you have filed anything or not.

JENNY GUY: My lemonade stand– I am a sole proprietor of my lemonade stand.

AMY NORTHARD: Exactly.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. Or the bread– I’m going to sell the bread that we’re baking.

AMY NORTHARD: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: People will buy it.

AMY NORTHARD: So that’s the easiest one. You don’t have any state fees associated with that. There’s just a lot less regulations. The downside to that one is you and the business are one and the same. So if something happens, then your personal assets are at risk.

So kind of the next level up is becoming an LLC. That separates you as you, the individual, and then you, the business. So in order to keep that separation, though, you have to have a separate business account. You can’t be using your personal account for business expenses all the time, or vise versa, using your business PayPal account to pay for personal things, because it’s easy and you have money in there. So you just have to really focus on keeping that separate in order to get the benefit of the LLC separation.

But from a tax perspective, there’s no difference. If you are a sole proprietor and you become an LLC, you’re still going to pay the same amount of tax. You’re still going to file the same types of tax forms. And then the S corporation’s kind of that next level up. So I typically recommend that for people who are making a profit. So that’s income left after expenses of about $50,000 or more. And that threshold gives them enough profit for the tax savings to be larger than the additional expenses that they’re going to have to pay for by becoming an S corporation.

So those are the different levels. But if you are an LLC or S corporation, then get that separate bank account. A lot of banks– you can set them up online. A lot of banks aren’t doing in-person meetings right now, but you will still be able to do a lot of it over the phone or online. So take that step. It’ll feel really good to check that off. And then I have mine linked to QuickBooks, so I just leave it up as one of my 50 tabs on Google Chrome. I leave it up–

JENNY GUY: So many tabs.

AMY NORTHARD: And I just go there. Every day, I click on it, I refresh my transactions, and I categorize them. That way, I have maybe five to 10 transactions to deal with rather than hundreds, if I were to wait towards the end of the quarter or whatever. So if you can keep up with it, then it will be a lot easier. Even if you’re just using a spreadsheet, adding those in as they happen rather than saving that step up will just be less overwhelming, and you can keep up with it. So that’s what I would recommend.

JENNY GUY: And then I know we talked about it, that it doesn’t really matter earlier what you name those categories. But can you give us just a basic overview of potential categories that people could have, just if they’re feeling a little bit like, I don’t know. I bought paper, and I have dog– I don’t– I got a course.

AMY NORTHARD: Yeah. So a great place to start would be just to google the Schedule C form. So in the expense section, they’re going to give you a lot of different types of expense categories, like advertising, insurance, interest paid on credit card bills, office expenses, supply. So they’ve got a lot of those basic ones.

But then, at the very end, they have one called “other expenses.” So that’s where, if your stuff doesn’t fit nicely into one of the categories they put on the main page, on the second page of the Schedule C, you can, essentially, make up your own categories. So if you find yourself buying a lot of things that you can fit into a category– let’s say you buy a lot of props for images for your blog. You could create a category called props expenses and do that.

But what you don’t want to do is have a category for paper expense, a category for pen expense. You want to group as much as you can into a category that makes sense, but you want to be careful that you don’t have, like, $3,000 in “miscellaneous business expenses.” You don’t want to have just a bunch of random stuff put together, because then the IRS is going to be like, oh, what are they hiding in there? So try to give it your best category name so that it’s descriptive but not too specific.

JENNY GUY: So speaking of that, what are the biggest red flags for the IRS? What are the things that are– like you just said, having random thousands of dollars in a category that isn’t specific and isn’t clear is one. What are some others that we can look out for?

AMY NORTHARD: So one we already talked about would be having your gross income not match the total 1099s that the IRS has on their end. So that’s going to be an instant– they don’t even have to think about it. They’re going to send you a letter type situation.

JENNY GUY: Got it.

AMY NORTHARD: I’ve seen audits happen. Now, one thing I want to say– I mentioned audits. A lot of times, if they just send you a letter and they say, give us the detail, they’re not sending a scary person to your house and making you sit down and tell them your life story.

An audit’s not that scary, typically. So usually it’s just sending them backing documentation. Then there’s an agent that looks it all over and says, yes, I agree with this, or, no, here are my proposed changes. So I just want to get that out there. It’s not super scary if it happens.

Another trigger could be if you had– let’s say 2018, you had $3,000 of travel expenses, and then 2019, you report $60,000 of travel expenses– a jump like that in that type of category might tip them off to say, maybe they put in a family travel– a travel abroad type thing and stuck it in here. We want to know more.

So they’re going to ask you to provide receipts and details about all the travel, and that sort of thing. So it’s big jumps like that. Or maybe, every year, you have $20,000 or $30,000 loss generated by your business. If that happens once or twice, it’s not a big deal. But if it’s like, every single year, you have a huge loss, then they may also want to know what you’re doing.

JENNY GUY: Excellent. Those are great things to avoid. So speaking back to the proposed stimulus that we’re having, and that hopefully will happen, how will that affect our taxes for 2020? What impact might that have on all of us?

AMY NORTHARD: So from what I read– because they’re still working on passing it. So nothing is set in stone at this point. But from what I’ve read, they will make those payments based on your 2018 or 2019 taxes. So if you didn’t file for 2019 but you have filed for 2018, then, if you had direct deposit information in there on your return, they’ll use that to direct deposit the amount that you qualify for.

Then when you file taxes for 2020, they will, essentially, even it out. So on your 2018 taxes, maybe you made way too much to qualify. But when you file your 2020 taxes, and your income was below a certain threshold, and you should have gotten it, but you didn’t, then they’ll give it to you as a refundable credit on your 2020 taxes.

So that’s just something that I’ve read. It’s not set in stone for that. But they’re kind of going back to when there was a stimulus payment paid out– I think 2008 was the last one. So they’re guessing that it’s going to kind of follow similar guidelines as to what they did with that.

So if you have not had a refund in the past, and you’ve paid, so they don’t have your direct deposit information on hand, they will mail you a check. So if you’ve moved recently, I recommend calling the IRS. Well, first of all, you can file your taxes for 2019 with the new address. That’s going to probably get it changed the fastest. If you’ve already done that, and it has your old address, then there are change of address forms on the IRS website.

From what I’ve read, since it will impact where the checks go, they might prioritize getting those processed, because they usually take six to eight weeks to actually get processed. But hopefully, since it’s such an important thing to get taken care of, they might bump that up and make that a priority. And then you could, potentially, call and make sure that they have the correct address on file. Let’s see. I think that was it.

JENNY GUY: So is there any way to petition the IRS for if you know for a fact that you have changed income tax brackets since the 2018 was filed? Is there a way to petition them and maybe get that money faster than waiting for a 2020 credit if you’re needing it now?

AMY NORTHARD: So they’re either going to base it on 2018, or if you– they’ll base it on 2018 if you haven’t filed 2019. If your income was too high in 2019, and you’re expected to go way down in 2020, we’re kind of into the unknown right now.

JENNY GUY: For sure, in more ways than one.

AMY NORTHARD: They’re probably not going to have some manual action where you call and request that.

JENNY GUY: Sure. That’s understandable. OK. So we are nearing the end of our hour here, so I wanted to give you a minute for our last question, which is going to be, what is the biggest mistake you see when helping your clients prepare taxes? Just general question– or the best tip that you could give for somebody who either has filed them or is getting ready to try to take care of them from home from self-isolation.

And guys, I’m going to give a quick announcement before we go back with Amy. So next Monday, we are doing a follow-up on the live that I did in the Facebook group with Eric on COVID. We are going to talk about– we just decided this about two hours ago, but we’re going to talk about, blogging is not dead. Because we are aware that, not just in the influencer industry, but in all industry, there’s a lot of uncertainty.

And we are going to get together, and I’m going to be here with Eric on Monday. We’re going to talk about all the reasons why our industry has the stamina to make it through this. And it’s going to be a good hour. We’ll answer all the questions that we can, as much as things are unknown. So join us. That’s going to be Monday at 2:00 PM Eastern. You can find more information about it on the Facebook page.

And then a week from today, it’s another episode of “Teal Talk.” That is going to be surviving slash thriving slash whatever you want to call it with children at home that you are not used to. So we’re going to have a couple of homeschooling experts on. They are Amiyrah Martin from 4 Hats and Frugal and Sarah from the Stay at Home Educator.

They’re two Mediavine publishers. They are both very well-versed in homeschooling. And we’re going to talk about not only ways to keep everyone occupied, but also strategies on how to keep getting work done that you need to do, and be able to maintain your sanity in ways other than wine.

So those are the things we’ve got coming up next week. And both of those are next week. So next Thursday, we’ve got tips for homeschooling and continuing to work with our new circumstances at home. And then Monday, we have Blogging Is Not Dead with our CEO, Eric Hochberger.

We’re going to keep sharing on all of that. Follow us on Facebook to make sure that you don’t miss any of these. And then subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you do miss one, all of those will be uploaded, and you can get back old conference sessions from our past years of those, and lots of educational materials there as well.

All right. Amy Northard, it has been a pleasure to have you. Please answer that last question. What is the biggest mistake you see or the biggest tip you can give for people that are working on their taxes now?

AMY NORTHARD: I would say the biggest tip that I can give right now is the fact that knowledge is power in terms of our stress. So if you are worried that you’re going to owe a lot, get it done. Get that weight off your shoulders. It gives you some time to plan for the tax, whether– worst case, you have to sign up for a payment plan, and that’s not a big deal. So that’s always an option.

And just don’t put it off. I know a lot of people are going to because of that extension deadline. But just spend some time. Get it done. Get that off your shoulders, because we have enough things that are stressful right now. Take that one off the plate and get it taken care of. If you guys are needing a payment plan, states offer them as well.

And there’s even– PayPal Credit teamed up with some online tax payment place to give you six months of an interest-free tax– basically a cushion. So you can use their program. You have six months of interest-free time to get that all paid off. So the IRS offers, like, a 120-day payment plan. That one is a little bit longer. So there are tons of options out there. Don’t feel like this is the end of the world if you do owe with your taxes.

JENNY GUY: Overcoming analysis paralysis. And I lied. There is one more question I was going to ask you, which is, at what point do you recommend people consult a professional to work with someone to help them with their taxes?

AMY NORTHARD: I would say, if you are– partnerships can get a little hairy in terms of distributions and how the tax returns work, as well as S corporations. So those are two that I would say, if you’re at that point, or considering that, start talking with an accountant now– maybe this summer. Summertime is a good time to start interviewing accountants, finding ones that are available and that match your work style in preparation for the next tax year, or tax season.

And then as far as business in general, if you just feel overwhelmed, ask for help. Things can get really crazy if you’re using tons of different payment methods and that sort of thing. So if you just feel nervous, and you’d rather have someone on your side to walk you through everything, that’s another good kind of gut feeling or gut indication that it might be worth talking with an accountant.

If you don’t want to do ongoing services, a lot of accounts are doing consulting. So sit down for an hour and just talk through how to do your bookkeeping or those sorts of things.

JENNY GUY: And that is great advice. And what questions would you ask an accountant that you were shopping, if you were consulting or talking to someone? What would you ask?

AMY NORTHARD: Well, first of all, I would ask, what niches do you specialize in? We, obviously, specialize in creatives, but there are some out there that you can specialize further into just bloggers, or just photographers, or those sorts of things. So find someone that you feel comfortable with, has the knowledge to work with you.

And then, next, talk to them about their preferred communication style. Some people love face-to-face– sit down at a table. Here’s all my papers. Let’s talk this through. If you’re that type of person, then a virtual accounting firm isn’t going to be a good fit for you. So talking through that.

And then, also, a lot of accountants, especially during busy season, can kind of fall off the face of the earth. So make sure that you feel good about the pace that they’re responding to your email or returning your communications, because if they’re slow in the beginning to follow up with you, it’s not going to get any better during tax season.

And that’s probably one of the biggest complaints I see about just accountants in general, is that they’re terrible at responding and getting back to people in a timely manner. So those are kind of red flag things you can be aware of when you’re shopping around.

JENNY GUY: So helpful. Amy Northard. Thank you so much for returning and for answering all of our questions, and getting people set up to get themselves in gear for 2019 and have a good start for 2020. We appreciate it.

AMY NORTHARD: Thanks for having me.

JENNY GUY: OK. Bye, everybody. Be safe. Be well. And we will see you on Monday. Bye.

AMY NORTHARD: Bye.

You’ve heard of SEO Like a CEO.

Today we’re bringing you SEO Like a Google Pro. As in THE Pro.

On the next episode of Teal Talk, Senior Director of Marketing Jenny Guy is joined by Google Search Advocate John Mueller. Yes. That John Mueller. SEO expert translator extraordinaire.

Listen in as Jenny asks John questions about updating existing content, images and videos for your site, the best way to structure your site and general algorithm questions. You don’t want to miss this episode!

[powerpress]

Helpful Resources

• Helpful Resources Slide
• Google Search Console
• Improving Rankings with Google Search Console Analytics
• SEO Friendly URL Structures
• John’s Twitter

Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING] JENNY GUY: Hello. Hello, everybody. And welcome to a very special edition of Teal Talk, the show about the business of content creation. I’m with you, as always, as your host, Mediavine’s Jenny Guy. And today you might notice it is Wednesday, November 17, as opposed to our plan of Tuesday, November 16. But that is all right. It is OK that we are so grateful that our guest was able to reschedule. Sometimes the internet is an unpredictable place. And that is part of why we are so thrilled to have our guest here today.

But as you know, next week is Thanksgiving in the US. And ordinarily, I would ask a question or two about your plans for the holiday, maybe get into a healthy debate about stuffing versus dressing, really important questions. But today, we don’t even have time for the briefest of bantering. That is because of my guest, who is joining us live from his home in Switzerland.

I have to say that we have been extremely fortunate over the course of four seasons on this show to talk with some of the most influential and knowledgeable people in the industry. But I’ve got to say, even with all of our incredible past guests, today is special. I already told him that I would try not to geek out, so I am working on myself.

As a result, the format of today’s show is slightly different. Just a little housekeeping. We asked you to submit questions in advance, and you guys have showed up. In fact, if I asked everything that was sent, we would be here for five hours.

Instead, myself and my team have put together a list of questions that we hope covers a wide range of important current CEO topics. So in order to get to as many of those topics as we can within our time restrictions, I won’t be taking questions live. Please keep commenting with your questions and feedback, though, as they may show up in a future episode if we are able to convince John to return.

So without any further ado, let us get SEO advice from the source. Today, I am joined by the one and only John Mueller. I’m going to read his bio real quick just to wow us all.

John Mueller joined Google in 2007 and works in Zurich, Switzerland, where he coordinates Google Search Relations efforts as a Search Advocate. He and his team connect the Google internal world of search engineering to those who create and optimize public websites. Together, they help to bring an understanding of the external web ecosystem to internal teams and help publishers, like us, make awesome websites that work well for users and search engines.

OK, here we go. Our first question. John, welcome to Teal Talk for the first time.

JOHN MUELLER: Hi. Nice to be here. So cool.

JENNY GUY: Wonderful to have you. Thank you. OK. Christine from Taste of Maroc. Do we run– we’re starting with a section on updating existing content, which is something we preach a lot of here. All right. Do we run the risk of losing rank on a top post if we make a minor update, such as adding an internal or external link, correcting a typo, adding a custom excerpt, breaking a long paragraph into two paragraphs, et cetera? How about adding additional photos to a post?

JOHN MUELLER: No problems. So all of these things sounds like great things to do with regards to content, kind of keeping things fresh, making sure that you’re fixing small issues when they pop up. And there’s definitely no downside from a search point of view with regards to any of these changes.

I think when you’re adding photos, the only thing there is, of course, we find another photo that we could index, which is almost like adding another way that people can find your website in search. So it seems like a good thing overall.

JENNY GUY: All positive things. Love hearing that. OK, so there’s no reason to be afraid that we’re going to ruin our rankings by updating existing content.

JOHN MUELLER: I mean, as long as the primary content is the same and that you’re not removing something that people are finding at the moment. So if, for example, you have this one mention of a word on a page, and it’s the only reason why this page ranks for that word, and you remove that word, then, obviously, yeah, it’s going to be hard for us to show that page for that query.

JENNY GUY: So before you do that, if it’s a high ranking post, make sure to look into where the Google– look into your Google Analytics. Dive in, find how people are finding you, and then go ahead.

JOHN MUELLER: Yeah, I mean, small stuff like fixing typos, I don’t see that as being an issue ever. But if you’re significantly rewarding things, if you’re changing a title completely, if you’re swapping out all of mentions of one word, then, obviously, that can be a bigger thing.

JENNY GUY: Love it. OK. Fantastic. So we’re going to open up a couple of cans of worms here. While we’re on the subject of updating older posts, here we go. Let’s talk about republishing.

When substantially– this is from Sherry Smothermon-Short of Cub Scout Ideas. And this is not only her, though. This is everyone. When substantially updating a blog post, can-should we publish it with a new date? Our CEO published a blog post a few weeks ago advocating for changing the updated or modified date, but leaving the published date alone, as per Google’s policy. Where are you on this?

JOHN MUELLER: I think that’s a great idea, yeah. One of the things that I notice with websites is some sites get a lot of traffic from fresh content. And that’s something where, especially if you’re a blog, if you’re regularly publishing content, or if you’re a news site, then essentially through the new content you keep appearing in search again.

So if you have something that you’re significantly updating and you’re saying, well, this is not just kind of like fixing a typo, but you’re actually revamping this page, then that feels like something where you put a new date on it. You make sure that Google understands this is actually a new piece of content and republish it like that. And I think that’s essentially a good idea to kind of stay on top of things.

Obviously, you don’t want to overdo it and just republish everything across a website. Because your users will notice that too. If they keep coming back, and they’re like, oh, yeah, I saw this blog post last week. And it just has a different date on it. Then that doesn’t really encourage them to keep coming back.

JENNY GUY: Definitely. OK, so it sounds like if you’re doing a huge revamp of the post, essentially changing major components of it, not just a couple of photos or switching typos, then yes. Where do you fall on the published or modified date? So we have the original published date. And then we usually– so the ideal would be to have a modified date, an updated date, but rather not changing the particular specific published date? Or where are we? We get very in the weeds on this, John, all of us.

JOHN MUELLER: I suspect from a web search point of view, there is no big difference. I could imagine that if this content shows up in Google News, then maybe there are some Google News guidelines in that area.

JENNY GUY: They do have that, yeah.

JOHN MUELLER: I don’t know. I don’t know too much about the Google News guidelines. But if it’s essentially a blog post, if you’re essentially looking at web search, then I suspect there isn’t a big difference, which is probably why this debate keeps going, because it’s like, if there’s no big difference, then both sides see that it’s working. So that’s kind of my take there.

JENNY GUY: OK. Thank you for sharing that. All right, so because we love controversial topics around here, let us hit another one, which is deleting old content. We understand that it can definitely make us feel better as content creators, getting rid of old posts that no longer apply to our niche. But is there a benefit as far as Google is concerned? Does it impact, for instance, a specific crawl budget for a lifestyle website?

We talk about– or our CEO has talked about is not linking to posts, as opposed to deleting. But if you are going to delete, verify the post isn’t getting traffic, and then remove all links. So where are you on this?

JOHN MUELLER: Deleting old stuff. So I think from a crawl budget point of view, for pretty much all blogs and that-sized websites, you’re not going to see any impact there. Usually crawl budget is something that you would impact if you’re creating a multiple of the pages that you have.

If you have a website that already has a million pages, and you’re creating versions– I don’t know– or you’re changing a sort order around. And suddenly, instead of one page or like millions of one page, you have 10 variants of all of that. Then it’s like going from 1 million to 10 million. That’s a significant change. But going from even saying like a large blog where you’re 100,000 pages going down to 99,999 pages, that’s not going to change anything.

So crawl budget I would ignore completely here. With regards to removing content, I think sometimes that makes sense. When I talk to the search quality teams, usually they say it’s better to improve content than to remove it. But obviously, when it’s a larger website, sometimes you’re looking at just the scale of things. Oh, I have 1,000 things I should be improving. And I have time to do maybe one a week. Then at some point, you might say, well, it’s not worth my time to focus on improving all of these 1,000 things. I’ll instead make a bunch of new stuff and just delete all of the old stuff.

And from my point of view, I think that’s a perfectly fine decision. It is something where you need to be careful that you’re not deleting anything that is of value. So like you mentioned, looking at the traffic to those pages makes a lot of sense. Making sure that when you delete something, you really delete it properly, like removing the links like you said. I think all of that kind of matches in there.

And sometimes people also are not sure if they want to remove something. And they’ll mark it as no index, for example. And the advantage there is that people within your website, they can still find the content. Because it’s still technically on your website, it’s just no longer shown in search. And because people can still find it within your website, you can still track the visits to that page.

So you can play around with things and try to improve that page a little bit. If you see the visits go up significantly, then maybe it’s worthwhile to let it be indexed again.

JENNY GUY: I love that idea of a wait and see approach. What I think we emphasize the most as Mediavine is focusing on creating new content or really doing great updates on your existing content, as opposed to finding things you should throw out. That’s what we focus on. With the limited time– because you’re right. We’ve got a lot of things happening. And worrying about which posts to get rid of–

JOHN MUELLER: I think removing things is really something I would try to limit to the absolute necessity, where you’re really saying, this is something I can’t stand behind at all anymore. And you want to get rid of it. Whereas if you’re just seeing, this post is not getting a lot of traffic, then it’s like, well, you have lots of other posts. And maybe they are getting traffic. So it’s like, don’t worry too much about these individual posts that only get traffic maybe once or twice a year, because maybe they’re unique enough that they have value once or twice a year. And that’s still valuable.

So just kind of like going in and saying, oh, I need to purge 10% of my website every month and taking the ones with the lowest page views, I don’t think that makes sense.

JENNY GUY: Thank you. We’ve heard a lot of advice from different sources where people are saying, it’s great to prune your trees and prune your content trees. And it’s better for Google. And thank you for clarifying on that. We just say, create more good content.

All right. Katalin from Spatula Deserts. Here is your question. Hope you’re watching. Why are none of my new posts getting indexed since the end of September? How long does crawling really take for new content? There are some rumors about Google bugs and a lot of us feeling like we’ve been impacted.

JOHN MUELLER: Yeah. I don’t know. So I think this is tricky. And it’s something that we talk about with the team every now and then. And I think one aspect here is that we generally don’t index everything from a website. And I think pretty much as far as I can think back, that was never the case. And the tricky part is within Search Console, we present a lot of things as almost like where you can look at them and say, well, there’s an error.

So we’ll say, oh, we know about this page, but we didn’t index it. And then you as a site owner will say, well, Google knows about 1,000 pages. And they’re not indexing it. I have to fix this.

And from our point of view, we’re like, well, that’s kind of normal. We just don’t index everything. And I think that kind of first step of seeing the information in Search Console and taking a step back and saying, well, it’s like, this looks like an opportunity. It doesn’t look like a problem. I think that’s really important. And yeah.

JENNY GUY: No, keep going, please.

JOHN MUELLER: I mean, it’s just one of those things where almost through the transparency that we have in Search Console, people get confused. And they think, oh, I need to fix it. So that’s kind of the one angle there.

The other thing that I see a lot with websites in general is, at least at the moment from a technical point of view, most websites are actually pretty good. They use a common CMS. They use WordPress or whatever system that is out there. And where in the past, we would say, well, it’s not indexed because of these five technical things. You look at it now, and it’s like, well, it’s kind of perfect from a technical point of view. They’re doing everything right. Because it’s kind of forcing you to do everything right. So at least that part is taken care of.

But that still leaves the overall aspect of Google maybe just not– I don’t know– being interested in indexing everything on a website. Which I think as a site owner is probably really hard to take, because it’s some weird algorithm that’s saying, oh, you have 100 pages, but I only like 70 of them. But it’s kind of I think the practical reality that we have a limited capacity for indexing things. And we–

JENNY GUY: You’re saying Google has a limited capacity, John?

JOHN MUELLER: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, we have to buy hardware like everyone else. We don’t have this magic– I don’t know– machine learning machine that just does everything for us. It’s like, people have computers. And I don’t know. Yeah, have to store the data somewhere.

JENNY GUY: Why, that is going to probably be the most revelatory thing that you say, which is Google isn’t magic. So I’m going to follow up that– [LAUGHS] you’ve heard it here, folks. I’m going to follow up that question with, do you recommend manually going into Search Console and submitting a post or indexing if you’re wanting to see quicker results?

JOHN MUELLER: I think on an individual level, sometimes that makes sense to kind of speed things up. But if you’re doing this for every post, then I would assume that it’s just– I don’t know, like you’re pushing five new ones in. And Google takes five out somewhere else. And it’s almost like, maybe there are other things that you can do on your website to make it clear that actually what you’re publishing is really important.

And that could be something along the lines of maybe not posting 10 articles a day, but rather posting one, kind of concentrating your energy into one really good thing. So that when we come by, we see, oh, there’s actually this one really good thing that we can pick up. Or making sure that within the internal linking of your website, you’re really making it clear what you care about.

And for example, if you’re a blog, and you have individual categories, then maybe really highlighting the categories that you do care about and kind of de-emphasizing the ones that you don’t care about that much. And that can be categories where maybe the competition is really hard, where you have the highest income, or where you just– I don’t know– feel the most opportunity or whatever. It’s essentially up to you.

But making it so that Google doesn’t look at your website and say, oh, there are 500,000 pages here. But rather, they look at it and say, oh, it’s a big website, but this is the really important part. And I’ll focus my energy on here and making sure that everything from here is properly indexed and shown in search.

JENNY GUY: Love that. Good on site navigation. We have some more questions on site navigation and site layout coming up next. We’re going to switch a little bit, change gears to images and video. Lin said, I know Google recommends using images that are at least 1,200 pixels wide. But does Google have a preferred height? Is there any benefit to one orientation over another– square, portrait, landscape, particularly for the SERPs?

JOHN MUELLER: So I think the tricky part here is the recommendations that we have depend a lot on how we show those images. So if you’re just interested in image search, like people search visually for your content, which might be the case for things like recipes or– I don’t know– fashion content, obviously people search in a visual way. For that kind of visual content in image search, it doesn’t matter. It’s essentially whatever you want.

For the content that we show in the rich results– so if you do a normal web search, and you sometimes see images there, which could be like a recipe thumbnail. Or maybe you see other kinds of thumbnails in the search results. Most of the rich result types have recommendations with regards to things like aspect ratio of the images.

So that’s kind of where I would go. Rather than just blindly saying, oh, it must be this size and this aspect ratio, kind of think about, well, is it a recipe? And if so, double-check the recipe guidelines and look at what kind of aspect ratios they recommend there. And then taking that width– I think the 1,200 pixel width is for the large image preview in discover, that recommendation. Kind of taking that width, and then using the appropriate aspect ratios to make sure that your images are appropriate for whatever type of rich result that you want to appear in.

JENNY GUY: Awesome. OK. Julia from Happy Foods Tube. Why is Google cropping the search result images on desktop browsers? It’s really hard to understand what’s in the picture. Is that a glitch?

JOHN MUELLER: It might be. I don’t know. Sometimes things go wrong on our side. So it’s really hard to say just based on this question. Because we have the recommendations for the different aspect ratios, it might be that the images that we’re getting are the wrong aspect ratio. And we have to kind of crop them for that. It might also be that something on our side is going wrong. And I’ve seen that specifically with regards to images in the past where we end up cropping images that we don’t need to crop.

But it’s kind of hard to say without examples. So if you can send me some examples, maybe on Twitter post a screenshot, that’s always super helpful. We pass these on to the team. And the team tries to figure out what went wrong in this particular case. And having a screenshot essentially shows us exactly what you’re seeing. Whereas if people come and say, oh, my images are showing incorrectly. And I can’t give you my site, because I don’t want to tell anyone what my site is, then we can’t do anything with that. We can’t go to the engineering teams, like, oh, some website on the internet has the wrong image aspect ratio. I think–

JENNY GUY: I also have a feeling that Google might know your website, probably knows a lot about it, maybe. And that would be a good thing. That would be a positive thing. You want Google to know about your website.

Another thing that I need to know is when things go wrong, do you have a bat signal in Switzerland that you can push that’s like the Google G that shines out to the team? That is how I picture it happening.

JOHN MUELLER: When something goes wrong and I see it, usually I end up pinging Gary and sending a bunch of emails. But no big light. Where I live, we have a lot of fog in the winter. So having a bat signal wouldn’t be that useful. It’d be– I don’t know. I could see it, but it wouldn’t go very far.

JENNY GUY: Fair. Fine. All right, John. We’ll let that go. OK. Marly from Namely Marly. And we had some questions about this during the live. She said, some people say having original video content on the page is an SEO ranking factor. Does Google consider this to be the case, or is it just a coincidence, because good video may increase dwell time?

JOHN MUELLER: It’s probably more of a coincidence. So from purely a technical point of view, when we look at a web page for web search, we recognize there’s a video there, but we don’t look at the contents of the video. So we wouldn’t know if it’s a Rickroll video or something useful. Essentially, we’d see, oh, there is this video embedded. And we would process the rest of the web page as we normally would. That means we don’t actually look at the content of the video for web search.

For video search, we do look at the video. And I don’t know what exactly video search all looks for, but that’s something that could be taken into account. I suspect the bigger part is really just that you’re providing something of value for your users. And they appreciate that. And they come back. They recommend you to other people. Maybe they send a link your way. And through that providing of high quality information and giving them something useful and unique, you’re kind of building up the value of your website overall.

So it’s not so much that Google recognizes, oh, this is a unique video, therefore, the website is better. It’s more that we recognize all of these signals all around where it’s like, well, people think this website is good. Maybe we should consider it as good as well.

JENNY GUY: Yes. And then a follow up on that, does Google prioritize YouTube over other video players? I suspect I know the answer for this, but still would like to say it out loud to dispel the rumor.

JOHN MUELLER: No, we don’t.

JENNY GUY: Thank you.

JOHN MUELLER: We don’t. And in fact, there’s a lot of work on Google side, within video search in particular, to make sure that, essentially, all video players have the opportunity to appear. I think YouTube is a particularly easy-to-use platform, which makes it really popular. They do a really good job with their landing pages as well. But essentially, it also means that you have a separate YouTube landing page for your videos. And for some sites, that’s OK. You kind of have that double visibility. For other sites, you really want the video only on your website. And for those, maybe you find your own player or find a different solution for hosting that video.

JENNY GUY: Excellent. OK. We’re going to pivot to site structure. I told you I promised you this was coming. It’s coming. So Sandi Gaertner from Fearless Dining said, I often link to the relevant category in my recipe posts. Is there value in this for search? Are category pages relevant for SEO? And how can we improve the user experience for categories? It’s a lot.

JOHN MUELLER: Yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense. What I see sites doing by kind of linking to the categories is giving a little bit more information about the structure of their website and making it a little bit easier for us to recognize, oh, this is a part of the website in this part of the website. And here are some pages that are part of the other part of the website. And kind of understanding how things are connected. What is the context of the individual pages there?

The tricky part is that, depending on how you have that set up on your website, maybe you already have those cross links in place. And by adding another version of the same link, you’re essentially not giving us any more information. So that’s kind of the, I think, the tricky part there.

Because usually in the navigation you’d have things like links to all of the categories. And then we would look at your posts and see, oh, all of the categories are linked up here. So from that post to the categories, that’s probably trickier. Whereas the other way around, that works a lot clearer. You go to one category landing page. And from there, you see a list of all of the posts that are in there. That connection works really well.

And category pages I think are really useful. Because it’s one of those places where, on the one hand, you have a persistent URL. So over time, that page builds up value. Even if individual posts don’t end up getting indexed– kind of like with that first question or a while back. If those posts don’t all end up getting indexed, that category page will still have the snippet of the post, some information about that post maybe, and at least be able to appear for kind of that broader category of search terms.

So that, from my point of view, makes it, I think, super relevant and super helpful for people. If they’re searching for a broader kind of category of things, and you have a category page, it’s a perfect match. So I would definitely make sure that they’re at least indexable. And making sure that you have a clean site structure helps make sure that we understand how things are set up on your website.

JENNY GUY: I’m going to ask a follow up question on that that I did not have. So is there such a thing as too many categories for one website?

JOHN MUELLER: I don’t think so. I think, at least from an SEO point of view, if you’re doing something that works well for users, then probably you’re on the right track. Which I realize a lot of SEOs just want a number. Like, oh, I want 17 categories maximum. But I would really look at it more from a user’s point of view. Is it something where they can still understand, what is the structure of this website?

And usually if users can understand it, then we can figure that out too. I think having too many category pages where maybe you run into hundreds of categories, that just makes it a lot harder for us to understand the overall structure of the website. So instead of having this Christmas tree layout where you have one small part and then more parts kind of going down, you end up having a really flat navigational or flat structure of a website. That makes it really hard for us to understand where individual parts fit in.

So having some kind of a reasonable structure I think makes sense. And reasonable is like– there’s no absolute number for that. For some, it’s like– I don’t know– five categories. Other people have maybe 20. I don’t know. Somewhere in between there I think is probably a good range.

JENNY GUY: Excellent. OK. Another can of worms, here it comes. Do jump buttons help your SEO or impact your rankings?

JOHN MUELLER: I don’t think so. So I mean, jump buttons are basically links that you have on a long page where you jump to a section further down or further up on a page. And from our point of view, those are essentially links to the same page. So they don’t really have kind of this link effect.

And I think the only aspect where sometimes we take that into account is when we have– I don’t know. I don’t know if they have a name. Kind of like special site links, where if you search for something, sometimes you’ll have– within the snippet, you’ll have links to individual parts of that page. Sometimes we can take it into account there. But that’s not a sign that this page will rank better or that it will perform better in search. It’s just, we recognize it’s a long page. You have links to individual sections. Maybe we can show those directly into the search results for your users.

JENNY GUY: Excellent. OK. Melissa asked, is it better to write ultimate guides covering a vast amount of information on a topic or better to write smaller posts that hit specific user intent?

JOHN MUELLER: I will go with the traditional SEO answer. It depends. Because I think it’s something where you kind of have to know your audience. And you have to know what they’re actually interested in. And it might be that you want to target a broader audience, and you have more of like a broad ultimate guide thing. It might be that you’re targeting something very specific, and you want something kind of more specific.

The one thing I would caution from, though, is starting off by doing everything in a very specific way. At least in the beginning when you’re starting off with a website, make sure that you have some kind of broad structure almost that is available. Pages that can rank for a wide variety of queries where you know people are interested enough in that topic to actually make it to your website, to avoid the situation that you create this fantastic article on this one very niche topic, and Google doesn’t notice and sends nobody your way.

So that’s kind of the thing that you want to avoid. And usually by starting off with something broad, you recognize which of these broad topics hits the nerve of the time where people are actually interested, and you have enough people coming. And it’s worthwhile for you to actually create more content in that direction. And based on that, you can kind of refine things and say, well, here’s my broad guide. And here are these five individual kind of more niche specific guides that I also create.

JENNY GUY: We have a whole bunch of stuff about that called parboiling where we use Google Search Console to find the specific topics where people are getting the hits and then creating supplemental content, because people are clearly interested in that.

JOHN MUELLER: Oh, perfect.

JENNY GUY: Yes. I also–

JOHN MUELLER: You have this covered. What do you need me for?

JENNY GUY: Well, no, hearing it from you is– I also have to say that, I think you said that it depends was an SEO answer, which is also a lawyer answer. And that [INAUDIBLE].

JOHN MUELLER: Oh no.

JENNY GUY: So the SEO equals lawyer answer. So we’re learning a lot, John. All right.

JOHN MUELLER: Oh boy.

JENNY GUY: We’re going to go to the general algorithm now. And we’ve got a couple here that are a little hot button and have been asked in the comments. So we have several people saying that there has been an onslaught of websites written by AI tools that tend to be inaccurate and have poor quality content, yet get millions of views. The question is, how does Google view this new AI content?

JOHN MUELLER: Yeah. I don’t know. I think there are two aspects here. On the one hand, I think there’s a bigger fear of this content than there is actually an issue in large cases, where people publish some AI generated content or show some AI generated artwork. And they pick the ones out that are particularly compelling. And based on that, they present it in a way like, well, machines can just take over and create all of this content.

When actually, when you work with a lot of these machine learning algorithms, you realize they create millions of things. And you can find 10 really nice ones in there if you’re kind of really picky and work to figure out what’s happening there. So that, I think, is the one angle. I think over time that will evolve and will probably get better.

The angle that I see happening there is, on the one hand, the lower quality AI generated content, we’ve seen this for years and years. I think, at least before I started at Google, when I created my test sites to try to figure out what is Google’s algorithms doing, I had little scripts that created websites that essentially looked like normal text. But if you read them in detail, you’d recognize, oh, these sentences don’t really fit together, or they don’t make as much sense. And that’s the kind of content we’ve seen for years and years.

And I’d say the kind of– I don’t know– almost like lazy or smart SEOs, they would use this kind of content. And sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. That part I don’t really see going away.

What I see more is that our algorithms work hard to understand the quality of the piece of content. And that’s something we’ve been working on for a really long time. And ultimately, what will happen is people will create AI generated low quality content. We’ll see, oh, this is low quality content. We don’t have to recognize that it’s AI generated. We just recognize, well, this is kind of gibberish. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Or it makes a little bit of sense, but it’s not actually useful content.

And we will treat it based on that. We’ll say, well, it’s like– we don’t really know if someone created it who’s just not that fluent in English or if some computer program created it. We just see it’s not great content. So we’re just not going to show that that well.

What I do kind of hope to see happen with all of this AI generated content is more that people use it as a tool. And they use it in a way to create better content on their own. So just like people often have copywriters who double check your content to make sure that it’s written well, more and more there are tools like Grammarly that go off and kind of help you to create a better page. And I think that mixture of having experts on a topic and all of these tools that are smarter and smarter, I think that’ll help us kind of move forward.

And that’s kind of more the direction I see happening where at least the more serious publishers, they’ll go off more in that direction. And obviously, there’ll always be people who are like, oh, I’m super smart. And I don’t want to spend a lot of time on writing something. Therefore, I’ll just have my computer do it for me. And maybe every now and then, it’ll be OK. But overall, I expect compared to someone who’s actually a subject matter expert, who’s working with these tools to create something fantastic, it’s not going to be comparable. And our systems will hopefully be able to pick that up more and more as well.

JENNY GUY: OK, I’m going to ask just, what is the algorithm? I’m just going to go off script. Tell us about what the algorithm is. How many people are working on the algorithm?

JOHN MUELLER: Lots of people. So I think the tricky part is, it’s not like one algorithm that figures everything out. That’s kind of the first thing. And the other part is, it’s not a magic box. It’s not something that looks at the web and understands what this page is about and how it should be shown. There are just lots and lots of really small technical aspects in there.

And that starts off with easy things like understanding where the word boundaries are, understanding what the words actually on a page are, what synonyms are, and figuring out kind of what synonyms evolve over time, and abbreviations and things like that. And all of those kind of small, more technical systems, they kind of come together. And we kind of frame it as the algorithm. But it’s not one long formula that processes everything. It’s just all of these small individual tools that do a small step.

So that’s I think– at least before I joined Google, I always thought like, oh, it’s like Google understands the web and knows what this page is about. And I saw it as some mystical thing. But it’s just a lot of really small, technical, nitty gritty details that anyone kind of would have to do.

JENNY GUY: I’m not going to lie. For me, the algorithm has like a capital A. And it’s maybe kept in a room like a Rosetta Stone or potentially like The Da Vinci Code. I have a lot of those images happening. I don’t know if I’m alone, but that’s how I’m seeing it.

JOHN MUELLER: So we have a tool internally that lets us look at some of the debug information in the search results pages, kind of to pull out the individual algorithms. And when you have 10 results on a search results page, usually the debug output, at least the parts that I see– and I don’t see everything– it’s maybe 100, 200 pages long. So it’s just all of these small systems. They’re all working together, trying to figure out– oh, it’s like this query, actually it means this and this and this.

And starting at the query, I think that was already a big aha moment for me, that we don’t just take what people write, but rather we turn it into a bunch of synonyms. And saying, well, probably this and this and this. And also it looks like they’re looking for something near them. So we should add some idea of the location to that as well. Kind of expanding what people type and turning that into a bunch of really small things and then looking at an index for all of those small things and compiling that back up.

So it’s just– I don’t know, just lots and lots of technical details that are kind of added up in the end. And we have to show them as a small list. And I think what makes it really interesting is we present it in such a simple way that when you look at it, you’re like, oh, there are 10 results here. And there are five images. It’s like, I could have made this page myself. But actually there’s just so much happening behind the scenes.

And all of that complexity hidden away I think makes it– I don’t know. It’s almost like part of the secret sauce there that we hide that complexity. That you look at it, and it’s like, oh, I can deal with this. It’s like a text box. I can just enter something. I don’t have to work with some complex UI to figure it out.

JENNY GUY: Making it look easy.

JOHN MUELLER: Yeah. But it’s really hard.

JENNY GUY: Oh, yeah. There’s a lot. There’s a lot going on. But that’s part of the magic. So I guess it is magic, the magic of lots and lots of people working really hard over the course of many, many years.

JOHN MUELLER: I mean, you see that when you’re creating content as well. It’s very easy to create a guide that is long and long and long, really long thing. And it takes a lot of work to refine that into something that is actually readable, where it’s like, oh, well, it’s a five minute read.

And I think that part of the magic is– when someone first looks at that five minute guide, they’re like, well, five minute guide. I could write that. But they don’t realize actually it’s this giant thing that you started with and you had to refine to that five minute guide.

JENNY GUY: Yep. Love that analogy. OK. We have a couple of questions here. So Norman from Nimble Needles and Laura from Your Guardian Chef ask– I smashed up their questions. We’ve often heard that Google has an interest in showing the user the best possible content. But as bloggers, we often find the same household names in the top three SERPs with content that is either thin, outdated, sometimes even recipes that are wrong. For example, Googling risotto, and the first result shows a best risotto recipe made with sushi rice from Bon Appetit.

Does the Google algorithm not recognize the value and authenticity of food bloggers versus large publications? And furthermore, is acquiring a lot of backlinks the only way to hit those top positions for high volume keywords?

JOHN MUELLER: I think that’s always tricky. Because we do look at individual pages, but we also look at the website overall when it comes to search. And sometimes a website that we think is overall a really fantastic website might have individual things that are not that great. And kind of that mixture of, well, some things are good, some things are bad. Where does that leave us? That’s sometimes really hard to figure out in our systems.

It is sometimes also an advantage, though. Because it means that as a site owner, you don’t have to do everything perfect. You don’t have to do everything exactly the same way as other people do. It’s like, you might get these five things wrong and these 20 things right. And someone else gets those five things wrong and the other 20 things right. And we have to show those sites essentially on the same search results page.

We have to figure out which order to put them in. But we kind of need to balance the good parts and the bad parts and figure that out. And I do think sometimes we get it wrong. And sometimes we show bad results on top.

What usually happens here is that if someone sends something like this our way where it’s a generic query, and we can tell lots of people are running into this, and the top results are really bad, or something really fantastic is hidden away, we can send that to a team internally. And they’ll figure out what went wrong here and try to figure out which part of the algorithm needs to be adjusted. And usually that’s something– they love digging into those details. It’s almost like– I don’t know. They’re looking at the algorithm overall, but they’re actually focusing just on their small parts. And based on that, we try to improve things over time.

And a lot of these cases where we see things go wrong, we tend not to announce, well, we made another change and yet another change. Because ultimately, we make– I don’t know, what is– thousands of changes every year in the search ranking algorithms. And all of these small things that are just adding up. And hopefully, when people try this out over time they’ll see that the results get better.

I think it’s always tricky, because you tend not to notice when things work well, and you notice when things don’t work that well. And you’re like, oh, I found another query where Google got it wrong. It’s like, Google’s always getting it wrong. But we fixed all of the other ones. So it’s like, yeah. It happens.

JENNY GUY: You don’t typically call customer service to tell them how amazing something was or that you had zero problems. So there’s a little bit of attention on that, yes. But that’s true. OK, so we’ve had multiple comments. And the elephant in the room, speaking of algorithm shifts, we had won today, John.

So other than just a couple of people who would like me to say why, tell us what happens with these major algorithm shifts, a core update. And what if your ranks drop overnight? What do you do?

JOHN MUELLER: I think it’s– yeah, I don’t know. I understand the anxiety around it a little bit. Because Google announces a big change. And you don’t really know what that actually means for your business. So you see all of the people externally like, oh, it’s like, everything is breaking. It’s the end of the world.

But we make these bigger changes every now and then, I think every couple of months. And the core algorithm changes are usually based on what we try to figure out with regards to relevance for individual queries. So it’s more about us trying to figure out, what are people actually searching for when they enter this thing? And how can we recognize that this is actually a great result for those queries?

And it’s less about– I don’t know– spam or flagging bad things or anything like that. It’s more about, well, we need to update our systems based on what we see people actually doing and what people actually expect. And that essentially leads to these core algorithm updates. For most updates, we tend not to announce them, because we just make so many of them. But the core updates tend to be something that– at least the individual SEO tracking tools they recognize– and some websites do see stronger changes in the search results based on them. So we decided at some point to announce these, just so that people know that, hey, this is happening. If you see something changing, probably it’s from here.

So that’s kind of our angle there. It’s something where I suspect most sites would not see any changes. So it’s not something that everyone needs to worry about. But it is, I think, something to keep in mind. Google does revisit what they’re doing and what they’re trying to show to users every now and then. And it does try to rethink, what is actually a good experience in the search results for these things?

One of the ways to look at this is to look at the quality raters guide that we have. The quality raters are basically people outside of Google who tell us which version of an algorithm is better or worse. And we essentially send them a collection of search results that we’ve seen and show them one version of search results with a change and one version without a change, or maybe multiple versions. And we ask them, based on the guide that we give them, which of these is better and why?

And in the quality rater guidelines, we have– it’s really long. So I think like 170 pages, something like that. We have a lot of detail on what we think they should be watching out for. And usually, they bring back really useful feedback for the algorithm team to kind of improve that.

So if you want to kind of be ahead of the curve with regards to these bigger changes, if you’re thinking that maybe your site is kind of like on the edge somehow, I’d strongly recommend kind of watching out for these quality rater guides and maybe working your way through them.

There are also a number of SEO bloggers that regularly go through them, say, oh, these things changed. And just following along with them usually gives you a little bit of insight as well.

JENNY GUY: OK, fantastic.

JOHN MUELLER: One of the things– I think with regards to figuring out what to fix, I think it’s something with regards to these core algorithm updates– it’s not something technical usually that’s kind of the matter. So it’s not something that you can just run off and fix and just say, oh, I’ll install another plugin. And that’ll make my website relevant again.

It’s really often a case of, well, maybe you have to rethink what you’re publishing and kind of rethink how you’re presenting that to people. And that’s not something that you can do overnight. Usually that takes a while to figure out.

JENNY GUY: All right, thank you for that. OK. Core Web Vitals. What impact do they actually have on rankings?

JOHN MUELLER: Core Web Vitals. OK. Yeah. So Core Web Vitals are essentially measures that we have for understanding the quality of a page, more or less, with regards to speed, interactiveness, responsiveness. I think those are the three main measures that we look at. And we have kind of a scoring system where you say, well, this is a good metric. This is somewhere in between. This is a bad metric.

And from a ranking point of view, we kind of take everything into account that is not a bad metric. And we say, well, there’s kind of a sliding scale here. This is almost good. Or this is in the good area completely. And based on that, we do apply that as a ranking factor.

But it’s a small factor. It’s not going to catapult your site to number one. It’s something that, for the most part, people would see in areas where there’s a lot of competition, where there’s no clear number one answer. So for example, if someone is looking for your company name, then your company’s website is kind of– it’s like the clear answer. Or if you’re a local business, and someone is looking for a pizzeria, and you’re a local pizzeria, it’s like you are kind of the clear answer for that query.

But if someone is looking for– I don’t know– a turkey recipe, and there are five million versions. That’s something where we might say, well, all of these are pretty good turkey recipes, at least as far as we can tell from a technical point of view. Googlebot is not going to try the recipes. But we can tell these are good pages–

JENNY GUY: Googlebot is–

JOHN MUELLER: –reasonable pages. And then we might figure out, well, this one has a better score here. So maybe we should show it a little bit higher.

JENNY GUY: I was going to say the Googlebot is probably vegan. So can’t eat turkey. Have some tofurky or something like that for the Googlebot.

JOHN MUELLER: I don’t know. I don’t know if vegan recipes would work better. I think that’s kind of– I don’t know. Now that I think about it, it is kind of this weird thing where even from a technical point of view if we could understand English well enough to read a recipe, understanding that this is actually a good recipe or not is probably not something that computers will be able to do, at least not in the near future.

JENNY GUY: So breathe easier all of our lifestyle bloggers. Computers still cannot tell you if something is yummy. So you are a very necessary part of this process, for many reasons, but that one specifically.

I wanted to– so we’re almost out of time. And as I said, I wish we could stay all day. But I wanted to ask your opinion on SEO plugins in general. Is there something that– is there one that everyone should definitely have? Is there something that could solve a lot of issues for people with regard to search?

JOHN MUELLER: I don’t know. So I think on the one hand, we try not to make recommendations with regards to different third party providers. So we wouldn’t want to say this one is better than the other one. I do see a lot of SEO plugins making your life a lot easier. So from that point of view, I’d say it’s probably worthwhile to look into the options.

I think with all of the technical things around SEO, they can do only so much. But if they can take some of the technical details out of your hands and take care of it for you, then sometimes that’s just worthwhile from a time point of view. So that’s kind of the angle I would take there, is look at what you want to do and think about the plugins that do it for you, so that you don’t have to spend time on it. And make sure that whatever you pick is something that is well-supported, where they regularly do updates, where they help you if something goes wrong.

And the other aspect I would watch out for with plugins in general is try to minimize them. Because every plugin adds a little bit of latency usually with regards to websites, makes things a little bit slower, adds a little bit of room for maybe security issues along the way. And the more you can concentrate into maybe one really strong plugin that is really well supported, I think that can make things a little bit easier.

So instead of going out and saying, well, there are five SEO plugins. I’ll install them all. Kind of pick what you really need and just install that.

JENNY GUY: So with that being said, I want to make sure I drill in on it. Page speed is important. [LAUGHS] Basically what you’re saying is page speed is important.

JOHN MUELLER: Yeah. I mean, it’s important for Google. But I think for the bigger aspect is actually for your users, where if you have a page that is really slow, they’re going to think twice about clicking around and browsing around on that website. Whereas if you have a page that is really fast and snappy, then of course they’ll be like, oh, maybe this article isn’t what I was looking for, but actually it looks like there’s other stuff here that is what I’m looking for.

And they’ll go and browse around until they find something that they actually like. And they’ll come back. Whereas if something is really slow, then all of those things kind of fall away. It makes it a lot harder.

JENNY GUY: It’s the Back button rule. How long would you personally sit there and wait before you click the Back button and go back to the search results.

JOHN MUELLER: Yeah. And especially when it’s about something where there’s almost like– I don’t know– commodity content and that. Like with recipes, there are lots of different recipes. And you find one recipe you click on, and it’s a really annoying website. You just go back and look for different recipes.

There are different variations. Maybe the other recipe isn’t as tasty. But it loads fast. You can read it easily. It’s like, that’s worth a lot too.

JENNY GUY: Totally agree. OK. I wanted to circle back on the question we had talked about with some of the big legacy sites or big name sites having the great results in the SERPs. I’d asked about backlinks. How important are backlinks to a content creation strategy?

JOHN MUELLER: I don’t know. It’s always a tricky question, because when we say we do use links in our systems, people go, oh, well, if you use five links, then I’ll buy 500 links. And then I’ll be on the good side. And that’s really not what we want people to do.

So we do use links. We use them and in some ways to understand the overall context of a website. But for the most part, it’s not something that you need to go off and kind of do these fancy schemes to get all of those links.

One way I like to think about this is, of all the teams that we have working on Google, as far as I know there’s only one team that works on understanding links better. And that’s the web spam team. And all of the other search quality teams, they’re kind of working on kind of understanding your content better, understanding the context of your pages better, how we can show that better in the search results. I don’t think there’s any team that’s working on, how can we use links more with regards to search results.

So there is I think that one aspect, especially for a new website of– well, it has to be found. We have to understand what the context is. But at some point, we found your website. We’re crawling it regularly. It’s not something where you need to regularly go off and buy links or organize links or do anything to keep getting them.

I think it’s super important that you make it easy for people to link to your website. So if they want to recommend it to other people, make it as easy as possible. But that doesn’t have to be a link that Google actually sees. Those recommendations can be make it easy for people to share on WhatsApp or kind of all of these other networks where people recommend things to other people.

And it’s not something that we would necessarily see. So we wouldn’t use that for search. But it’s kind of the same thing as you would do for search.

JENNY GUY: Awesome. OK, well, we are almost out of time. Right before we go, I wanted to ask, is there a specific article or two that you would highly recommend to our content creators who are wanting to perform better in SEO and in the SERPs to go read that is Google content?

JOHN MUELLER: I would actually point at the blog post we have on core updates, not because it’s timely or anything, but because it includes a lot of details on things that content creators usually try to suppress. So things like if someone new comes to your website, would you give them your credit card? And those are the kind of things where you would probably want to go to someone who’s unassociated with your website and ask them directly.

It’s kind of that– I don’t know– honest advice, where when you look at your website, you’re like, of course my website is trustworthy. It’s the best website ever. But if you present it to someone who doesn’t know your business, that kind of honest advice is really priceless. And the blog post on core updates has a bunch of those questions in there where you can really kind of go to someone who’s not associated with your website and ask them these questions.

And maybe present different websites from your competitors. Ask the same questions. And then really get that honest feedback of, well, your website looks outdated. Or the design is not nice. It’s not pleasant. Where you’d say, well, probably like an SEO aspect– it’s not really directly an issue. But indirectly, it is. It is something that people look at and they think about.

JENNY GUY: That is great. We are adding that link. So we are handing you guys– everyone, we have our one-pager that we always have that has all of the links that John has been talking about, including some of the links that I mentioned for Mediavine. We’re going to stick it in there. It’s going to be everywhere. You don’t have to worry about it.

John, this has been so much fun and so amazing. Would you come back in 2022? Is it possible?

JOHN MUELLER: Sure, sure.

JENNY GUY: That would be wonderful. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you guys for watching. I wanted to let you guys know that on the next episode of Teal Talk, it is Tuesday, December 14. We’re going to get through the Thanksgiving holiday. We’re having Paul Bakaus of Creator Relations at Google. He’s the head of it. We’re going to talk about Google for content creators. We’re going to talk Web Stories, Discover, and how to navigate all of those resources that they provide for content creators.

It’s going to be an amazing month. And we could not be more grateful. This has been all that we could have dreamed of and more. So thank you, John.

JOHN MUELLER: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Q4: It’s heeeeere.

And it can be a ghoulish time for content creators. But never fear: The Mediavine Support team is here to guide you to scary good earnings this year.

On this episode of Mediavine On Air, Ghostess with the Mostest Jenny Guy is joined by devilishly good Director of Support Heather Tullos. She’s bringing all her top RPM-raising tips to ensure all treats, no tricks for the holiday season.

You don’t want to miss it!

(Editor’s note: this episode and transcript mentions autoplay settings in the Mediavine Dashboard. Autoplay options have been retired as of February 2023. See this article for more information.)

[powerpress]

Helpful Resources

• Heather’s Presentation + Helpful Resources Slide
• How To Set Up Universal Player
• Ad Viewability
• Mediavine Ads and Core Web Vitals FAQ

Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING] JENNY GUY: Hello, and welcome, foolish mortals to another episode of Mediavine’s Teal Talk. I am your host, your ghost host, Jenny Guy. Today is Tuesday October 26, which means that it’s Scorpio season, and Halloween is Sunday.

You might have noticed that things look a little bit different around here today. We are going all in on celebrating the spooky season, and we’re so glad that you’re here to celebrate with us. If you are here with us live, there are some hair-raising prizes for you to win this episode. So make sure that you’re paying attention, and all will be revealed in good time.

Again, welcome. We are so glad that you are here. And speaking of the spooky holiday season, it also happens to be Q4. And if you’ve been a content creator for any length of time, you know that Q4 can be a little spooky for us. It’s marked by increased advertiser spend and a slew of influencer marketing campaigns.

So it has the potential to be the craziest and most lucrative time of the year. But how do you ensure that your Q4 is all treats and no tricks this year? Leave it to my guest for today. Morticia Addams, Director of Support, Heather Tullos, is here. After running a successful blog for the last 10 years, she transitioned to helping build and lead the Mediavine support team, kicking all the ass and taking all the names, while rescuing all the dogs.

Seriously though, adopt, don’t shop. Heather, welcome back. I mean, Morticia. Excuse me. I’m sorry.

HEATHER TULLOS: Hello. Hello, Cruella. You look amazing.

JENNY GUY: As do you look incredible. You look like you’re in gray scale, and I am dying. OK.

So friends, as I said, pay attention. Make sure you’re paying attention to the screen. I won’t tell you why, but you just need to be doing it, and also paying attention to everything that Heather is telling you. She’s going to give us some of her top tips.

If you have questions for the Mistress of Support, please drop them in the comments. She’s going to, like I said, share some top tips and a presentation to start us off. But we will definitely be opening up the floor for your questions later.

All righty, folks. I’m going to turn it over to Heather. We’re going to get this presentation going, and let’s do it.

HEATHER TULLOS: Hi, everybody. It’s me. I feel like you know me. Today, you might not know me as well.

[LAUGHTER]

And in case nobody told you, Halloween is my very favorite holiday. So I’m super excited that I got to work with our excellent marketing team to put this presentation together. Also, shout out to Rosie for this beautiful presentation. I cannot take credit for any of it. Yeah.

So we’re going to talk about making more in Q4. I feel like it’s a popular topic. We’ve had a lot of changes in the last year. The approach to how you’re going to make some more money might be a little different than it was in years past. Some of our advice has changed.

And so let’s talk through some of the differences and some of the ways that we’re going to help you make some more money. Hopefully, I will give you a few tips and tricks that you didn’t know already. Tricks and treats, straight from the spooky land of money.

JENNY GUY: If you haven’t met our mascot, this is Leaf. And they are wearing a farmer costume. As you can see, they are pulling a carrot from the Earth which is a money carrot. So that’s the best kind around here.

HEATHER TULLOS: So the first tip we have here, so that you can collect all the money carrots and also Halloween candy–

[LAUGHTER]

Is to check your sitewide viewability. Is it 70% or higher? So first, let’s talk about where to find that number.

If you go to your Mediavine Dashboard, and you look at the ad unit breakdown, and then you scroll down to the bottom of all the ad units that you’re running. So you’ll see in-content ads. Hopefully, you’ll see the Universal Player. Scroll down to the end of that, and you’ll see the totals across the bottom.

So you’ll see how many impressions that you’ve run, and we’ll talk about that in a minute. But you’ll also see the average of all of your sitewide viewability. You want that number to be 70% or higher.

The amount of dollars that advertisers spend once you cross that 70% threshold changes drastically. And there are a lot of ways that you can improve viewability. I would say, the very, very first thing is, if you’re using a jump button on your site, I would turn on the Arrival Unit, like 9-1-1, ASAP.

The reason that matters for viewability but also for earnings is because of the way we load our ads. So if your reader skips over your content, we’re not loading all those ads that they skipped. That would be stupid. Because why would an advertiser pay to serve ads that nobody is looking at? Right?

So we want there to be an ad where the reader is jumping to. The idea is that, when we don’t serve all those ads in the middle that nobody sees, that would slow your site down and make for a poor user experience. You need to make sure that, in order to have a paycheck, you’re serving ads where your readers actually are.

So if you’ve got a jump button at the top of your content, whether it’s for a DIY card or a recipe card, make sure that if you click it, especially on mobile, that there are ads where your reader lands. And that there are appropriate ads. Click through your top posts.

The same goes for a table of contents. If you’re using a table of contents in your post, so if you’re not a craft or recipe blogger, you’re not doing DIY tutorials for the home, you might have ways for your readers to skip around your site and land on the H2s that you’ve set up at the top of the page. There are a couple of mistakes that I see a lot. And one is just a table of contents that is so intense that it gives your readers too many options.

When you give them too many options, they don’t know what to choose. It’s like when you put 4,000 things in your sidebar. If they don’t know what to choose, they make no choices. So you need to make sure that you’re simplifying the options that they have. And I know that a lot of people will use table of contents, because Google likes to pull out those little H2s sometimes.

So be deliberate about that information and be deliberate about the choices that you are giving your readers. But also, be deliberate about the fact that when somebody chooses one of those table of contents options, that there are ads where they’re going to land. And sometimes you have to do that. Check your top posts and push the buttons yourself. It’s really the best way to figure that out.

JENNY GUY: Morticia, one moment. I also wanted to say that I become paralyzed with too many choices. It’s like trying to choose where you want to go eat. It’s awful.

Claudia had a really great question for us. So she said, if viewability is 75% in the US, but overseas is 60%, what could cause that?

HEATHER TULLOS: Are you looking in the country breakdown? I’m guessing, probably. That is a good question. I could guess at the answer, but I don’t actually know the answer.

I would guess that probably some of it is just that your site looks different depending on where it’s being served. If you’re in the EU, your reader has to navigate the CMP before they can get to anything. But also, sometimes, you want to make sure that you’re looking at your own site. So if you have the ability to VPN or if you’re in one of those countries, see what your site looks like for that user. Because they’re probably having a different experience.

If you don’t have a lot of readers there, don’t spin your wheels. Make sure that you’re paying attention to where the largest percentage of your traffic is. And just like we have you focus on top posts, because that’s where you can make the biggest impact. Right? I would say, if you’re looking at readers in Italy, and you only have 150 readers in Italy, and that’s less than 2% of your traffic, it’s probably not going to be the most return for your time investment.

JENNY GUY: I’m going to jump in with one more if that’s OK.

HEATHER TULLOS: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: OK. Michelle James said– and I was actually going to follow up on this. Do you recommend not including a table of contents? And if you want a table of contents, you said, don’t overload it. What would you consider the sweet spot?

HEATHER TULLOS: So I mean, a table of contents is great. It’s easy for your readers to navigate your post, especially if you’ve got a really long detailed post. A lot of travel sites really utilize the table of contents in really smart ways.

There’s definitely excellent ways to approach it and go about it. I think it is handy dandy for search traffic. And it will do good things for you there, depending on implement it. But again, you just want to make sure you don’t go wild and crazy with it.

Sometimes– and I feel like I see this more when we are vetting sites that are applying to work with Mediavine than we necessarily do with our publishers. Because you guys have probably already read a lot of our current recommendations. But I don’t know that this one is actually written down anywhere. I would just say, be really deliberate.

If every sentence of your blog post is in the table of contents, then what’s the point of the table of contents? And I have actually seen that. I’ve seen a table of contents employed that way. And I think it was confusing for me. And that means that it’s definitely confusing for a reader.

I think, circling back to viewability, you want to– ads are only viewable– we can only check that metric off if we are figuring out how our users are reading our sites and using our sites. And they do not use your website if they don’t read your blog the same way that you do. I know that we all hope that they are very deliberately consuming our content and are carefully, slowly reading every word that you worked so hard to write down, and edit, and put together. But most of the time, they are not.

I’m sure you all have a few die hards. But most of your readers are skimming, and they’re scanning, just like you do emails. So make sure that you are making it easy for your reader to pick out the important bits of information. And I think that’s what a table of contents really helps, it really helps you to do.

JENNY GUY: I mean, your mom is probably reading all of your words.

HEATHER TULLOS: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: So that’s, yeah, but other than that, I would say, I would maybe check your table of contents on a phone. And if your reader is having to scroll through your table of content–

HEATHER TULLOS: Right. If it leaves one screen through–

JENNY GUY: Right.

HEATHER TULLOS: Maybe you went too far, depending on your font size, again. It’s just like there’s– it’s like, have your eye out for too much of a good thing, I guess, would be the best way to phrase it. And then we skipped over one in the middle that I definitely don’t want to skip. Because I was trying to go in the order of operations here.

But jump to print and jump to video, a lot of people use those. They are redundant. So a jump to print button is only going to be for desktop readers. Right?

If you let them immediately go from the top of your blog post– I don’t know anybody that prints on mobile. I mean, I guess, it’s like you can. But I think that the people that print recipes and don’t just cook from a reader or a phone are probably using desktop computers most of the time.

So a jump to print button is going to take you straight to a page with no ads. If there are ads on your print page, it’s probably one, maybe two. It’s not going to monetize in the same way that monetizing like a blog post would.

And jump to video is just going to take you to your recipe card. Right? Or your DIY card, or your how to. The video should be embedded there. So it’s redundant.

It’s offering two buttons to get to the same place. Again, it’s too many choices. But you’re also giving your reader a whole bunch of ways to lose you money.

Giving them one choice, one way to get straight to the content and then decide, do I want to watch a video? Do I want to print? Do I want to read more? Do I want to see what the next post is? Let them– give them the option, and then let them take it from there.

JENNY GUY: OK. We had a couple more questions. So just to be clear, you’re not– jump to print and jump to video, we’re not saying jump to recipe. Right?

You’ve got Michelle’s question here was saying, wait, I thought jump to recipe was good. Because it kept people on the site who would otherwise bounce. Is this no longer– we’re not talking about jump to recipes.

HEATHER TULLOS: I’m not talking about jump to recipe. I’m talking specifically about jump to print and jump to video. But if you are using jump to recipe, Arrival Unit all the way.

JENNY GUY: Yes. OK. Ricky says, we use table of contents on most posts. Would it be worth placing the ads ourselves next to each H2 that the TOC jumps to?

HEATHER TULLOS: Nope. Placing ads yourself is never going to be as good as letting the script wrapper figure it out for you. You just want to make sure, that depending on the plugin that you’re using, and depending on how you have your content ordered.

What is the search term that is getting most people to that post? And if you click on that in the table of contents, do you get to a place that has ads? Do you get to a place with no ads? And then maybe rethink the layout if you can.

If you’re landing in a place where you’re not monetizing, or if they’re landing in a place, and there’s no ads there, like that’s OK. But did they stop scrolling there, or do they keep going? Those are the kinds of things that you can figure out. And we’ll talk a little bit more in a further slide about where you can figure that out.

JENNY GUY: Perfect. Do you need– do you want me to slide, Heather? Or do you want site speed settings?

HEATHER TULLOS: You can slide, because I think site speed settings, everybody knows site speed settings. Turn them on. We’re going to talk about them in another second, but yeah.

Site speed settings are super important for viability. Because what they do is they prevent ads from loading until the reader takes an action on the page. Right? So even the adhesion unit doesn’t pop up until the reader decides to scroll, which means it’s got really great viewability. So now you can scoot.

Site speed settings, enable your CLS settings. I know that there is probably still a warning on the one for sidebar ads. If you’re running Trellis, you don’t need that one. But everybody else, you’re probably not going to run into too many conflicts.

It was more an issue in the beginning when we rolled that out than it is now. And our support engineers are really good at helping with it. Morticia’s hair is really intense, you guys.

JENNY GUY: Morticia!

[LAUGHTER]

Looking hot, little bit extra.

[LAUGHTER]

HEATHER TULLOS: So 36.6% of Mediavine publishers are passing Core Web Vitals, which I think is amazing. High five Mediavine publishers. 80% of Trellis users are passing Core Web Vitals.

I would say that anybody running Mediavine ads that is passing CWV, they probably have those CLS settings enabled. This is compared to just 4% of the web that is passing. So you can see. We’re kind of doing a really good job.

Don’t ignore those settings. They’re on the site’s feed page. All of them are recommended. Just toggle the little buttons.

JENNY GUY: Friends, you might have noticed that just a second ago the little ticker went across the screen asking you what your favorite Halloween candy was. Deanna Hill was on it and said, Reese cups. Also, we love that answer. She wins our first prize.

Deanna, email marketing@mediavine.com. We are going to get you a Halloween prize pack. And guys, that’s it. Keep those eyes peeled for those tickers on the bottom of the screen.

We’re going to pick the first person that makes the comment and answers the question. This time, it was Deanna Hill. We are so excited. All right. Heather, are you ready for the next slide?

HEATHER TULLOS: I am. Let’s move it.

JENNY GUY: All right.

HEATHER TULLOS: Universal Player, you’ve probably seen an email or 12 about the Universal Player. And the reason–

[LAUGHTER]

The reason we keep talking about it and we keep emailing you about it is because if there was ever a pretty good little money button for your website, this one is it. The Universal Player, turning it on, it is about 10 pixels smaller than the standard video player. But the real benefit is making sure that you’ve got the placement right. Because when you get it set up right, it generates a lot of impressions.

So to compare, most of the time when you’re running your mobile autoplay video, so if you have a video embedded in your post, and you autoplay on mobile, and you have the little sticky player, I mean, those are post-specific videos. But most of his time, your reader is not actually coming to your site to watch a video. Right?

We run those videos, because they’re useful, but mostly because they make us money. Right? So the Universal Player will just make you money. And you don’t have to put a lot of effort into it.

[LAUGHTER]

But you do want to make sure that you set it up right. So I’m going to recommend that you toggle on the Universal Player on desktop, toggle it on on mobile. And then the next setting right below that is going to be for your autoplay mobile video. Try turning that off. And just trust me for a week, and see how it goes.

Then you also want to make sure that you either have your featured video set to– you can set it to your up next playlist. Because now, this setting that you choose here is only going to apply to your desktop traffic. And the Universal Player will work as backfill there. Or you can set it to none.

Again, the featured video is mostly– it’s like a little vanity playlist. We were all running it for so long. But mostly it was just so we could make some money with the video content that we poured our hearts and souls into making.

[LAUGHTER]

Video production is pretty intense. So now, you might be wondered about, well, what about all the videos that I was making? What happens to those? They do not get left by the wayside.

Google still really loves videos, and your reader probably still really loves videos. But instead of auto-playing them, you’re going to let the reader that wants to watch the video click to play it. You still have all the options to convert to YouTube at the end of that video when they want to. But I think this gives you a little more freedom with your video.

You have to be less concerned with making it short, so that you can try to get more impressions in there. Because that little small player– I think I was going to tell you, and then I sidetracked myself. It generates less than one impression per session most of the time, which means that most readers see most of the ad but not all of the ad, which means that they probably don’t really watch your video. They exit out of it.

The Universal Player, on a lot of sites, it creeps past two impressions per session and sometimes closer to 3.8 or four, which means that they’re not exiting out of that. It’s paying you really well. And then if they want to click to play your video, you’re still getting a really high paying CPM there. Plus they’re actually watching the video.

They pushed the button, because they wanted to see what else you had to say and how you could help them. Also, please don’t worry if you’re frantically trying to scribble all of these instructions down as I narrate them or trying to pull them from this presentation. It will be provided with lots of handy links and help articles at the end.

JENNY GUY: Yes. We’re not about stress. We’re about candy.

HEATHER TULLOS: No stress.

JENNY GUY: And coats out of puppies. That’s it. That’s all we’re about. OK.

So Heather, can you give us an idea– I know that it totally varies site to site. But basically, Universal Player is universally good for all Mediavine publishers. Just do it. There’s no reason not to. OK.

HEATHER TULLOS: I would agree with that. If you have a lot of international traffic, watch it carefully. Because the kind of ads that are available to fill can vary depending on where you are. So if you’re in a place where there’s not a ton of Universal Player impressions to serve, you may possibly do better with the regular pre-roll video ad. But that’s really the only caveat that I want to throw out there.

And then what is a lot of international traffic? Because I’ve definitely helped publishers with less than 50% US traffic run the Universal Player. And it was also a nice little money button for them.

JENNY GUY: I mean, the comments about the Universal Player are rolling in. Deanna, our first winner said, it’s 24% of my income on one site and 29 on the other. Like you can’t argue. Like, come on.

HEATHER TULLOS: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: It made a big difference. It’s been a game changer, all of them. Just do it.

HEATHER TULLOS: Yeah, and let me also say, don’t freak out. If you see the video impressions go down, they should. Right? So your video revenue will go down, because the Universal Player revenue will go up. So you’ve got to give it a minute.

JENNY GUY: And breathe. Breathe through it. So is there any caveat in not turning it on in Q4? Should we wait, or is it just go now, go do it?

HEATHER TULLOS: Don’t wait.

JENNY GUY: OK.

HEATHER TULLOS: Do it today.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic.

HEATHER TULLOS: And if you don’t, we’ll probably email you.

[LAUGHTER]

JENNY GUY: Get those dollar bills. Come on, y’all. Do it.

HEATHER TULLOS: We want to help you make money.

JENNY GUY: All right. Oh. Look at those little M&M’s.

HEATHER TULLOS: I know. I was obsessed with this slide, and I messaged you at very late o’clock last night to tell you about it.

[LAUGHTER]

JENNY GUY: I am ne– it’s never a bad time to message me and tell me how– they’re genius. I love them. Look at the little witch’s hat on the one M&M. Come on.

HEATHER TULLOS: I know. Look at the little mummy in the corner. He’s so–

JENNY GUY: So cute!

[LAUGHTER]

Dead.

HEATHER TULLOS: OK. Do a plugin audit. I promise this is quick and painless, and it’s not hard. And I think a lot of us panic about like, oh my God. How do I audit my plugins?

So there’s a really good blog post that our support engineers painstakingly put together that just tells you how to quickly run through your plugins. So first of all, anything that’s deactivated, you can probably trash. If it’s not active, you’re not using it, and you probably don’t need it.

Anything that is out of date, or that you can’t update, or that hasn’t had an update in several years, I would be concerned about using that plug-in. So if the last update was in 2018, you should probably find an alternative. But anyway, the blog post that support engineers put together, it’s really easy to just follow the steps one, two, three, four. And just make sure you’re not running any junk.

Do you have anything that is doing double duty? Do you have two plugins that are doing the same thing? Do you have to caching plugins?

That’s stuff that we see a lot. And you can’t like– there are some things, sort of like lazy loading, where if you do too much of it, it works against you. So if you have several plugins that are trying to do the same job, sometimes, you end up doing yourself more harm than good.

JENNY GUY: And if you’re like me, there are things every season where I’m like, when did I buy this?

HEATHER TULLOS: Yes.

JENNY GUY: I think it’s the same thing with plugins. Like, what is this?

HEATHER TULLOS: Yes. And also, while we’re on the topic of plugins, can I just issue a public service announcement about plugins? Please don’t just click Update All and then hope it’s going to be fine.

If you have a bunch of plugins that need to be updated, because a lot of times they’ll all issue releases kind of close together. So you’ll log in, and you’ll have seven things that need to be updated. Please just take the five minutes to do them one at a time. So that you know where things went wrong if one of them updates and it goes south.

I know I’ve had that happen with Yoast a time or two. I went to update the premium version, and it got mad at me, because I didn’t update the regular version first. Then I updated the regular version, and something else got mad at me. And I wouldn’t have known what was causing the problem if I hadn’t just pushed the buttons one at a time.

JENNY GUY: Love that. And it’s a lot like you sometimes just want the thing to check off your to do list. But make– separate this one out. Separate this one out. OK.

Our second winner is Chrysa Duran. Her movie that keeps her up at night, the spooky movie, is Scream. And I want to ask Heather this question too. What is a spooky, scary Halloween movie that you know is going to make it hard for you to sleep and/or maybe have to leave that closet light on?

HEATHER TULLOS: I think we answered this question in a meeting a couple of weeks ago. And for me, it is It. So I never saw the new version, Stephen King’s It. But the original that was aired on television, I watched it when I was in the fourth grade. And now, I have dated myself, but that’s OK.

[LAUGHTER]

JENNY GUY: Morticia is eternal. OK?

HEATHER TULLOS: Morticia is eternal. Anyway, I was terrified of the bathroom for literal months. But I still think I don’t like creepy clowns with giant sharp teeth that send balloons out of the sewer. Steer clear.

JENNY GUY: No, I will say that I went through about a year period where we were watching– me and my best friend decided we were going to watch all the scary movies that we’d never been allowed to watch. We were 12 or 13. And It, that moment when the picture winks, like I peed.

I swear to you I did. When the little kid was like, I’m like, [SCREAM]. I mean, I swear. I crawled out of that.

It was so unexpected. And Tim Curry is just a master as Pennywise. Come on.

HEATHER TULLOS: Yes. It was creepy, and I think it never left me. And it was one of those movies that made you want to go into the bathroom with a broom and poke at the shower curtain. You know? Yeah.

JENNY GUY: Yes! I–

[LAUGHTER]

So the last one that we saved was– mine is The Exorcist. And the last one that we saved, we begged our parents. My mom was straight up like, that scarred me when I saw it in the theater, and I don’t want you to watch it. But if you want to watch it, go ahead.

We made it about 45 minutes in. And both of us were about to cry. And we’re like, we’re turning it off. And I’ve never gone back, and I’m OK with it.

HEATHER TULLOS: Yeah. I’m also OK with it. OK. So increase your recipe card frequency, this is another one of those things where especially if you’re using a way for your readers to jump, you want to make sure that they’re jumping to something that’s actually going to make you money.

Otherwise, why are you spending all your time creating this content? So your recipe card frequency, you don’t want to go wild. But the good news is that our default settings, just like our in content settings, are never going to let you go super wild.

My best recommendation is to make sure that you have an ad on either side of the ingredients. And then we also have options in the dashboard for you to adjust your actual frequency in your instructions. And so if you have a beverage recipe, where you only have a few little short lines of how to make a drink, you’re probably going to only have one ad after the instructions there, because our script dropper is super smart, and it figures things out.

But if you have a tutorial for a really intense bread recipe, or if you’re using your how-to or DIY card, where you’ve got really long, detailed instructions for how to build a workbench, or paint something, or craft something. Obviously, those are not things that I do very often. But–

[LAUGHTER]

How to do your make up like Cruella de Vil, that would be a really amazing tutorial. And I feel like you should write about it.

JENNY GUY: Hey. I was– there were some masterful ones already out there that I was copying from.

HEATHER TULLOS: But if your instructions get a little long, you want to make sure that there are ads in your instructions.

JENNY GUY: Yeah, get monetized for that. So Kippi Kim Gale O’Hern said, let’s talk WP recipe card for crafts. Is that OK? What does Google think of cards for crafts, recipe cards for crafts?

HEATHER TULLOS: I think the general advice is don’t lie to Google. And if you mark up your crafts as a recipe, then you’re putting recipes scheme out there for something that is not food. So it’ll probably work against you.

I get the want to do that, because it formats things really pretty. But most recipe cards also have a DIY option, like a how to option. And so make sure that you’re using– make sure you’re outputting the right schema if you’re going to use a card that’s going to format things really pretty for you. That’s really important.

JENNY GUY: And speaking of that schema, Kippi was also asking, WP recipe card versus Mediavine create card, which–

HEATHER TULLOS: I mean, are we really asking me this? My answer is Create.

[LAUGHTER]

Honestly, I’ve used Create since before, I think, we really talked about Create. I was– my website was with Mediavine before I worked here, because I really just like everything that we do. So as soon as Create was available for us to test it on our own sites, I installed it. I started importing my recipes. I put together some DIY posts, so that I could talk to people in an educated manner, when we go to conferences that are not food related.

And so yeah, I think Create is going to do it faster. The user interface is better, and there are also some really cool Create options that are coming soon. So I don’t want to give away any fun surprises. But I will say that Create gets cooler all the time.

So I would choose Create. But yeah, definitely toggle, if you’re going to do DIY. Regardless of the card that you’re using and which option you’re more comfortable with, make sure that you’re putting out the right schema for that card. And then for our– go ahead, Jenny. Sorry.

JENNY GUY: Well, I was just going to say, how-to schema didn’t exist until Create gave an option for it. So this is– it’s specifically designed for other than food. Because we knew that the problem we were solving was that how-to and craft bloggers were putting non-food recipes into recipe cards. And that’s why Create, it’s way more than just food.

HEATHER TULLOS: Yes. It is way more than just food. And I think we navigated all of those little how-to, and list, and all of the cool options for schema to be put out into the world. I think we did those first, and we did them really well.

And then for those of you that are not running, where you would not need any kind of instructional content, where you don’t have a recipe card. You don’t have a how-to card. That’s not your jam. Maybe you have a travel site, or you write about science, or kids, or a whole ton of other things. There are fun little things that you can try a couple of times a year.

And one of them is in-image ad. So if you’re just looking for a settings button that you can push and increase your earnings in Q4, we work with GumGum. They’re a partner that bids in a lot of ad spaces on our websites. But one of the things that they’ve done since we’ve partnered with them is in-image ads.

If you have images on your website, it’s a really easy way to just turn that on. And the spend is really good in Q4. They have really good campaigns, and we can also tailor it for you. So if you want to– well, we can’t, but GumGum can.

So if you want to skip the first image, or you don’t want it on every image, that’s a request that we can put in for you. And GumGum will make that happen. So if you just want to dip your toes into the in-image ads waters and see how it goes, but they have really good campaigns.

They have really good CPMs. And it can add a meaningful amount to your RPM if you turn it on at the right time of year. You can always gauge whether or not it’s worth it to be running those.

If you look– not in the ad unit breakdown. I can’t think of what it’s called. I think it’s the Mediavine ad partner breakdown on the Dashboard. But it will say, Mediavine ads, GumGum in-image ads. It’s really easy to see how much GumGum is adding to your overall RPM.

JENNY GUY: Love it, always trying to find that balance between monetization and user experience.

* Editorial note: Since the airing of this episode, “Grow.me” has been rebranded to “Grow.” *

HEATHER TULLOS: Yes. Next slide, opt into Grow. You’ll notice that we’re not calling it Grow.me on this slide, but–

[LAUGHTER]

You’ll know it in your Dashboard as Grow.me. So we have a couple of Grow options. We have Grow Social Pro and then we have Grow.me.

Grow is the overarching theme here. We want you to grow your subscribers. We want you to grow your readership. We want you to grow your traffic.

We also want you to grow your access to your readers’ first-party data. Because at some point, somebody is going to enforce some very serious privacy laws. And we don’t know what those are going to look like. So just because Google pushed that timeline out doesn’t mean we get to cover our faces and pretend it’s not going to happen.

You have readers now. You have users now. You have people that subscribe to your lists, and your site, and your social channels. And they’re coming to you for all kinds of things now. And if you opt in to grow in your Dashboard now, you can make more money now. You don’t have to wait.

If you have a lot of iOS traffic, it’s already a good option for you to monetize that traffic where we’re not using third-party cookies. Because they’re just not hanging out over there. It can make a meaningful difference. But also, Grow is just a really cool engagement tool that will help you grow your traffic.

JENNY GUY: And if you’re looking– I can say this from experience on the Mediavine website. If you’re looking for just a way to just see if Grow is working, just try it. Just try one feature.

Turn on spotlight subscribe for your email. Just do it. I cannot emphasize this enough what a difference it is made on the Mediavine website. It is an incredibly brilliant way to get subscribers without an annoying pop up.

So please just turn it on, give it a shot. See what happens. You’ve got nothing to lose. What do you have to lose? It’s easy.

HEATHER TULLOS: It is easy. And we add new features all the time. So I think sometimes there was some confusion about what Grow actually is. And we have blog posts about it.

But if we just break it down really simple, it’s an engagement suite. Right? So not every single tool that is available in Grow is going to be the best fit for every single site. But the whole point of it is for there to be a whole bunch of options for you to choose from. Because one or two of them is probably going to work for you.

It’s probably going to work for your readers. And keep an eye on things, because we’re always adding new things. And in another month, there might be another feature that you want to turn on. And the idea is that we just keep building on those opportunities to collect first-party data from your reader. Keep them engaged.

JENNY GUY: And the other idea is that we’re developing this product together as we go. And we need you guys to tell us what is working for your readers. Tell us what– and then in addition, tell us what features you think might work.

What would entice them to log in? What would entice them to do all those things? That’s what we’re looking for. We need that. So that when Google finally does pull the plug, we’ll already be sitting pretty with a lot of first-party data.

HEATHER TULLOS: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: So that’s what we’re going for.

HEATHER TULLOS: And I will say that, when you have feedback, when you guys have a good idea, or you want to make sure that you want to let us know how you’re using something, or you think it might be a little better if you adjusted it in some way, make sure you email us that feedback. I see a lot of it try to land in the Facebook group. If I moderated you away, I apologize. It was definitely me, but–

[LAUGHTER]

It’s because I want it to– if it’s in the Facebook group, it’s not in a place where we can do anything with it. So I want to make sure that all of those good ideas get into support’s hands, so that they can hand it off to our product team. So that we can make sure that your good ideas get filtered up to engineers, and we can put some of them into action for you.

JENNY GUY: We have got– we actually asked what the favorite Halloween costume was of years past. And we’ve been getting a lot of incredible suggestions. We’ve got one, but Andrea Jansen was quick on the draw with Dracula.

So she’s our next winner. Andrea, email marketing@mediavine.com, and we will get your prize pack. But I’m going to read some of these costumes out, because they’re just so cool.

HEATHER TULLOS: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: We’ve got zombies, scarecrow. Somebody was a Rubik’s cube, which I really want to see. That sounds amazing. We’ve got ET. We’ve got Slimer from Ghostbusters, Annie, witches.

HEATHER TULLOS: These are so good.

JENNY GUY: I know. Listen to this one. In college, Linda Smith said, in college, friends and I went as the night sky, dark clothes, tons of tiny gold star stickers. I love that.

HEATHER TULLOS: That’s so creative.

JENNY GUY: Yes.

HEATHER TULLOS: One time my mom dressed me up as a bag of jelly beans. And she–

[LAUGHTER]

JENNY GUY: That’s so adorable.

HEATHER TULLOS: She blew up a bunch of multicolored balloons, and put them in a clear plastic bag, and just cut out holes for my arms and legs, and tied it with a bow around my neck.

JENNY GUY: That’s adorable.

HEATHER TULLOS: I thought it was really cool.

[LAUGHTER]

JENNY GUY: It’s a really cool costume. I think– so my favorite I think was the year– it was in college, and I dressed up as the bride from Kill Bill. So I had the yellow tracksuit with the– and I put the black, and I had the samurai sword. Yes, that was cool.

HEATHER TULLOS: Yes.

JENNY GUY: That was fun. It was a lot of fun.

HEATHER TULLOS: I love it.

JENNY GUY: OK. All right. We have some people that are requesting– are making comments that Zapier is too expensive. They need web hooks for Grow. That’s definitely some feedback that we can take in, and we appreciate you sharing that with us.

HEATHER TULLOS: I like this feedback. I like it a lot.

JENNY GUY: Yes. And also, please do keep your eyes peeled on the Mediavine space. Those of you who are already fans of Spotlight Subscribe, and those of you who might be waiting to use it, there are some pretty cool things coming.

And I think it’s pretty darn soon. So just sit tight for a minute, and we have some great developments from our incredible product team. So standby.

HEATHER TULLOS: Oh. This is my favorite slide.

[LAUGHTER]

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

I know you guys are tired of seeing this, or hearing it, or you want to roll your eyes at me. But I’ll tell you it’s a fruitless effort. It’s never going to make you feel better, and it’s never really going to let know how well you are performing.

Because even if Jenny and I have sites running the same theme, and we write similar content, people are going to navigate our content differently. So let’s say, we’re running the same thing, the same theme. And we both write about baked goods, and we have the exact same settings. Jenny and I still have different readers. And they’re going to use my site differently than they’re going to use Jenny site.

And we’re all going after the sa– different keywords. And even if we were going after the same keywords, the way that I dispense information is going to be different than the way Jenny does. And that goes for all of you.

So RPM is just a math equation. It happens after your traffic has already come and gone. It happens after the advertisers have already spent what they’re going to spend. So yes, RPM is an important metric. But my RPM compared to Jenny’s RPM is a useless metric.

[LAUGHTER]

It’s not– Jenny’s RPM is not going to help me. Because what you really want to know– if we’re talking about increasing RPM, we’re talking about increasing revenue. So what you want to know is how to make more.

You want to make– you want to figure out how to make more money with your own content. You can’t make more money with Jenny’s content, or I can’t. Jenny can, but–

[LAUGHTER]

So you want to compare your year over year progress. But you also want to use– we have a lot of really good help articles about how to use your page level data to get you to the right place, to help you understand how to make more money. Circling back to that viewability slide way at the beginning, high visibility means high CPMs. And if you have high CPMs, you can make more money by running fewer ads.

So you can’t learn about your own viewability by worrying about Jenny RPM– or I can’t. I say, you, me. Me, I can’t learn about–

[LAUGHTER]

I can’t learn how to improve my viewability and make advertisers spend more on my content by looking at Jenny’s site. I can only use the data in my Dashboard to figure out, well, how are my readers using my content? And how can I make that better? And how can I make more than I did last year? And what changes should I be making to my own site and my own content that are going to help me to balance money and user experience and get myself to the revenue goals that I have set?

Sorry. I got distracted. I was reading about–

JENNY GUY: No, that’s OK. I’ll put that up. Yes.

So we got– as the editor of two sites, one has a way higher RPM. But the one with the lower RPM is still up 52% year to date versus last year. That’s huge.

HEATHER TULLOS: Yeah, that is huge. And then also, location makes a difference. Right? But also the kind of recipes that you’re running and the kind of content, the kind of travel content that you’re putting out there.

Maybe you write a post where people are only searching when they’re like, where do I eat in this random city in Slovenia? Well, that’s a useful piece of information. Right? But the RPM for that post is probably going to be low.

So you have to figure out how to balance it. You can’t just look at the overall number. You have to say, well, I’m really good at telling people where to eat in this particular little city, but this post isn’t monetizing well. So how can I pivot, and use the content that I already have, and build on it? And you can’t figure that out by looking at other people’s site or worrying about whatever their numbers are today.

JENNY GUY: Can I pop a can of worms real quick?

HEATHER TULLOS: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: How does that– how does not comparing RPMs, when a lot of times I see when people are thinking about different companies– guys, we’re going to– spoiler. There are competitors. There are people who offer similar services that to what we do.

HEATHER TULLOS: Are there?

JENNY GUY: I mean–

[LAUGHTER]

We have to say that. I think we’re incomparable, and I think some other people do too. And we prove that every day, but what is– how does not comparing RPMs factor into that?

Because a lot of times, I’ll see my RPM on October 15 was this. And somebody else will say, well, I’m at company X, and my RPM was this. In a vacuum, how does all that– I mean, does that even make sense?

HEATHER TULLOS: Well, no, it doesn’t make sense. Because if you are running ads with– if we say, my company and Jenny’s company, we don’t have the same technology. We don’t have the same approach to advertising. But again, we also still don’t have the same websites. Right?

And so trying to compare different sorts of technology, it’s not going to get you the right answer. I think, it also doesn’t let you ask the right questions, which is like we’re talking about RPM. But what we really want is to make more money with the content that we have.

So if you’re only taking the top level number, and you’re only looking at RPM, you’re not looking at how much advertisers are actually spending on your content. You’re not looking at how many ads you’re actually serving to get there. You’re not looking at whether or not you’re passing Core Web Vitals, so that you can continue to grow your business. You’re not looking at you long term goals for the content that you’re going to create.

I just– there’s too many factors to consider for things to hinge on one number. It’s an important number. I wouldn’t count it out. It is a really good metric for you to say, well, how much am I making relative to my traffic? But it also does not factor in, how much am I making relative to my traffic, when everybody that came to my site yesterday was in France?

Yeah. So and then also, it’s important. So October 15 year over year, remember year over year, you’re going to shift a day. So instead of just comparing year over year, I like to make sure that I’m comparing the same day last year.

So if October 15 is a Tuesday this year, it’s probably on Monday last year or a Sunday. Right? So if you’re comparing a Tuesday to a Sunday, Sunday is always going to be higher. So I mean, Sunday is a really good day for most websites. And then Monday is always a bummer, when things crash down. Right?

So you don’t want to compare Monday to Sunday, because it’s not an accurate representation. Advertisers spend more on the weekend, when people are more engaged with the content and the internet. Things change on Monday. We all go to work. We’re worried about coffee and emails, and we’re not as worried about how to build a raised bed garden in the backyard.

JENNY GUY: I mean, I worry about that every day. It’s just a continuous cycle of fear and worry for me. I’m trapped in a worrying cycle of a raised bed garden.

The last thing I wanted to ask about this was this also factors into seasonality. So for instance, if company X told me, you’re going to make 21% more when you come here. But you’re going to come in Q4. Isn’t everyone going to make 20% more in a month?

HEATHER TULLOS: If you don’t make 20% more in the next– before the end of November, please email support. Because something is terribly wrong. First of all, a 20% increase is actually not that much when you’re just looking at incremental RPM.

If you look at the month of October so far, so if you change the date range in your Dashboard, and you say, like October 1 to the 25th, yesterday, you’ve probably already seen a 20% increase this month. And then things may dip a little the first week of November but probably not that much. Because November, November is typically one of the highest months of the year and December.

And so your RPM is going to go up. It’s just going to. Just it’s going to go down the first week of January. It’s super predictable.

Our VP of Ad Operations put together a really cool blog post. And our marketing team put together a really amazing visual aid. They share it in little bits and pieces every month, so that you can know what days are the best.

And I’ve seen people in the Facebook group talk about how they plan their marketing around that calendar. And they decide when they’re going to promote things, which I think is amazing. But it’s also really good to just be like, oh, yeah, yesterday was a gold-y yellow day. It wasn’t a teal day. Let me not freak out.

[LAUGHTER]

JENNY GUY: Yeah, it doesn’t mean that it’s broken. It doesn’t mean that something shocking has happened. It just means that the ads are seasonal.

HEATHER TULLOS: Right, like day after a holiday. Expect it to go down a little, unless that holiday is Thanksgiving, in which case it probably went up.

JENNY GUY: OK, our last raffle winner was Laura Samson. It’s not raffle. We asked them what the spookiest place you’ve ever visited is, and she said, Notre-Dame, which is a– I would love to go to there. Spookiest place you’ve ever visited, Morticia, other than your own home?

HEATHER TULLOS: I mean, my home is pretty spooky.

[LAUGHTER]

JENNY GUY: That’s true.

HEATHER TULLOS: The caged creatures have been quiet the whole time though, so we’re doing OK.

JENNY GUY: So good.

HEATHER TULLOS: Fingers crossed.

[LAUGHTER]

I don’t know that I’ve really visited too many spooky places. I did like a haunted walking tour in Edinburgh, Scotland, and that was really cool.

JENNY GUY: Oh, nice.

HEATHER TULLOS: Yeah. It was a ghost tour with cemeteries and lots of spooky things. Also, lots of terrible things happened there. So it’s kind of creepy.

JENNY GUY: I think places def– I remember being at the Tower in London and feeling just kind of a weight.

HEATHER TULLOS: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: This feels–

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

Oh, well, look, that’s where Anne Boleyn– oh, OK. Well, this is awkward. And it just makes you feel– yeah.

I did a– I was in a hearse ghost tour in Savannah. And that was a little bit– it was fun. It was good. I like haunted things though.

HEATHER TULLOS: I’m going to put that on my list of things I need to do.

JENNY GUY: It’s fun.

HEATHER TULLOS: And I’m going to wear this outfit.

JENNY GUY: I think it would be wrong if you didn’t, honestly.

HEATHER TULLOS: I agree.

[LAUGHTER]

JENNY GUY: Wrong and illegal.

HEATHER TULLOS: Oh, this slide appeared.

JENNY GUY: It did.

HEATHER TULLOS: Rosie is amazing. It appeared since we talked earlier. Another shout out to Rosie, who I don’t know how we lived our lives without. OK.

So check your in-content settings. So I put together a whole new help article that’s going to be linked in this presentation. But it’s about how to count your ads. I think this is confusing for people.

They think that if they’re scrolling through their blog post, and they’re counting ads, one, two, three, four, five as they see them, they think– well, again, we talked about readers don’t use your site the same way that you use your site. But when you count your ads like that, you’re actually not counting ads. You’re counting ad slots.

At Mediavine, we don’t fill at 100%, and we also tailor the experience to every single user. So again, the way that I read is going to be different than the way that Jenny reads. If I want to read everything you wrote, and if Jenny wants to click the highlights in your table of contents, and just skip around, and get what she needs. So she can get out of here, because she’s the busy lady.

[LAUGHTER]

JENNY GUY: Puppies, puppies to find and kill.

HEATHER TULLOS: Right.

JENNY GUY: I’m busy.

[LAUGHTER]

HEATHER TULLOS: So many puppies. The amount of ads that Jenny is served is going to be really different than the amount of ads that I’m served. And that’s OK, because we’re consuming the content differently.

So it’s important to know where to look in your Dashboard to figure out how many ads you are serving. Again, that ad unit breakdown is really your friend. Pro tip, if you take the total number of impressions and divide by the total number of page views, you get the average number of impressions that you’re running per page. And those impressions include everything. Right?

So it’s not just the in-content ads that you are looking at right this minute. But it’s your sidebar ads, and it’s the adhesion unit that refreshes. And it’s the recipe cart ads. It’s the Universal Player that you forgot about, because it’s so small and unobtrusive, hanging out in the bottom corner there.

[LAUGHTER]

JENNY GUY: Can I just say, who says that about video ads? That’s just magic to me. My unobtrusive video ads before now? Come on, that’s just magical. Way to go.

HEATHER TULLOS: That don’t ruin my user experience and also don’t make my sites slow? They’re pretty terrific.

JENNY GUY: And make me a beaucoup bucks? Come on. Awesome.

HEATHER TULLOS: Yeah. So make sure that you’re just looking at those overall impressions. And then also, you can look at your page level breakdown. It will tell you the number of impressions that you are serving per page view. That’s a really good place to survey the situation and see how many impressions you’re running and where.

I know that, on my own site, for the posts where I’m running the most impressions, those are also the posts that tend to be the most detailed tutorials. So it doesn’t mean that I have 25 or 30 ad slots. It means that somebody was hanging out there long enough, for probably two or three of those units to refresh several times. Right? Or they needed to scroll back up and read my detailed instructions somewhere, or maybe they watched the video–

JENNY GUY: Tell me more about those biscuits.

HEATHER TULLOS: Yeah. I know.

JENNY GUY: Scroll up, scroll up, scroll up, scroll up.

HEATHER TULLOS: Yeah. Or if you give somebody a directive in your instructions at the end of the post, we say, always save the good stuff for the end of the post. And that is still accurate. You always– you don’t want to give away the goods in the first paragraph, or you probably didn’t serve any ads.

[LAUGHTER]

Yeah. So make sure that you’re not looking at that top level number and being like, oh well, that seems like too many. Go to the post. Look at it on your phone.

Hit the jump button. Hit the table of contents, scroll around. See if you can experience it like a user not like your content creator self.

JENNY GUY: And I got a sneak peek at the counting your ads help article, and it is so helpful. I learned so much just reading it. It’s such a good, comprehensive way to understand how that works. Because it’s hard to get the difference between–

HEATHER TULLOS: It is.

JENNY GUY: I mean, especially if you have a–

HEATHER TULLOS: Plots– and yeah.

JENNY GUY: And one reader coming at you saying, there are zillions of ads on your post. I mean, it doesn’t happen often, but–

HEATHER TULLOS: By the way, that reader is probably just mad about your pop up that you forgot about. Yeah.

JENNY GUY: Fair. OK. Guys, you will see here on the presentation that we have come to the final slide, which is our resource slide. And then we’re going to start– let’s start sharing those links. It is super exciting.

Everything is there that you need to make sure that you are getting all of these treats, no tricks, for Q4 this year. I want to go ahead and say one more time, congratulations to our readers, Deanna Hill, [? Chrissa ?] Duran– I’m scrolling through– Andrea Jansen, and Laura Sampson. So please make sure all four of you email into marketing@mediavine.com, so we can get you your prizes.

Heather, last question for you. I’m going to make a quick announcement, and then we’ll come back to that. But what are– give us a couple of action items that you want people to go do right now or this week to make sure that they’re capitalizing. OK? All right.

HEATHER TULLOS: So are you going to make an announcement? You want me to–

JENNY GUY: I’m going to make my announcement real quick. It’s a little bit of a big deal. So guys, for our next Teal Talk, it’s going to be a little bit of a wait. It’s actually Tuesday, November 16 at 1:00 PM Eastern.

The reason for the wait is that we have a guest. Paul Bakaus, the Head of Creator Relations at Google, is going to be here. And he’s going to talk about Google for content creators. It’s going to be pretty exciting.

We’re very, very, very, very ready for it. So mark your calendars. Do it now. You will have the Head of Creator Relations at Google on alive talking to you. So we’re thrilled.

Heather, this has been so much fun. Morticia, it’s always a pleasure. Please give me your action items.

HEATHER TULLOS: OK, action items. I think that the very first thing I would tell you to do is, if you are not running the Universal Player, please use the help article that we linked in the presentation, and here, and the live. And make sure you get your settings right.

If you’re not sure or you need help monitoring, we will help you, but it’s pretty simple to set up. The help article has pictures and everything. I know I like to read the instruction and do the action. That’s how I roll. So I hope it’s helpful for you.

The second thing that I would say is make sure that you go forth and use your website like a reader, not like a blogger. Right? So go to your top posts that are trending this time of year. Go to your top posts that we’re trending in November last year. Look at them on your phone or use DevTools on mobile.

Use an incognito window, so you can spot things that are cached for you, like email options that you forgot about. And then just push the buttons. Make sure the links work. Make sure that the experience is what you want it to be. And if you need help adjusting your settings, then email us, because we want you to make a lot of money.

JENNY GUY: It’s the time of the year when everybody’s on your site. So make sure they’re having the best experience that they can.

HEATHER TULLOS: Yes. 100%.

JENNY GUY: It has been wonderful. Guys, we have linked the presentation everywhere. So you can grab it. Heather is going to send the presentation out to Mediavine publishers, which is exciting.

We are also going to be sharing some of these wonderful tips on different social media. So follow us around. Congratulations to our winners, and come back on Tuesday, November 16 1:00 PM for the Head of Creator Relations Paul Bakaus from Google. Everybody else, happy Halloween.

HEATHER TULLOS: Happy Halloween.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused not only economic, environmental and health impacts on the world; but emotional impacts as well.

In this episode of Teal Talk originally recorded in April 2020, Litsa Williams and Eleanor Haley from What’s Your Grief discussed the different ways people grieved the worldwide shutdown, and provided evergreen practices for how to cope.

We were also joined by then Head of People Operations TQ Evans. Since this recording, TQ passed away after a long battle with colon cancer in April 2021.

Her light shines bright in this episode as she relayed how her family and her coped with the problems of the world — and her spirit shines through Mediavine as we cope with her loss, and continue to honor her memory.

We love you TQ.

[powerpress]

Helpful Resources

• What’s Your Grief?
• Eleanor and Litsa’s Blogs on Grieving…
• Remembering Chief Diversity Officer Tonquise “TQ” Evans
• Announcing the Tonquise “TQ” Evans ’03 Endowed Scholarship…
• MBU Empowers Campaign
• “Leading with Heart” Blog Post

Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING] JENNY GUY: Hey, y’all. It is Thursday, April 23. It is approximately day 473 of quarantine, for those keeping track. This is Teal Talk, and I’m your host Jenny Guy. I’m the director of marketing at Mediavine, and, more importantly, I have finally fulfilled my childhood dream in this quarantine and become a carbohydrate. And that’s when I’m not getting really emotional over all the new COVID-19 quarantine commercials, so that’s fun.

So welcome. Say hi to us in the comments if you’re hanging out.

[MOWER STARTS]

Oh, and good, the lawn service is starting, so that’s perfect. And we said not to come today, so good good good. Tell us how you’re holding up at this point because it is not an easy time right now. I also wanted to– I told all these awesome ladies before, I am wearing a dress on the top, and then I am wearing lizard pajama bottoms on the bottom. So I am the definition of a mullet, I am business on the top, party on the bottom.

So now that we’ve gotten all of that out of the way, we have people working from home and teaching their kids for the first time. We’re cooking all of our own meals and producing more dirty dishes– than, I mean, I never even thought– it’s unbelievable how many dishes there are. It’s insane. And we’re reconfiguring milestone celebrations, and missing family, and worrying about the state of our wallets and the world, and in light of all these bizarre firsts and struggles, we brought on some experts to help with work-from-home wellness and mental wellness in general. And I’m so glad they’re here, I’m going to introduce them.

First, I’m with Mediavine’s Director of People Operations, TQ Evans. TQ joins us live from her home in Richmond, Virginia. She has been the director of People Operations with Mediavine for nearly two years. She’s got a master’s degree, along with several other professional certifications in HR management and leadership, and that means a lot of initials behind her name. Her background specialty entails partnering with small to mid-sized startups and successfully building and teaching their people-ops team from the ground up. She also is a birth doula, a wife, a mom of four human kids, and a new mom to three backyard hens, fondly named Aretha, Gladys, and Patti. She is an avid urban gardener, has a passion for health and wellness, and, most recently, is the recipient of the unofficial Neighborhood Quarantine double-Dutch Award. What is that? Hi TQ, welcome.

TQ EVANS: Hi Jenny. I look forward to getting into that– oh, do you want me to tell you now?

JENNY GUY: Yeah please, what is that?

TQ EVANS: Oh yeah. So I started just doing different activities with my neighbors, like virtual activities. And we’re taking it back to– we’re all 80s babies, and we did jump rope, double-Dutch. So my neighbors and I started– we bought hula hoops and all these things, and we do virtual backyard competitions, and so far I’m the winner of the double-Dutch category.

JENNY GUY: That’s pretty incredible and impressive. We’re so glad you’re here, I can’t believe it’s your first episode.

And then our other two ladies are Litsa Williams and Eleanor Haley. They are the Baltimore-based mental health professionals and co-authors of the site, What’s Your Grief, where their mission is to promote grief education, exploration, and expression in both practical and creative ways. Their work has been featured in the US News and World Report and the Huffington Post, among others.

Ladies, welcome. Thank you for joining us.

ELEANOR HALEY: Hi. Thank you for having us.

LITSA WILLIAMS: Yeah, thanks for having us.

JENNY GUY: OK. So guys, if you’re out there and you have questions on working from home, coping with it all, if your thoughts and fears are normal, whatever you want, whatever is going on right now, post them in the comments. If you don’t have a question just say hi, tell us how you’re doing, we are here to help.

OK. Let’s start out with what the three of you do on a regular basis, and then hear a little bit about how that’s changed during COVID times. And we’ll start out with TQ because I think a lot of people have no idea what People Ops is, because it’s not a common term.

TQ EVANS: OK. So as Jenny mentioned, I am the Director of People Operations with Mediavine. And basically what that is, it’s a little bit human resources, a little bit therapy, a little bit employee relations, organizational development. So, basically, my job is to make sure that employees have everything that they need to feel motivated, to feel engaged. So I’m constantly touching bases with them and really creating a culture around what works for employees, as opposed to the organization creating it the other way around. So that’s what I do on a day to day basis.

As you guys know, we are a 100% remote team at Mediavine. So all the challenges that many People Ops and HR professionals are facing right now, and managers, with people, the people issues, have been kind of my wheelhouse for a while now. So I’m really excited to dive into this today.

JENNY GUY: And we love having you at Mediavine, and we love you. And talk a little bit, before we move on, about what’s changed. You were telling us a little bit about a survey– What’s going on that’s different during this very different time?

TQ EVANS: Yes. So basically, one of the main things that’s changed for organizations is that Human Resources and People Operations professionals are really having to step up. It’s really our time to shine here because the focus is really on the people. Yes, organizations have goals and there are things that need to be accomplished, but none of that works if the people are stressed, if the people are overworked, if the people are having challenges. So one main thing that has really changed is that we are needing to dedicate more time, more resources, look at tools and platforms to help manage our people. But not just manage them, to provide an outlet for them to express concerns.

So we recently launched a employee engagement and survey platform because we wanted a really easy way for employees to let us know– We’re not, we don’t have a brick and mortar, so employees can’t just pop into their manager’s office and say, hey, I’m having an issue. And honestly, because we’re remote, we may never– people are really isolated and sometimes suffering in silence. And so by adopting certain platforms, we’re able to easily throw out questions. We recently did a “checking in on you” survey, and literally the only goal of that survey was to say, hey, how are you? How can we help? How can we support you? We’re here, we care about you, we’re happy you’re part of the Mediavine family. How can we help? And then really trying to listen and understand what employees are saying, and try to provide solutions along with managers and employees of how to help create a more, just a better experience during this time.

JENNY GUY: Love that, we appreciate it.

OK, same question to Eleanor and Lisa, what do– and you’ve got some fans already posting and some fans internally from Mediavine that are talking about what your site has meant to them. So we’re so glad you’re here. So can one of you, or both of you, whoever wants to start, talk about what you guys do on a day to day basis, and then how you’re adapting that in our unique times.

LITSA WILLIAMS: Sure. So I think what we do on a day to day basis, it varies a lot, so it’s hard to easily really sum it up. But What’s Your Grief, in general, is an online grief and bereavement support community, but one that also does some things in person as well.

So our background was working with people in person who are grieving. We moved that into the online space when we founded What’s Your Grief, and a lot of that is through articles, social media support, podcasts, e-courses, webinars. And then we print and sell grief materials to hospitals, hospices, funeral homes, grief centers, anyone who could use grief and bereavement support print materials. Is that, did I miss anything?

ELEANOR HALEY: The only thing I would add is that we do a lot of training for people who work in any field who may come into contact with people who are grieving. And we are really passionate about that, and that’s why we’re so thankful that you’re letting us talk today a little bit about what we do, and about grief, and about mental health because I think there’s just so much misinformation out there. And so any time we have the opportunity sit down in front of people and sort of set the record straight, we really want to seize that and take advantage of it. So thank you for having us.

LITSA WILLIAMS: Yeah, absolutely.

JENNY GUY: We’re thrilled to have you. And it’s such an important topic, and I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir, but we don’t talk about it really at all, talk about how to grieve or how to help people. And I think also, grief gets placed into a really specific box that means death, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that. And actually, in this time, when you look at what people are going through, and it is a whole lot. We’re grieving the loss of jobs, our social interactions, all of these non-death losses. And you wrote a great post on your site about that, and I would love for you guys to go into that a little bit more, talking about these non-death losses and how to cope with them. That would be really helpful.

ELEANOR HALEY: Yeah absolutely. I think right now especially, as you said, I think so many people are coping with non-death losses. And so, as you said, we often think that you can only grieve when someone we love dies, but really anything that you value, if it’s gone, if you lose it, if that changes, there’s an element of loss that comes with it. And I think some of these losses might seem smaller and more easier to cope with and integrate, but they’re losses nonetheless. And one of the things that we just always want to really emphasize is that anything that you feel grief over, any loss that has caused you any sort of distress in any way, is something worthy of being acknowledged and grieved.

And that’s something that our society doesn’t really do well. Oftentimes we say, oh you can only grieve certain losses, and other losses you just need to kind of buck up and move forward. And I think right now, especially, people are grappling with this a little bit because some people are facing such significant losses that relate to death and illness. And so other losses we feel like, oh gosh, do we really even have the right to grieve? Is it selfish for us to grieve? And we just want to emphasize that, no, it’s not selfish to grieve. Your grief doesn’t take away from the fact that other people who are grieving– –it doesn’t take away from their grief. We all are facing big and small losses right now. And so we want to emphasize that people absolutely should name their grief and feel it and express it.

JENNY GUY: Anything to add to that, Litsa?

LITSA WILLIAMS: No, I think that that– I mean, I think right now one of the things that we’ve been amazed to see how comforting and reassuring it is to people just when we say, it’s OK to label it grief. It’s OK to call it grief. Grief is literally defined as our normal and natural reaction to loss. And so I think part of it, it’s amazing how sometimes, just when we know it’s OK to say that and name that feeling, that it really is helpful for people.

And then looking for, what does it mean to cope with that? How do we name it, how do we give space for it individually, as a family? And then figuring out from there, what does it look like to actually cope with it during these times?

ELEANOR HALEY: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: It is weird how, and I do this personally, it’s so hard, it turns into a competition. And not in a way that like, my grief is bigger than your grief, but in a way of, my grief is not significant. What I’m experiencing is nothing compared to what they’re experiencing, so I should shut up, and get on with my life, and stop being a big baby about it. But that’s really giving space to it, I love that. How do you recommend giving space to it? And, TQ, I’m going to have you weigh in on that too, giving space to your feelings and your emotions, especially when maybe you don’t have physical space. I think a lot of us are in that circumstance right now where we don’t actually have physical space to do anything. So talk a little bit about that, please. And, ladies, we’ll start with you, and then I’ll have TQ go.

LITSA WILLIAMS: Oh, OK.

JENNY GUY: Sorry, that was unclear.

ELEANOR HALEY: I think just being able to, like what you just said, is being able to own it, and label it, and call it that, is the most important step for many people. And I think beyond that, it’s just acknowledging that there’s loss there, right? And we can put those things into perspective. We can find ways to cope, we can find ways to try and make the situation a little bit better. But there is that element of loss, and it’s something that’s going to stay with us, in a way, and that we have a right to feel. And I think that’s the biggest hurdle for so many people. There are so many different ways to cope with your losses and with grief. And that’s something that’s really important for people to know, is that coping with grief doesn’t look one certain way. Grief never looks the same from person to person. And so we just encourage people to find the things that help them to feel better and to process what they’re feeling. Some people it’s journaling, some people it’s creating art, for other people it’s reaching out and talking. And so whatever it is that you know works for you, we encourage you to really lean into that and do it.

LITSA WILLIAMS: Yeah. And I would add, that those moments where it comes up for you, just the act of noticing it’s coming up, and the act of then realizing that comparison thing, catching it in ourselves. A lot of that is that little voice in our heads that we feel, and thinking about, how is that affecting our behavior?

So maybe it’s in a moment where you were planning to have, whatever, like a girls weekend that didn’t get to happen because of this, and you’re having feelings but you’re like, I don’t want to say that when there’s all these other, bigger things going on in the world. And it’s going, you know what, no, it’s OK. It’s OK for me to reach out to those people who I was supposed to be with and say, this is really sad. I was really looking forward to this, and this was going to be a great time away or moment to connect.

And if it makes you feel better to say, I know this isn’t the worst thing happening in the world, you can say that to make yourself feel better. But you don’t have to say it, it’s OK to just say, this is a feeling I’m having, and I want to be able to express it and share it with you. And we all have the right to do that even when it’s not the worst feeling. In all moments in life, there’s always someone going through something worse than you. I promise. It doesn’t mean that we can’t still talk about the things that we’re going through.

JENNY GUY: Love that. TQ, same to you, talk a little bit about making space for emotions and all of the things even when you might not have space.

TQ EVANS: Yes. So I think for me, the thing that helps me is exercising gratitude and practicing that everyday. Just opening up a little bit personally, I think one of you just mentioned that sometimes people– like, grief becomes a competition. So for me personally, last year I was diagnosed with terminal cancer, which was really, really hard. And then a week ago, I lost two of my neighbors within 48 hours to COVID, like actually lost my neighbors. And there are the these horrible, horrible, or seemingly horrible, things that happen. And I think the best way to do it is to practice gratitude. And also to go inside because there are a lot of things that are continuing to happen that are beyond our control, there are things that will continue to happen that are beyond our control. And the only thing that we can control is how we internalize those things. So I’ve been putting a lot of work and a lot of effort in doing the work, the internal work inside of my myself, to be able to control the things that I can.

So I’m in a house with four kids and a husband, we’re both working full time. And so I carved out my own little space in the bathroom, and I kind of created a, just like a table that has candles on it. And it has different crystals and things that make me feel happy, different pictures, different sheets of paper to write gratitude things on. And I go into that space as a routine every morning, and even in times where I’m stressed. And I close out from everything else, and even if it’s just 15 minutes, I have this little space inside of my house where I’m able to go inside of myself to help to heal myself so that I can come out better and more prepared. So–

ELEANOR HALEY: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: Love that. Ladies, you’re both nodding. Do you have anything to add to the private, making a space where you don’t have a space, anything to add to that?

LITSA WILLIAMS: Well, what I love about what you just said is you described the two kinds of space. Because there’s literally physical space, but then there’s time, and that’s its own version of space. And so I think, right now, one of the things that we are all collectively struggling with is, for different reasons, routines have been upended. The way that our time is being spent looks very, very different. And so I think creating that physical space is so important. And then saying, my time of might be completely chaotic right now, or suddenly I haven’t been working from home, and I am and time is spilling into different areas in different ways.

And so it’s especially important that I carve out space that’s dedicated to tending to myself, self-care, whether introspection. Or it might be on the other end, it might be what I’m missing is connection, and I need to carve out time for connection. We’ve had a lot of people on our social media talking about how their coping was very much based on finding and seeking support from others grieving, and that that now has to be a lot more deliberate. You have to really create the time and space for that. So I think both aspects of that are so important.

JENNY GUY: Wanted to share that Lori Bostrik made a comment here. She said, “What’s Your Grief has been very helpful to me over the past almost three years since my 17-year-old daughter was killed in a car crash. I am very transparent about my grief and have had several people tell me that it’s a glimpse into grief. There is such a need to show grief as it really is.” And she also said, “Even within the child loss community people tend to rank their grief. Grief is grief, and it’s all hard.”

ELEANOR HALEY: Yeah. Oh, thank you. I love that.

JENNY GUY: Thank you for sharing that. So from all of you, because all of us have different experiences, do you guys have any tips for parents going through– dealing with this with their kids who are experiencing their own levels of loss but maybe don’t have the words or the ability to do the things that adults do, sometimes do? I mean, I’m listening to you, TQ, talk about carving out the space, and I want to do that. I’m not doing it, so I need to start doing it. But I’m an adult. I’m responsible for my own damn self. But for kids who cannot express themselves, how do you help them?

ELEANOR HALEY: Yeah. I think that, going back to a lot of what we just said, because I think a lot of times there are a lot of special considerations for kids, but then a lot of it is pretty similar to what we say to adults as well. First of all, just helping them to name that this is sad, that this is a big loss for you. Many kids are going through all sorts of different losses right now. And so allowing that to exist because I think, a lot of times, some parents might be tempted to be like, oh it could be much worse, or, we’re all making sacrifices right now. So rather than doing that, allowing them to name it and to express what they’re actually feeling without minimizing that can be really important.

And then leading them to do the coping that works for them, just like we said with adults. Whatever it is that works for them, whether it’s finding that gratitude, whether it’s carving out their own personal space or reaching out to other people. Maybe they want to journal. Maybe they’re spending a lot of time on their phone, and we normally would say, oh screen time is over, phone time is over. But maybe giving them a little bit of extra time to connect with their friends would be helpful.

So I think just validating what they’re going through. A lot of things that we’ve seen, and because we’re all on social media and watching the television, many of us, I think we’ve seen how people have tried to help find alternative ways to have these experiences and those next best things to having a graduation, or a birthday party, or a prom. They’re finding other ways to connect people and to have certain experiences, and I think that’s wonderful. And when that is an option, finding those alternatives. But also recognizing that it’s not going to fill that loss completely, it’s not going to totally make up for that loss, but it is a way to cope and make it a little bit better.

JENNY GUY: Same question to you, TQ. Talk about that for us. You have four right?

TQ EVANS: Yeah, I have four. So they’re two, five, seven, and 16, and we do a lot of talking in my family because each of them are handling it differently. My– and very surprisingly. You know, they’re little people, they’re a little humans, they all have different personalities. And prior to this, my five-year-old was having tantrums in school and just really having a difficult time dealing with other things that were happening. And so this time for him has been amazing. He’s wanted nothing but to have individual time with Mommy and lots of love and kisses, and every hour or so– he may even come in during this live today. But he comes to get mommy love. And so for him, I don’t necessarily– I think that it’s a very positive experience. And so my 7-year-old has expressed that he misses his friends. My two-year-old, she’s kind of too little to really say. And my sixteen-year-old has his own set of challenges as well.

So I think, as we become more intentional about self care practices that work for us, I think it would be a disservice not to share those same practices with your children. So I’ve introduced journaling to my kids. The older kids are able to actually write, and we try to write every day or every other day. And the little kids are encouraged to draw. Let’s draw out our feelings, let’s draw a picture of how we feel today. [INAUDIBLE]

Also, we’ll find someone on YouTube and do a 15 minute yoga in the morning to get things started. I’ve introduced breathing and meditating with them. So all of those little things on a level that they understand, and then I’m able to share those experiences with them and not necessarily have it as something mommy is doing by herself. It’s like, this is what mommy is doing, and you guys, let’s do it together for a few minutes. So.

ELEANOR HALEY: I think that’s so great. You’re introducing so many different ways to cope to them. And so it’s not always going to resonate with every child. But it’s important that we introduce these things, and hopefully it does resonate. But it’s helpful for them to look at all these different outlets and say, what is working for me and what doesn’t. What do I love to do, what don’t I love to do. And so it’s so great to give them these opportunities young because these are tools that they can carry with them forever into adulthood.

JENNY GUY: Litsa, anything to add on that?

LITSA WILLIAMS: I mean, seeing as there is someone with three children and someone with four children who have already spoken to this, and I only have a fur-legged child–

JENNY GUY: I feel you.

LITSA WILLIAMS: –I will not speak on this.

JENNY GUY: I am also in a similar boat. OK. So let’s shift a little bit away from that, the parenting, and let’s talk about employees, people that are trying to work from home for the first time, or they’re used to working from home, like we are at Mediavine, but now have a lot of other people that are working from home that were not there before. Can you talk about– what tips can you give for this overwhelming feeling? Also, I mean, not to discount the fact that there is a global pandemic, which it’s weighing heavily on most people’s minds right now. TQ, any tips on that?

TQ EVANS: Yes. So one of the main– I fall in that category where people think just because you were in a position where you were working from home, whether it was full time, or part time, or so many days a week, that this should be easier for those people. But that is really not necessarily the case. One main thing is that you– I know in my household, having my husband now working from home also, we didn’t really have two designated spaces of where to work. We also work very differently, he almost needs to be behind closed doors, and I like to work in a well lit areas of my home. So I like working in the kitchen or working in the living room, I’m more of that kind of remote worker.

But I think one of the main things that are important is schedules. So my husband and I talk about what our schedules are, when does he have conference calls, when do I have conference calls, because that’s going to be times where someone needs to be around where the kids are. We also try to do routines with the kids as well. So basically, every day, every morning, I wake up really early. So that’s been a strategy that’s helping, is to try to, if you can, steal time early in the morning before the rest of the household gets up if you live with others in your home. But even if not, routines and schedules are going to be important. And really trying to stick to those because the days really seem to get eaten up, especially nowadays. And you realize at the end of the day, what did I do? What were my goals? So really writing things down is going to be huge.

Another thing that I found helpful in doing so is I ordered a laptop desk, and it’s like $30 from Amazon, and it has wheels on it. And basically, you make your space wherever you are. So you don’t have to be in your home office or in– basically, wherever you are, if you’re– I bring this table, I have it right now. I bring it outside on the porch. I take it to the backyard. And my workspace becomes– however I’m feeling at that time, whatever space is giving me energy in my home or outside of my home, it becomes my office at that time. So that’s the strategy that I think works, is trying to make sure that you have access to things that are– to tech equipment or tools that are flexible. And for Mediavine employees, we actually give a reimbursement for employees to buy things like that to help with their office space. So–

JENNY GUY: We love it. Litsa or Eleanor, talking about working from home, I know that you’ve probably had some of your audience or clients come and talk to you about it. So give us a little bit on that. Litsa I’ll start with you please.

LITSA WILLIAMS: Sure. So I think working from home, for me personally, I find working from home very, very difficult. And when we first started what’s your grief we were both working from home, and it was a big and a hard transition for me. I have ADD that is no joke, and I am a person who really– structuring time for me is really, really difficult. And so I think one of the things that having an office does, is it really clearly delineates the start and the end of the day. It allows you to have that feeling of, OK here are the lines. And when you’re working from home, you’re always at work and never at work. And that bleed that happens for me is really complicated because, all of a sudden, my workday might suddenly span from 8:00 AM till midnight. Not that I’ve worked consistently all that time, but I just kind of am going in and out of it. And I think that, for me, it becomes really important when we think about, how do we still maintain work/life balance? And how do we still look at dedicated work time, dedicated personal time, finding ways, whether it is taking a shower at the end of the day, changing your clothes– Doing something that delineates, this is the end of my workday, or this is when it’s starting, is something that is helpful for me, even though I don’t practice it nearly as much as I should. I know it’s– but–

And the other thing for me, I think, that’s been important is getting creative with where you are in your house. I live in a little teeny, tiny nine foot wide house, and there are not a lot of work spaces, there’s not a lot of rooms. And so for me, realizing that sitting in one place all of the time was really, really starting to be problematic. But all I can sometimes do is literally move from one side of a room to another, but even that helps. Even just a change in view in the same nine foot wide room can just help to stimulate and move my brain a little bit. So it’s just little things that for me have been helpful. I don’t know.

ELEANOR HALEY: Just one thing to add. I think, less in terms of logistics, but in just mindset, I think practicing a little self-compassion for ourselves. One thing that we always say to people who are grieving because they have so much going on, they’re grieving, they have regular life to deal with, they have the secondary losses and stressors they’re dealing with, is to just recognize that this is not normal. This is not the way you’re used to, right? Everything has been flipped on its head. And so we have to adjust our expectations a little bit.

And we always encourage people to be careful how they measure themselves because if they are measuring themselves against some impossible standards, they’re going to get really frustrated and discouraged. And so we always tell people, don’t compare yourself to who you were before all this happened because that was a person living in a different world, under different circumstances. And don’t compare yourself to who you think you should be or would be or could be, this idealized future self. Just compare yourself to where you began in all of this.

And, in translating it to this, just compare yourself to, maybe, if you set a couple of goals at the beginning of the day, did you meet those goals? Yes, congratulate yourself for each one that you met. Congratulate yourself for each of those smaller sub-goals. For every single win that you have, give yourself credit. Because I think when we don’t measure up to some impossible standard, we feel like we failed instead of recognizing all the progress that we have made. So that’s just the last thing I would add to that.

TQ EVANS: And, Jenny, can I add to that?

JENNY GUY: Of Course.

TQ EVANS: I absolutely love, I love what you just said because I saw a quote on Instagram about, you should be upset with yourself if, during this time, you haven’t written the book you’ve always wanted to write, lost the weight you’ve always wanted to lose, started that business you’ve always wanted to start. It wasn’t a matter of time, it was a matter of motivation. And I thought, that is just horrible, that is just horrible. Like, I call bullshit because I just can’t imagine– Literally that is the type of stressors that we’re carrying, of expectations that we’re carrying for ourselves.

And I remember looking at all of these moms doing these awesome home-school schedules for their kids, and they wake up, and at 9 o’clock they’re doing this. My kids literally have recess, like, six hours a day. And I started to really think about how– all the things I’m not doing, and all the things I could be doing better and more of. And then I stop, and I look at them smile. I look at how beautiful the day is. And it’s like, you know what guys, this is what it’s all about. So absolutely having self-forgiveness and just giving yourself grace, I think it’s huge.

LITSA WILLIAMS: I saw all that same post. And on Saturday, I literally, on What’s Your Grief’s Instagram, posted something that I wrote in response to that exact–

TQ EVANS: Yes. That is insane.

LITSA WILLIAMS: And it filled me with rage. I was like, no no, we are all doing the best that we can, and whether you’ve written your novel or whether you’ve just been binging TV shows, none of us is more valuable. We’re all doing the best that we can do.

TQ EVANS: Or binging Oreos. It’s all good.

LITSA WILLIAMS: Exactly.

JENNY GUY: And also, you are– those actors and that crew that created that television show need their work to be respected. You are doing a service by watching Netflix, so please realize that and understand that.

Ray Ransom called and said, “Smart TQ heads to Amazon to order a laptop desk. “

Yes. So OK, on this topic, and I just want to get a little more specific about how not to feel this way. Because with the additional responsibilities, plus the distractions of family being home, plus stress from the general situation, and depression, and loss, many people have been really reporting a loss of that productivity. That’s just pretty much across the board we’re hearing that.

And then, of course, comes our very favorite friend, guilt, over not getting enough done or not being productive enough or, like you said, not writing a novel or starting their third website or whatever, learning Portuguese, whatever that is. What are some of the ways that people can cope with these guilty feelings? Because I know for myself, that’s a rabbit hole. When I start there, and I’m not– to talk about productivity loss. If I’m sitting here beating the crap out of myself for not getting stuff done, I’m not getting anything else done. So, Eleanor, can you start with that, please?

ELEANOR HALEY: Yeah. I think– I mean, I can certainly relate to this. I think the hardest thing about, for me personally, I’m working and parenting. And before, I could kind of compartmentalize those two. I could work and forget about what I’m not doing as a parent, and I could parent and forget about what I’m not doing at work. And now I’m trying to work, and I have a 10-year-old standing there staring at me wondering where her lunch is.

So it’s hard. You can’t really escape the sense that you’re not doing enough, or you’re not doing good enough, or you’re failing certain people at certain times. And so I can certainly relate to this. I think for me it is, I don’t know, just trying to let go a little bit. And that’s not really very good, concrete advice, but I– You mentioned, TQ, the schedules that everybody was posting in the first week, that everybody was doing school remotely. And, you know, I was tempted to feel bad, but then I was like, no. This is just not how we operate. And we’ve had so many moments of joy and togetherness and happiness, and those were not scheduled, they were just moments that happened.

And I think we need to keep sight of our overarching goals. Maybe our overarching values, as long as we’re sticking together as a family, as long as we’re trying to be good community members, as long as we’re handing in the work that we feel like we need to get done, we’re doing what we need to do and we’re staying in line with what we care about, and with what we value.

In terms of productivity, it may not feel all that helpful, those things. But I don’t know. I think I’m going to look back on this time and think more about the time I spent doing those things with my family or maybe doing things for our What’s Your Grief community that felt really meaningful. I think I’m going to remember those more than all the different spreadsheets I finish. So that’s just– it’s a little abstract but how I try to look at it.

JENNY GUY: Very true. Litsa, same to you.

LITSA WILLIAMS: So Eleanor sort of referenced it, but for me, I think so much of it is about values and how we look at our time and how it connects to our values. And if there is one mantra, I think, for anybody to stick on their mirror or wherever if they’re struggling with the productivity thing it is that, my worth is not my productivity. My value is not my productivity. Who I am as a human being is more than that. And I think when we look at our values, and we ask people about what their values are– values like family, values like the time that we spend doing things to support people that we love and that we care about and the things in the world that are important to us, are often the things that bubble to the surface when we’re talking about how we spend our time.

So I think being really concrete about that, even not in these times, is helpful. It’s saying, you know what, what are my top five values and what am I doing every day that connects to those values? And, in many ways, you’re going to find that productivity it’s maybe part of some of that, but it’s certainly usually very far from the whole. I think in the moment it’s very easy for us to get wrapped up in this idea that we need to do do do, create create create, and that’s the most important thing. When we take a step back, and we actually look at those values, look at the time we’re spending, spending as much time as we can connected to those values, research shows that’s what’s going to help our mood and our well-being and help us to stay really grounded. So that’s where I would encourage people to start.

JENNY GUY: I’m loving that, and I’m also– a lot of the, what are you going to take out of this time? What changes, what’s been happening that you’re going to walk out of this making a permanent part of your life even when you have the option to do a lot of different things? And I’m loving that. I’m trying to keep a self-inventory of the things that I want to keep doing and keep making happen in my life once I’m able to do all the things I could do before. TQ, same question to you.

TQ EVANS: What was the question, Jenny?

[ALL LAUGHING]

JENNY GUY: So yes, it was a while ago, and I’m circling too. We’ve kind of evolved. Ladies, we were talking about how to help feel better, to assuage that guilt when you’re not being productive enough, when you feel like you’re not getting enough done.

TQ EVANS: So I have just learned to release. And so I try to think back on, when was the last time that I really remembered how to have fun. And, as an adult, if it doesn’t contain a Margarita or a trip to the beach, I just feel like it’s not fun. And so it’s like, huh. So I basically, I go back to my child self, to my childhood, and think about the things that I did that were meaningful to me and fun to me. And that’s why we ordered a bunch of hula hoops, and jump ropes, and all kinds of just things that I remember. I’m teaching my kids hopscotch. And just, just playing, I learned to play again during this time.

And that has really helped to center me, and to balance me, and to, really, for us to evoke our– just the innocence of childhood a little bit more. It allows you, it’s kind of a gateway to forgiveness. It’s helpful to being able to release because you’re able to just enjoy life, and kind of forget about it in a way. So–

JENNY GUY: I love that.

ELEANOR HALEY: I just, I think we should be able to allow ourselves to change how we define our priorities, too, when everything’s kind of turned on its head and changed. I think all three of us just spoke to a shift in priorities, and what we’re really focusing on as being important in this time looks a little bit different. So I think we should be able to look at what we’ve accomplished in different terms as well on a day to day basis.

It might not be that our productivity is that we completed three work tasks, it might be that we completed one and then had two moments that we feel like wins were in a parenting way or in a self care way. So this is just not our normal, right? And so I think we should be able to redefine a little bit of how we define our priorities.

TQ EVANS: And I also think, continuing with some of the coping mechanisms that we had before this pandemic or before this time, such as continuing to keep those therapy appointments. You know, all of the– so many therapists now, so quickly were able to transition to virtual meetings. And I know that that has helped me, is that I didn’t miss a beat in my weekly therapy sessions. It’s turned to virtual meetings, which are still really– they’re just as good to me. And if there are things that we can anchor to, that worked for us prior to this, if we’re able to continue with some of those things, even if they look different, to continue with those. I think that that helps as well.

ELEANOR HALEY: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: I also think that we’re going to have to redefine, like you said redefine normal, but also we’ve kind of been living in a free-for-all time, it feels like a little bit for the last six weeks or so where we’re all just like, whatever. I’m going to eat and sleep– And that’s good, and you have to do what you have to do to get through it, and I completely get that. But we’re going to be moving into a time where it’s not going to be normal, but it’s not going to be free-for-all either.

So we’re going to have to, like TQ said, clinging to things that are going to help us establish some sort of a structure in our lives, that will help us, because we’re not going to go back to normal for a while, unfortunately. But we also probably don’t want to live into the place where I am, where I was saying I jokingly have become a carb because I’m baking like, 7,000 times a week. So I think that finding something that is an intermediate area between those things will be helpful.

Amber Bracegirdle, our co-founder, said, “Yes. The days where I’ve said, forget school, let’s just have fun, we’ve had the best time. I baked cookies with my boys yesterday afternoon, and we all felt so much happier after.”

And then we have a comment from Sara Volk, who is the office manager here. She said, “I’m in a bit of a different situation than a lot of people in that I’m spending this quarantine alone. I don’t think two cats count.”

I mean, depends on your perspective. Sara, we know how you feel about those cats.

“Rather than with family or a significant other, what are some ways you think, for those of us quarantining alone or with limited other people, can really help fill that human need of socialization and connection?”

LITSA WILLIAMS: Well, I’m also quarantining and distancing alone, so I absolutely feel, I feel very deeply. And I, as Eleanor and I often say, of the two of us, I am certainly the extrovert of What’s Your Grief. And so I am somebody who really recharges, and a lot of my ways of coping normally are getting out of the house. Before this happened, I’ve lived in my house about a year, and I think that I have spent more hours in my house during this than cumulatively in the year up to this. And so I’ve been thinking about that a lot.

And so I have really been trying to use all the screen tools that are available. So House Party and Jackbox are fantastic for being able to connect with people and play games and get together with friends online, I’ve been doing a lot of that. I’m a huge, huge advocate of Marco Polo, as Eleanor knows. It’s my favorite, and it allows that really amazing– because obviously, of course, things like Zoom, Happy Hour, Jackbox, House Party is great when you can get people together at a scheduled time.

I think one of the things that’s really nice about Marco Polo is you can drop in and record and watch other people on your time, and they can do it on their time. But you’re still getting to see people’s faces, they can show you their dog or their kids, or what’s going on. And so you get more than you’re getting in just text messaging. And so I think really, not that all the tools are going to work for everybody, but testing out the different ones, being open to it. I’ve heard a lot of people who are like, oh no that’s not my thing. I’m not into– And then when they try they’re like, oh wait, this was actually really fun.

So I think, going back to what Eleanor said earlier, which is sometimes where we go, this isn’t a replacement. It’s not going to be the same. It’s not going to feel as great as going to happy hour in real life or as playing a board game around a table together. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be good, and it doesn’t mean that it can’t be fun. So I think that can be good.

I think looking, I’ve been doing some of the live yoga classes online, and I really like that. Normally I never do that. So normally I’ll do a yoga video or I’ll go to yoga class. But I think the live yoga classes give you more of a feeling of, oh this is happening in real time. There is that person who is doing yoga at the same time. And it just adds a little more connection than doing a generic YouTube video. So I think that can help with the people connection piece.

And then I think the other part, for me, has been really channeling– If you’re someone like me who maybe doesn’t normally spend a lot of time at home, it’s motivated me to be more deliberate about thinking about, how do I make my space a space that I really want to be in? I think if you’re someone who is out in about a lot, it’s easy to not always tend to your personal space in the same way. So I think this can be a good opportunity to do that as well.

JENNY GUY: Love that. OK, anything TQ or Eleanor?

TQ EVANS: No, I’m just listening.

JENNY GUY: OK. Eleanor did you have anything on that one?

ELEANOR HALEY: No. The only thing I would add is just, I think sometimes we might have a tendency to say, it’s not the same, so I’m not going to do it at all. Or, oh I’ll do that later, or I’ll just reconnect with people when all this ends, right? But I think that that can really get us caught up in a rut, and we actually don’t know how long, necessarily, this is going to last.

And so we encourage people not to get caught up in that thinking, I’ll do it later, or it’s not as good so I’m not going to do it at all. And to just give it a try. “Just do it” is often our motto in terms of things that involve coping. Just try it, and we think that it’ll probably get easier and feel better as you continue to do it.

JENNY GUY: I say that too about when people are talking about doing lives or not doing lives. I’m like, I mean, you really just kind of got to go live. And then–

ELEANOR HALEY: Just do it.

JENNY GUY: –let the poop hit the fan, and then see what happens. So, from what we were talking about earlier, there’s a flip side to the coin of that productivity conversation that we were having which is, yes we want to be graceful with ourselves, and yes we want to allow for new priorities, but at the same time food is good, and having a job and paying our bills. And there are people that need things from us.

So is there a way– And I think that part of the beauty of this work from home situation that we’re finding out is that you don’t have to sit there for eight hours straight to get something accomplished. So how can you adapt to become productive in the time that you do have to maximize your productivity when you can get that little bit of time? And, TQ, I’m going to start with you on that one if that’s OK.

TQ EVANS: OK, Jenny. I had a headset issue. Am I– Can you hear me the same, or am I a little lower?

JENNY GUY: You’re in a different– and it’s a little more echoey, which is why we have people use headphones. But we’re good, we’re rolling along. I like your plant. Let’s go.

TQ EVANS: OK. You know, I’m going to just try it one more time to see if it–

JENNY GUY: That’s much better, yes.

TQ EVANS: It was just doing something weird. Let’s see. OK.

JENNY GUY: You sound great.

ELEANOR HALEY: Yeah.

TQ EVANS: Do I?

JENNY GUY: I mean, you really do.

ELEANOR HALEY: You do.

TQ EVANS: OK. I don’t know what happened to these. I don’t know. OK. I don’t know. OK. If I don’t, just give me a signal, and I’m–

JENNY GUY: Oh, I will.

TQ EVANS: OK.

JENNY GUY: I’ll interrupt you.

TQ EVANS: –the headset while we do it. So the question was how do we–

JENNY GUY: How can we maximize productivity because we do have demands on our time, and we do have people that need things from us even though we’re trying to be graceful and we don’t necessarily have the time that we had before. So how can you maximize productivity with the time that you do have?

TQ EVANS: So one suggestion is to have almost like a commitment to yourself, where you carve out a certain block of time, and that is your appointment to yourself that you cannot break. And so that’s something that’s really worked here in our house where we will have designated times of work, but then also designated break times. Sometimes working from home you don’t take lunches. You are eating in virtual meetings and that sort of thing. And so by just really having dedicated work hours. And then also having everything that you need in the space so that you can be successful is one that can be really good as well. So those are just a couple of things that helped me to remain focused.

ELEANOR HALEY: I most definitely agree with what you shared. I have a baby at home, so if I try and just say, all right I’m just going to get up and do work while the kids are all doing their thing, I will fail all day long. I’ll become very unproductive. So I think, like you said, carving out that time and choosing the time that makes the most sense as well. So when are the kids napping or busy can be so helpful.

And I think, one thing Litsa and I’ve talked about a lot and really struggle with is we’re both night people. We’re more productive at night than in the morning, and though I think sometimes it’s bad when things bleed together a lot, I think for me personally, being able to say, you know what, after my youngest goes down, that’s when I’m going to have the most time to be productive. I’m just going to do the kid thing right now, and I’ll do my work at this time later on in the day. So I think being more deliberate about what you’re doing in each time block can be really helpful, for me personally.

JENNY GUY: Litsa, same to you.

LITSA WILLIAMS: So I think when, this is actually an ADD productivity tip, but I think it might work for people at this time. One thing often they recommend for people with ADD or ADHD is, when you make your list for the day or for the week or however you make your list, is to estimate how much time do you think each item will take. So that in a particular moment, if you know you have 30 minutes, you can scan your list for what’s a 30 minute item. Because with ADHD, it’s really hard to stop and start. Usually people can, once they get going, they can focus. But then, if they take a break, it’s really hard to get back. So it’s a tip for that.

But I think for this, when our time is maybe being interrupted by kids, or different things are happening, or we’re going to have to adjust things around, having your list really quickly and easily just being able to go, OK. I only have 15 minutes, but here are three 15 minute– let me grab one of these three 15 minute things and do it. We can start to maximize the time we do have and use it a little bit differently.

ELEANOR HALEY: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: I love that. And also it sounds like a really great way to figure out how much time you actually are taking on things because I don’t think I have an idea. When I’m writing something, I’m gone. And then it’s two hours later and I’m like, well what happened? Well, I got derailed 47 times.

ELEANOR HALEY: Yeah.

LITSA WILLIAMS: So it’s actually– Part of the reason they recommend it for ADHD and ADD is that people with ADHD and ADD often have a hard time guessing how long things are going to take, they think it’s going to usually take way less time than it’s actually going to take. So when you first start doing it, part of the reason they recommend it is not just for time management, but it actually helps you to get better at learning to estimate how long tasks take you because we’re often not great at doing that.

JENNY GUY: I love that. And I also love, yeah, the ability– We live in Slack in our work from home at Mediavine. That is our lives, we are there all the time, that’s what we do. But having the ability to say, I’m going on DND for the next 45 minutes because I need to not be disturbed, because otherwise– because there’s fires constantly in the world that we live in. So you’re always just like, ugh, and you never get anything done. So that’s very helpful.

Ladies, we’re coming to the end of our time, but I have one more question that’s kind of a refrain that I’ve gotten from different people and some from me too. I always give you a little bit of time to think while I make announcements. So the last thing I want to hear from you guys, please, is how can we show up for other people right now? People that might be grieving that we can’t be with, that we can’t physically touch. People that are alone in the quarantine that are feeling very isolated. What are some easy ways that we can show up for them and make them feel a little bit less alone? So think about that, I will come right back.

Guys, we are continuing on our trail of lives, that we’re “live-ing” through, we’re living through this quarantine together. And we’re “live-ing” through this quarantine together, and that is what we are here for. Next week, next Thursday, I have our CEO coming back again, Eric Hochberger. He always brings goodies, he’s like Santa, and he brings goodies with him when he comes to Live, and we have some more things we want to talk to you about that we’re working on behind the scenes. So we’re going to give you a look behind the scenes, what we’re doing, what we’re working on, and how we are getting through this time and getting ready for the future where we’re going to come out stronger and profitable on the other side. So hold on for that, that will be next week.

I’m sure we’ll talk about Trellis because we always do. We can’t not talk about Trellis when he’s here. So come by, we’ll be back here 3:00 PM eastern time, next Thursday, which is the 30th of April. Again, I don’t know how that happened. And finally, I want to find out how we can show up for other people, and I’m going to start with Eleanor from What’s Your Grief. Will you please give us your final thoughts on that, Eleanor?

ELEANOR HALEY: I think this is another one of those areas where it feels like, oh, I don’t know how I can possibly bridge the gap, the physical gap between us, so I’m just not going to. And so Litsa and I have talked a lot about this and about just the need to at least do something, right? And so Litsa just mentioned a number of different platforms we can use. If we’re talking about somebody who’s grieving, just relying on some of those old tried and true things, sending something in the mail, send a card, send a gift of some sort in the mail to them to let you know you’re just thinking about them.

One of the things, when we ask people who are grieving what has been the most helpful to them in their grief, one of the things people have said time and time again is just the people who continue to check in. So not just checking in once and thinking I’m done, I’m checking that box off, I’ve done that, checking in again and again and taking the person’s cues. If it seems like they want a little space, but you don’t have to do much, you don’t have to be pushy, you don’t invade their virtual space. Just saying, hey, I’m thinking about you. I love you, and I can’t wait till I can see you again, can really do a lot to let somebody know that you’re just you’re thinking of them and they’re not alone.

JENNY GUY: Love that. Thank you, Eleanor. OK Lisa, from you, please.

LITSA WILLIAMS: I think one of the things that for right now, very specific to people who are grieving, is that one thing we don’t do as often as we could is share memories and photos of loved ones if we have them. And I think this is a time where a lot of us have some time. And if you know people in your life who’ve lost someone, and maybe you have some photos they might not have, or you have a story or a memory or something, anything, a way that you think about their loved one, taking this time to just say, hey, I was thinking about your mom and I loved this thing about her, I remember this thing about her, I’m just using this moment as a time to reach out. I don’t think we do that enough in general, but I think this is a time where things like that are especially meaningful.

JENNY GUY: Love that too. OK, TQ, finally to you. We can’t hear you, you’re muted. Yay!

TQ EVANS: OK am I muted? Can you hear me?

JENNY GUY: We can hear you.

TQ EVANS: Oh good. OK. I felt bad. Thanks to the Geek Squad, they taught me a couple of things about when technical issues happen, I know how to save myself and recover now.

JENNY GUY: Excellent.

TQ EVANS: So one of the things I would suggest is being a good neighbor. I think it’s really helpful. I have elderly neighbors who are not able to get out. And if you are having to go out and make a run to the grocery store, obviously protect yourself, utilize social distancing, and so on and so forth. I would actually call my neighbor and ask, hey Miss such and such, is there anything that you need from the store? I know you’re not really able to go, can I pick up some things for you? And dropping those off to a neighbor.

As you mentioned, you can send a gift. Amazon, Etsy, there are lots of care packages that are already made up that really creative folks have put together that you could pay for and have sent to someone. I would also suggest starting pen-palling again. That’s kind of a vintage thing that I think is awesome. I mean, how awesome is it to get a handwritten letter, two, three page letter from someone just telling you how they feel, or how they care about you, or what you mean to them.

And lastly, I would recommend to be transparent and honest in your social media spaces and not being a person to contribute to the “everything is perfect image anymore. And really committing to showing up in your social media spaces as your authentic self, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And by being your authentic self, you give others permission to express when they are stressed and when it’s not the picture perfect, everything’s scheduled, my kids are– like, this picture perfect life. So those are some suggestions I would give.

[JENNY AND ELEANOR]: (TOGETHER) Love that.

LITSA WILLIAMS: Can I just throw in real quick, I know you were sharing resources, but there’s a great place in terms of sending care packages called Here For You. And they send really, really great grief and self-care care packages. So other than Etsy and Amazon, they’re another great resource that we love.

JENNY GUY: And I would contribute in there too, there is also no better time to send people something local or something made by a local artisan, a local jeweler, a local scarf, a small business owner, send somebody local restaurant food. Anything that can support people that are struggling right now, I think you can kill two birds with one very happy stone. So I think that that’s–

Guys, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for being here, and I appreciate it. Ladies, stay safe and be well. And we will see you again next Thursday everyone. And subscribe to our YouTube channel, and follow Mediavine on all our social media accounts so you can not miss an episode. Thank you guys.

As a food blogger, there’s one key ingredient to your success: taking delicious photos of your recipes.

But how do you do that with the seemingly endless competition and incredibly complex Google algorithm?

In this episode of Mediavine On-Air, Stephanie Keeping and Melodee Fiske of Pretty Focused break down their system of taking amazing photos that drives pageviews and expands their audience. Using real life examples and statistics on how a few principles for their photos greatly increased their popularity, this episode is great for food bloggers that are just starting out or trying to recalculate their business.

Make sure to listen to the full episode and let us know what you think!

[powerpress]

Helpful Resources

• Stephanie and Melodee’s Presentation
• Pretty Focused
• Pretty Focused Courses

Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING] JENNY GUY: Hey, everybody. Welcome. Hello. Say hi. Welcome to another episode. Sorry, we were in here just totally getting down–

MELODEE FISKE: I love it.

[LAUGHTER]

JENNY GUY: –during the intro. And we were adding each other through the– yeah, I mean, if you can’t start with a little dance party, I think you’re doing something wrong.

MELODEE FISKE: Just go home. Just go home if you’re not going to dance.

JENNY GUY: True that. That’s very true. Well, welcome to another Mediavine Summer of Live. I’m your host, Jenny Guy. And as we saw from that beautiful intro, it is summer. But regardless of how we feel about it, summer is just flying by.

So my first question for you guys, and for my guests, is, how are you making the most of it? How are you enjoying summer? I have personally been on a bruschetta kick. And there’s nothing like summer produce. And in my humble opinion, cooking is the most fun around the holidays and summertime.

So I made some with tomato, basil, and red onion. And it was dinner. I broiled my bread with Trader Joe’s garlic olive oil. And then I drizzled with my homemade balsamic syrup. And I was like– I was feeling very–

MELODEE FISKE: Summer.

JENNY GUY: I felt very– yes. I felt summer. The pictures were very colorful. Of course I had to take pictures.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yeah.

MELODEE FISKE: Right.

JENNY GUY: I mean, because if–

MELODEE FISKE: What else would you do?

JENNY GUY: Why would I make food if I wasn’t going to take pictures of it? Eating is–

MELODEE FISKE: Photos, or it didn’t happen.

[LAUGHTER]

JENNY GUY: Exactly, exactly. So I mean, what’s the point of life if you’re not capturing– it’s dumb.

MELODEE FISKE: Exactly.

JENNY GUY: Why would I go to a restaurant if I wasn’t– yeah, it’s silly. But for publishers, social media is a terrific way to showcase their content and grow their followings. But the question is, how do you create a compelling image that actually brings people in, makes them click? And you guys, my guests are here to help. Let us meet them.

So, Stephanie Keeping and Melodee Fiske were moms who wanted to stay at home with their kids. A kitchen, a camera, and a computer helped them do it. Melodee, a former teacher, had two little kids, loved her job, and still wanted to be able to contribute financially to her family. As a hobby photographer for several years, starting her own thriving home-based photography business seemed like the answer.

Stephanie was in a similar boat. She’d quit her corporate job and was building a blog, Spaceships and Laser Beams, so she could stay home with her young son. But she was burning the candle at both ends as she balanced photography, growing page views, and building brand sponsorships and social following, giving an amen to all of my content creators out there.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: Feel it. Mhm.

MELODEE FISKE: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: Melodee felt burned out working as a wedding and portrait photographer and wanted to work more with bloggers and influencers to establish her business on her terms, which is what we all want, photographing food and crafts on her schedule while exercising her own creative side in the process. With the ever-growing demands of social media– algorithm, hello– bloggers like Stephanie often look for content creators like Melodee to help lighten their workload. So a partnership was born.

Based on the things Stephanie saw in the blogging world and Melodee’s background as an educator, Melodee perfected a system for content creation based on what bloggers, influencers, and website publishers actually needed. Here comes the jaw-drop part. Get ready. The strategies they developed together increased Stephanie’s blog readership by about two million people per month in just one year.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: Again–

MELODEE FISKE: Boom.

JENNY GUY: –two million people per month, one year. Hoo!

MELODEE FISKE: Just go ahead and pick up that microphone.

[LAUGHTER]

JENNY GUY: That’s right. It’s a drop.

MELODEE FISKE: That was a drop. That’s crazy.

JENNY GUY: And on top of all of that, that’s during COVID, y’all.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: It survived.

JENNY GUY: And it stuck around, right?

MELODEE FISKE: Even more so, we survived COVID. It didn’t drop. It’s continued to grow, yeah, which is big, right? That’s the fear. That was the fear–

JENNY GUY: Oh, yeah.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: –yeah, that people would go back to life and leave. [LAUGHS] So–

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

JENNY GUY: And it’s amazing that they stayed. And yeah, they just keep coming. And that system became the foundation for Pretty Focused, which is your program that teaches women how to master food photography and build thriving businesses–

MELODEE FISKE: Yes.

JENNY GUY: –as content creators.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Right.

MELODEE FISKE: Yes.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yes, you are the greatest hype man I’ve ever had.

[LAUGHTER]

MELODEE FISKE: I know. If I could take you with me everywhere–

STEPHANIE KEEPING: I feel so good about myself.

MELODEE FISKE: –I go–

[LAUGHTER]

JENNY GUY: Well, you guys make it– I mean, you could have, Bill– or what’s the guy from– Ben Stein from Ferris Bueller, where he does the (MONOTONOUSLY) two million page views. And it wouldn’t matter how you said it, it would still be quite compelling.

So they are going to talk about photographing for page views and teach us how to go viral. So if you have questions for either of them, Stephanie or Melodee, drop them in the comments. I will talk to them after the presentation. I’m going to drop in the presentation now for them and let them take it away.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Awesome. Let’s start. I thought I would do a Google snapshot of our journey. So what everyone’s seeing are basically the page views for the last two years for Spaceships and Laser Beams.

I’ve taken out numbers. And the reason why I don’t talk about numbers when I do this kind of thing is because for people who are just beginning their journey, the numbers can seem insurmountable. And there’s like, well, but…for people who are way bigger than me, they’ll discount me.

So I find the exact numbers become a focal point, but to know that the difference is in the millions. So that’s what I would say to anyone asking. And if there are specific questions, I can answer it.

So this all started in December 2019. And at the time, Mediavine, I will give you guys a ton of credit here. You guys were doing a great job. And RPMs were really increasing for bloggers.

And so I had really had more of a monetization strategy that was focused on sponsorship. And it was always 50% of my income. I had strong page views. But I definitely wanted more, as RPMs made it really attractive to monetize with page views.

And so I decided– it was around December ’19– I was, at the time, mostly blogging about boys’ birthday parties and doing some sponsored work that was around recipes. I decided to become a food blogger [LAUGHS] because food bloggers get massive– there’s massive competition but also massive page views. And everyone eats. [LAUGHS] Right?

So there’s a lot of pieces of that pie available out there even though there’s a lot of competition. So what you’re going to see here is kind of our journey over the last two years. So what happened, if anyone’s looking closely in here, they’re going to see, I think it was about in March of 2020– or March of 2019, sorry– I changed my URL structure in hopes of future-proofing my site.

I would not ever recommend that to anyone. I’m glad that I did it. But I could never recommend. It was an immediate 25% drop in search. And hits kept getting bigger.

So you’re going to see there that there was a struggle bus period of, I don’t know, eight months, where I just continued to get hit by Google. And I say here my sanity was hanging on by a thread. But at the same time, because of the things Melodee and I were doing and the things we were implementing, that we started to gain social traffic and were able to compensate for the Google losses and hit our traffic goals.

Then COVID hit. I mean, it’s amazing traffic time. I don’t ever know how much I can take credit for that versus everyone was home and googling recipes. So I kind of always de-mark that and leave it out of it.

But I wanted to put in there, one year past lockdown, except for the COVID anniversary, the lockdown anniversary, we’ve been up year over year. Basically the last 30 days were a 20% increase over last year. And if you were to look versus 2018, it’s millions in the difference.

So I wanted to say that this is, I think, a sound strategy that can really pay dividends. I truly believe. I mean, I think the proof is there. And we’ve had people who have followed what we said and grown exponentially, as well.

So this is kind of the journey we had. And that was that we really started to look at strategy, right? So we started to say that we wanted to become more strategic in how we select and create recipes as well as how we style and photograph those recipes.

And the reason that we do this is because I want to photograph something so that I believe everything we post on the blog has the opportunity to go viral. That’s because I want to make money from page views. And to do that in any significant way, you need volume.

So the first part of this whole thing is the strategy before you shoot. And what we like to do is create a plan where the end result is that someone can look at a photo and look at it and know what that recipe tastes like, know what it smells like, know what the textures are from just looking at the photo.

And that is how we grow page views through photography. And it all starts with research– planning a shot list, researching the recipe, and doing some really important things before we even take out our cameras. And so Melodee had an example of that that she wanted to go through on the next slide.

MELODEE FISKE: Yeah, so a lot of times, unfortunately, we learn the hard way. And so I have to tell you this story of this recipe right here. Actually, when Stephanie saw these photos in here, she was like, oh, man. I almost broke you with that one. But–

STEPHANIE KEEPING: [LAUGHS]

MELODEE FISKE: –this was so pivotal for us that I have to share it because it was our aha moment. So there was a time when Stephanie asked me to photograph a meatball sub for a sponsor. And I was super proud [LAUGHS] of how much cheese I layered on to it. I was like, ooh, who doesn’t love a cheesy sub?

It’s going to have awesome cheese pull– so cheesy. So I submitted the photos to her. And she was like, (HESITANTLY) no. No, no. [LAUGHS] She’s like, this isn’t a meatball sub.

And I’m like, what are you talking about? Look at all the cheese. There’s lots of– there’s lots of cheese. There’s too much cheese covering the meatballs. OK, Stephanie, you’re right. It doesn’t even look like a meatball sub.

It looks like a sausage– it could be a sausage sandwich, like a hot dog, the way the bun is opened. Or my favorite comment– I just held up this picture to somebody who has never seen it before. I was like, what is this? And she was like, oh, a baked potato. It’s not a baked potato. It’s not a baked potato.

So Stephanie took to Google searching for a meatball sub. And she sent me the photos. And this was really the first time she and I had hero hacked together. So this was our pivotable– pivotable– I can’t say that word today– pivotal moment, one that changed how we would approach sessions from then on, see, because we have an idea of what we think that it could or should look like, maybe based on family preferences.

Like, my husband loves cheese. So I was like, I’m going to give him a cheesy sub. And he’s going to love it. And Stephanie’s going to love it. The brand’s going to love it. But I was wrong on almost all accounts.

So [LAUGHS] it’s not necessarily that we learned what America would recognize as– or what our audience would recognize as a meatball sub. As you saw, somebody looked and thought that it was a baked potato.

And so that first photo over on the left, this is not a viral photo because we can’t even tell what it is. But the second photo, well, the second photo is one the brand actually put money behind to promote because they loved it so much. This right here is the difference between planning and researching before your session.

OK, so now before every session, we have to have a plan. Planning your sessions saves time. Boy, did it save time because right at dusk, I’m losing all the light. I have to go back in and rephotograph that meatball sub again, hoping that I get my photos right. So then I’ve lost time because I had to photograph it again.

And so planning your session, it allows you to stop hoping that you get the shot that you can use. And you can be confident that you do get the shot. And it allows you to compete because you have the right amount of content.

Planning gives you a huge variety of images that you need because you need a variety to use across all different social channels, OK? So a big part of planning is doing that market research, like the example that I gave. Stephanie went straight to the source– Google. What does a meatball sandwich look like to America?

So we actually coined the phrase “hero hacking.” And when we hero hack, we’re looking for the types of photos that people are responding to. And if you want to go on to the next slide, too. What types of images does Google look like? What type of images do people prefer to pin on Pinterest?

So things that we’re looking for Stephanie’s going to tell you in a minute. But I’m looking for the types of ingredients that are being used, dishes that are being used. Not all casseroles belong in a cast iron skillet, right? So we want to make sure our dishes make sense for the recipe that we’re using.

We want to make sure our garnishes make sense, that it’s something that home cooks are going to have. Otherwise they’re going to be intimidated and not be able to make it. We’re going to be able to create a shot list. And we’re looking at different camera angles.

But I do want to emphasize this is something that we are being inspired by. We’re looking at what people are responding to. We’re not copying off of the photos. So, Stephanie, why don’t you take us over and show us what it looks like to hero hack, briefly.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: OK, the number-one rule of hero hacking is to Google the keyword. And I can’t tell you how those two minutes of your life can save you a world of work. And so basically, like Melodee said, Google tells you what America thinks this recipe should be, right?

So what you’re going to do when you Google it, you’re going to look in the– we call it the tray. I don’t think Google calls it the tray, but the bank of recipes. We look in the SERP list that goes below it. We look in the Image search. And we’re starting to take notes.

We also search Pinterest for additional ideas. And what we’re doing is trying to really get a sense of all those things that Melodee said so that we can create images that are going to compete with the best of the best and eliminate the guesswork, right?

So this is, like, the curious case of the Jell-O poke cake. So in the top middle, there, is our photo, which we were like, let’s do a Jell-O poke cake. And we shot it. And I tried it a million different ways. And nothing ever took off. And I’m like, what’s wrong? It looks like everybody else’s.

I even tried some of my friends– because this is a super common recipe– some of my friends. And theirs took off. But mine wasn’t. So any time that we see something that isn’t working, we’re thinking, OK, is it the wrong season or the wrong timing? Is it the wrong platform? Like, sometimes things just work on Pinterest. They don’t work on Facebook, or vice versa.

Or if the answers to those things are no, we ask ourselves, did we make a mistake? And in this case, we could see that we made a mistake. And the reason I know this is because of hero hacking.

So you’re going to see here our photo’s at the top. Then at the bottom, there are the Google results plus two images of people’s that I share that actually did well. And I’m wondering if anyone wants to put in the comments what they think we did wrong.

But basically it’s so clear to me now. I’ve X-ed out the photos that don’t count. So everything here has one thing in common that ours doesn’t. And so that is that it’s on an angle. So the slice is pointing towards you. And I think, Melodee, you gave me a really good example. It’s like, that’s how you would eat it. You would eat it from the side. Its angles are pointing towards you.

And so what are we doing? We put it on the list to re-shoot and get that viral image because it’s so important. And we’ve done this time and time again.

And to be able to compete– we’re not copying. We’re doing our own recipe, our own photos. But we’re just turning the plate because the research has said that’s what works. That is what resonates with people.

MELODEE FISKE: Yep.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: So I wanted to give now the next example, is how we work through the process so that people could kind of see it and relate it to their own blog. So this is a post that’s been on my blog since the dawn of time. And it used to do really well. But it doesn’t compete anymore. You can look at the photos and see why.

But there are some things about it that this post used to go viral. This was, like, a 2015 record. You know, it was just one of those posts. It just doesn’t compete today.

And what works for it are thick layers and it being sliced. And it used to do really well. But it’s dropped off. So we got it reshot. And I think it’s the case with a lot of bloggers. And you get something reshot, and the new photos don’t do as well as the old photos. So that’s in the next slide.

So the next slide shows you what doesn’t work. And so there are three kinds of pictures that we found out don’t work for this recipe– overhead, thin layers, and not freezing it. So that’s the next slide. Jenny.

So these don’t work. These all bombed. So what we had to do is go back to the drawing board and really think about what we needed for this recipe. So if you go to the next slide, when we were looking at similar posts, we knew we hadn’t made a mistake, that it wasn’t a timing issue or a platform issue. I can share a pumpkin in July and get it to go viral. This was definitely a photographic issue.

So we knew that, with similar posts, what works well is a bite shot. So we developed a plan for the new session. And that’s on the next slide. And there were three things we wanted to focus on.

So these three things were that we wanted to adjust the recipe because the reshot one, an option is to put it in two pies. That just doesn’t look well for photographing. So we needed to make sure that we had a recipe that worked in the biggest pie shell possible so that we could get thick layers. And my people don’t make their own pie crusts. [LAUGHS] So it had to be a premade pie shell. That’s another thing.

We knew we wanted to freeze the pie because we needed those layers to be cleanly cut and the pie to stand tall so then it could defrost while it was being shot. And we knew we needed to get a bite shot because you can see from the last slide all of those pictures are bite shots. And they all went viral for similar recipes.

So the next slide is the heroes that we ended up with. And so these were kind of our choices. And so we had to pick one that we wanted to be the first face of the recipe. So we ended up picking– it’s on the next slide– is this bite shot. But it’s not just a bite shot. It actually has a bite shot with a fork, which I think reinforced the layers twice– super thick layers and close-cropped.

And I wanted to give the results of that. So this has been shared a lot. But this is one Facebook share. So this had about an 18 million reach. It had 240,000 shares. And it had 267,000 link clicks. And if anyone can do the math on that, it’s a nice payday.

MELODEE FISKE: So awesome.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yeah, and we’ll share it again this year. And hopefully it’ll take off again this year.

MELODEE FISKE: Yeah.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: So this is just really in the power of research and photography, what you’re seeing here. And I think if people take a little time ahead of time, I think they can see how to incorporate it into their own workflow and really develop some game changers.

So I think the first start of that is in really understanding the type of photos that go viral. And so we kind of have a brand, or a photo brand, of the type and style we use. And it’s actually one we teach our students, too, because we want to teach them what works.

When we hire photographers, we’re saying, OK, here’s how you have to shoot. You need it to be kitchen and not editorial, right? It needs to be accessible. It needs to look like someone’s rich friend’s kitchen, not a magazine shoot.

We want a white background. I typically don’t like stark white. I like a marble or a white grain board to give it some home and depth and take it out of that editorial. But I like it being white because I want the food to be the star of the show.

So I want bright food. So we ensure that the food is shot and edited, I would call it saturated but realistic. So we want it true to color–

MELODEE FISKE: Yeah.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: –but really bright and pop. And I would say the most important thing– all of those other things could be discounted. If you’re just wanting the most important thing, it’s that last thing. It has to look yummy.

If we get the most beautiful photos in the world but there are none that look yummy, that post does not go live. I can take shots that are less in quality– Melodee does not want to hear this, by the way– but [LAUGHS] you can get people to click on bad iPhone photos that are yummy versus beautiful editorial shots that look dry, that look not yummy.

MELODEE FISKE: Mhm, mhm.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: So if you’re making your money as a food blogger, being yummy is the most important thing. I think the other things help elevate your blog, bring in readership, and all those things. I would not discount them. And I don’t want blurry iPhone photos on my blog. But at the end of the day, it has to look yummy.

And there are some keys to getting your work to look like this every time. So Melodee’s going to go through some practical tips that we hope will help people.

MELODEE FISKE: Yeah, so let’s start with camera gear. And I saw in the comments–I was perusing those– that some people were asking about lenses and stuff. So I shoot with a Canon Mark III. Actually, right now I shoot with a Canon Mark IV.

My two go-to lenses, you guys– I like to keep things super simple and approachable. My go-tos that I’m always using are my 50 1.2 and my 100 2.8.

I will tell you the jump from the 50 1.8 to the 1.2 is worth it. The colors in that 1.2 alone, I feel like, just take you to a whole new level. Whenever I first put that on my camera and I took a picture and I saw the colors, I was like, [GASPS] oh, my gosh. This is amazing.

I just felt like it’s a whole other level. And so the colors on the 1.2 are beautiful. The Canon 100 2.8, this allows you to get nice and close to the food. This is great for heroes. This is great for those bite shots that Stephanie was showing us.

It just allows you to get close. It makes the food look big. So these are my go-to lenses. I also use an ExpoDisc. I’m going to show you what that looks like in a minute.

Of course I’ve got SD cards. I have a tripod. But you guys, I’m a free-hand shooter. I know a lot of people like it mounted. They like it tethered. They like tripods. And I’m like, I just like free-hand. So I’m a free-hand shooter.

I use Lightroom for post-processing. And of course I edit on a laptop or a computer. I would recommend this over an iPad or a Chromebook. It makes a difference.

So now let’s talk a little bit about the styling supplies that you need. So like Stephanie was saying, she likes that light background. She likes a lot of neutrals because it really allows the food to be the star so we’re getting some really bright and colorful food images.

So I like to start with neutral plates and bowls. I like brushed silverware instead of the shiny because I’m sure you don’t want to see yourself in the reflection of the spoons.

I have a photo– it’s forever burned in my mind just like those meatball photos– of me in a hot-pink shirt standing over a pot of delicious chicken and dumplings. And there I am in a hot-pink shirt. I’m so sorry, Stephanie.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: [LAUGHS]

MELODEE FISKE: So I always like to use linens. I love linens because it adds a different texture. It adds movement. It adds some more depth.

I like the earthiness of the wooden serving spoons, even little wooden bowls, little pinch bowls. Neutral baking dishes, neutral mixing bowls because, again, like I talked about before, is you really want to make sure that you use the appropriate dish for the recipe.

And so Stephanie and I, we’ve had this– I’m sure you can relate– the comment of, I don’t have– what did they say– I don’t have a 9″ by 13.” But I have a 13″ by 9″. Will that work for this recipe? And so whenever you’re getting questions like that, you realize how important it is. Having the appropriate dishes for that recipe is so important.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: We had a tuna casserole that was photographed in a round casserole dish. It did nothing. And if anyone knows my blog, tuna casserole should be a winner.

And we took the exact same recipe, just put it in a regular rectangle. And it did well. It’s like, people picture the recipe how they pictured it. And that round casserole dish was before we hero hacked.

MELODEE FISKE: Yeah.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: And that was when we realized we had made a mistake. And the difference was the casserole dish, nothing else.

MELODEE FISKE: Yeah. It’s amazing, these–

STEPHANIE KEEPING: It’s shocking, right? Yeah.

MELODEE FISKE: It is shocking, these details, that you wouldn’t think, you know? So that’s why going and seeing what Google likes, what Google is putting up to the front, pushing to the front, and seeing what people are responding to.

So let’s talk about a home-studio setup because I photograph in my house. Right behind me is my table. So the items that you need for that home-studio setup is a portable table, styling boards. You’ll see in that photo, that is a vinyl styling board. But I really like the thick boards. I love those. I’ve got marble.

I tend to have the lighter, more neutral tones. Some of our students, they go for the darker. They’ll go for different ones. I love that Stephanie and I are on the same page. I use reflectors. I have a stepstool because shorty-short getting those overhead shots definitely needs some help getting up there.

I use stands to hold up my reflectors. And then a natural light source. I am a free-hand shooter. And I shoot with natural light. But I’m also in sunny Phoenix, Arizona. So [LAUGHS] that helps. The sun is on my side.

So I want to give you guys two tips to create pin-worthy photos with the gear you already have now because, believe it or not, that’s a question we get asked a lot of is, well, I’ve got a Rebel T3i or a Rebel T6. And can I create those beautiful images with the gear that I have now? Or do I need to upgrade now?

And so first of all, I want to say that no matter what gear you have, light is foundational– always. Light is foundational. And so I want to show you how I set up that portable table and the styling boards to my window.

So first of all, I set up my board parallel to a south-facing window. I have a big south-facing window. So that allows me the most shooting time during the day. This one, I will say, is a west-facing window. And it allows me to photograph in the afternoon, which is actually usually whenever I photograph anyway.

So I have a reflector on the opposite side of the window and at the back of the board. And that helps me create a light trap OK? It keeps all of that light concentrated on the board. And that light’s going to flood my camera. My camera’s going to love that, OK?

Because this is a west-facing window, sometimes during the day, towards the end, I have that direct light coming in. And this is where my diffuser comes into play.

I will put a diffuser in the window between the light and my board. And then it diffuses all of that harsh light. And it creates this beautiful soft light. And actually it’s my favorite type of light to photograph in. So I love this.

Now I want to show you– speaking of, is my gear good enough; can I do this with my gear– I want to show you how important light is because I have two setups right here of one with an $800 setup. I have a Canon 60D– 6-0 D– and an 18 to 55 millimeter lens, you guys, on one photo. On the other photo, I’m either using my Mark III or my Mark IV. And I’m using my Canon 50 1.2. So either way, it’s like a $3,500 setup versus an $800 setup.

OK, this is how important light is. So if you go to the next slide, you’ll see which one it is. And Stephanie has figured it out now because we’ve talked about this so much. She’s seen this photo.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yeah.

MELODEE FISKE: But you’ll see the photo on the left is an $800 setup. The photo on the right is a $3,500 setup. You’re going to have to zoom in to those photos pretty darn close to see that difference.

You guys, light is foundational. So you can use that gear that you have now to create these bright and colorful images. OK, now, my second tip I have for you– light, super important. Number two is to use an ExpoDisc. And this little lifesaver will save your life.

[LAUGHTER]

It is. Like, I have a couple of them laying around here. And I do not leave home without this. I do not shoot without this. This thing– well, when I go to the grocery store, I leave it at home.

But if I’m going shooting anywhere, I have this thing because our digital cameras are amazing. They are wonderful. But they cannot determine what white looks like in every setting. And so we have to help it. And we have to create– this helps create a custom white balance. It helps your camera know what white is supposed to look like in every setting.

Now, some of you might use Kelvin and say, well, I just use Kelvin. And I adjust it. And that’s great. What Kelvin does is Kelvin will adjust the yellows and the blues. The ExpoDisc is actually calibrated on the color spectrum. And not only will it account for the blues and the yellows but the greens and the pinks, as well. So the colors on your photo are more rounded.

I want to show you a before and after with auto-white balance and using the ExpoDisc. With an ExpoDisc, there is no editing. That photo is straight off of camera.

The goal is always to get our photos looking pretty darn perfect straight off of camera because we’re photographers, right? I don’t like to spend hours editing photos. And making sure that I’ve got my light dialed in, I’m using the best light, and I’m using my ExpoDisc– because using an ExpoDisc does require the best light– I am able to get photos like this right off of camera.

This makes such a big difference whenever it comes to our productivity and how much time we’re spending behind a camera. So those are my two tips. Those are my secret weapons, is making sure I’ve got good light and making sure that I am using an ExpoDisc to get my photos right in camera.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: I love that. Oh, my gosh. We’re like, who does the selling?

[LAUGHS]

MELODEE FISKE: I know, and tag team.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

STEPHANIE KEEPING: –really awkward. So I will say, if anyone’s interested in joining us or wondering how the heck can I look and improve my photography, we want to say there’s two options. One is the do-it-yourself option.

So we’re in the middle of an enrollment session right now. I think we have 13 spaces left-ish, somewhere around there. And we have tiers, so if you just wanted photography versus if you wanted coaching and all the other things.

So if anyone wants to go, they can go to prettyfocused.com/sales-page and check out what we offer in terms of coaching. And if you just want to join our waitlist or be on our email list, you can do that there on our website, as well.

The other option is if you want to go the Stephanie Keeping path of having people do– [LAUGHS] things for you. We also– we train people to be food photographers for bloggers, basically because it came out of a need for my own blog.

And if you go to prettyfocused.com/grads, you’re going to find there a directory of our graduates. So these are people who’ve gone through– they’ve taken the training. But not only did they take the training, they were tested. And they had to pass a rigorous portfolio process. And they’re all people who are independent businesspeople and photographers who you can hire.

Or you can go to our Buyers’ Club, which is a Facebook group, and lurk or post a job in there or see what people have for sale. And that’s another option. So I would love to have people join us either way. It’d be amazing. Oh, yes! Oh, my gosh. We’re the worst salespeople ever.

[LAUGHTER]

JENNY GUY: I’ve got you. I’ve got you, Stephanie.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yeah. [LAUGHS] I forgot, but we’re offering– please don’t tell anyone [LAUGHS]– we’re offering a 10% off–

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

MELODEE FISKE: Yep, just the people who are here.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yeah, just the people who are here and the people on the Mediavine email list–

MELODEE FISKE: Yes.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: –which if you’re a Tier 3 person, that’s going to save you hundreds of dollars. So you can take a look at the pricing, put in SUMMER10, and get a discount. And I will say– (SARCASTICALLY) and there’s more, but– [LAUGHS] for anyone who’s wondering if it’s worth it or what to do, it’s broken into tiers.

So the Tier 1, what I would say to people, you could use the coupon, buy Tier 1. And the Tier 1 is photography only. If you feel like you want extra coaching or you want community, you want feedback, you want all those things, you can upgrade at any time.

We’re not– [LAUGHS] so we just tell people you just pay the difference. And we’ll work with you so that you can upgrade to the tier to get the coaching if you decide afterwards. It’s not a big deal at all. So people can kind of dip their toe in. And there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee. There’s– like, the worst– [LAUGHS]

JENNY GUY: No, not at all. You guys are great. I have to say that we’re having, guys– and not to worry, audience. We are going to share that presentation with you in the comments as soon as we’re done.

If you have additional questions– I have a few that people have been asking throughout that I’m going to put to them. But before I even get started, I want to say that myself and my entire team are messaging each other saying how frickin’ hungry we are right now–

[LAUGHS]

–because we’ve been looking at the pictures. And we’re all like, I want the cookie. No, I want the pumpkin. I want that– yes, all of it. All of the things. We were feeling very, very tantalized by the images.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: I love it.

JENNY GUY: So thank you so much. OK, we had a question a long time ago from Kippi, And she said, Stephanie, “what do you mean by URL structure change?”

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Oh, god. OK, so don’t do this unless– don’t be like me unless–

JENNY GUY: We actually have a blog post about this on the Mediavine website.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yes, so don’t do this unless you can afford to lose Google traffic. This was a calculated risk that still hurts today. But I’m OK with it.

So I just want to put that out there. You need to know going in, if you do this, you’re going to lose traffic, hands down. Mediavine will tell you, I will tell you, everyone will tell you, you need to be OK with losing money. OK, with that out of the way–

JENNY GUY: And not just from traffic, it’s also from our advertisers because it is an entirely new URL that you are introducing to– it’s a new website.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yeah, so for me, I did not re– so some people do an entirely new–

JENNY GUY: Oh, OK, yes.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yeah, so people who are contemplating changing their blog name after years of blogging, don’t do it. I’m just going to say that. Don’t do it. Rebrand. Make a new logo. Get it out of your system. Don’t do it.

But what I did, [LAUGHS] which is also horrible, but I’m OK with it, is I had a URL structure that was like, blog. Then it had the category. It had some stuff in there.

So what it meant was it was creating duplicate URLs for multiple posts if they were in multiple categories. It was from, like, the early days of blogging when no one knew anything, that type of thing.

JENNY GUY: Yes, totally.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: And I made the decision to just eat the frog and do it. And so it has been multiple years of dealing with this. So I would say if you want to do something like that, you need to calculate the money you’re going to lose and be OK with it. So that’s what I mean. I don’t want people to think– like, it’s a thing.

JENNY GUY: No, and it’s perfectly transparent. We appreciate it. Kippi just said, “oh, my god. I just did this.”

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Oh.

JENNY GUY: Uh-oh. OK.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: OK, well–

JENNY GUY: You guys might need to collab afterwards and discuss.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yeah, just message. I remember Kippi from BTI. So totally just message me if you need to.

JENNY GUY: We also are getting some compliments on your Mediavine teal eyeshadow, which I–

STEPHANIE KEEPING: I know.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

JENNY GUY: –have to say, heck yeah.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: –such a coincidence. But now I’m going to pretend like I’m just a cheerleader. [LAUGHS]

JENNY GUY: My team was like, we love your teal sweater. It’s green. But you know, I’ll take it. It was planned. And I loved it.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yeah.

JENNY GUY: OK, Sarah said, “Wow! So do you choose your recipes based on whether or not the food is “photographable?”

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Not necessarily.

JENNY GUY: OK.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: No, because, I mean, I have lots of casseroles and brown food. What I would say, I choose recipes that I think my audience will love first, not that I think Google will love. The reason I do that is because you saw the struggle bus of Google in my analytics.

So I need to make money now. [LAUGHS] I can’t wait two years, right? I’m the sole provider for my family and for the people who work for me. So I need to make money now.

So I make sure that my audience, whether it’s social, email, those things, love it first. And then I hope that by going viral, that I get backlinks on all those things and Google catches up. So that’s the number-one consideration, is that I think it’s something that my audience will love and that it will go viral on social.

But in that photographable thing, what I try to do is make sure that every single recipe we photograph is the most yummy it can be for that recipe. So if it’s tuna casserole, which– or if it’s like a strawberry cake, whatever it is, there has to be yummy shots in there.

So that’s, I think, the difference, where you’re going to see– I might not necessarily pick all the beautiful food. But it needs to look yummy. And so that is the number-one thing when I’m telling my team. I’m like, OK, that’s pretty. But it doesn’t look yummy.

So we need to have shots that look yummy. We do tutorial-based photography. And that’s what we teach. And that’s what I do on my own blog. We also do ingredient shots in step-by-step photos. But for me and my job of getting page views to the site, I’m really concerned about the heroes and that they look yummy. So that’s– yeah.

JENNY GUY: I also love the– I mean, nobody is going to sit here and say– even as beautiful as they were, nobody’s going to go, you know the most beautiful food? It’s a meatball sub. Or it’s a tuna noodle casserole. You’re just not. You’re not going to walk in and be like, it’s going to be beautiful like a lattice apple pie.

You’re not going to get the same thing. It’s just not going to be that. But I love that you’re taking foods that– because I still want to eat a meatball sub and a tuna noodle casserole. I like to eat those things. So making it as good as it can be, love that.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yes. And I mean, realistically, for any food blog, what are your number-one posts going to be? Like, chili, meatloaf, right?

I mean, I think most Mediavine publishers are an American audience. You’re going to want the things that America eats on your blog. And they’re not beautiful things. The big page views are in dinners and brown food. So we’re just trying to make that thing yummiest it can possibly be.

So I said it in the presentation– it’s not mine, I actually took it from another– the best, best, best advice I ever got from a blogger, who is infinitely more successful than I am, is that when you look at a photo– and I’m going to say this again for the people in the back because it’s so important– you need to be able to taste that dish from your photos. And if you can’t, go photograph it again. It will be the difference in getting people to your blog and not.

They need to look at it. And if there’s a mix of crunchy and sweet, they need to know that. They just have to be like, oh, my god, that looks so good. Click. Oh, my god, that looks so good, Mom. Make this for me. Whatever they’re doing, right, that needs to happen.

And you can only invoke that emotion if it looks yummy, if you want page views. I mean, right? That’s really what most of us want here, I think, is for people to visit.

JENNY GUY: Well, I mean, yeah. I think you can take– and I also loved that, Stephanie, you talking about how you are taking it from, it’s not just the food that you want to eat or want to make. You’re wanting to serve your audience because you are serving your pocketbook and the people who work for you. So it’s very much a business decision.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yeah, absolutely.

JENNY GUY: Love hearing that. OK, so we’re unfortunately out of time. But I want to ask one more thing. I’m going to let you guys think about it. I want answers from both of you before we say goodbye.

But I absolutely appreciate it and it fed my soul that one of the slides specifically said, be inspired. Do not copy another photographer’s images or style, which, like, as I said, heck yeah. We’re all about it. Don’t copy.

But with that, could you tell us how to find the line between inspiration and copying and a couple of resources of where to go that isn’t just Google? Maybe where you guys get inspired. How did you find your signature look?

So if you’ll think about that for a second. I asked about 17 questions in that one. So you’re welcome. I’ll be right back in a second. Guys, I’m going to make a quick announcement, that we are back with a Summer of Live next week. It will be Wednesday, July 29, 3:00 PM Eastern.

Amy Flanigan of Belly Full will be here. And we are going to do– the topic is “TikTok, You Don’t Stop– Expanding Your Brand With Short, Funny Videos.” I am old and have not been on TikTok. So I’m very excited to learn from her. Here we go.

MELODEE FISKE: That’s awesome.

JENNY GUY: And from Stephanie and Melodee, we have learned so much. People are saying, love it. So excited to learn the info. We are going to share that slide presentation in the comments so people can get in touch with you after the presentation. But who would like to go first with my plethora of questions?

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yeah. OK, so I think it can happen. I just want to say it can happen. Sometimes it happens where you look at something a little too close, right? It can happen. But to try to prevent it, you’re going to not– you’re going to make a list, right?

So when you’re going through and you’re looking at all the sources, you’re going to be like, I need a shot that’s an overhead shot of the casserole dish. I need a shot where a spoon is being scooped out. I need a shot where it’s a slice of pie that’s on a plate that’s front on. So you’re making a list. So then you’re not grabbing pictures and like, I’m gonna copy–

JENNY GUY: OK.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: –that one. I’m going to copy– so you’re making a word list. And then you’re pulling in your linens, your look, all of those things. So hopefully as you transition through, you’re not going to copy.

I would say if you get to the end, hopefully you’ve done your due diligence and it isn’t. I’m going to say, you make a judgment call of, is this too close, it needs to be reshot? Or is it just inspired and I should link to that blogger? Those types of things. So I think there’s several issues there.

But I think it’s about making just a checklist of the things you need and planning. It’s not about taking someone’s photo and having it there and saying, I need to duplicate that photo. That’s the difference, I think. And then giving credit where credit is due if needed.

MELODEE FISKE: Yeah.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: And Melodee probably has better. [LAUGHS]

MELODEE FISKE: No, I think that’s great. And I think, too, it’s– because we have a whole session-planning guide that has a whole list of heroes to get so you’re not just getting– like, I’ve gone to blogs. I don’t know the name of the blog. I can just remember my experience there. It was, like, a close-up of a frosted chocolate cupcake, far back of the same setup of the chocolate-frosted cupcake, and then a little bit higher angle of the chocolate-frosted cupcake.

And I was like, as a reader, let me tell you, bloggers. I was like, give me more. I know what that looks like frosted. Tell me more about the story. And I just get so frustrated. I’m like, I’m going to go find another recipe. I need more. And so I don’t even know where I was going with that. But–

STEPHANIE KEEPING: [LAUGHS]

MELODEE FISKE: So we have that checklist. So we’re getting more than just that one hero, right? We need a variety because, like I said, we’re not just using it in the blog post. You’re using it on Pinterest. You’re using it on Instagram. You’re using it on Facebook. You’re using these images everywhere to push traffic to your blog.

So we are compiling a list. And I think it’s also important that you don’t just hone in on one photo because that’s– [LAUGHS] when you just hone in on one photo, that’s where that happens. So whenever you’re looking over a huge variety of images– looking at Google. You are looking at Pinterest. You’re even looking at Instagram just to see what people really like on Instagram.

But I have a whole list of– or a stack of magazines that I’ll buy, like the Taste of Home, chicken edition, right? And I’m flipping through that magazine. And I’m looking for inspiration in the magazine, you know?

I’m looking for inspiration everywhere that I am, everywhere that I look because I want to know how to better photograph, especially those foods that are ugly. So give me a Taste of Home, like, casserole edition– I’m sure they have it somewhere– just to be able to make sure you’re getting all of those.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yeah.

MELODEE FISKE: Does that make–

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

JENNY GUY: Oh, totally.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yeah, and I think you can look at, like, the poke cake we need to re-photograph. It’s not one image I’m saying we need to copy. It’s, we need to turn the damn plate, right? That’s the–

MELODEE FISKE: Right. It’s–

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yeah.

MELODEE FISKE: A lot of times it’s the angle.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yeah.

MELODEE FISKE: It’s the angle. And so whenever you start– when you use the same plate, when you use the same linen, whenever you use the same recipe, there’s so much that goes, you know–

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yeah.

MELODEE FISKE: You have to really try, I feel like, to copy a photo exactly.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Yeah, for sure.

JENNY GUY: I mean, if all else fails from this episode, please take with you, “turn the damn plate.”

[LAUGHTER]

Just go with that. That’s if you take nothing else. Ladies, you have been an absolute treat. Audience, thank you for joining us. Have a wonderful weekend. And we’ll see you next time.

STEPHANIE KEEPING: Bye.

MELODEE FISKE: Bye.