Blog

Overview

Strategic Building Blocks

• Business and Technical Drivers
• Digital disruption vs leadership
• Visionary Customers
• Digital Ecosystems

Transformation Discvery

Digital Core

• Products
• Customer Journey / Marketing
• Operational Systems

Digital Leadership Competencies

• Customer Insight
• Technology Insight
• Data / Analytics
• Continual Learning / Innovation
• Digital Culture

Digital Transformation Phases

• Introduction
• Team Development
• Discovery
• Vision and Strategy
• Identification
• Engagement
• Development
• Transformation

Summary

Three Youtube Algorithms

• Youtube SEO – relevant to the current search – you must do this for every video – this is what the person is searching for
• Home Page Algorithm – Logged-in Home Page where youtube places all of user’s recent interests – this is what the person is most likely to watch in general
• Recommendation Algorithm – relevant to the current video being watched – this is what similar viewers were most likely to watch

After you are done, they are all automated.  You dont need to spend money to promote or keep posting and posting every day.

Unifiying Factors (Recently):

Youtube cares about

• Watch time  (meaning after they click your video what percentage of the video that people go on to watch)
• Total engagement (thumbs up or thumbs down or do people comment)

Content Summary:
1. YouTube SEO: keyword research, on page SEO, off page SEO

• short-tail key word: really competitive
• long-tail key word: easy to start
• use some keyword for upsells, such as Best Yoga Mat, Yoga pants, cooking workshops, etc….and perhaps you can become an amazon affliate or create your own e-commerce website

2. More Youtube keyword research tools: Vidlq, TubeBuddy, and …

• Google Keyword Tool (FREE! -> ads.google.com -> keyword Planner)

• VidIQ Tool (Chrome Extension)
• TubeBuddy (Chrome Extension)

3. On-page SEO introduction

• title (most important, 100 keywords, but truncated in 50 characters to show on mobile, 70 characters to show on most desktops)
  • test your title in mobile and desktop
  • use a mix of long tail and short tail keywords
  • hashtags “#” in title
• description – put it long (the first two lines are most viewed so put the important/lucrative sentence you want audiences to see there)
  • first two sentences should be attractive (increase click through rate )
  • or put the url you want people to go (to sell something online or make people go to some page of your own site)
  • The keywords are towards the top of your description are weighted more heavily than the keywords towards the bottom
  • put your other video urls there if you have or you want.  It will increase the chance that videos appear on the recommendation list
  • hashtags “#” in description (better at bottom)
• tags/keywords
  • use the ones within your title
  • use the tools that shows the ranking number
• How Youtube treats on-page SEO?
  • Your on-page SEO is just a respected suggestion
  • They may give you preferential treatment for about 3-6 weeks
  • While at this time they collect data about the performance through the video
  • This data is click through rate engagement, watch time and many other factors that they use to determine
  • After that assessment, they will rank you according to their algorithm
  • The keywords and description you chose to optimize are not going to matter much

4. YouTube search ranking factors for your videos to rank higher

• • Plan to have your video be better than the existing videos out there
  • Watch-Time (Total minutes watched and percentage completed) relative to competitors
  • Upvotes, comments, sharing will help you
  • Appropriate Website embedding like Quora, etc. -> get more views
  • YouTube Ads -> get more views
  • get more thumbs up
    • Video Quality is the top factor
    • the longer your video is watched, the more likely it is to get thumbs up
    • one very engaged fan can upvote many of your videos
    • how to do this?
      • Ask for the thumb-up in the video after a valuable moment, not at the beginning(irritate people), not the end (not many people reach the end), it should be the place where you give value when you feel like all people must really like it.
      • Ask on YouTube review groups on Facebooks groups, Linkedin groups etc. (but do remember Youtube doesnt like reciprocal promotion)
      • Ask friends and business contacts (at video launch ask individually)
      • Your own review team that you build yourself
      • When you promote on social media, ask when posting (eg. Check out my video on XXX and please leave a comment and thumbs up…)
      • Stir Controversy (optional – because it will give you as many thumbs up and thumbs down maybe) – This is unconfirmed by Youtube, but many top YouTubers actually suggest this because you are getting extra engagement signals, YouTube actually uses that as a positive ranking signal.
  • Get more Youtube comments
    • It is a big engagement and ranking factor
    • Create a graphic or pop-up asking people to comment somewhere in the video (not beginning or end)
    • Offer help or promotion (eg. I ask them, hey if you have questions, post your questions in the comments)
    • Ask questions and opinions form your viewers, and keep them engaged
    • Be controversial (optional – the same as above)
    • Spark debate
    • Reply to comments to keep conversation going
    • Press thumbs up and heart
  • How to boost your watch time
    • Huge ranking factor in Youtube SEO
    • Good presentation, audio and video quality helps a lot (It is known that longer video obviously have generally more watch time)
    • Have a brisk and effective introduction (first 25 or 30 seconds is very important, many people drop at the very beginning 30 seconds)
      • Sample Script: Hi, my name is Alice Ding from Miapple Inc. (3 seconds), In this video, you will learn ______ Benefit ____________  (5-10 seconds)
      • Optional: I will fully walk you through _______ The benefits of XXX is that you will get more of XXX and XXX
    • Promise some extra bonus or giveaway at the end
    • Maybe some advanced strategy (Pre-plan them and use them in your title and video positioning)
  • How to boost views and embed with Quora
    • It is a very big ranking factor if your video gets embedded into high DA sites and other third party
    • Post related videos in your answers in Quora.  (Make sure your overall answer does not seem promotional but seems helpful)
    • Post related videos in your answers on Bestblackhatforum or Medium.com or cooking forum or other forums etc.
    • Create a blog post (guest post) including the video
    • Use Growviews.com – not that good as those are random views
  • What do you do when you first launch your video?
    • Post your video on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pintrest, Quora, Linkedin, Tiktok etc
    • Use hashtags in your social media posts
    • Pin that post on your social media accounts
    • Privately ask people to watch
    • Create one or multiple blog post where to embed the video
    • As your channel grows, many initial views will come from subscribers
    • Fiverr, upwork, influencers?
    • You can also run YouTube Ads for a penny per view – recommanded
    • Join Facebook and Linkedin Groups that focus on the topic of your video
    • Dont just post or spam and be a valuable member there
    • Create your own group – long-term build your own engaged audience
  • How to use YouTube video commenting to boost your views and subscribers
    • Comment your influencers in your niche and become valuable for them, always comment at the top maybe
    • Use Yes/No Questions for comment (eg. Is Spider Man or Bat Man your superhero? 1. Spider Man 2. Bat Man 3. Others) – many people will likely to be engaged
  • How to increase sales and traffic from your email signature
    • settings -> signature -> put your youtube channel or particular video that wants to be promoted
  • Ring the bell strategy to get more engaged subscribers who watch more videos
  • Make YouTube videos rank in Google search
    • When your video is the number one result in YouTube search, then the video gets this replacement in Google Search.  And as this video gets more authoritative in YouTube, search is going to have a chance to climb up and be shown more often in the first page of Google. That is the strategy!
    • When you create a YouTube video title, make sure that you have some long tail keywords in additional to the short tail keyword, so that you can easily rank for the long tail keywords in Google search.  Thats really the strategy!
  • How to use Closed Captioning (CC) to boost your YouTube SEO?
    • Youtube video -> details -> Lanugage, subtitles and closed captions (CC) -> download -> edit -> upload
    • Use more keywords here (However the keywords here are not actually going to have a lot of impacts but it takes effect)
  • Recency and acceleration of all ranking signals will help you rank

5. YouTube recommendation algorithm

• YouTube sidebar recommended videos (this gives your video tremendous traffic)
  • Two factors that play a role in engagement and user happiness: Browsing history, Content performance
  • Youtube search: Relevance + Performance
  • There is a correlation between views and ranking of your video
  • In the beginning, very few users have your videos in their browsing history
  • To make matters worse, competitors are getting recommended and building audiences
  • So find your niche audience
  • Build your niche audience -> make your video very engaging (maybe A/B testing)-> do collaborations with bigger brands -> run targeted ads, created many pieces of content -> be patient and keep improving
• Different language keywords + get recommended by using “piggybacking” keywords
  • piggyback off the keyword from other video: really strong technique to get recommended by YouTube for certain video topics
  • make it a bit more interesting than others
• Youtube channel keywords setup to boost SEO & recommendations
  • Settings -> channel -> Keywords
  • you can check other channels keyword from source code or use VidIQ, TubeBuddy etc.
• Playlists to boost recommendations (your playlist will be mostly like to show on the side recommendation list when you are watching one of your videos in the list, but if your videos have few views, it will only be shown at the bottom)
• Subscribe watermark and widget
  • Watermark: Customization -> Branding -> Video Watermark -> Publish
  • Widget: Developers.google.com/youtube -> Subscribe Buttons -> put the channel name and change styles
• Youtube YMYL

6. YouTube shorts
7. More views from better video titles & thumbnails
8. Creating beautiful YouTube thumbnail images for free with Canva
9. YouTube policy violations and strikes
10. Using YouTube analytics to get clues about what to improve in your videos
11. Video virality
12. Successful YouTuber case study
13. How I built my channel and how you should build yours
14. YouTube monetization
15. YouTube live
16. Few channel branding tips
17. Common things to consider for a show
18. YouTube Ads (formerly AdWords) to boost your video ads with cheap advertising
19. Ad scripts for YouTube ads
20. Social media to boost YouTube rankings
21. Promoting different kinds of YouTube channels
22. Basic legal concepts you must know so you don’t violate trademarkes or…
23. How I plan and prep for a YouTube video
24. Basic tips improving lighting and get rid of shadows for improved video quality
25. Introduction to improving audio
26. Introduction to on-screen appearance, body language & presenting
27. Fixing speech issues
28. Setting up a new channel from scratch – for very beginners only
29. Conclusion of our YouTube Markeing

nav-menus.php  (Dashboard -> Apperance -> Menus)

This page is used for edit customized menus (or navigation menus, navigation bars, etc.).  Please see the image below.

A website can have multiple menus.

There is only one main menu, but there can be secondary menus, tertiary menus, etc.

Different menus can be put at different location such as sidebar, footer, etc.

A menu can be multi-levels.  There can be sub-menus.

You can add any pages, any posts, any custom url links, any categories etc to your menu.

You can decide the order and hierarchy of your menu items.

Note: if you click on the “screen options” on the top right, you can choose some more items to add on the menu, for example, the default ones are pages, posts, custom url links, and categories.  Tags are hidden by default.

You can create a new menu, delete menu, bulk delete menu items, rearrange menu items, save menu, and choose which location this menu will be displayed.  (It is easy to find without instruction.)

if you click on the arrow on the right of each menu item, you will see something similar like the image above.  If you dont see “CSS Classes” or “XFN” or “Description” etc., then you need to go to top right “Screen Options” to check them all.

• Navigation Label: This is what will display at front end.
• Title Attribute:  It provides additional information to your page.
• Open link in new tab: if you want to open link in a new tab when clicking on this menu item
• CSS Classes: the CSS classes name for this menu item
• Link Relationship (XFN): A special attribute  to show your relationship to the menu item you are linking to
• Description: description of this link.  It is useful when your theme supports this feature.
• Origin:  It shows where this original source of this link.
• Move: Move up, move down
• Remove: delete this menu item from this menu
• Cancel: cancel the configuration of this menu item

Permalinks is the permanent links/urls of the individual pages on your WordPress website.

People use these links to open your pages.

For example: the permalink of this post is https://aliceding.com/wordpress-permalinks/

The setting of permalinks is under “Settings -> Permalinks” (The url is https://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/options-permalink.php)

Please make sure your permainlink structure is ending with %post_id% or %postname%. In this way, each permalink goes to a unique page.

There are three basic types of permalinks.

1. Plain – This is the default one. It always work if you type in this plain one into browser.

http://yourdomain.com/?p=X

X is the Post ID number.

2. Pretty Permalinks: it is just as it says.  The URLs are built in a way that makes sense and comprehensible.

http://yourdomain.com/2021/post-title/

http://yourdomain.com/2021/12/21/post-title

http://yourdomain.com/archives/2021/12/21/post-title/

It is easily understand without any strange parameters such as “?p=X”.  What is p?  Not many people understand it.  However, using pretty permalink structures, you can easily get it.  For example, http://yourdomain.com/2021/12/21/post-title, it is posted on December 21, 2021.  The post title is “post-title”.

(Pretty Permalink is produced by mod_rewrite, lighttpd, or NGinx with try-files, etc.)

3. PATHINFO: “Almost Pretty”

http://yourdomain.com/index.php/yyyy/mm/dd/post-title/

PATHINFO permalinks are similar with mod_rewrite permalinks.  There is only one difference.  They have “index.php”.

(To activate PATHINFO permalinks, please start your custom permalink structure with index.php/)

Structure Tags

%year%

%monthnum%

%day%

%hour%

%minute%

%second%

%post_id%

%post_name%

%category%

%author%

Overview

WordPress is one of the most common dynamic open source content management systems (CMS) all over the world.

The market share of WordPress in CMS related websites are around 64%.  And over 40% of top 10 million websites are using WordPress.

It is based on PHP and MySQL.

It is licensed under the Gnu Public License (GPL) version.

WordPress is led by Matt Mullenweg, and the core leadership team.

We will discuss more details in the next posts.

WordPress Requirement

• >= PHP 7.4
• >= MySQL 5.6 or >=MariaDB 10.1
• HTTPS Support
• Apache or Nginx with mod_rewrite module

* It also works with older PHP or MySQL versions, but it may cause some security vulnerabilities.

* Current WordPress Version: 5.8 – (Added Query Loop Block Feature)

wordpress.com vs wordpress.org

When we say “wordpress”, normally we are talking about “wordpress.org”.

WordPress.org is the so-called self hosted software.  It means it is free and open source.   “Free” means you are completely free to develop and control over all the data and code.  You can integrate your own custom theme and plugins to your websites.

However, more freedom also has more cons.  You need to take care of your own site security.  You need to find your own hosting provider.  You need to update and maintain your theme and plugin.

WordPress.com is one of the implementations of wordpress software.  It is easy to install, especially for beginners.  WordPress.com takes care of all the security issues and updates.

However, as it is easy to install and some of the responsibilities are taken care by wordpress.com, it also has lots of limitations.  You cannot control your data.  You cannot develop your own code.  You cannot upload custom theme and plugins unless you choose the business package.  The business package is much more  expensive.

Default WordPress Theme

Twenty Twenty-One

WordPress History

2021. Version: 5.9, 5.8, 5.7

2020. Version: 5.6, 5.5, 5.4

2019.  Version: 5.3, 5.2, 5.1

2014-2018.  Version: 5.0-4.0

2010-2014.  Version: 4.0-3.0

2005-2009.  Version: 2.0-3.0

2004-2005.  Version: .0-2.0

2003.  Version: 0.7

V2001. Initial Version

* Major Version (2 digit – for example 3.5, 4.6) + Minor Version (3 digit – for example 3.5.1, 5.4.1)

* Backward Compatibility: the old plugin/theme code can still be used in the new version of WordPres

* Since 3.7, WordPress has automatic background updated for security releases.  (You may remove this feature through a code change in configuration file, but this feature is strongly recommended.  )

WordPress Features

• Simplicity: it is very easy to use for beginner and amateurs, also has the under-the-hook advanced features for professional developers
• Flexibility:  it can create nearly all kinds of websites.
• Easy to Publish + Publish Tools: one button click to publish, preview posts, publish or private or draft, schedule post, restore revisions, automatically saves your work
• Different Level of User Managements
• Media Library
• In Compliance with W3C Standards, acceptable by today’s browser
• Theme + Plugins
• Built-in Comments
• Search Engine Optimized
• Multiple Languages
• Multisite: A single WordPress Installation to maintain multiple sites
• Easy installation and Upgrades
• Data Import/Export: You own your own data
• Publish Anywhere: Desktop, mobile application, even post by email (there is plugin)
• Clearly Organized Structure:  Archive by year, by month by author, by category; Everything, every words can be searched from the website, readable URL/permalinks
• Freedom
• Community
• Support Pingback and Traceback

WordPress Developer Features

• Theme + Plugin Custom Development
• Application Framework (Translations, databases, http requests, user management, URL routing, etc.)
• Custom Content Types, Taxonomies, and Metadata

WordPress Security

1. Injection Risks: There may be some unauthorized code injected into the database.  WordPress is prone to have SQL injection risks because the input and output data is not sanitized and validated properly.  (The data includes media files, URLs, HTTP headers, etd )
2. Brute Force Attack and Broken Authentication: A common hacker attack is from the wp-login.php and enter the admin and password.
3. XSS (Cross Site Scripting) Risks: Use scripting language (Eg. Javascript) on the client side, to steal cookie, session tokens, or other data.
4. IDOR (Insecure Direct Object Reference) Risks: For example, http://www.yourdomain.com/postname?id=3333, hackers may try other id numbers to steal other account information.  To resolve this issue, we need to strict access control.
5. Data Exposure / Data Breach: Choose the secure WordPress professional hosting.  Use strong password.
6. CSRF (Cross Site Request Forgery) / SSRF (Server Side Request Forgery) and Nonces Threat: This is usually caused by using unsecured plugins without using nonces.  Hacker trick users to do something they do not intend to do.  Hackers will get full control of your website through this way.  Also hackers can make Goggle blacklist your website and hosting server may even suspend your website!
7. XXE (XML eXternal Entity) processing attacks: Attackers can interfere the website during the XML data process. They use this way to interact with files in the backend system.