Category: Tech • Electric Mayhem Solutions

Microsoft 365 Family Price Increase, Bypassed

Posted on March 6, 2025 by Adrian Robertson — No Comments ↓

Not too long ago I received an email from Microsoft informing me that the price for my yearly subscription to Microsoft 365 Family was up for renewal, and that the price was increasing from $139 (AUD) / year to $179 (AUD) / year. A similar price rise is happening for Microsoft 365 Personal.

A little annoying but hardly very surprising given that just about everything in life has gone up in price. A hike of 29% did seem a bit steep, but what can you do? For a product that I use myself, plus share with my wife and children, it has become a must use product in our work and school lives.

I mean, even our OneDrive shared folders were still working to expectation, unlike many others.

Just a week or so ago, however, I stumbled across an article talking about people’s frustration with the price rise, and to my surprise, a way to get around it! That’s right, you CAN have the same functionality as you have always had, and still pay the old price.

Don’t need Copilot? Don’t pay for it!

As it turns out, the price increase is to do with the added functionality of Copilot, Microsoft’s generative AI bot and Cortana replacement. Without having had much a play with it, from what I have seen it is designed to help compose letters, emails, I guess help with creating formulas in Excel, and no doubt more.

But if you didn’t ask for it and don’t want to use it, why should you pay for it?

What do you know, there was no mention of an option to have Microsoft 365 Family without Copilot in the email I had received.

No clear options above other than to pay the new price, nor a clear explanation as to the reason behind the price rise. Is Microsoft being sneaky?

The key here is to go to your Microsoft account dashboard, and manage your subscription.

Cancel your existing subscription, and select a new one without Copilot

What they don’t tell you, is that by managing your subscription and cancelling it, you then get the option to select the option to choose Microsoft 365 Family Classic (or Microsoft 365 Personal Classic), which comes without Copilot AI, and is at the same price you were paying previously.

You can find good instructions on the Microsoft website, though I guess you need to know to begin with that this is an option, which is where the sneaky perception comes in. Plus, why wouldn’t using Copilot be an opt-in, rather than opt-out? Also note that when you select to cancel, you’ll see a warning explaining how you’ll lose everything in your OneDrive storage if you cancel, though this is only if you cancel your subscription completely, and not if you select another plan.

Also note that if you are currently on 365 Family, you can’t choose 365 Personal Classic (you can choose this if currently on 365 Personal), however you can still select 365 Family Classic. Re-confirm your payment details, and you should be done.

From the Microsoft site:
Downgrade to Microsoft 365 Personal or Microsoft 365 Family Classic
Go to Subscriptions. Sign in with the Microsoft account associated with your subscription, if prompted.

Find your current subscription and select Manage > Cancel subscription

To downgrade to another plan with fewer features, select Microsoft 365 Personal Classic or Microsoft 365 Family Classic, or another plan that works for you.

Follow the instructions to complete the switch.

Your existing subscription might not change immediately, but it will automatically switch to the new plan at renewal. You will not be charged for the new plan until it renews.

My plan “downgraded”

Once done I then received confirmation via email that my plan had been changed to Microsoft 365 Family Classic, and that I would be charged the existing price of $139 (AUD).

It’s worth noting that you need to do this within 7-10 days of your current subscription expiring.

Thoughts anyone? I found it a bit irritating that Microsoft had done such a thing, with no proper explanation or options freely given to their customers, without digging.

They have even been reported to the Australian consumer watchdog, the ACCC, so it will be interesting if anything comes of that.

At any rate, feel free to share or comment if you found this post helpful, and hopefully you have managed to save a few dollars as well!

Unable to transfer Residential Starlink plan to a new Residential account, due to waitlist

Posted on January 30, 2025 by Adrian Robertson — No Comments ↓

Who would have thought that a company owned by the richest man on the planet might rip people off?

Is that a harsh take on what happens in areas where the Residential service for Starlink is listed as “on waitlist”? I don’t think so.

The issue faced

A customer that I was trying to assist was looking to take up Starlink services. This couple had recently moved into a house in South East Queensland, where the NBN service is typically sketchy (no Fibre to the Node or Premises options) and so Starlink seemed like the best option. There are plenty of people advocating for Starlink in various social groups, with impressive performance claims and for a lot of areas in SE QLD there is little choice.

The previous owners of the house had Starlink, with a Residential plan in place.

There are options as seen on the Starlink website to transfer the service to another person, which sound perfect for this exact scenario considering all the hardware was staying put.

The previous owner wasn’t even going to be using a Residential plan for themselves, as they were going to set off on a long trip so would be utilising their second Starlink account, which was on a Roaming plan.

Sounds like an easy swap.

But as a warning to people who may look to do something similar, just because you want to transfer account doesn’t mean you can sign up for the same Residential plan. Why? Because, as of January 2025, the entire area of South East QLD (and into northern New South Wales) is on a waitlist when it comes to Starlink’s Residential plan. As is Perth, WA.

There’s no telling how long the waitlist is for.

Isn’t it reasonable to wait for the service?

It might even seem reasonable that there is a waitlist, I mean the satellites can only handle so many customers at a time right?

Oh wait, but I can get a Starlink Roam service.

For $80 a month I can get a whopping (sic) 50GB of data.

Being on an unlimited NBN plan personally, I haven’t ever thought, or cared too much, about how much data my household consumes (4 family members, adults largely working from home, 2 children close enough to both being teenagers).

I decided to have a look and was mildly surprised as to just how much data we do consume, over a monthly basis; approx 800GB per month (averaged out over the last 12 months). The Starlink Roam plan would last us 2 days.

For $195 / month I can get unlimited data on the Roam plan.

So for about $70 more a month, compared to Residential, I can get the Roam service on unlimited data; as long as I am also happy with poorer speeds or as it has been described, “lower priority performance”.

Are the Roam satellites different satellites than those used for Residential plans? Maybe they are, but also maybe people are getting shafted. What I really don’t get is why, if transferring the service, there is still a waitlist. The limitations shown against transferring a service referrences a different service plan name as well, adding to the confusion.

At any rate, hopefully Starlink can quickly provide more Residential plan options to those living in or near South East QLD, and at time of writing Perth WA.

I am happy that at least I can connect to the NBN service, via Fibre to the Premises, but not everyone in these areas is as lucky.

Let me know if you have had similar issues trying to sign up to Starlink, or what your service is like connecting to their Roam plan, or indeed if you use something else such as Fixed Wireless (and what that performance is like).

FooGallery not opening custom URL, resolved

Posted on July 22, 2024 by Adrian Robertson — 2 Comments ↓

Recently I wanted to add a small, yet nice looking gallery of work to my site, specifically to my Services page (update 28th November 2024: I have since removed this gallery due to other technical issues, and am now using one of the ones Elementor provide, though not entirely happy with it. Hopefully the information in this post is still relevant). Although I do use and advocate for Elementor as a product (especially for non coders) I didn’t much like the galleries on offer there, and I am generally not one to use “non Elementor created” add-ons.

I decided to go with FooGallery as I like the typical style it uses and had used it years previously, with good results.

Adding the gallery itself is a breeze, and I was organised enough to have all of my images sized to what I liked, so creating a carousel with a half dozen or so images of websites I had either created, or designed and created, didn’t take too long at all. Thinking it would be good to also have a link to the website, I carefully added custom URLs to each of the images in the gallery.

Check the Gallery Settings, Thumbnail Link

I am using the Carousel style gallery, so one thing to check here is that the Thumbnail Link setting (at the bottom of the General settings of the Gallery) is set to “Custom URL”.

I figured once done, I could save the gallery, view it on the live page, and people could click through to the real deal. WHAT A FOOL I WAS!!

Check the Lightbox Settings

With the above set, you also need to check the Lightbox settings on the Gallery itself (not the general Foobox settings) and set this to something other than the default; set it to FooBox.

This solution was found largely thanks to a WordPress support topic, found here, but part of me wanted to write this blog about it if for nothing other than to remind myself this issue existed!

Once then saved and page loaded, the custom URL was working as expected.

I hope you found this helpful! If so, please share with your socials, or let me know if you run into any issues in the comments section.

OneDrive Users Continue to be Frustrated by Shared Folder Bug

Posted on July 17, 2024 by Adrian Robertson — 4 Comments ↓

OneDrive shared folder added to My Files

A shared folder in OneDrive now acts like a browser shortcut (for some users)

It came to my attention a few weeks ago (mid June 2024), from a customer of mine, that they were having an issue with a OneDrive shared folder. The customer is using Microsoft 365 Family. This is despite following the instructions to have the folder(s) that are “shared with me” added as a shortcut to the local OneDrive folder.

The problem is that with one member within the Microsoft 365 Family, the folder no longer acted like a regular local folder via File Explorer. Instead, the folder looked like a shortcut (little blue arrow bottom left corner) and when clicked on would open the online/Browser version of OneDrive. Other family members are not affected (yet) and the issue appears to affect both Windows and Mac users, and is not necessarily tied specifically to the version of OneDrive. Meaning, all computers are using the same version of OneDrive (Build 24.126.0623.0001, 64-bit), yet just one family member cannot see the folder shortcut as they normally would.

This remains a cause of frustration for the customer (now into July 2024), due largely to a loss of productivity and apparent apathy from Microsoft. I have seen it stated that a support response has been along the lines of, “well you can edit the document in the browser version of OneDrive”. This only works if the file has a browser based editor though, as otherwise the user must download the file, edit it locally, and re-upload, all while hoping someone else isn’t doing the same thing. Not good enough, Microsoft.

Anecdotally it may only affect Personal and Family users, and not Office 365 Business users. This merely flames the conspiracy fire as people look to explain as, “Micro$oft forcing people onto higher paying plans and prevent very small business from using 365 Family”.

Whilst it seems Microsoft do acknowledge the issue, at time of writing there has been little information by way of updates on progress or any indication as to when a fixed version will be available (or really, what users would need to do, if anything, once a fix is released).

More can be seen about it in several Microsoft support forums, or Reddit posts. No doubt found elsewhere as well, as people start to turn to alternative solutions such as Dropbox and Google Drive.

My own testing

I think the issue somehow lies with the OneDrive account.

I have come to this conclusion after trying numerous things to fix the issue on one laptop, which included:
removing the shared folder from the problematic computer, and re-adding it
removing OneDrive completely and reinstalling it
Taking the access away from the laptop user, removing the folder from the laptop, and re-applying everything
Performing a fresh install of Windows on the problem laptop

None of the above worked.

Really I should have tried the following before doing the Windows reinstall (purely to save time):
I logged into the problem laptop as a different family member, one that was not having the issue. It worked! The OneDrive shared folder was behaving as it should.

Out of curiosity I then logged into my own laptop as the “problem” user, and I could now reproduce the issue locally.

I decided then to share the problem folder with my own Microsoft account, logged back into my laptop as “me”, and OneDrive was back to normal and the shared folder was behaving as expected.

Edit March 2025: another folder I was testing with (shared with me from my daughter’s account) now appears as a browser URL shortcut only, so I too am now affected.

My loose workaround

From this, I concluded that the issue actually lies with the account associated with OneDrive, and not strictly the operating system or version of OneDrive.

Theoretically therefore, if I could share the folder again with a new account, then maybe the issue would go away (if albeit temporarily).

This worked! A bit of a hassle as I wanted to make sure the new account had enough OneDrive space and therefore added into the Family (luckily had spare licenses) and there isn’t much else this user needs to do within OneDrive other than access this one shared folder, but it worked and now the problem laptop is logged into OneDrive (and OneDrive only) as the new account.

Now that I’m typing this out, the Microsoft 365 Family license might not need to be used, so I’ll see if this can be done away with.

The key to it all though (as I see it) was to have the new account created, and the OneDrive folder shared with them. Perhaps this method will help someone else? I’d love to hear if it did or if you have another workaround!

Please share in your social network if you found this helpful.

Having Blog in your Post URL without affecting Custom Post Types

Posted on July 4, 2024 by Adrian Robertson — No Comments ↓

Is it possible to include “blog” in the Post URL?

I was working on a project where I was transferring to a different CMS (WordPress), and the original blogs all had “blog” in the URL. I wanted the same format in the new site, figuring this was the best thing to do for existing SEO.

However, the new WordPress site is also using Custom Post Types (CPTs) and I didn’t want to affect the URLs of those posts. My instinct was to change the Permalink Settings to add “/blog” to the front, but this also affected the CPT URL.

Checking with my good friend Google seemed to take me longer to find the solution than expected, and admittedly I may be just stupid, but I thought I’d write this to see if it helps anyone else in the same, or similar, situation.

Why not use a Custom Post Type plugin to handle this?

It is highly likely that a decent Custom Post Type plugin would be able to handle this “out of the box”, however I had already created the post type somewhat manually, using what I think is a very nifty little plugin called WPCode which typically means for me less plugins installed overall (seriously, check it out, it’s great).

Ultimately it meant I had basically entered the CPT code manually, but obviously had something missing that might allow me to “strip” or ideally “ignore” this starting part of the URL structure.

Links high up the Google SERP had me looking at various Custom Post Type plugin solutions, or more like stripping it after the post was published or upon retrieval which seems like a slow way of doing things (or if not slow, less efficient), meaning doing something via the functions.php file.

Finding what I thought was going to be my answer, as it at least spoke about the Post Type registering process, only gave me half the answer and contained my bug bear (one of many) of typically developers (yes I am looking at mostly ALL of you developers out there!) that tend to post incomplete code snippets under the assumption that I am smart enough to figure out the rest. Well I am NOT, dammit!

My answer with a more or less complete code snippet

My Custom Post Type is Projects. I want the URL / slug to appear as “project”, so something in the line of https://mysite.com/project/project-post-title.

So in my arguments array, the start of which looks like below:

// Set other options for Custom Post Type
      
    $args = array(
        'label'               => __( 'Projects', 'responsive-mobile-child' ),

I had the following right at the end or the array:

'rewrite' => array( 'slug' => 'project'), // my custom slug

);

Which worked perfectly fine until I changed the Permalink structure as per above, which meant I now had https://mysite.com/blog/project/project-post-title.

Not cool, and probably not ideal for SEO considering the original “projects” had the more desirable URL.

All I had to do though was slightly edit that rewrite line, so it now included ‘with_front’ => False and now it looks like this:

'rewrite' => array( 'slug' => 'project', 'with_front' => False), // my custom slug );

Saving the Permalink again at this point seems a good idea, so after doing that my “Projects” all had the appropriate URL (with just “projects” in the URL) and my regular posts have “blog” in the URL.

Huzzah!

Hope this has helped someone, and if any more explanation, or code snippets, are required then feel free to get in touch. And don’t forget to share!

How to avoid online scams

Posted on August 14, 2023 by Adrian Robertson — No Comments ↓

Scammers online are rife these days, with Australian victims perceived to be rather soft targets.

Gone are the days where we might be duped by Nigerian Princes or very poorly written emails from, apparently, Margot Robbie (yes, I got one of these once). Instead, scammers often rely on your goodwill or perhaps a moment of vulnerability to trick you into thinking you need their help to avoid “unnecessary and unwanted charges”, and before you know it they are accessing your computer and perhaps your bank accounts.

So how do you spot these from the real deal?

Read on for some tips on how to avoid being scammed.

How is this service contacting me?

With the abundance of choice of streaming services or similar, comes a vast choice of ways for scammers to grab your attention.

Whether it’s a big bank, Netflix, Disney+, Amazon, the ATO, Telstra, or something else, scammers will throw any well known service out there, casting the net as wide as possible, and see what lands. This sort of scamming can be described as phishing, as the scammers are trying to land any fish. That’s you, you’re the fish. Don’t be the fish.

The way this works is you receive an email, text message or phone call out of the blue that appears to come from a bank, or a service you might use (eg. Netflix) that either tells you that your credit card details are out of date and need updating, or that you have just been successfully charged and if you no longer want to be charged, click THIS button!

These emails are often alarmist in nature (YOUR SERVICE IS ABOUT TO BE CANCELLED!), often require you to do something quickly (ACT NOW!), and/or trying to trick you into thinking you have been charged something when you haven’t (THANK YOU FOR THE PAYMENT OF $70 IF THIS IS IN ERROR CLICK HERE OR CALL THIS NUMBER!), for the purpose of you making a rash decision and calling the number, or clicking the bright shiny button.

Clicking the button within these emails might do one of several things:

Take you to a fake, sometimes well branded (sometimes not), website for you to enter card details
Convince you to make a phone call to the number provided to talk about your “refund”, and thereby hand over card or banking details
Perhaps ultimately convince you to download some sort of remote access software to “help” you with the refund
Something else that is just as dangerous

All of this spells major trouble, and the downloading of remote access software (eg. AnyDesk, AnyPlace Control, Ultra Viewer) fills me with the most dread.

Some personal experiences

In the last month I have had no less than 3 customers contact me due to activities based on the above. All of them had a similar story to tell, they were all a little embarrassed about what had happened, were a little vulnerable at the time due to a hectic life or less than ideal personal circumstances, and had unwittingly allowed access to their machine and in some cases, bank accounts.

One person hadn’t lost anything and realised what was going on, and quickly shut it down.

Another lost a few hundred dollars, but was apparently getting it back from the bank after discussing the situation with them. In this instance, it was bills that appeared to come from Google that the victim had paid, and having an online business was quite used to receiving such bills.

Another had someone in their accounts and setting up payments to a third party before they realised what was going on. Last I heard, they were trying to talk to the bank about getting over $9,000 back …

Another common scam is to say that you have been charged a relatively small amount of money. For the sake of an example, let’s say $50.00 and now you are looking for a refund because you never signed up for this service to begin with, so how dare they take your $50 to begin with, right? Helpful Company (the scammer) says they have refunded you, but OH NO they have made a mistake and refunded you $500.00. Now if you can just be kind enough to refund that money back to the account number they’ll provide (“you might not see the $500 in your account yet, because you know it clears overnight”), because if you don’t they’ll get fired and then who will feed their 5 children … you get the idea but in this way they are trying to prey on your goodwill and sense of doing the right thing. Now just download this Remote Access software and Helpful Company will walk you through it!

Things to look out for

Poorly spelled email subjects, or content. Dead giveaway, though less and less common. However, legit company emails are good at getting the spelling perfect. Also look for impersonal emails (Dear Customer, versus your real name).

Do you even use the service? I got an email recently that I admit looked great. Content was solid, good use of logos and other imagery. Only a slight typo in the subject which I didn’t actually notice on the first read. If I actually had a Paramount+ account, I might have even believed that I was about to be cut off!

Buttons, links, click-throughs that go somewhere completely different to the expectation. A lot of email viewers these days will show you where the email has come from (return email address) or where the link is going to, when you hover on it. Try this, and see what it says. The email that I received recently telling me that my Disney+ account currently has “suspension your account” I doubt should really be using imagery or links from “lumiere-a.akamaihd.net”. That all of the footer information was in Spanish is quite the red flag also.

ANY text message or SMS that wants you to click a link. This is popular with bank and tax/ATO scams. If in doubt, don’t believe them, and contact your bank or service via another means (look up the phone number in a separate Google search). The real service providers don’t want to lose your business, and won’t simply cut you off. Just TRY and genuinely disconnect from Foxtel to see how difficult it is!

No service wants to be paid via Apple iTunes cards (a still popular ATO scam).

Nobody is going to buy your car sight unseen via a friend/agent that only wants to pay via PayPal and pick it up to deliver to Far North QLD or the NT.

If you have been told that an amount from a service you don’t use has been successfully charged, check your bank accounts to verify it is true. And don’t click the button.

The last word

It only takes a couple of bites, a small number of people to take the hook, for the scammers to make a good amount of money. This is a large part of why such scams continue to be seen.

By being ever vigilant and perhaps even a little suspicious of any email asking you to click a link or button to avoid cancellation of a service (or to commence a refund process) you can help keep yourself and your money safe.

Please don’t ever, EVER, allow someone you don’t know and trust to install any sort of remote access software on your computer.

And don’t click the shiny button.

How to remove the text “Published On:” in Avada custom archive page

Posted on July 24, 2023 by Adrian Robertson — No Comments ↓

Recently I created a custom Blog and Blog Archive page for a site using the Avada theme, and this brought my first experience with Fusion Builder.

This in itself was a reasonably smooth process, once I watched a tutorial or two on how to best delineate between header, content, and footer.

Whilst I got the Blog page working the way I wanted it, I noticed on the Blog Archive page that, within the meta information, some extra strings were being presented such as showing “Published On:” before the published date, and “Categories:” before the list of categories. These don’t show on the standard Blog page, and it seemed more tied to the Post Card Blog Archive element I was using.

I couldn’t find any way within Avada options (nor element options) to control this, or change the labelling.

Thanks to this Stack Overflow question, I was able to find more generally where the issue was coming from but then had to dive a little deeper to find out the exact file in question, as it wasn’t mentioned in any of the answers.

Part of the issue is that the above mentioned strings all form part of a single span, meaning that the “Published On:” string was immediately followed by the actual published date, and contained within a single span. This meant a CSS solution alone was not going to work.

So, for those that might have followed the same path and looking for something a little more specific, I can tell you that the way I fixed it was to find the Fusion Builder plugin (fusion-builder), then the “shortcodees” folder, “components” folder, meta.php file.

Doing a search for “Published On:” within this file showed this:

case 'published_date':
	/* Translators: %s: Date. */
	$content .= '<span class="fusion-tb-published-date">' . sprintf( esc_html__( 'Published On: %s', 'fusion-builder' ), get_the_time( $date_format ) ) . '</span>' . $separator;
	break;<br />

I kept the “%s” component so that the code now read as this (recommended to make a copy of the original file before editing):

case 'published_date':
	/* Translators: %s: Date. */
	$content .= '<span class="fusion-tb-published-date">' . sprintf( esc_html__( '%s', 'fusion-builder' ), get_the_time( $date_format ) ) . '</span>' . $separator;
	break;

Rinse and repeat for “Categories:” and any other meta label you might want to remove. Save the file, and upload it to the server, refresh the page and got the result I wanted.

The downside of this method is that the changes will need to be made again if and when the Avada theme is updated, but to date I have not found another way to handle this situation.

In the meantime, I hope this information has helped you!

Unable to purchase Robux via App Store for my child’s Roblox

Posted on May 28, 2023 by Adrian Robertson — 10 Comments ↓

As the father of a child under the age of 13, I am often tasked with giving permission for her to purchase / install apps on her iPad, including purchases of Robux for her rather popular Roblox app. Sometimes though the permissions don’t seem to work, and I either don’t get the notification at all, or trying to act on it doesn’t work as expected. Here’s how we fixed it.

Despite her best intentions, such as saving her pocket money and literally giving me the money to pay for her desired Robux purchases, something screwy seems to go wrong with the whole Parental Controls thing when it comes to the Apple app store.

She would request the Robux purchase. The app would tell her she needs to ask permission. She’d do that. I’d get the notification. I’d try to open the notification (which for some weird reason has started opening in Apple Messages). I’d click View in Store. I’d get a message on screen, “Cannot Connect to App Store”.

What we tried

Restarting both iPads; shutting them down and cold booting them up again (not just a restart).

Making sure both iPads had the most up to date versions of iOS.

Making sure she had the most up to date version of the app. To be fair, these first two or three things have normally fixed things for us in the past. Not this time.

Googling a lot.

In some desperation, even going to Bing.

Yelling a lot.

How we fixed it

Need to give the credit to my 11 year old here.

Her idea was to install Roblox on my iPad, and then log into it using her account. We then made the purchase of Robux and because it went via my natural Apple App Store, no permission was required (which is good because my parents would have said no).

Back onto her iPad, and restarted Roblox, logged in, and voila! Robux purchase was there!

I could then remove Roblox from my iPad. This kind of work around / fix might work for other apps too, so long as you have another Apple device that can be used to install the app on. If this has helped you, please let me know in the comments!

A beginner guide to Yoast SEO

Posted on July 27, 2017 by Adrian Robertson — No Comments ↓

Mastering SEO can be a time-consuming thing. Whilst there are a lot of options available and many ways you can increase your Google search rankings, sometimes you need to simply get started and are looking for some basics, some general tips and explanation of the various options seen when editing your page or blog. Well, here is a beginners guide to Yoast SEO.

Note that this post assumes that the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress has been installed and that the back-end has been configured. I’ll be writing another post about how to install and set up Yoast SEO soon.

What is Yoast SEO?

Yoast SEO is one of the most popular plugins for WordPress, and probably the #1 popular plugin for SEO purposes. It has a lot of options, some of which can seem confusing, but also has some terrific built in functionality that helps you track how well your blog (or page) is performing from an SEO perspective.

Once the plugin has been installed and the back-end options have been considered, there are a number settings seen when editing a page or a blog that can seem confusing to the uninitiated.

The settings for Yoast SEO on a post-by-post (or page-by-page) basis are generally found immediately below where you add your main content.

The trick is knowing how to use these settings, and below is a quick guide on some of the key components, to help you get the most from Yoast.

Focus Keyword

This is the main topic of your blog or page and is usually where I start when adding in details for Yoast SEO. It should be reasonably short, and to the point. Think of it like the search term you would use (or expect others to use) in a Google search to find your blog or page. It’s also the cornerstone of other areas of your blog / page and should be included as part of:

Your blog or page title (can be part of the title, it doesn’t need to be the entire title)
Within the meta description of your blog or page
Ideally used in your content (in the first paragraph is good) but not overly used throughout the content, so as not to be too repetitive. Within the first paragraph and in a closing statement are good starting points
Used as the “alt text” against at least one of your images that is within the page or post, even if it is only the Feature Image

The Focus Keyword should not

Include your site name. This is picked up in your URL (web address)
Include generic “all site” terms. This will be picked up in your general site meta description
Be too lengthy or contain entire sentences. It’s about keyword searches, not trying to match an entire string of information

Snippet Preview

This is the first section seen in the Yoast SEO area, and includes items such as your SEO Title (what your blog / page title will look like in Google search results), the SEO slug (also known as permalink, or how the link looks) and Meta description (an intro to what your blog or page is about which is the default text that appears in the Google search results*)

Click on the existing meta description to edit any of these three areas.

SEO Title

By default this is taken from the name of your blog or page, but can be changed if you wish. This should include your focus keyword, and your site name (blog or page title should come first, then your site name).

I usually only change the SEO Title if my focus keyword is not contained within the Title for some reason.

SEO Slug

I tend to leave this alone and take the default value.

Meta Description

By default this is taken from your first paragraph (or Excerpt), but can be changed to better suit your needs, and provide a description of what your blog or page is about. This should also include your focus keyword, but be aware you have only 156 characters to play with, as this is all that is seen in the Google search results.

*When Google indexes your page or post and it is seen within someone’s Google search results, if Google thinks another snippet of text better fits the “search words”, then this alternative text will appear in the search results instead of the meta description. This is completely fine and, when you think about it, makes perfect sense. It also encourages you to make sure your content is of good quality and on-topic.

Analysis and quick visual guide

There are a couple of visual guides as to how Yoast SEO thinks your efforts are tracking. One is a quick visualised score seen at the top right (in the Publish box, where you publish your blog or save as draft) and this gives you a simple blank (no score), red (poor), amber (OK) or green (good) indicator of how your blog or page is scoring.

The Analysis section, found below the Focus Keyword section, gives you a more detailed view on what is both good and not so good about your blog or page content. This is a handy reminder to see what you may have forgotten to add into your content, such as images, headings or links.

Note that both of these indicators are measured against your Focus Keyword, so without that neither can accurately score your content.

Readability

Next to the Focus Keyword tab is the Readability tab. The purpose of this is to look more closely at your content and see what might need changing or adding to generally make your blog easier to read.

This includes using things like headings to break up sections in your blog, and also looks at how much content there is, how easy or difficult your text is to read, and a few other factors.

The blog title itself is usually either a Heading 2 (H2) or a Heading 1 (H1), so when I look to break up my blog posts into sections I tend to use Heading 3 (H3).

The benefit of using the headings, as opposed to using normal text that’s in bold, is that headings tend to naturally stand out more (they are usually bold by default, larger font by default) and also force a line break. This means that any text you write after a heading automatically starts a new line, and the heading itself usually has some padding around it, which in itself makes your text easier to read.

Other Social Media

You may be sharing your content on other social platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn (among others). However, at times you may want to use a different title, description, or image on those other platforms.

By clicking on the share icon (just next to the Snippet Preview) you can control these things across a number of tabs, meaning you can set a different title to be used in Facebook, a different one again in Twitter, etc. Totally optional, but you do need your Yoast back-end to be connected to the social media platforms to take full advantage of this feature.

Other areas not directly Yoast related

A couple of other areas that, whilst not contained in the Yoast section, are also factors in your SEO performance include the Categories and Tags that you have against your blog post.

It can be confusing as to what the difference is, and to be fair Google treat them identically, but from a “real person wants to come and search your blog” perspective I like to think of Categories as a major topic, and the tags as a sub-topics.

If your blogs were recipes, for example, the Category might be Beef Recipes, or Soups, or something else quite generic. The Tags would then be Beef Lasagne, Shepherd’s Pie, Corned Beef (or Minestrone Soup, foe the Soup category), things that are more specific.

You can have more than one Category and more than one Tag on your blog posts, but while Google treat them the same it’s important to realise you are ultimately writing for people, and having the correct category and tags (and separating the two) can help people find the information on your website.

Note: by default WordPress does not support categories and tags on Pages, only Posts. If you want to have Categories and Tags against Pages also, this can be rectified via a simple plugin. Contact me for details.

Meta Keywords

Way back in prehistoric times as far as websites are concerned (so about 5 years ago. Maybe a little more) you would see sites filled with meta keywords, which were singular words used to describe a site (not to be confused with Meta Description, which contains a summary of what your site, your page, or post is about).

This would often be filled with many synonyms or a vast array of suburb names, city names, however the site wanted to be recognised. You might often have seen these repeated in the footer of someone’s website.

For the record, Meta Keywords are absolutely useless as far as your SEO effort is concerned, and Google now completely ignore them.

This is very much unlike a Meta Description (as described above) which do still hold a lot of relevance and contribute to your overall SEO effort.

Summary

Congratulations if you got this far!

Although this can be thought of as the tip of the SEO-ceberg (<< copyrighted. I’m sure it’ll catch on), getting these fundamentals right can go a long way to getting good results in Google and other search engines.

Remember to:

think about your focus keyword and structure your content, title, image tags and so on accordingly
use links either internally (eg. to a contact page) or externally (eg. if referencing other sites)
break up your content with headings, and / or images, making your content easier on the human eye
use categories and tags as appropriate
broadcast your blog posts via social media, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc to help drive traffic
remember that whilst you want to make a good impression for Google and other search engines, ultimately it is people that you are writing for

If you do need further assistance or have questions, you can contact me or post a message below!

Making your WordPress site mobile friendly for Google

Posted on April 20, 2015 by Adrian Robertson — 4 Comments ↓

As you may know, as of April 21 2015 Google will rank mobile-friendly websites higher than those that are not mobile-friendly. If you’re not sure whether you pass the mobile-friendly test, Google provides a link where you can simply enter your site URL, and see some general results. If not mobile-friendly, Google offers some advice but often these pieces of advice can’t be directly applied to a WordPress site, although it does go some way to explain general design principals of making a WordPress site more mobile-friendly.