SEO
How To Run A Live Youtube Show To An International Audience And Gain Traction
![How To Run A Live Youtube Show To An International Audience And Gain Traction How To Run A Live Youtube Show To An International Audience And Gain Traction](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/1725276365_How-To-Run-A-Live-Youtube-Show-To-An-International.png)
YouTube has more than 2.5 billion users, and it is the second most popular social media network worldwide. Yet, only some marketers are making use of this platform.
A recent Social Media Examiner industry report found that only 51% of marketers use YouTube, but 59% plan to increase their use of the platform.
Even though not all marketers use YouTube, they do recognize video is an essential part of marketing and learning. According to Wyzowl, 91% of businesses use video as a key marketing tool. Data suggest that online videos have an audience reach of 92.3% worldwide.
The image below illustrates the percentage of global internet users who viewed online videos for learning purposes during the last week of the fourth quarter of 2023, categorized by region. Morocco leads the way with 63.3%, followed by Turkey and South Africa.
How To Build A Following For A Show
There is no secret formula to being successful when running a live YouTube show, but I want to show what has worked well for us.
I ran three different shows, Turn Digi, Tea Time SEO, and, most recently, SEO Office Hours with Mike Chidzey from Good Signals. The third show has had the most success, and these are some of our learnings:
Engage With Your Audience
SEO Office Hours has two special guests who answer questions along with the host, Mike, and the co-host, me.
During SEO Office Hours, we have a live chat, and we encourage our live audience to ask questions in the chat to our special guests.
Sometimes, we are not as quick to reply as other audience members who answer the questions. This works well as it encourages audience members to get involved with the discussion.
Bring In Guests From All Backgrounds
We have freelancers and entrepreneurs take part in the show. We also have those from agencies and brands.
We have guests calling in from all over the world and, in one episode, including Brazil (so it was quite early for them) to New Zealand, the other time of the day.
The show is on at 9:30 a.m. BST, so that does allow others from the West to join.
However, if you want to run an event and have it open for the US to join, then you need to choose a time in the afternoon (if broadcasting from Europe).
Be Part Of Communities
There are many communities in digital marketing, including Women in Tech SEO, The Digital Marketing Union, and The Freelance Coalition for Developing Countries, to name a few.
Being part of communities in your sector helps you to get to know others and in turn, invite them to take part in your show.
Answer Questions Our Community Wants Answered
SEO can be overwhelming, and there can sometimes be many solutions to the same problem. Therefore, with SEO Office Hours, we ask people to submit their questions and then join us live to listen to the answers.
We also have a lot of discussion in the chat where other questions are asked. We tend to get through six questions a week and we include them in the transcript of the videos.
Consistency Is Key
When you want to make a difference in anything you do, being consistent is key.
Mike was adamant from the beginning that we do the show every Friday at the same time until at least the end of the year.
That would have been six weeks. By the end of those 6 weeks, we had 16k views and 48 subscribers.
Engagement
Sprout Social recommends that to increase engagement, you need more comments or likes on your video.
However, SEO Office Hours is a live show run via Zoom, so they cannot like or comment when we are recording.
We do not stream directly to YouTube, we upload the video later so audience members will have to come back and watch it and then like/comment.
We have not seen an increase in the number of likes per video, but we have seen more people join us live. In the beginning, we had 4 attendees, and in our most recent episodes, we have had up to 40.
We also have many questions asked from our audience members and guests answer the questions submitted in the chat sometimes before Mike or I are able to ask our special guests.
Have A Dedicated Landing Page
If you are running a live YouTube show, make sure you have a dedicated landing page with all information on how to get involved. Include the sign up on the home page as well.
For SEO Office Hours, we have all the videos of the previous episodes so guests can watch them, they can also read how to submit a question and sign up and where attendees sign up to calendar invites which grows each week – this is something that people naturally share.
Different Ways To Stream To YouTube
Dacast compares some of the best live streaming platforms in their post here. The platform you decide to use is up to you and depends on the objectives of the show.
For example, with SEO Office Hours, Mike did not want it to be too polished or rehearsed – because it isn’t. He wanted it to feel like a regular video call, like the original hangouts that John Mueller used to organize.
He likes the fact he can see everybody, including attendees, if they decide to share their video. Sometimes, attendees will jump on and give context to a question or help with answering a question.
When running a live YouTube show, there are two main options I have used in the past:
Zoom
This is a live video platform where anyone who has registered for the event can attend.
This means you can edit the video before you upload it to YouTube. At SEO Office Hours, we amend the video by taking out the “ums” and “you knows.”
We then upload it to YouTube so everyone can see it.
Streamyard
There are two options: either to run this live and have it streamed directly to your YouTube channel or simply run it live but have it recorded. Then, you can upload it to YouTube at a later date.
There are some online conferences and webinars, and there feels like a real distance between the speakers and attendees, and you are there to listen to what the presenters want to talk about.
Therefore, we went with Zoom, but I recommend using the platform that suits your company and the objectives of your show the most.
Encourage Live Q And A
With SEO Office Hours it’s really the people who submit questions and watch live that make the show.
We are watching the live chat, and the audience’s expressions (sometimes puzzled looks, really engaged, usually lots of nodding) dictate whether we explore a topic further/ something might need clarifying, or move to the next question.
The audience is a mixture of stressed marketing managers, frustrated business owners, and SEO pros who work alone. SEO Office Hours is their chance to see what’s working for others, to bring up the problems they are having, or just to chat with others doing what they do.
For us, running the show, it’s important that the audience feels heard and seen – and that if they have a question, it’s likely we will chat about it. We think Zoom or Google Meet naturally assists with this format.
During the live hour, it’s very rare for attendees to drop out, and that may be because they feel just as much a part of SEO Office Hours as the special guests answering the questions.
How To Manage Those “Awkward” Live Questions/Answers From The Audience (And Sometimes From Guests)
If there are these awkward live questions, you can do one of three things:
- Wait for the audience to answer the question.
- Ask the person to clarify what they mean.
- Answer the question (the host and co-host with special guests).
Sometimes, spam questions are asked, and then if not answered, they are asked again.
Most of the time, in 37 episodes (up until August 11th), we have not had too many awkward live questions.
Where To Find Speakers Even If You Have Not Met Or Been In Touch With Them Before
This was the third time I had run a show and so I contacted some people who had taken part in previous shows. Being part of communities is key to connecting with others and promoting them in the show.
There is never an excuse to have the same type of people speaking at your YouTube show.
If you do not find people outside of your circle, that is fine, but build connections with others or ask former colleagues or friends if they know others who want to be part of your show.
How To Promote
Do not be shy about promoting your show.
Since Good Signals started SEO Office Hours on November 3rd, their LinkedIn followers increased by 560, and their subscribers increased by 251 by the end of July, our 35th episode.
Good Signals has a dedicated landing page with all information (how to submit a question and sign up) where attendees sign up for calendar invites, which grows each week – this is something that people naturally share.
Initially, Mike used to include SEO office hours in the weekly newsletter, and he also used to include it in his email signature.
Along with relevant descriptions, we also tag individual videos on YouTube by relevant topics so they appear for searches and alongside popular relevant videos.
Plus, we run a small Google Ads campaign on YouTube, which means that when people see similar videos, they are shown SEO Office Hours.
We have been lucky to be featured in the SEOFOMO newsletter; thank you, Aleyda Solis.
We were invited to come on the Search off the Record podcast, where Google occasionally interviews guests on its show. We sometimes have Lizzie and John from Google come on SEO Office Hours, too.
Use The Platform That Suits Your Brand The Most
If guests have YouTube channels, they sometimes share directly on the platform with their subscribers. We tend to promote on Linkedin and sometimes Twitter. We do not share the show on Instagram.
We played with the design for the thumbnails for the videos over the first few months.
Without overdesigning, we wanted to create something that people in our networks would recognize – and it seems to have worked. When we promote the shows, the thumbnails stand out.
Be Open To Feedback
We always welcome feedback, and when we receive it from attendees, we make those changes. This means SEO Office Hours continues to improve, and therefore, more people enjoy it.
As a result, these people share it with their network, and we have more exposure.
Don’t Give Up
If, at first, you do not succeed, try a different approach.
This is the third YouTube show I have been part of. We have generated the highest number of views on videos than I have in the past.
However, the experience I gained with the previous shows has helped me with SEO Office Hours.
Most of us do not learn how to run a live YouTube show at university/college or have formal training; we learn about it on the job.
Therefore, learn from others who have been successful, and if your technique is not working, do not give up; try something different.
More resources:
Featured Image from author
SEO
Vulnerabilities in Two ThemeForest WordPress Themes, 500k+ Sold
![Vulnerabilities in Two ThemeForest WordPress Themes, 500k+ Sold Vulnerabilities in Two ThemeForest WordPress Themes, 500k+ Sold](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Vulnerabilities-in-Two-ThemeForest-WordPress-Themes-500k-Sold.jpg)
A vulnerability advisory was issued about two WordPress themes found on ThemeForest that could allow a hacker to delete arbitrary files and inject malicious scripts into a website.
Two WordPress Themes Sold On ThemeForest
The two WordPress themes with vulnerabilities are sold on ThemeForest and together they have over a half million sales.
The two themes are:
- Betheme theme for WordPress (306,362 sales)
- The Enfold – Responsive Multi-Purpose Theme for WordPress (260,607 sales)
Betheme Theme for WordPress Vulnerability
Wordfence issued an advisory that The Betheme theme contained a PHP Object Injection vulnerability that was rated as a high threat.
Wordfence was discreet in their description of the vulnerability and offered no details of the specific flaw. However, in the context of a WordPress theme, a PHP Object Injection vulnerability usually arises when a user input is not properly filtered (sanitized) for unwanted uploads and inputs.
This is how Wordfence described it:
“The Betheme theme for WordPress is vulnerable to PHP Object Injection in all versions up to, and including, 27.5.6 via deserialization of untrusted input of the ‘mfn-page-items’ post meta value. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with contributor-level access and above, to inject a PHP Object. No known POP chain is present in the vulnerable plugin.
If a POP chain is present via an additional plugin or theme installed on the target system, it could allow the attacker to delete arbitrary files, retrieve sensitive data, or execute code.”
Has Betheme Theme Been Patched?
Betheme Theme for WordPress has received a patch on August 30, 2024. But Wordfence’s advisory isn’t acknowledging it. It’s possible that the advisory needs to be updated, not sure. Nevertheless, it’s recommended that users of the Enfold theme consider updating their theme to the newest version, which is Version 27.5.7.1.
The Enfold – Responsive Multi-Purpose Theme for WordPress
The Enfold Responsive Multi-Purpose WordPress theme contains a different flaw and was given a lower severity rating of 6.4. That said, the publisher of the theme has not issued a fix for the vulnerability.
A Stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) was discovered in the WordPress theme from a flaw originating in a failure to sanitize inputs.
Wordfence describes the vulnerability:
“The Enfold – Responsive Multi-Purpose Theme theme for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the ‘wrapper_class’ and ‘class’ parameters in all versions up to, and including, 6.0.3 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Contributor-level access and above, to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever a user accesses an injected page.”
Enfold Vulnerability Has Not Been Patched
The Enfold – Responsive Multi-Purpose Theme for WordPress has not been patched as of this writing and remains vulnerable. The changelog documenting the updates to the theme shows that it was last updated in August 19, 2024.
Screenshot Of Enfold WordPress Theme’s Changelog
The Enfold – Responsive Multi-Purpose Theme for WordPress has not been patched as of this writing and remains vulnerable.
Wordfence’s advisory warned:
“No known patch available. Please review the vulnerability’s details in depth and employ mitigations based on your organization’s risk tolerance. It may be best to uninstall the affected software and find a replacement.”
Read the advisories:
SEO
WordPress Insiders Discuss WordPress Stagnation
![WordPress Insiders Discuss WordPress Stagnation WordPress Insiders Discuss WordPress Stagnation](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/WordPress-Insiders-Discuss-WordPress-Stagnation.jpg)
A recent webinar featuring WordPress executives from Automattic and Elementor, along with developers and Joost de Valk, discussed the stagnation in WordPress growth, exploring the causes and potential solutions.
Stagnation Was The Webinar Topic
The webinar, “Is WordPress’ Market share Declining? And What Should Product Businesses Do About it?” was a frank discussion about what can be done to increase the market share of new users that are choosing a web publishing platform.
Yet something that came up is that there are some areas that WordPress is doing exceptionally well so it’s not all doom and gloom. As will be seen later on, the fact that the WordPress core isn’t progressing in terms of specific technological adoption isn’t necessarily a sign that WordPress is falling behind, it’s actually a feature.
Yet there is a stagnation as mentioned at the 17:07 minute mark:
“…Basically you’re saying it’s not necessarily declining, but it’s not increasing and the energy is lagging. “
The response to the above statement acknowledged that while there are areas of growth like in the education and government sectors, the rest was “up for grabs.”
Joost de Valk spoke directly and unambiguously acknowledged the stagnation at the 18:09 minute mark:
“I agree with Noel. I think it’s stagnant.”
That said, Joost also saw opportunities with ecommerce, with the performance of WooCommerce. WooCommerce, by the way, outperformed WordPress as a whole with a 6.80% year over year growth rate, so there’s a good reason that Joost was optimistic of the ecommerce sector.
A general sense that WordPress was entering a stall however was not in dispute, as shown in remarks at the 31:45 minute mark:
“… the WordPress product market share is not decreasing, but it is stagnating…”
Facing Reality Is Productive
Humans have two ways to deal with a problem:
- Acknowledge the problem and seek solutions
- Pretend it’s not there and proceed as if everything is okay
WordPress is a publishing platform that’s loved around the world and has literally created countless jobs, careers, powered online commerce as well as helped establish new industries in developing applications that extend WordPress.
Many people have a stake in WordPress’ continued survival so any talk about WordPress entering a stall and descent phase like an airplane that reached the maximum altitude is frightening and some people would prefer to shout it down to make it go away.
Acknowledging facts and not brushing them aside is what this webinar achieved as a step toward identifying solutions. Everyone in the discussion has a stake in the continued growth of WordPress and their goal was to put it out there for the community to also get involved.
The live webinar featured:
- Miriam Schwab, Elementor’s Head of WP Relations
- Rich Tabor, Automattic Product Manager
- Joost de Valk, founder of Yoast SEO
- Co-hosts Matt Cromwell and Amber Hinds, both members of the WordPress developer community moderated the discussion.
WordPress Market Share Stagnation
The webinar acknowledged that WordPress market share, the percentage of websites online that use WordPress, was stagnating. Stagnation is a state at which something is neither moving forward nor backwards, it is simply stuck at an in between point. And that’s what was openly acknowledged and the main point of the discussion was understanding the reasons why and what could be done about it.
Statistics gathered by the HTTPArchive and published on Joost de Valk’s blog show that WordPress experienced a year over year growth of 1.85%, having spent the year growing and contracting its market share. For example, over the latest month over month period the market share dropped by -0.28%.
Crowing about the WordPress 1.85% growth rate as evidence that everything is fine is to ignore that a large percentage of new businesses and websites coming online are increasingly going to other platforms, with year over year growth rates of other platforms outpacing the rate of growth of WordPress.
Out of the top 10 Content Management Systems, only six experienced year over year (YoY) growth.
CMS YoY Growth
- Webflow: 25.00%
- Shopify: 15.61%
- Wix: 10.71%
- Squarespace: 9.04%
- Duda: 8.89%
- WordPress: 1.85%
Why Stagnation Is A Problem
An important point made in the webinar is that stagnation can have a negative trickle-down effect on the business ecosystem by reducing growth opportunities and customer acquisition. If fewer of the new businesses coming online are opting in for WordPress are clients that will never come looking for a theme, plugin, development or SEO service.
It was noted at the 4:18 minute mark by Joost de Valk:
“…when you’re investing and when you’re building a product in the WordPress space, the market share or whether WordPress is growing or not has a deep impact on how easy it is to well to get people to, to buy the software that you want to sell them.”
Perception Of Innovation
One of the potential reasons for the struggle to achieve significant growth is the perception of a lack of innovation, pointed out at the 16:51 minute mark that there’s still no integration with popular technologies like Next JS, an open-source web development platform that is optimized for fast rollout of scalable and search-friendly websites.
It was observed at the 16:51 minute mark:
“…and still today we have no integration with next JS or anything like that…”
Someone else agreed but also expressed at the 41:52 minute mark, that the lack of innovation in the WordPress core can also be seen as a deliberate effort to make WordPress extensible so that if users find a gap a developer can step in and make a plugin to make WordPress be whatever users and developers want it to be.
“It’s not trying to be everything for everyone because it’s extensible. So if WordPress has a… let’s say a weakness for a particular segment or could be doing better in some way. Then you can come along and develop a plug in for it and that is one of the beautiful things about WordPress.”
Is Improved Marketing A Solution
One of the things that was identified as an area of improvement is marketing. They didn’t say it would solve all problems. It was simply noted that competitors are actively advertising and promoting but WordPress is by comparison not really proactively there. I think to extend that idea, which wasn’t expressed in the webinar, is to consider that if WordPress isn’t out there putting out a positive marketing message then the only thing consumers might be exposed to is the daily news of another vulnerability.
Someone commented in the 16:21 minute mark:
“I’m missing the excitement of WordPress and I’m not feeling that in the market. …I think a lot of that is around the product marketing and how we repackage WordPress for certain verticals because this one-size-fits-all means that in every single vertical we’re being displaced by campaigns that have paid or, you know, have received a a certain amount of funding and can go after us, right?”
This idea of marketing being a shortcoming of WordPress was raised earlier in the webinar at the 18:27 minute mark where it was acknowledged that growth was in some respects driven by the WordPress ecosystem with associated products like Elementor driving the growth in adoption of WordPress by new businesses.
They said:
“…the only logical conclusion is that the fact that marketing of WordPress itself is has actually always been a pain point, is now starting to actually hurt us.”
Future Of WordPress
This webinar is important because it features the voices of people who are actively involved at every level of WordPress, from development, marketing, accessibility, WordPress security, to plugin development. These are insiders with a deep interest in the continued evolution of WordPress as a viable platform for getting online.
The fact that they’re talking about the stagnation of WordPress should be of concern to everybody and that they are talking about solutions shows that the WordPress community is not in denial but is directly confronting situations, which is how a thriving ecosystem should be responding.
Watch the webinar:
Is WordPress’ Market share Declining? And What Should Product Businesses Do About it?
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Krakenimages.com
SEO
Google’s New Support For AVIF Images May Boost SEO
![Google's New Support For AVIF Images May Boost SEO Google's New Support For AVIF Images May Boost SEO](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Googles-New-Support-For-AVIF-Images-May-Boost-SEO.jpg)
Google announced that images in the AVIF file format will now be eligible to be shown in Google Search and Google Images, including all platforms that surface Google Search data. AVIF will dramatically lower image sizes and improve Core Web Vitals scores, particularly Largest Contentful Paint.
How AVIF Can Improve SEO
Getting pages crawled and indexed are the first step of effective SEO. Anything that lowers file size and speeds up web page rendering will help search crawlers get to the content faster and improve the amount of pages crawled.
Google’s crawl budget documentation recommends increasing the speeds of page loading and rendering as a way to avoid receiving “Hostload exceeded” warnings.
It also says that faster loading times enables Googlebot to crawl more pages:
Improve your site’s crawl efficiency
Increase your page loading speed
Google’s crawling is limited by bandwidth, time, and availability of Googlebot instances. If your server responds to requests quicker, we might be able to crawl more pages on your site.
What Is AVIF?
AVIF (AVI Image File Format) is a next generation open source image file format that combines the best of JPEG, PNG, and GIF image file formats but in a more compressed format for smaller image files (by 50% for JPEG format).
AVIF supports transparency like PNG and photographic images like JPEG does but does but with a higher level of dynamic range, deeper blacks, and better compression (meaning smaller file sizes). AVIF even supports animation like GIF does.
AVIF Versus WebP
AVIF is generally a better file format than WebP in terms of smaller files size (compression) and image quality. WebP is better for lossless images, where maintaining high quality regardless of file size is more important. But for everyday web usage, AVIF is the better choice.
See also: 12 Important Image SEO Tips You Need To Know
Is AVIF Supported?
AVIF is currently supported by Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, and Safari browsers. Not all content management systems support AVIF. However, both WordPress and Joomla support AVIF. In terms of CDN, Cloudflare also already supports AVIF.
I couldn’t at this time ascertain whether Bing supports AVIF files and will update this article once I find out.
Current website usage of AVIF stands at 0.2% but now that it’s available to surfaced in Google Search, expect that percentage to grow. AVIF images will probably become a standard image format because of its high compression will help sites perform far better than they currently do with JPEG and PNG formats.
Research conducted in July 2024 by Joost de Valk (founder of Yoast, ) discovered that social media platforms don’t all support AVIF files. He found that LinkedIn, Mastodon, Slack, and Twitter/X do not currently support AVIF but that Facebook, Pinterest, Threads and WhatsApp do support it.
AVIF Images Are Automatically Indexable By Google
According to Google’s announcement there is nothing special that needs to be done to make AVIF image files indexable.
“Over the recent years, AVIF has become one of the most commonly used image formats on the web. We’re happy to announce that AVIF is now a supported file type in Google Search, for Google Images as well as any place that uses images in Google Search. You don’t need to do anything special to have your AVIF files indexed by Google.”
Read Google’s announcement:
Supporting AVIF in Google Search
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Cast Of Thousands
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