Hey Everyone, With this post, I am starting a new chapter for MetaBlogue. For a long time, I was thinking to start a regular series on MetaBlogue and what's better than Blogging updates. So, I am going to do a monthly mashup about the latest news and updates around blogging and this is first of those.

This monthly mashup will not only contain things about Blogging but also things or services close to blogging and WordPress. Some of the things which will be covered are like updates to Elegant Themes, Genesis Framework, Hosting Services updates, WordPress Plugin Releases, etc.

Blogging Monthly 001

So let's kick off this month's update with one of the most important topics for every blogger - Google Search Updates.

Google BERT Update

Google has released its latest updated to Search Algorithms - BERT.

BERT update is specifically targeted towards a better understanding of the user queries context. It is going to use machine learning and artificial intelligence to better understand the query and map it with proper results.

This is good news for the people who do not like keyword stuffing and would like to write the content in more conversational language. With this update, Google will be able to better categorize the queries and map it with proper content by understanding the context of the queries.

The update is released around the 25th of October, so keep an eye on your SERP results and traffic. Let us know if you are seeing major changes around it. As per Google, this update affects around 10% of the search queries which is very high considering some of the recent updates.

BERT update improves the understanding of the on-page content and user search query with the help of natural language processors. So you may see some increase with the queries which might be related but the keyword is not directly mentioned on your pages.

Another point to notice about BERT is that it's targeted towards long-tail keywords. Short tail keywords will not have much data to process through the natural language processors. Though there can be some shuffling of results for short-tail keywords due to better understanding of on-page content.

You can get more details about it from Search Engine Journal or Search Engine Land.

WordPress 5.3

The next update is around WordPress CMS. WordPress is already testing the next version (5.3) which will be released in the upcoming weeks. Currently, its under BETA testing and showing good progress. You can expect it to be available in the week of 11th November.

There are many changes that will help you better manage your WordPress installs including performance improvements for Gutenberg Editor. With this update, the Gutenberg Editor will reduce its response time and your content will load faster.

There are also many enhancements including Group block functionality which will allow you to select multiple blocks and create a group. Currently, I use Atomic Blocks to create a container to manage multiple blocks easily. The grouping functionality will help in easily manage it.

There are some updates to Site Health functionality, Gallery embeds on post/pages or cosmetic upgrades to Admin UI.

There are many other updates for other blocks that you can check in detail at this post on Kinsta. So, keep an eye on the public release of WordPress 5.3 in the week of 11th November.

Divi 4.0 Release

Divi from Elegant Themes is one of the best WordPress Page builder available in the market. Till now, you are able to design the pages and save generic elements in the Divi Library for reuse.

Elegant Themes has released a major update to Divi which makes it a complete solution to design WordPress Themes. Now, you can use the Divi and design almost all the pages or posts with the help of Divi Theme Builder.

There are new site-wide templates where you can design an element and assign it across your site. This will remove the need to edit each post individually...