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Smart SEO Newsletter

I'll help you trade an imposter syndrome for a technical SEO superpower. My mission is to break down and simplify complex technical SEO things so that you can understand and use them to advance your SEO career.

Featured Post

Optimize critical rendering path

Do you know what the Critical rendering path is? It’s what your browser goes through in order to build a beautiful usable page from your source code. It requires communication between the server and browser: Steps to render a page in a browser (Critical rendering path) Begin constructing the DOM by parsing HTML incrementally Request CSS and JS files Parse CSS and construct CSSOM Execute JS, build a render tree Merge Document and CSS Object Models Run layout and paint Optimizing critical...

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to you: Google uses rendered HTML of your page to evaluate the page’s optimization. First, let’s make sure we’re on the same page here. What is rendered HTML? Rendered HTML is displayed after CSS and JavaScript are processed. It means that if you’re only relying on the source code for your SEO efforts, it’s easy to miss many important things that can be altered by JavaScript, such as: Rewritten title tag A sneaked noindex tag A removed canonical Added/removed...

Critical knowledge alert 🚨🚨🚨 As a technical SEO, it’s crucial you know the difference between source code and rendered HTML them. Source code It is the initial code of the page before any JavaScript files are executed and CSS files are parsed. It’s the code you see when viewing the source code of a page in your browser. Rendered HTML It is displayed after CSS and JavaScript are processed. When you inspect an element on a page using Chrome dev tools, you’re looking at the rendered HTML. Why is...

JavaScript is a great option to make website pages more interactive and less boring. But it’s also a good way to kill a website’s SEO if implemented incorrectly. Tired Oh No GIF by Law & Order That’s why, as a technical SEO, you need to be comfortable debugging JavaScript issues. Here’s how you do it in 3 steps 👇👇👇 Step 1: Disable JavaScript in the browser using Web Developer Chrome extension The easiest way to do it is to disable JavaScript in your browser. I use the Web Developer Chrome...

Google and JavaScript

Here’s the truth every SEO needs to know: No matter how great your website is, if Google can’t index it due to JavaScript issues, you’re missing out on traffic opportunities. JavaScript is a great option to make website pages more interactive and less boring. But it’s also a good way to kill a website’s SEO if implemented incorrectly. So here’s what you need to know about Google and JavaScript relationships👇👇👇 Google doesn’t interact with your content Googlebot can’t click the buttons on your...

🚀 Psst... Here's the truth: It's not enough to send your recommendations to developers and call it a day. They won't implement any of your smart ideas (sad, right?) What you need to do instead is to start speaking the same language with developers (and it ≠ becoming one 😉). This is the only way to get your SEO recommendations implemented. I created the BRIDGE framework to help you with that. And I teach it inside my short but impactful Get SEO Implemented course: Get 51% off the Get SEO...

You’d never guess but: Internal links are important. Oh My God Wow GIF (And are still highly undervalued). Role of internal links ✅ Determine the importance of pages within the site ✅ Influence the ranking potential of the website pages ✅ Help Google understand the website architecture and crawl your website ✅ Internal links provide the context of your content (through anchor text) ✅ Help users navigate from one page to another Here are 17 ideas for adding internal links at scale, i.e. using...

The most valuable lesson I learnt is that I can be a genius, but if I can't communicate in ways where people can understand and digest, I'm no different than a sitting fool. Zafran Zaba, Lead SEO Strategist This is part of the Tech SEO Pro course testimonial I received the other day. And I felt inspired. It reminded me why I created the course and have been sharing so much information through my free newsletters and LinkedIn posts: 😎 Solid expertise + 🤝 proper communication = 🏆 win-win Zafran...

This is not your typical "AI tools and secrets for tech SEOs" post. Because the tools and secrets are secondary. The first thing is your expertise. I know, it can be an unpopular opinion. But hear me out. Every day, there's a new post on LinkedIn about "that great new AI tool for technical SEOs". It gets overwhelming as you already have a list of AI tools to try, and you never have time to get to it. So you add that another tool to your list, hoping one day you'll have time to explore it....

🚀 Psst... Here's the truth: It's not enough to send your recommendations to developers and call it a day. They won't implement any of your smart ideas (sad, right?) What you need to do instead is to start speaking the same language with developers (and it does not = becoming one 😉). This is the only way to get your SEO recommendations implemented. I created the BRIDGE framework to help you with that. And I teach it inside my short but impactful GSI course: Check out the Get SEO Implemented...