Posts in Category

WebDev

When Google is releasing their search engine updates, there is always a lot of action and a lot of discussions around. Everybody is looking for the impact of the update on their website and position in search engines.

By the end of August 2022, Google comes with a Helpful Content Update (HCU). This highly appreciated (by content creators) update suppose to penalise low-content websites and those generated by AI. I have been happy about it and knew, that none of my websites will be affected, and I was right!

Read More about Where Helpful Content Update did not do as much, Core update did!
Implementing Structured Data (Schema) Carousel for Category pages in Hugo
Published
Read Time 3 min.

On websites that I tend to create, I always try to utilise Structured Data (Schema) as much as possible. This invisible for ordinary visitor data is served in the background and is used by search engines and other websites for better positioning of your content.

On YummyRecipes.uk I have already widely implemented Schema for Recipes but would like to do some more.

Simple implementation of PWA on a website with a Mobile First Design approach
Published
Read Time 9 min.

If you read my other post, you will find out that I recently rediscovered Progressive Web Apps (PWA).

Following this lead, I decided to implement it on the websites, where our main audience browses it from mobile phones. Later I decided to implement it gradually on all of my websites, independently of whether the main audience is on mobile or desktop. As you will see, PWA is quite useful for desktop users as well.

Simplified way of adding a favicon to the website
Published
Updated
Read Time 4 min.

If you are not a first time on my website you already know, that I like simplifying things and using a minimal approach with a complex solution. Overall, if something complex can be done that same, but simple, why not try?

This time I want to cover Favicon during website design.

“A favicon is a browser icon that represents a brand or website. Most often seen next to a web page’s title in browser tabs, favicons can also be found in address bars, bookmark lists, search results pages, toolbars, browser history, and other places across the web.”

What is a favicon? @ blog.hubspot.com

I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, as there is already a perfect solution for that, well written and documented by Andrey Sitnik from Evil Martian.

Rediscovering Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
Published
Read Time 3 min.

Over the last years, I forget about something called Progressive Web Apps (PWA) until one day I added to my Home Screen a bookmark to Homebridge, and, believe me, or not, I do not add bookmarks that way very often.

When I added this bookmark to my Home Screen on iOS I noticed, that it looks unusual. The icon was like a native app. When I click on the icon it didn’t open inside Safari like other bookmarks but it run on full screen like a normal native app.

Of course, it was still Safari in the background but highly limited to the scope of that single website, that it feels like a native. It certainly can be confused with an app.

Google Search Console hidden gem!
Published
Read Time 3 min.

It’s not very often that I am finding something new in a tool that I am using constantly, every single day. Unless it’s announced as a new feature, I would not expect to find something, that is like a holy grail!

A "Read more" links are not bad for SEO (and a11y) if done right
Published
Read Time 3 min.

From time to time I see and look at some SEO articles to see what others are writing about and what’s new that I need to look at.

I have started reading an article about some SEO mistakes to avoid, and the first thing that stopped me from reading further was a point about “Read more” links.

It was stated that the severity of using the “read more” link for SEO is high and that the developer of the site should remove the use of “read more” links in favour of article links (for example title as a link).

That particular author claimed that when that has been done, the site visibility “went through the roof”.

Partly I can agree with that, but removing “read more” links shall not be advised if it is done right. Here is why.

Removing outdated content from the website... not only for SEO
Published
Updated
Read Time 5 min.

I have been reading for some time that one of your solutions for better SEO will be removing pages that are not performing well and just wasting a crawl time.

Redirecting them to the most relevant part (using redirect 301) or where such doesn’t exist, pointing back to the homepage and advising search engines that it’s gone (using redirect 410).

There is one problem with removing something from a page that you spend a lot of time creating. There is a sort of sentiment in it.

Even when I migrated from WordPress to Hugo I moved all pages to a new website. I have done an initial review and did some corrections, but never looked at the test from a merit point of view.

Generally, I am against using the rule of removing content that performs poorly in search engines. Not always the case, that the content is not desired. Sometimes simply is unique and targeting the niche that shall be here for some who will need it.

With such an approach, I am creating some of my posts. To give users something that I struggle to find. You can call it niche but in reality, this is something that some people are searching for and cannot find easily. If I struggle to find a solution and I will come up with my own, I would like to share this with the world.

A very Minimal Google Analytics 4 Snippet
Published
Updated
Read Time 10 min.

When Google announced that they would force us to move away from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 I wasn’t happy. Due to a lack of alternatives in minimal analytics, loading official (bloated) tracking code that weighs 171kB (in my instance), which is liable for blocking by various AdBlockers, wasn’t something that I had been looking forward to.

I started searching for a solution. Due to the lack of it, I decided, by hit-and-miss approach, to create my own, and I think I did it. It currently weighs 3kB minified (version 1.10). Its main purpose is to track page views (page_view, session_start and first_visit) on our website in Google Analytics 4 property. Since version 1.06 it detects and tracks site searches (view_search_results), from 1.07 search query (search_term), from 1.09 scrolls (scroll) capturing scroll events each time when a visitor gets to the bottom of a page (90% and below) and from 1.10 it got ability to track <a href links to files with specified extensions (see below) and all these links where there is a download attribute specified independently of the extension of the file.

Improving website performance by loading fonts the smart way
Published
Updated
Read Time 6 min.

My site, until recently, was using a system font stack, mostly because I would like to have the lightest website possible.

My featured images, heavily optimized, still account for large LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) and adding custom fonts, in the most common way, can increase the overall weight of the website.

I am happy with my site, but on others, I need to use specified fonts to get the right visual experience across all user devices. In that case, I need to load additional fonts to accomplish that.

The fonts not only add weight to the website but also can hurt CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) if loaded incorrectly. As CLS is part of essential Core Web Vitals, its poor score can drop a website significantly in Google Search results.

Ironically, Google, on their Google Fonts website provides information (code) on how to implement the desired font in our website. The problem is, that their solution will have a huge negative impact on your website.

Not only they are loaded from an external source, but the speed of loading of your website and external fonts can also vary and cause, ironically, CLS, that Google will penalise you on.

A widely recommended method is to self-host your fonts (even these from Google). This, in most cases, may improve an impact on CLS, but not always. There are plenty of factors in how these fonts are delivered. If our hosting is poor and we are not using CDN (Content Delivery Network) then we can see worse results than loading fonts directly as Google advised.

Self-hosting fonts are the right approach, but it requires a couple of tweaks before it will work well for us in matters of web performance.

Let’s start with, how to load them correctly.

Categories