Last week the industry lost a dear friend, Hamlet Batista.
His close friend Lily Ray wrote a beautiful tribute to Hamlet, and set up a fundraiser for his wife and family, which he so sadly left behind.
Like me, many of you will have only known Hamlet through his wonderfully generous teachings on Python, JavaScript and SEO. The legacy he leaves behind is literally the inspiration for a whole generation of SEOs. Community members have been curating links to all his contributions, which you can find on SEOPythonistas.
Go take a read; you won't fail to be inspired.
Recent Tech SEO Stuff We Love
Getting Tech SEO Implemented
via @areej_abuali
So much of this article resonates with how we like to think about website audits - focusing on specific areas, prioritization (T-shirt sizing for the win!) and splitting recommendations by template.
Plus as a bonus, when you get to the end Areej has also embedded her epic TurnDigi slidedeck on the same topic (which has a completely different focus).
A Technical SEO Guide to Lighthouse Performance Metrics
via @Jammer_Volts & @rachelleighrva
This is literally the ULTIMATE guide to lighthouse metrics, Jamie has covered absolutely everything, and then some. My favourite bit is the 'Lighthouse Performance Metrics Explained' section, which includes not only 'what it is' but also 'how to fix' type guidance.
An absolute banger of a post.
The Comforting Mirage of SEO A/B Testing
via @ajkohn
I love pretty much everything that AJ publishes. This post is possibly more thought-provoking than anything else, as he argues against A/B split testing for SEO. Almost as fascinating was the Twitter debate that followed between AJ and Will Critchlow, who unsurprisingly disagreed with the central tenet of AJ's post - pretty cool watching two of the smartest minds in the industry take opposing stances.
Unleash your faceted navigation: How I increased a company’s organic traffic by 230% in 2 months
via @digitalquokka
A detailed explanation and analysis of how Andy helped one of his clients take advantage of new search opportunities by reworking their faceted navigation. It works as a really good reminder that this sort of technical optimisation can reap huge rewards... without a single link being built :)
A bunch of awesome free SEO tools
- Google Search Console Data Exporter - By default GSC only allows you to see and export the top 1,000 results. This tool will allow you to export the top 5,000 queries per calendar day, or top 25,000 queries over a date range.
- Seoasked.com - a searchable archive of Googler tweets, so you can easily find them for you next blog post or client presentation ("See, John Mueller said it!").
- SEO Pro Chrome Extension - brought to you by @azarchick, this free Chrome Extension helps you see crucial on-page SEO data in just a few clicks.
- List of free tools - @stekenwright shares a list of lesser known cheap/free tools that will make your life easier (in his words)
What We've Been Up To
- We launched our new Structured Data Alerts system, which was received very well by the community. It allows you to sign up for email alerts when anything changes on the Google rich results or Schema docs, which we actively monitor (so you don't have to).
- I published a guide on How JavaScript Rendering Affects Google Indexing, which also explains the value of analysing response vs rendered HTML, a new report we added in December.
- We hosted our third livestream Q & A on YouTube; 'Structured Data Problem Solving', with our awesome guests Aleyda Solis and Dave Ojeda; if you missed it you can catch the full recording and transcript here.
