Technical optimization
Search Engine Land is your source for technical SEO news and content. You’ll find a variety of up-to-date and authoritative resources, including the latest news, tactic-rich tutorials, and the latest data to help you work smarter and make better decisions.
What you read here is written by our experienced in-house team, and subject matter experts from leading brands and agencies.
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Core Web Vitals: SEOs look back and shrug; Thursday’s daily brief
Plus, retailers will lose half of sales on backordered items unless they compensate with experience, according to Forrester.
Core Web Vitals: SEOs aren’t sold the work was worth it
But, UX remains crucial and Google has introduced Priority Hints to help site owners and browsers prioritize which resources to load first.
How to fix the SEO issues that keep you from achieving your goals
Effective SEO requires a holistic approach. JR Oakes deep-dives into his approach from his session at SMX Report.
Google’s legacy structured data testing tool is now gone
Google replaced it with a navigational page to direct you to the Google rich results tool or Schema.org tool.
Video: Richard Nazarewicz, Technical SEO Manager at the Wall Street Journal
From the old Alta Vista days to doing SEO at the Wall Street Journal - we covered it all.
Reminder: Core Web Vitals is still rolling out, how to prioritize your dev fixes; Tuesday’s daily brief
Plus, Pinterest bans all weight loss ads
Less than 4% of websites passed all Core Web Vitals tests. Is yours one of them?
In this comprehensive analysis, Searchmetrics provides real performance benchmarks, insights, and guidance for the algorithm update.
Core Web Vitals: Google is not backing down in the fight against the slow web
Core Web Vitals fixes and industry-specific benchmarks
Google changes Core Web Vitals metrics; How to use lab and field data for optimization
Field data, considered towards rankings, will vary depending on real-world user device power, screen size, and network connectivity. Lab data has default values for these and, (except in the case of Page Speed Insights), can be calibrated by developers to simulate all manner of conditions.
Your CLS score for your Google Search Console core web vitals report may have just improved
You may have seen a big improvement in your CLS score without you doing anything.
News from Google I/O for technical SEO practitioners and site developers
For technical SEO practitioners and site developers alike, we can glean a lot from the announcements the Chrome team made about the availability of technologies and extensions to their current products in the "What's new for The Web Platform" keynote.
Google video structured data with Clip markup and Seek markup
Here are some new methods to make your videos stand out in Google Search.
A Schema.org replacement for Google’s phased-out Structured Data Testing Tool; Thursday’s daily brief
Plus, most marketing execs don’t make data-driven decisions
Let’s get things straight with the Google page experience update; Friday’s daily brief
Also more on the Google product reviews update rolling, local car inventory displaying and soft 404s seem resolved.
SEOs rejoice: Core web vitals release moves to June; plus WordPress might block FLoC; Tuesday’s daily brief
And why you should use social media as a key component of your negotiation research
Complete Guide to Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are set to be rolled into Google's page experience algorithm update. Are you, your SEO team, and your business ready?
Google expands its core web vitals and page experience update FAQs
Google explained it "will continue to prioritize pages with the best information overall, even if some aspects of page experience are subpar."
Google adds practice problems and math solver structured data and Search Console reports
Online education businesses may want to leverage these new structured data types to get more exposure in Google Search results.
Passage based rankings, core web vitals and responsive search ads; Friday’s daily brief
I hope you like SEO rants...
Google updated metric boundaries for core web vitals in Search Console
You may see more green scores in your core web vitals report in Search Console.
Are Core Web Vitals worth the trouble? And confusion around passage ranking; Tuesday’s daily brief
Plus, Bing launches misspelling interpreter
How to audit Core Web Vitals
A step-by-step process to identify problems and prioritize fixes ahead of the Page Experience Update.
Chrome 88 adds to Core Web Vitals DevTools
Chrome 88 allows you to view your site's LCP, FIP, and CLS data in dev tools.
Google to move the Structured Data testing tool to schema.org
After the SEO backlash around Google announcing it would deprecate the tool, Google decided to migrate it instead.
Home activities structured data now supported by Google Search
Google just added new search development documents for this structured data type.
Video: Pam Auugst on SEO automation & XML sitemaps
How automation can be a win for agencies and clients, and why sitemaps aren't set-it-and-forget-it.
Video: Patrick Stox on pagination, technical SEO & community
We spoke about how Google surprisingly dropped the rel=next/prev support and more technical SEO topics.
Google rich results test tool adds support for article structured data
Google keeps upgrading this tool to add more and more structured data support.
Google Search Console adds image license structured data support
Now you can debug your image license markup in the Rich Results test tool or in Search Console.
Bing’s new URL Inspection tool: What it does and why to use it
A quick side-by-side of Bing vs Google's URL Inspection tools.
Why SEOs are going to miss the Structured Data Testing Tool
Google’s decision to deprecate the testing tool in favor of the Rich Results Testing Tool isn’t sad because of nostalgia, but because this feels like a downgrade masked as an improvement.
Guide to Core Web Vitals for SEOs and Developers
What you need to know about Google’s latest set of key user experience metrics for Web Developers.
Technical SEO for Shopify: A guide to optimizing your store for search engines
How to address the technical limitations in Shopify to improve your store’s search visibility.
Core Web Vitals report replaces Speed report in Google Search Console: What you need to know
If you are looking for the speed report in Google Search Console, it is no longer named that.
SMX Overtime: Schema and structured data — hidden gold for SEOs
Technical SEO Chris Long discusses the benefits of schema, MREIDs and markup for e-commerce category pages and more.
A deep dive into the fact check structured data: Who is it right for?
If you want to position yourself as an authority in your space, learn how to use Fact Check structured data.
New official Google advice on generating structured data with JavaScript
Do you use Google Tag Manager or custom JavaScript with structured data? You will want to read this.
Google ends support for data-vocabulary.org structured data in rich results
A last reminder to switch to schema.org markup before April 6 to maintain rich result eligibility.
Pro Tip: 3 important XML sitemap checks to improve your SEO
Evaluate what important URLs are missing, what needs to be removed and asses how Google indexes your XML sitemap URLs.
Bing adopts SpecialAnnouncement structured data for COVID-19
The SpecialAnnouncement markup can be applied to coronavirus-related business, travel, health agency and testing center updates.