Field notes on a faster web
Practical, no-fluff guides to Core Web Vitals, page speed, and the technical SEO that comes with them.
- practical guides
- 19practical guides
- topics
- 7topics
- learning paths
- 3learning paths
Editor's picks
Start with these
From 38 to 97 on PageSpeed Insights: A Step-by-Step Teardown
A walkthrough of the fixes that take a typical slow store page from a failing mobile score to a passing one, in the order they were applied, with the impact of each.
- PageSpeed Insights
- Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals Explained: LCP, INP, and CLS in Plain English
What Google's Core Web Vitals actually measure, the thresholds that count as good, and the fixes that move each metric the most.
- SEO
- Performance
How to Show Up in AI Search: Getting Cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews
How AI search engines find and choose sources, which crawlers to allow, what llms.txt does and does not do, and how to write content AI assistants cite.
- Visibility
Learning paths
Pick a goal, read in order
Each path is four articles, sequenced so every one builds on the last.
- 4 articles · 8 min
Pass Core Web Vitals
Understand the three metrics, then fix each one in order of impact.
- 1Core Web Vitals Explained: LCP, INP, and CLS in Plain English2 min read
- 2How to Fix a Slow LCP: The 7 Usual Causes, Ranked by Impact3 min read
- 3INP Is the New FID: Why Your Site Suddenly Fails Core Web Vitals2 min read
- 4How to Fix Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): A Practical Checklist1 min read
- 4 articles · 11 min
Rank higher in Google
Turn a fast site into one search engines understand, trust, and feature.
- 1Does Page Speed Actually Affect Google Rankings? What the Evidence Says3 min read
- 2Technical SEO Checklist for Small Business Websites (2026 Edition)3 min read
- 3Structured Data That Wins Rich Results: Product, Review, Breadcrumb and FAQ Markup2 min read
- 4How to Get Your Brand Name to Rank Number One for Itself3 min read
- 4 articles · 9 min
Speed up your platform
Platform-specific fixes for the builders most small businesses run on.
- 1How to Speed Up a Shopify Store Without Rewriting Your Theme1 min read
- 2How to Speed Up a WordPress Site: Plugins, Hosting and What Actually Works3 min read
- 3Webflow and Wix Speed Optimization: What You Can and Cannot Control2 min read
- 4The Real Cost of Third-Party Scripts: Chat Widgets, Pixels and Tag Managers3 min read
The library
Every article, searchable
Filter by topic or search across titles, summaries, and tags.
19 articles
- SEO
Does Page Speed Actually Affect Google Rankings? What the Evidence Says
An honest look at how much page speed and Core Web Vitals influence Google rankings, where speed is only a tiebreaker, and where it pays off anyway.
- Rankings
3 min read - AI Search
How to Show Up in AI Search: Getting Cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews
How AI search engines find and choose sources, which crawlers to allow, what llms.txt does and does not do, and how to write content AI assistants cite.
- Visibility
3 min read - Guides
Why Your PageSpeed Score Changes Every Time You Test (and Which Number Matters)
Run PageSpeed Insights twice and get two different scores? Here is why that happens, how the score is calculated, and the numbers Google actually uses.
- Lighthouse
- Core Web Vitals
3 min read - Tutorials
How to Fix a Slow LCP: The 7 Usual Causes, Ranked by Impact
Find out exactly why your Largest Contentful Paint is slow, then fix the seven most common causes in the order that moves the number most.
- Core Web Vitals
- Performance
3 min read - Platforms
How to Speed Up a WordPress Site: Plugins, Hosting and What Actually Works
A practical guide to making WordPress fast: hosting, caching, plugin audits, images, built-in features like speculative loading, and what to skip.
- Performance
- Core Web Vitals
3 min read - SEO
Technical SEO Checklist for Small Business Websites (2026 Edition)
A practical, prioritized technical SEO checklist: crawling and indexing, sitemaps, canonicals, structured data, social tags, Core Web Vitals and more.
- Checklist
3 min read - Case Studies
From 38 to 97 on PageSpeed Insights: A Step-by-Step Teardown
A walkthrough of the fixes that take a typical slow store page from a failing mobile score to a passing one, in the order they were applied, with the impact of each.
- PageSpeed Insights
- Core Web Vitals
3 min read - SEO
How to Get Your Brand Name to Rank Number One for Itself
Why your own brand name might not rank first in Google, and the concrete steps to fix it: Organization markup, consistent profiles, Search Console and real mentions.
- Structured data
3 min read - Guides
INP Is the New FID: Why Your Site Suddenly Fails Core Web Vitals
Interaction to Next Paint replaced First Input Delay in March 2024. Here is what it measures, why sites that passed now fail, and how to find and fix slow interactions.
- Core Web Vitals
- JavaScript
2 min read - Research
The Real Cost of Third-Party Scripts: Chat Widgets, Pixels and Tag Managers
How much do chat widgets, tracking pixels, session recorders and tag managers slow your site down? How to measure the cost and keep the tools without the penalty.
- INP
- Performance
3 min read - Tutorials
Image Optimization in 2026: AVIF vs WebP, Responsive Sizes and Lazy-Loading Mistakes
Which image format to use, how to serve the right size to every device, and the lazy-loading mistakes that quietly wreck your LCP.
- LCP
- Performance
2 min read - Tutorials
Web Fonts Without the Flash: A Font-Loading Playbook
Stop invisible text, flashes of unstyled text and font-induced layout shift with preloading, font-display, subsetting and metric-matched fallbacks.
- CLS
- Performance
2 min read - Research
Page Speed and Conversion Rate: The Numbers Every Store Owner Should Know
Real studies on how load time affects bounce rate, conversions and revenue, plus a simple formula to estimate what faster pages are worth to your business.
- E-commerce
- Performance
3 min read - SEO
Structured Data That Wins Rich Results: Product, Review, Breadcrumb and FAQ Markup
Which schema markup types Google still shows as rich results in 2026, which ones were retired, copy-paste examples, and how to test them.
- Rich results
2 min read - SEO
Why Googlebot Cannot See Your JavaScript Site (and How to Fix It)
How Google crawls and renders JavaScript, the common reasons single-page apps fail to get indexed, and how to test and fix rendering problems.
- Technical SEO
- React
3 min read - Platforms
Webflow and Wix Speed Optimization: What You Can and Cannot Control
Hosted website builders handle the servers for you, but plenty of speed is still in your hands. What to optimize in Webflow and Wix, and what to leave alone.
- Wix
- Performance
2 min read - Platforms
How to Speed Up a Shopify Store Without Rewriting Your Theme
Practical ways to make a Shopify store load faster: audit apps, tame images, defer scripts, and improve Core Web Vitals without a redesign.
- E-commerce
- Performance
1 min read - Tutorials
How to Fix Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): A Practical Checklist
A step-by-step checklist to find and fix the elements that make your pages jump, with copy-paste code for images, embeds, and fonts.
- Core Web Vitals
- CSS
1 min read - Guides
Core Web Vitals Explained: LCP, INP, and CLS in Plain English
What Google's Core Web Vitals actually measure, the thresholds that count as good, and the fixes that move each metric the most.
- SEO
- Performance
2 min read
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