Practical thinking on technical SEO, content, and the changing shape of search. From the details that break a crawl to the decisions that build a business.
270 field notes · Page 3 of 23
Position zero isn't a myth, it isn't dying, and it isn't equally accessible to all content. In 2026, featured snippets appear for roughly 12.3% of all searches (SemRush, Q1 2026…
Read the field note ↗People Also Ask boxes appear in approximately 48% of all Google SERPs in 2026 — more frequently than featured snippets, more frequently than knowledge panels for most queries, and…
Read the field note ↗Most enterprise sites are carrying dead weight they don't know about. Pages that rank for nothing, earn no links, drive no conversions, and dilute the topical authority of…
Read the field note ↗URL structure is one of those topics where bad advice gets recycled endlessly. "Keep URLs short." "Include keywords." "Avoid dynamic parameters." These rules have a kernel of truth…
Read the field note ↗E-E-A-T is not a ranking factor. This distinction matters, and confusing it with direct algorithmic input is what leads to unfalsifiable SEO theater: adding author bios, slapping…
Read the field note ↗Meta descriptions don't directly affect rankings. Google rewrites them approximately 70% of the time anyway. And yet, the meta description is one of the highest-leverage on-page…
Read the field note ↗Most SEOs treat robots.txt like a simple gatekeeping file — add a few Disallow lines, call it done. That mental model breaks under the weight of a real enterprise site. I've audited…
Read the field note ↗The naive view of XML sitemaps: list your URLs, submit to GSC, done. The reality on a site with 500,000+ pages, multiple content types, international variants, and a publishing CMS…
Read the field note ↗Crawl budget is one of the most misunderstood concepts in technical SEO. It's not a number you're allocated, it's not a dial you can turn in GSC, and it's not equally important for…
Read the field note ↗Log file analysis is the closest thing technical SEO has to a ground truth. Every other data source — GSC, third-party crawlers, analytics — is either sampled, filtered, or reports…
Read the field note ↗Some technical SEO issues fail loudly: a misconfigured robots.txt blocks the entire site, a server throws 500s, a sitemap breaks. Those get noticed and fixed. The insidious issues…
Read the field note ↗Canonical tags are simultaneously one of the most powerful and most misused signals in technical SEO. A single misplaced rel="canonical" can silently drain crawl budget, consolidate…
Read the field note ↗Get a focused SEO audit or a consultation on your next technical decision. We’ll agree on the scope and fee before any work begins.
