Welcome to the first ever Sitebulb Monthly newsletter. The idea here is that we'll try and surface all the best stuff that's been happening in the world of technical SEO, so you don't have to bother.
Recent Tech SEO Stuff We Love
Our favourite things from the world of tech SEO, in the last 30 days (or so).
TechSEO Boost: Conference Videos
My biggest conference-related-regret of 2017 is that we didn't get across to Boston for the inaugural TechSEO Boost, a new conference that is purely about technical SEO.
They live streamed the event, and I wasn't the only one blown away by the content.
Fortunately for all you lucky cats, the TechSEO Boost guys put all the recordings live on their website. The smartest move you can make this month is to stop reading this email, and go watch all those videos in a massive Netflix-binge.
See you at the conference next year?
Everything You Know About JavaScript Indexing is Wrong
via @bart_goralewicz
Bartosz has published some of the most insightful stuff you can read on JavaScript SEO (in fact he gets a few mentions in our JavaScript SEO Resources area). This post includes some interesting revelations about how underlying JavaScript errors can cause indexing issues, and shares a troubleshooting methodology.
Breaking the Head (Quietly)
via @ohgm
If you're not familiar with Oliver Mason's work, you should get familiar with it. On his blog (which, for the uninitiated, comes dripping with sarcasm) he tests all the things that most people are not brave/stupid enough to test themselves. Generally, he spends a lot of time trying to break things.
This particular post is a case in point - he explains how you can accidentally cause Googlebot to miss important directives in the <head> by adding in HTML which has no place being in the <head> in the first place.
More JavaScript SEO experiments with Google Tag Manager
via @rebelytics
I'm not a particular fan of implementing SEO changes with Google Tag Manager, but then again I don't have to deal with clients NEVER IMPLEMENTING ANYTHING, so what do I know? This post is a very interesting experiment showing the affects of using GTM to control title tags, meta descriptions, noindex and canonical tags.
Other Stuff You Should Check Out
- Search Analytics to FINALLY Show 12 Months of Data
Wait a second. Google actually...listened? I'll believe it when I see it with my own 2 eyes. - How Long Should Your Meta Description Be? (2018 Edition)
In case reading is not really your thing, the answer is 300 characters. No, not 155, get with the times. 155 characters is sooo November 2017. - Proposing Better Ways to Think about Internal Linking
I absolutely LOVE stuff like this. Read it.
That's all for today folks. Have an awesome Christmas, and we'll see you in the new year.
