SEO report for slatestarcodex.com
https://slatestarcodex.com/ · checked Sun, 01 Nov 2026 21:48 GMT
Fix these first
- Canonical URLhigh
No canonical tag.
Fix: Add <link rel="canonical" href="(this page's full URL)"> – only point it elsewhere for true duplicates.
- Meta descriptionhigh
No meta description – Google will pick text from the page.
Fix: Write a 140–155 character description that answers the searcher's question and invites the click.
On WordPress: Edit the page and scroll to the Yoast SEO or Rank Math box (install one of these free plugins if you have neither), then fill in the meta description.
- Entity clarityhigh
No Organization / LocalBusiness structured data – search engines and AI have to guess who runs this site.
Fix: Add Organization or LocalBusiness JSON-LD with name, url, logo, contact details and sameAs links to your official profiles.
- JSON-LD present & validhigh
No JSON-LD structured data.
Fix: Add JSON-LD describing the business and the page (Organization/LocalBusiness, WebSite, WebPage or Article, BreadcrumbList).
- Render-blocking resourceshigh
5 blocking script(s) and 6 stylesheet(s) in <head>.
Fix: Add defer to scripts, inline critical CSS and load the rest asynchronously.
- Title tagcritical
“Slate Star Codex”
Fix: Write a unique title of roughly 50–60 characters with the main search phrase first.
On WordPress: Edit the page and scroll to the Yoast SEO or Rank Math box (install one of these free plugins if you have neither), then fill in the SEO title.
- Question-led contentmedium
No headings phrased as questions.
Fix: Add headings that match real questions ("How much does…?") followed by a direct one- or two-sentence answer – an easy format for search and AI answers to quote.
- Freshness signalsmedium
No published/updated date found.
Fix: Show a 'last updated' date and add dateModified to your structured data.
Real-world speed Google PageSpeed
Loading Core Web Vitals from Google… this can take up to 30 seconds.
Authority & backlinks
Looking up which websites link to slatestarcodex.com…
Indexing & crawling 81%
Can search engines reach, read and index this page?
- ✓
Status codecritical
The page returned HTTP 200.
- ✓
Indexablecritical
No noindex instruction – the page can appear in search.
- ✓
robots.txthigh
robots.txt found.
Googlebot is allowed to crawl this page.
- !
XML sitemaphigh
Sitemap index found at https://slatestarcodex.com/wp-sitemap.xml listing 5 sitemaps.
Not declared in robots.txt.
No lastmod dates – add accurate ones so search engines know what changed.
Fix: Add a 'Sitemap:' line to robots.txt, list every indexable page and include accurate lastmod dates.
On WordPress: WordPress makes one at /wp-sitemap.xml, and Yoast or Rank Math make /sitemap_index.xml. Submit it in Google Search Console.
- ✗
Canonical URLhigh
No canonical tag.
Fix: Add <link rel="canonical" href="(this page's full URL)"> – only point it elsewhere for true duplicates.
- ✓
Redirectshigh
Loads directly with no redirects.
- ✓
www / non-wwwmedium
www.slatestarcodex.com redirects to slatestarcodex.com.
Search snippet & sharing 38%
How the page looks in Google results and when shared.
- !
Title tagcritical
“Slate Star Codex”
About 151px of Google's ~580px desktop width – short; use the space.
Fix: Write a unique title of roughly 50–60 characters with the main search phrase first.
On WordPress: Edit the page and scroll to the Yoast SEO or Rank Math box (install one of these free plugins if you have neither), then fill in the SEO title.
- ✗
Meta descriptionhigh
No meta description – Google will pick text from the page.
Fix: Write a 140–155 character description that answers the searcher's question and invites the click.
On WordPress: Edit the page and scroll to the Yoast SEO or Rank Math box (install one of these free plugins if you have neither), then fill in the meta description.
- ✗
Faviconlow
No favicon linked.
Fix: Add a square favicon at least 48×48px.
On WordPress: Appearance → Customize → Site Identity → Site Icon (Settings → General in newer versions).
- ✓
Languagelow
lang="en-US"
Content quality 93%
Is there enough clear, useful text that matches what the page targets?
- ✓
Word countmedium
12,542 words of main content (menus and footer excluded).
Google has no minimum word count – this is a rough guide to whether the page answers the question in full.
- ✓
Readabilitymedium
Flesch reading ease 76 (plain English), about 5 words per sentence.
- ✓
Topic focushigh
3 of 3 title keywords appear in the main content.
- ✓
H1 headingcritical
“Slate Star Codex”
- !
Heading structuremedium
19 headings for 12542 words.
1 skipped level(s), e.g. H2 → H4.
Fix: Use H2s for main sections and H3s inside them, without skipping levels.
- ✓
Text-to-code ratiolow
53% of the HTML is visible text.
AI search readiness 38%
Can ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews read, understand and cite this site?
- ✓
AI crawler accesshigh
Search and AI-search crawlers (Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot…) can read this page.
- ✓
Snippet controlshigh
No snippet restrictions – search and AI answers can quote this page.
- ✗
llms.txtlow
No /llms.txt file. It's an optional, emerging convention – few AI tools are confirmed to read it yet, so this is low priority.
Fix: Optionally add /llms.txt: a short Markdown summary of who you are with links to your key pages.
- ✗
Question-led contentmedium
No headings phrased as questions.
Fix: Add headings that match real questions ("How much does…?") followed by a direct one- or two-sentence answer – an easy format for search and AI answers to quote.
- ✗
Entity clarityhigh
No Organization / LocalBusiness structured data – search engines and AI have to guess who runs this site.
Fix: Add Organization or LocalBusiness JSON-LD with name, url, logo, contact details and sameAs links to your official profiles.
- ✗
Freshness signalsmedium
No published/updated date found.
Fix: Show a 'last updated' date and add dateModified to your structured data.
- ✗
Trust pages (E-E-A-T)medium
Links found to about; missing contact and privacy.
Fix: Link to About, Contact and Privacy pages from every page – they help visitors, Google and AI tools see who stands behind the content.
Structured data 0%
Machine-readable facts for rich results and AI.
- ✗
JSON-LD present & validhigh
No JSON-LD structured data.
Fix: Add JSON-LD describing the business and the page (Organization/LocalBusiness, WebSite, WebPage or Article, BreadcrumbList).
Links 75%
Internal linking, anchor text and broken links.
- ✓
Internal linkinghigh
179 internal and 140 external links.
- ✗
Anchor text qualitymedium
Same text used for different pages: “scott alexander”.
16 link(s) with no text at all.
Fix: Make every link text describe its destination, e.g. “logo design prices” instead of “click here”.
- ✓
Broken links (sample)high
Checked 12 internal link(s).
No broken links found.
Performance 60%
Speed signals from the HTML and server. Real-user Core Web Vitals load below.
- ✓
Server response (TTFB)high
206 ms until the first response from our checker, including connection setup (Google rates TTFB good under 0.8 s, poor over 1.8 s).
- ✓
HTML sizemedium
137 kB of HTML.
- ✓
Compressionmedium
Compressed with gzip.
- ✗
Render-blocking resourceshigh
5 blocking script(s) and 6 stylesheet(s) in <head>.
Fix: Add defer to scripts, inline critical CSS and load the rest asynchronously.
- !
Scripts & third partiesmedium
17 script tag(s); files loaded from 8 other domain(s): fonts.googleapis.com, cdnjs.cloudflare.com, c0.wp.com, youtube.com, platform.twitter.com, imgs.xkcd.com….
Fix: Remove unused tracking and widget scripts; every third party adds connection time.
- ✗
Imagesmedium
22 image(s).
22 without width/height – can cause layout shift (CLS).
19 image(s) after the first three aren't lazy-loaded.
1 use WebP/AVIF or responsive srcset.
Fix: Give every image width and height, lazy-load images below the fold (but not the main image) and serve WebP/AVIF.
On WordPress: Install a free image optimiser plugin (such as EWWW Image Optimizer or Smush) to shrink images and serve WebP.
- ✓
Cachinglow
Cache-Control: max-age=600, must-revalidate
- i
HTTP/3low
Couldn't be confirmed from our server – the alt-svc header that advertises HTTP/3 isn't always visible to it. Your site is on Cloudflare, which offers HTTP/3 under Network settings.
Security 67%
Visitor safety signals that browsers and Google check.
- ✓
HTTPScritical
Secure HTTPS with no mixed content.
- ✓
HTTP → HTTPS redirecthigh
http:// redirects to https://.
- ✗
HSTSmedium
No Strict-Transport-Security header.
Fix: Add Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains.
- ✗
Security headerslow
Present: none.
Fix: Add X-Content-Type-Options, Referrer-Policy, Permissions-Policy and X-Frame-Options (or a CSP).
- ✗
Server fingerprintlow
X-Powered-By reveals “WP Engine”.
Fix: Remove X-Powered-By so attackers can't see your software versions.
Mobile & accessibility 50%
Usable on phones and by everyone – Google indexes the mobile version.
- ✓
Mobile viewportcritical
viewport: width=device-width, min-width=572, initial-scale=1
- ✗
Image alt textmedium
21 of 22 images have no alt attribute.
Fix: Describe each meaningful image in its alt attribute (use alt="" for decorative ones).
On WordPress: Media → Library: click each image and fill in Alternative Text. For images already on a page, select the image block and fill in Alternative text in the sidebar.
- ✗
Link nameslow
16 link(s) have no readable name for screen readers.
Fix: Add text or aria-label to icon-only links.
- ✗
Tap-to-contactmedium
No tel: or mailto: links.
Fix: Add a tap-to-call or tap-to-email button so phone visitors can contact you instantly.
Local SEO not scored
This site doesn't look like a local business, so these checks are shown for information and not scored.
- i
LocalBusiness markuphigh
No LocalBusiness structured data.
- i
Contact details on pagemedium
No phone number found.
No postcode found (fine for service-area businesses).
- i
Map & directionslow
No map or directions link.