SEO report for www.thejournal.ie

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 thejournal.ie…

Indexing & crawling 88%

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 found at https://www.thejournal.ie/sitemaps/sitemap.xml with 97 URLs.

  Declared in robots.txt.

  This page is NOT listed in it.

  No lastmod dates – add accurate ones so search engines know what changed.

• ✗

  Canonical URLhigh

  No canonical tag.

  Fix: Add <link rel="canonical" href="(this page's full URL)"> – only point it elsewhere for true duplicates.

  Read the guide: duplicate content

• ✓

  Redirectshigh

  1 redirect before the page loaded.

  https://thejournal.ie/ → https://www.thejournal.ie/

  A single redirect to your preferred address is normal; just make sure your own links use the final address.

• ✓

  www / non-wwwmedium

  thejournal.ie redirects to www.thejournal.ie.

Search snippet & sharing 71%

How the page looks in Google results and when shared.

• !

  Title tagcritical

  “The Journal”

  About 106px 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.

  Preview and measure your title with the free title tag checker

  Read the guide: how to write title tags

• ✓

  Meta descriptionhigh

  87 characters, ~559px of ~990px.

  Good length.

  Google sometimes rewrites descriptions to match the search; a good one is still used most often.

• !

  Open Graph & social cardsmedium

  Open Graph title and image set.

  No og:description.

  No twitter:card tag.

  Fix: Add og:title, og:description, og:image (1200×630 PNG/JPG, absolute URL) and twitter:card=summary_large_image.

  Make the tags with the free Open Graph generator

  Read the guide: does social media help SEO?

• ✓

  Faviconlow

  Favicon linked (Google shows it next to results).

• ✓

  Languagelow

  lang="en"

Content quality 70%

Is there enough clear, useful text that matches what the page targets?

• ✓

  Word countmedium

  1,595 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 85 (plain English), about 8 words per sentence.

• ✓

  Topic focushigh

  1 of 1 title keywords appear in the main content.

• !

  H1 headingcritical

  “”

  The H1 is empty.

  Fix: Use one H1 that states the page topic with its main keyword.

• !

  Heading structuremedium

  1 headings for 1595 words.

  Levels are in order.

  1 empty heading(s).

  Fix: Use H2s for main sections and H3s inside them, without skipping levels.

  Read the guide: the on-page SEO checklist

• ✗

  Text-to-code ratiolow

  3% of the HTML is visible text.

  Fix: Trim unused markup, inline scripts and builder bloat.

AI search readiness 41%

Can ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews read, understand and cite this site?

• !

  AI crawler accesshigh

  robots.txt blocks search crawlers: ChatGPT-User (ChatGPT browsing).

  Training-only crawlers blocked: GPTBot. That's a licensing choice – these companies document them as separate from their search crawlers.

  Fix: Allow Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot so search and AI tools can cite you (you can still block training-only bots such as GPTBot or Google-Extended).

  Make a new robots.txt with the free generator

  Read the guide: blocking AI training bots

• ✓

  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.

  Make one with the free llms.txt generator

  Read the guide: do you need llms.txt?

• ✗

  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.

  Read the guide: how to write SEO content

• ✗

  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.

  Make the code with the free local business schema generator

  Read the guide: schema markup

• ✗

  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 all three: about, contact and privacy.

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).

  Make valid code with the free schema generator

  Read the guide: schema markup

• i

  Breadcrumbslow

  Home page – breadcrumbs not needed.

Links 38%

Internal linking, anchor text and broken links.

• ✓

  Internal linkinghigh

  156 internal and 23 external links.

• ✗

  Anchor text qualitymedium

  Same text used for different pages: “factcheck”, “quizzes”.

  77 link(s) with no text at all.

  Fix: Make every link text describe its destination, e.g. “logo design prices” instead of “click here”.

  Check every link's wording with the free anchor text checker

  Read the guide: internal linking

• ✗

  Broken links (sample)high

  Checked 12 internal link(s).

  Broken: /investigates/ (404), /tv/ (404).

  1 link(s) point to a redirect – link to the final address instead.

  Fix: Fix or remove links that return errors, and update links that redirect.

Performance 43%

Speed signals from the HTML and server. Real-user Core Web Vitals load below.

• ✓

  Server response (TTFB)high

  628 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

  352 kB of HTML.

  Fix: Remove inline bloat, base64 images and unused markup.

• ✓

  Compressionmedium

  Compressed with gzip.

• ✗

  Render-blocking resourceshigh

  12 blocking script(s) and 6 stylesheet(s) in <head>.

  Fix: Add defer to scripts, inline critical CSS and load the rest asynchronously.

  Read the guide: Core Web Vitals

• ✗

  Scripts & third partiesmedium

  58 script tag(s); files loaded from 11 other domain(s): d2wy8f7a9ursnm.cloudfront.net, cdn.jsdelivr.net, fonts.googleapis.com, ajax.googleapis.com, gstatic.com, unpkg.com….

  Fix: Remove unused tracking and widget scripts; every third party adds connection time.

  Read the guide: Core Web Vitals

• ✗

  Imagesmedium

  76 image(s).

  74 without width/height – can cause layout shift (CLS).

  73 image(s) after the first three aren't lazy-loaded.

  13 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.

  Read the guide: image SEO

• !

  Cachinglow

  Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate

  Fix: Set Cache-Control so browsers and CDNs can reuse the page.

• 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.

  Read the guide: the technical SEO checklist

• ✗

  Security headerslow

  Present: none.

  Fix: Add X-Content-Type-Options, Referrer-Policy, Permissions-Policy and X-Frame-Options (or a CSP).

  Read the guide: the technical SEO checklist

• ✗

  Server fingerprintlow

  X-Powered-By reveals “PHP/7.1.33-81+0~20261022.128+ubuntu22.04~1.gbpa88ccf”.

  Fix: Remove X-Powered-By so attackers can't see your software versions.

Mobile & accessibility 17%

Usable on phones and by everyone – Google indexes the mobile version.

• ✗

  Mobile viewportcritical

  No viewport meta tag – the page won't fit phones.

  Fix: Use <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> and allow zoom.

  Read the guide: mobile-friendly websites

• ✗

  Image alt textmedium

  67 of 76 images have no alt attribute.

  Fix: Describe each meaningful image in its alt attribute (use alt="" for decorative ones).

  Read the guide: image SEO

• ✓

  Form labelsmedium

  All 9 form fields are labelled.

• ✗

  Link nameslow

  77 link(s) have no readable name for screen readers.

  Fix: Add text or aria-label to icon-only links.

  Read the guide: internal linking

• ✗

  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.

  Read the guide: mobile-friendly websites

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.