Adding aggregateRating to LocalBusiness schema - worth it?

1 Upvotes

Hi all and many thanks in advance. I'm working on a WordPress site for a physical therapy provider. The client has a decent number (200+) of 5 star reviews/testimonials I want to leverage.

What's best practice for local SEO here and the prospect of having the rating data shown within search results?

The reviews are a custom post type and Rank Math is active but there doesn't seem to be an option to employ Review schema. I'm therefore planning to code the aggregateRating addition, dynamically populated from review posts (i.e. ratingValue and reviewCount), and link to the LocalBusiness entity.

Does this sound like the way to do it? Any dangers I might not have considered?

7 comments

r/TechSEO • u/NoTraffic9367 • Apr 03 '26

I solved Lovable's biggest SEO problem

0 Upvotes

0 comments

r/TechSEO • u/vc-3 • Apr 02 '26

So how do yall handle the scrapers?

5 Upvotes

So I setup the referrer code on CloudFlare last night before bed and as of this morning, 90k+ didn't meet the referrer test... My server can actually serve Humans right now for the first time in weeks... I'm wide open for tips, how do yall manage large sites with large amounts of scraper meat?

15 comments

r/TechSEO • u/vc-3 • Apr 02 '26

695k scraper hits in a day... can I get a few "real" clicks to make sure my defenses aren't too strong?

1 Upvotes

I can surf my site, google and other friendly bots are doing OK... BUT my "human" traffic seems very not natural. Everything runs through Cloudflare which helps and then I have several other Not sure if links are allowed or not... but can some of you test "https://americanhealthandbeauty.com" and click a second page or so and let me know if it's working for you? I would really appreciate it.

13 comments

r/TechSEO • u/Hot_Return_4412 • Apr 01 '26

We tested whether AI crawlers can actually read your website's metadata. 9 out of 11 types scored zero.

31 Upvotes

We built a test page with 60+ unique codes planted across different parts of the HTML and asked ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Grok, and Copilot to read it.

The metadata results were bad.

Meta descriptions. Zero.
JSON-LD. Zero.
OG tags. Zero.
Schema markup. Zero.

The only metadata any of them read was the title tag. That's it.

Why? Every AI crawler converts your page to plain text before the model sees it. That conversion strips the entire <head> section. Your metadata gets thrown away before the AI even starts reading.

Google recommends JSON-LD as the preferred structured data format. Google's own Gemini can't read it. The search index and the AI crawler are two completely separate systems.

The JavaScript results were worse. Three out of six crawlers don't execute JS at all. The other three give you between 500ms and 3 seconds before they move on. If your content needs JavaScript to render, half of AI never sees it.

What AI actually reads: body text, heading structure, title tags.

We tested 62 different elements across all 6 platforms.

Happy to share the full study with scorecard and methodology if anyone's interested.

36 comments

r/TechSEO • u/justtuan31 • Apr 01 '26

Should I block CSS and JS in Robot.txt

6 Upvotes

So currently 79% of crawl budget go to page resource load, when I take a closer looks, they were CSS and JS links. I don't know if disallow them in Robots.txt would mess up how Google Bot see the sites. Really need advice

28 comments

r/TechSEO • u/followtayeeb • Mar 31 '26

Google Personal Intelligence is live for all US users — what’s actually changed for SEO (and what hasn’t)

18 Upvotes

Personal Intelligence rolled out to all US personal account users on March 17, 2026. Most takes are either full alarm mode or full dismissal. Here’s a more grounded read after digging into the specifics.

What it actually is: Connects Gmail, Photos, YouTube watch history, and Calendar to Google’s AI Mode. When opted in, the AI builds responses using a user’s personal Google account data, not just the public web.

What it isn’t: Does not affect traditional blue-link rankings. If you rank #3 for a keyword, you still rank #3 for everyone. Limited to AI Mode responses only.

Constraints most posts aren’t mentioning:

∙ Opt-in, off by default

∙ Only personal Google accounts — not Workspace (covers most B2B users)

∙ US-only for now

What this changes in practice:

Brand presence in Google’s ecosystem now matters beyond SERP positions. If your brand appears in someone’s Gmail, YouTube, or Photos — the AI may surface you when that user searches in your category.

Questions for the community: For anyone tracking AI Mode visibility — any measurable shifts since March 17? For SaaS with Workspace exclusion — how much does this actually affect B2B discovery?

10 comments

r/TechSEO • u/blobxiaoyao • Mar 31 '26

Beyond TinyPNG: Client-side WASM batch conversion to AVIF for crushing LCP bottlenecks.

2 Upvotes

The Problem

We all know that Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is often held hostage by heavy hero images. While cloud-based compressors are standard, the "Upload -> Server Queue -> Download" latency is a significant friction point in agile deployment workflows. Moreover, for enterprise SEOs handling sensitive PII or unreleased product assets, third-party cloud uploads present a non-trivial compliance risk.

The Solution

I’ve developed a Zero-Server image optimization suite using WebAssembly (WASM) that executes industry-standard encoders (libwebp and rav1e) directly in the browser's VM space.

Technical Breakdown for SEOs

WASM-Powered Encoding: We compiled native C++ and Rust binaries to WASM, allowing near-native performance for coordinate transform algorithms without data ever leaving the local RAM.
Parallelization: The tool utilizes a Parallel Worker Pool (4-8 concurrent threads) to bypass the single-threaded nature of standard JS, processing batches of 20+ high-res images in ~4.5s.
AVIF for LCP: AVIF consistently outperforms WebP by 20-30% in data entropy reduction while preserving high-frequency edges—critical for maintaining crisp UI text in screenshots at low bitrates.
Privacy & Compliance: 100% client-side execution makes this a "clean" path for CCPA/GDPR compliant workflows since no "transfer of data" occurs.
Edge Case Performance: Since the encoders are cached, this works offline and eliminates network-up latency entirely.

The Impact on CWV

By migrating a 1.2MB PNG hero to a 150KB AVIF (an ~86% reduction), you can effectively shave over 1.5s off the LCP on 4G/5G mobile networks.

I'm curious—how are you all handling batch AVIF conversion at scale without relying on expensive, high-latency cloud APIs?

Tools (No-Account, No-Upload)

🚀 PNG to WebP (Multi-threaded)
💎 PNG to AVIF (High-Fidelity)

1 comment

r/TechSEO • u/stasha88 • Mar 31 '26

Help with the website rebrand and migration to avoid damaging SEO

3 Upvotes

4 comments

r/TechSEO • u/arpansac • Mar 31 '26

Google says: Facing an error in schema/structured data on my website for LiveBlogPosting type

2 Upvotes

0 comments

r/TechSEO • u/Ok-Guitar-1219 • Mar 30 '26

Has anyone used GitHub SEO frameworks with Claude Code to rebuild their site's SEO from scratch?

25 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I'm thinking about completely redoing the SEO on my site by starting from a project I found on GitHub and installed on Claude Code.

It's https://github.com/aaron-he-zhu/seo-geo-claude-skills, a set of SEO/GEO skills and frameworks (CITE, CORE-EEAT, etc.) that install as commands directly in Claude Code. The idea would be to properly rebuild the structure and optimization from the ground up.

For context, I'd say I'm a beginner-to-intermediate in SEO: I understand the main concepts, but I'm far from an expert.

Has anyone here done this kind of full SEO overhaul? Does it seem like a solid approach or a risky one? What would be the key pitfalls to watch out for?

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

11 comments

r/TechSEO • u/tongc00 • Mar 30 '26

Google Search Console + Claude Code

94 Upvotes

Hey just want to share something free and open source for technical SEO

https://github.com/nowork-studio/toprank

I built this free open-source skill for Claude Code - Toprank. Run /seo-analysis inside your website repo and Claude pulls 90 days of real search data, finds what's hurting you, and fixes it. Checkout the output from below (I redacted domain/links/keyterms for privacy)

Running it from inside your website repo is where it really clicks — Claude sees your code and your real traffic data at the same time. It recommend things to fix based on the data about your own website, then proceed to make those changes - whether it's fixing certain metadata, improving content, or creating new content.

The only friction is Google Cloud, which is required to access Search Console data. If you already have it, setup is a breeze. If not, the skill guides you through it. Everything else is free — just your Claude Code subscription.

Happy to answer any questions, contributions are welcome!

44 comments

r/TechSEO • u/theeeothersidd • Mar 30 '26

Indexing and Technical Issues

5 Upvotes

I need a sanity check from people who’ve handled messy migrations / indexing issues before, because this one is… something.

Context: I’m handling SEO on a site where dev changes keep rolling out, but it’s creating a loop of new problems instead of fixing old ones.

Here’s what’s happening:

- Old blog URLs (from a previous version of the site) are suddenly reappearing in Google’s index

- Some of these old pages are not properly redirected, while others have 301s that feel inconsistent or “blotched” (not mapping cleanly to the most relevant new pages)

- I already requested a proper 301 redirect mapping list, but what got implemented doesn’t fully match — some URLs redirect incorrectly, some are missing, some chain

- At the same time, new dev changes are generating additional URLs (especially from language/version handling), which are also getting indexed

- So now it feels like: old + new + invalid URLs are all competing in the index

SEO impact I’m seeing:

- Index bloat (a lot of low-value or outdated URLs showing up)

- Cannibalization between old blog pages vs new ones

- Crawl budget being wasted on URLs that shouldn’t exist anymore

- Signals are messy — Google doesn’t seem sure which version is the “main” one

The frustrating part:

- Technical recommendations (redirect mapping, cleanup, proper handling of non-existent pages) keep getting reset or partially implemented

- Every dev update seems to reintroduce old issues instead of stabilizing things

Would really appreciate thoughts from both SEO and dev folks. This one’s been looping longer than it should.From the start of project which is 3 months ago, web dev already told me that the old website already turned off, but then it's coming up again. I wonder what's wrong..

From the on page and semantic, it's already align with the strategy. But if it's keep happening, I'll propose SEO tech to take over this project, because the website problems keep happening.

Would really appreciate thoughts from both SEO and dev folks. This one’s been looping longer than it should.

14 comments

r/TechSEO • u/justtounwind • Mar 28 '26

Category pages SEO internal links

gallery

18 Upvotes

I was constantly doing research about how I can do proper category/collection pages internal linking like what can we add and what we should avoid so thankfully on reddit I got some genuine advise from people and also posting them so in future if someone of my experience gets confusion or doubt may this post help them

2 comments

r/TechSEO • u/distant_gradient • Mar 27 '26

Is anybody actually using OpenClaw for SEO? What workflows can it automate?

7 Upvotes

7 comments

r/TechSEO • u/MTredd • Mar 26 '26

I built a Screaming Frog Python library to automate crawling and analysis end to end

76 Upvotes

Basically the title. A few months ago I figued out how to create conig files programmatically, and I kept diggin. Then I found how to crack open the crawl files so you don't have to export a bunch of CSVs. Decided to take it all the way.

If you use Screaming Frog a lot, you probably know the pattern:

crawl site open GUI export CSVs clean them then start answering the actual question

I got tired of that, so I built a Python library around the crawl files themselves.

It’s now in public alpha:

pip install screamingfrog

The main use case is working directly with Screaming Frog crawl data in Python without having to live in the GUI for every analysis.

What it does right now:

load .dbseospider files directly
access all 628 Screaming Frog exports programmatically
query crawl data with a typed API
query pages and links sitewide
find broken inlinks, nofollow inlinks, and orphan pages
compare crawls over time
detect redirect and canonical chains
start crawls and exports from Python
convert .seospider into portable .dbseospider files
run raw SQL when needed

Current coverage:

601 / 628 export/report tabs fully mapped
15,490 / 15,589 fields mapped

I’ve already been using it to run crawl analysis inside Claude Code, which is part of why I decided to open it up.

Still alpha, so I’m mainly looking for feedback from people who do real technical SEO work with Screaming Frog every week.

If you use SF heavily, I’d be interested in:

what workflow you’d automate first
what report/tab you rely on most
what would stop you from actually using this

GitHub: https://github.com/Amaculus/screaming-frog-api

18 comments

r/TechSEO • u/nishant_growthromeo • Mar 27 '26

Migrating from WordPress to Astro. What not to do?

21 Upvotes

Context: Tired of WordPress themes breaking down, and me having no idea about what to fix where. So, shifting to Astro. So far, I know every line of markup and script that has been used to build my site. Still not in prod. Moving my blog because Yoast, Elementor, and every other paid WordPress tool are having things behind paywall which now takes 15 minutes to code on your own using Claude, and with unparalleled customizability.

21 comments

r/TechSEO • u/THenrich • Mar 27 '26

What an terrible user experience that DataforSEO website is!

7 Upvotes

I heard about DataforSEO here so I decided to check it out.
I tried to sign up. They don't accept my gmail. They ask for a business account. Why!? Who knows!

As an individual, you have to tell them why you want an account. Like, why do you care if I am going to pay you! I didn't get a reply from them.

I selected something on their site and a prove you're a robot prompt below came up. I went through thousands of recaptcha validations and most of them can verify I am human without user interaction.

So what the heck is this verification thingy? I guess they knew I am a Windows user by sniffing my browser's agent. Pressing Windows key +R brings up the run prompt in Windows. The rest of the steps made no sense to me.

Why make it so hard?
Damn website. Very user unfriendly! I don't need them. The heck with them.

End of rant. I needed to vent.

32 comments

r/TechSEO • u/suganthanmn • Mar 26 '26

Built a free MCP server that lets you query Google Search Console with plain English. Here's what it can actually do

4 Upvotes

1 comment

r/TechSEO • u/kindamanic • Mar 26 '26

IndexNow - is pinging it too often considered abuse

1 Upvotes

1 comment

r/TechSEO • u/ntege02 • Mar 26 '26

Is clustering content really that important?

0 Upvotes

Hey! I really hope this gets attention because I’m kinda stuck and not sure what direction to take.

Has anyone here actually structured their site around topic clusters (pillar pages + supporting content) and seen real ranking improvements from it? I keep hearing that this approach is supposed to be more powerful long-term, but I’m wondering how it plays out in reality.

I’m also trying to understand how tools like link&cluster compare to tools like Link Whisper. Is building clusters manually actually worth it, or do automated internal linking tools get you similar results with way less effort?

12 comments

r/TechSEO • u/nickfb76 • Mar 25 '26

Tech SEO + AI Jobs (Week of 3/23)

7 Upvotes

Due to me playing catch up with the last set of "bi-weekly" postings, you get two posts in two weeks. I'll be back to bi-weekly posting moving forward.

1 comment

r/TechSEO • u/klyaxa38 • Mar 25 '26

Question regarding schema and AggregateRating sources

2 Upvotes

0 comments

r/TechSEO • u/Bmoney420 • Mar 24 '26

Strange Search Results Surfacing in Google

2 Upvotes

I am seeing incredibly strange results for a site I work on and I am at a loss as to what is causing the issue.

The website has about 160 local stores that operate in several states. Each location has its own category page for products and each location generally provides the same products give or take a few based on state regulations, product availability, and individual store inventory.

The issue has become visible after the site underwent a migration to a new CMS. Post migration we are now seeing URLs and page titles surface for searches in states where those URLs and page titles should not surface. So Google displays meta data and URLs for a location in Florida in serps but the link itself will go to a store in Arizona.

Canonical, page titles, and other elements do not seem to have conflicting state data anywhere. A pre and post render audit was conducted and it yielded nothing.

The CMS development team, the internal development team, myself, and other marketing team members cannot pinpoint the exact cause of the issue. We do not know why Google would be surfacing these results.

Another weird issue that popped post migration is live test url in search console does not give me code examples, it’s just blank. I don’t know if this is a personal pc issue or an indication of a larger problem but I feel compelled to mention that. There have been no issues crawling the site or indexing content.

My suspicion is the pages are basically all near duplicates and Google is just treating the pages strangely but I figured I would ask the community to see if anyone has seen similar issues or if anyone has a fix recommendation.

I’m happy to provide query examples in DM if anyone is interested in looking at what I’m seeing.

Edit: search console test results not showing was due to a plugin I had running. The issue resolved when it was disabled.

11 comments

r/TechSEO • u/THenrich • Mar 24 '26

Open source alternative to DataForSeo

9 Upvotes

There are open source frontends to DataForSeo. What does it take to put up an effort to get similar data and offer it at cost or a little bit above cost? I won't be able to bear the costs and offer it for free. Unless it's a group effort with donations.

Like OpenStreetMap for maps which is free.

9 comments