Best of SEO — December 2025

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   Article

   Web Performance Calendar·16w

   Revisiting HTML streaming for modern web performance

   HTML streaming allows servers to send HTML progressively rather than in one chunk, enabling browsers to render content as it arrives. HTMS is an experimental project that extends basic streaming with progressive placeholders that can be updated asynchronously within a single HTTP response. This approach delivers early First Contentful Paint, maintains SEO-friendly complete HTML documents, and achieves strong Lighthouse scores without client-side hydration. The technique works best combined with SSR, SSG, or tools like HTMX, though it introduces constraints around error handling once streaming begins and requires careful layout planning.

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2. 2
   Article

   Christian Heilmann·17w

   Ad Blockers helped kill the open web

   Ad blockers created a vicious cycle where blocking ads led to more aggressive advertising, making the web increasingly unusable. While privacy concerns are valid, dedicated ad blocking differs from tracking prevention and undermines content monetization. The web's fundamental mistake was treating it like traditional media with ads as the primary revenue model, without innovating payment distribution systems. As ad blocking grew, publishers compensated with more ads, search results became dominated by sponsored content, and the open web is now being replaced by closed AI-driven platforms. The lack of scalable micropayment solutions means subscriptions don't work for casual reading, leaving the web ecosystem broken.

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3. 3
   Video

   Awesome·18w

   3 rules to build faster apps for the modern web

   Google's Core Web Vitals—Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)—are critical metrics for web performance and SEO rankings. LCP measures how quickly main content renders, driving the shift from SPAs to server-side rendering. INP tracks session-wide responsiveness across all interactions, not just the first click. CLS penalizes visual instability from improperly sized elements or late-loading resources. Modern approaches favor either minimal server-rendered HTML with lightweight JavaScript libraries or full meta-frameworks optimizing server rendering with on-demand hydration.

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