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Brain Dumps

Real lessons from building real projects. No fluff, no theory – just honest insights from the trenches of development, complete with spectacular failures and hard-won victories.

Title Tags and Meta Descriptions: Lengths, Limits, and What Google Actually Shows
June 30, 2026
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Title Tags and Meta Descriptions: Lengths, Limits, and What Google Actually Shows

Title under ~60 chars, keyword-first. Meta description ~120–160 chars, written to earn the click. Google rewrites descriptions a lot — so write for the times it doesn't.
Twitter/X Cards vs Open Graph: What's the Difference and Do You Need Both?
June 25, 2026
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Twitter/X Cards vs Open Graph: What's the Difference and Do You Need Both?

You don't need to duplicate everything. X/Twitter falls back to Open Graph when twitter: tags are missing — so implement OG as the foundation, then add two Twitter-specific tags and call it done.
How I automate keyword research with Claude and DataForSEO (the €0 Ahrefs alternative)

How I automate keyword research with Claude and DataForSEO (the €0 Ahrefs alternative)

Ahrefs costs €400/month. Here's the workflow I actually use — Claude Code orchestrating DataForSEO's pay-per-call API, clustering the output, and spitting out a brief that doesn't read like a SaaS demo.
The Signs of AI Writing (and AI Code): A Field Guide to the Tells
June 22, 2026
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The Signs of AI Writing (and AI Code): A Field Guide to the Tells

The real signs of AI writing — delve, em-dash clusters, rule-of-three, copula avoidance — plus the AI-code tells nobody talks about, and how to score and fix text.
Google says llms.txt is 'fine.' That's not the same as 'it works for AI SEO'
June 19, 2026
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Google says llms.txt is 'fine.' That's not the same as 'it works for AI SEO'

Google's June 2026 update calls llms.txt 'fine' to use — but says it won't help (or hurt) Search. Ahrefs found 97% of llms.txt files get zero bot requests. The real story.
How Much of the Web Is AI-Generated? What the Data Actually Says
June 18, 2026
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How Much of the Web Is AI-Generated? What the Data Actually Says

By mid-2025, ~35% of new websites were AI-generated. But the data on whether everything 'looks the same' is more surprising than the meme. Here's what's real and what isn't.
og:image Size Guide: The 1200x630 Rule and the Safe Zone Nobody Mentions
June 18, 2026
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og:image Size Guide: The 1200x630 Rule and the Safe Zone Nobody Mentions

1200x630 px, 1.91:1 ratio — that's the baseline. But the safe zone, the file-size ceiling, and the width/height attributes crawlers need are what most guides skip. Here's all of it.
Why Your Link Preview Isn't Showing (and How to Fix It)
June 16, 2026
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Why Your Link Preview Isn't Showing (and How to Fix It)

You updated your og:image, you reshared the link, and it still shows the old card. Here's what's actually happening — and the exact steps to fix it.
How to Tell If a Website Was AI-Generated: A Field Guide
June 15, 2026
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How to Tell If a Website Was AI-Generated: A Field Guide

A practical checklist for spotting AI-generated websites — the visual tells, the dead giveaways in the code, and how to confirm it by measuring the page instead of guessing.
Open Graph Tags Explained: og:title, og:description, og:image, og:type
June 11, 2026
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Open Graph Tags Explained: og:title, og:description, og:image, og:type

Open Graph tags are the four lines in your that control how your link looks when someone shares it. Here's what each one does, the mistakes that break previews, and the minimum block every page needs.
Why Every AI-Built Website Is Purple (and Looks the Same)
June 11, 2026
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Why Every AI-Built Website Is Purple (and Looks the Same)

AI-built sites are purple because of one default color in Tailwind UI that saturated AI training data — then fed back on itself. Here's the full chain, and how to break it.
What Is AI Design Slop? (And Why Every AI-Built Site Looks the Same)
June 9, 2026
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What Is AI Design Slop? (And Why Every AI-Built Site Looks the Same)

What AI design slop is, why AI tools keep defaulting to the same purple-gradient, glass-card, low-contrast UI, what the data actually says about web homogenization, and how to catch it before it ships.

Got Questions or War Stories?

I love hearing about other people's spectacular failures and unexpected wins. Drop me a line if you've got a story to share or a question about any of these posts.

Let's Share Some War Stories