SEO & Performance Self-Improvement Report

Generated: 2026-06-19
Workflow: SEO_PERFORMANCE_SELF_IMPROVEMENT_WORKFLOW.md
Site: https://scottcoff.in

Baseline Audit Results (pre-optimization)

Lighthouse measured against local build (simulated mobile, throttled network):

Local SEO check: 0 errors, 0 warnings (all pages pass)
JSON-LD validation: 20 blocks, 0 parse errors
Sitemap: 26 URLs, correct canonical domain (scottcoff.in)

Key issues identified

1. LCP 11.7s (score 0) — hero image scottrubidoux_crop.jpg was 3984×1500px, 1.3 MB with no preload hint. The LCP element is a CSS background-image div, so the browser discovers it late.
2. Color contrast failures (score 0) — navigation links, body content links, card links, footer disclaimer, and footer social links all failed WCAG 4.5:1 contrast on their respective backgrounds.
3. Heading order violations — card grid <h3> elements appeared before any <h2> in the DOM because the homepage was an .html file: Jekyll does not run the markdown converter on .html files, so ## Selected impact etc. were rendering as literal ## text instead of HTML headings.
4. Render-blocking resources — main.css (882ms savings) and main.min.js (304ms savings).
5. Homepage markdown not processed — index.html with markdown-style syntax (## Heading, - list item, etc.) was outputting raw markdown visible to users and search engines. The file was created as .html during the professionalization workflow; Jekyll only converts .md files.
6. Malformed H1 from | in title — title: "Scott Coffin, PhD | Environmental Toxicologist" was being run through markdownify, which converted the | into a two-column table inside the <h1> tag.

Changes Applied

1. Hero image optimization (highest impact)

Files changed: assets/images/ (new files added), index.md

• Original: scottrubidoux_crop.jpg — 3984×1500px, 1,307 KB
• Optimized JPEG: scottrubidoux_crop_opt.jpg — 1400px wide, progressive, mozjpeg — 60 KB (95% reduction)
• WebP: scottrubidoux_crop.webp — 1400px wide — 47 KB
• Updated index.md frontmatter to use scottrubidoux_crop_opt.jpg

Expected impact: LCP drops from ~11.7s to approximately 1–3s on throttled mobile. The LCP resource is now 22× smaller.

2. Preload hint for hero image

File changed: _includes/head/custom.html

Added a conditional <link rel="preload" as="image"> that fires on any page with header.overlay_image set:

Impact: Tells the browser to discover the hero image early, before the CSS is parsed. Addresses the Lighthouse LCP discovery audit.

3. Fixed homepage: .html → .md (rendering fix)

Files changed: index.html deleted, index.md created

Jekyll does not convert markdown in .html files. The old index.html was displaying raw markdown (## Selected impact, # Scott Coffin, PhD, etc.) as literal text in the rendered page — both visually broken and SEO-harmful (no semantic headings).

Converting to index.md restores proper heading structure:

• H1: “Scott Coffin, PhD — Environmental Toxicologist” (from splash layout, using page.title)
• H2: Selected impact, Find what you need, Featured work, How I work, Beyond work
• H3: Card headings under each H2 section

4. Fixed title to prevent markdown table in H1

File changed: index.md

Changed title from "Scott Coffin, PhD | Environmental Toxicologist" to "Scott Coffin, PhD — Environmental Toxicologist".

Minimal Mistakes runs page.title | markdownify to render the H1. The pipe character | creates a two-column markdown table. An em dash eliminates this.

5. Color contrast fixes

Files changed: assets/css/main.scss, _includes/footer.html

Added WCAG AA-compliant link color (#005f8e, ~5.0:1 contrast ratio on white) for:

• Card grid links (.card a)
• Body content links (.page__content a, .page__content p a, .page__content li a)
• Masthead navigation links (.site-title, .masthead__menu-item a)

Changed footer disclaimer from opacity: 0.8 to explicit color: #c8d6e0 (light blue-gray that contrasts adequately on the dark footer background).

Note: Footer social icon links and the “Follow:” label use the Minimal Mistakes theme’s default colors. These may still fail WCAG contrast audits as they are defined in the vendor Sass files. Overriding these would require deeper theme customization.

Verification Results

After all changes:

Lighthouse re-run: Local re-run encountered Windows headless Chrome NO_FCP error (known environment limitation — Chrome does not paint content in some headless configurations in this session). The baseline scores are captured in reports/lhci/homepage.json. Expected performance improvement on the live site is large due to the image size reduction.

Expected Performance Gains on Live Site

Projected scores (live site, after deploy):

• Performance: 85–95 (from 70)
• Accessibility: 96–100 (from 93)
• Best Practices: 100 (unchanged)
• SEO: 100 (unchanged)

Remaining Issues (not fixed in this pass)

Items for Scott’s Review

From both the professionalization workflow and this SEO pass:

1. Microplastics Explainer health effects framing — /Microplastics_Explainer/ has a TODO: Scott, please review and confirm this framing reflects your current assessment. in the health effects section.
2. Career timeline 2025-present date — confirm start date of current OEHHA position.
3. University of Wyoming — confirm as degree-conferring institution for your credentials listed on site.
4. CV highlights — verify the stated counts (40 papers, 11 first-author, 270+ presentations, 16 keynotes) against your CV.
5. Headshot for journalists — the /For_Journalists/ page would benefit from a downloadable high-resolution headshot.
6. Mixcloud link — confirm https://www.mixcloud.com/scoffincheyenne/ is still active.
7. /Expertise/ redirect — if there are any external links to /Expertise/, consider adding a Jekyll redirect.

8. Homepage <title> redundancy — change title: to "Environmental Toxicologist" if you want a cleaner <title> tag (“Environmental Toxicologist

   Scott Coffin, PhD”).

9. WebP hero image — scottrubidoux_crop.webp (47 KB) was also generated. Using it as the hero would provide additional savings. Requires a custom override of the Minimal Mistakes hero template to serve WebP with JPEG fallback.

Files Modified

Report generated by SEO_PERFORMANCE_SELF_IMPROVEMENT_WORKFLOW.md automation pass.