writermag.com website review

About 1.3 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 6.2 s faster on a phone.

19 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (956 KiB).

16 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 2.3 s.

Your mobile performance score is 49 (desktop: 72). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (adthrive.com, Google Tag Manager and Facebook and others), adding 2.3 MB and 871 ms of main-thread time.

Polyfills for old browsers add 93 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 600 ms faster on a phone.

2 images could be 33 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 300 ms faster on a phone.

adthrive.com costs a phone 222 ms of main-thread work and 747 KiB of downloads while your page loads. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 209 ms of main-thread work and 347 KiB of downloads while your page loads. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

A phone's processor spends 2.3 s on main-thread work while loading, 1.2 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

Google/Doubleclick Ads costs a phone 82 ms of main-thread work and 336 KiB of downloads while your page loads. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

Taboola costs a phone 67 ms of main-thread work and 338 KiB of downloads while your page loads. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

3 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

8 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 205 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

16 KiB could be saved by minifying CSS.

About 65 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page.

Critical files load one after another instead of in parallel (3 chains). Preconnecting to key origins and preloading the hero image shortens the chain.

Scripts make the browser recalculate the layout repeatedly while the page loads, which wastes processor time on phones.

Real Chrome users on phones do not pass Google's Core Web Vitals on this page (28-day field data from the Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab)). Google uses this in ranking.

The first text or image appears after 7.7 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 24.7 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “Finding Anecdotal Sources for Articles: 6 Strategies”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 24.8 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 9.6 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Real visitors wait 2.7 s for the largest content to appear (75th percentile). Good is under 2.5 s.

Real visitors wait 211 ms for the page to respond to a tap (75th percentile). Good is under 200 ms.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 162 ms to 208 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Real visitors see the first content after 2.7 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

Real visitors wait 1.7 s for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 334 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 3.0 s to 2.7 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 3.1 MB in 212 requests on a phone: scripts 2.4 MB (51), images 254 KiB (26) and other files 180 KiB (111). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

4 images further down the page (276 KiB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

2 images (68 KiB) are JPEG, PNG or GIF. The same pictures as WebP or AVIF are usually much smaller at the same quality, and every current browser shows them.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 0.87 g of CO₂e: 104.9 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

1 element use ARIA attributes their role does not allow, which confuses screen readers.

14 text elements don't have enough contrast against the background to read easily, especially outdoors on a phone.

8 links inside paragraphs rely on colour alone to stand out.

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 3 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

3 visible links have no text or label, so screen readers cannot say where they go.

Headings should not be empty: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated minor by axe-core.

Headings skip levels (h1 → h3), which makes the page harder to scan with a screen reader.

Your meta description is only 41 characters: “Advice and inspiration for today's writer”. 70 to 160 characters is enough to sell the click.

No Open Graph image, so links shared on LinkedIn, Slack or Facebook show no preview picture.

No favicon is declared in the HTML, so browser tabs and Google's mobile results may show a generic icon.

1 link has no real href, so search engines can't follow it.

1 link use generic text like “click here” or “learn more”, which tells Google nothing about the page behind it.

The homepage links to 81 pages on writermag.com and 7 external pages.

Your robots.txt shuts out ChatGPT (ChatGPT-User). These fetch pages to answer people's questions and cite the source, so your site can't be quoted or linked in those answers.

There is no Organization (or LocalBusiness) JSON-LD, so search engines and AI assistants have no machine-readable facts about who runs the site: its name, logo, profiles and contact details.

There is no /llms.txt, a short Markdown guide to your key pages for AI tools (llmstxt.org). It is optional and few AI tools read it yet, so treat it as a cheap extra.

robots.txt blocks GPTBot and CCBot, which collect pages to train models. That's a legitimate choice and doesn't by itself stop the site appearing in AI answers.

/favorites, /memberships, /the-magazine/subscribe, /improve-writing/fiction, /improve-writing/nonfiction and /improve-writing/writing-for-young-readers and 7 others have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 64 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

2 images failed to load on a phone, for example https://www.writermag.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/2018-education-guide.jpg.

10 of 24 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

1 third-party cookie is set on load; browsers are restricting these, so whatever relies on them breaks.

3 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “googletag is not defined”.

Chrome logged issues while loading the page (“Cookie”).

No Strict-Transport-Security header, so browsers may still try plain http first on a return visit.

No Content-Security-Policy header, the main browser-side defence against injected scripts.

Neither X-Frame-Options nor a CSP frame-ancestors policy is set, so any site can embed yours in a frame.

X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff is missing, so browsers may guess file types.

No Referrer-Policy header, so full URLs can leak to the sites you link to.

No Permissions-Policy header to switch off camera, microphone and location for embedded content.

There is no /.well-known/security.txt telling researchers how to report a security problem to you.

writermag.com has no CAA record, so any certificate authority may issue a certificate for it. A CAA record naming your provider (for example letsencrypt.org) closes that door.

writermag.com's DNS answers are not signed. DNSSEC stops attackers forging them to send visitors or email elsewhere; most registrars switch it on in a click, though most sites still run without it.

On a phone, there is no call to action on the first screen: visitors have to scroll to find out what to do next.

Social proof on the homepage: 1 trust badge. Pairing it with named testimonials or customer logos makes it far more convincing.

No phone number or email link on the homepage, so ready-to-buy visitors have one fewer way to reach you.

No guarantee or risk reducer (money-back, free trial, no credit card) is mentioned, which is often what tips a hesitant visitor.

The homepage carries about 424 words of visible text.

DMARC is set to p=none, so mail pretending to be writermag.com is still delivered. Reports are on, so moving to quarantine is the next step.

Email authentication: SPF record 25 points, plus 15 when it ends in -all (10 for ~all); DMARC record 25, plus 25 for a reject policy (15 for quarantine); a DKIM key on a common selector 10.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Amazon Ads, Comscore, Criteo, Google Ads and Google Analytics and 5 mores (measured from a US location before any click). No consent tool was detected. Visitors from the EU, UK and several US states must be asked first.

Opening the homepage sets 31 cookies, 2 of them by other companies (measured from a US location before any click).

No known cookie consent tool loads with the page. Some sites build their own banner, and some only show one to visitors from the EU.

Loading the homepage contacts 84 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.