How Can You Optimize the Mediumish Jekyll Theme for Better Speed and SEO Performance

The Mediumish Jekyll Theme is known for its stylish design and readability. However, to maximize your blog’s performance on search engines and enhance user experience, it’s essential to fine-tune both speed and SEO. A beautiful design won’t matter if your site loads slowly or isn’t properly indexed by Google. This guide explores actionable strategies to make your Mediumish-based blog perform at its best — fast, efficient, and SEO-ready.

Smart Optimization Strategies for a Faster Jekyll Blog

Performance optimization starts with reducing unnecessary weight from your website. Every second counts. Studies show that websites taking more than 3 seconds to load lose nearly half of their visitors. Mediumish is already lightweight by design, but there’s always room for improvement. Let’s look at how to optimize key aspects without breaking its minimalist charm.

1. Optimize Images Without Losing Quality

Images are often the heaviest part of a web page. By optimizing them, you can cut load times dramatically while keeping visuals sharp. The goal is to compress, not compromise.

• Use modern formats like WebP instead of PNG or JPEG.
• Resize images to the maximum size they’ll be displayed (e.g., 1200px width for featured posts).
• Add loading="lazy" to all images for deferred loading.
• Include alt text for accessibility and SEO indexing.

<img src="/assets/images/featured.webp" alt="Jekyll theme optimization guide" loading="lazy">

Additionally, tools like TinyPNG, ImageOptim, or automated GitHub Actions can handle compression before deployment.

2. Minimize CSS and JavaScript

Every CSS or JS file your site loads adds to the total request count. To improve page speed:

• Use jekyll-minifier plugin or htmlproofer to automatically compress assets.
• Remove unused JS scripts like external widgets or analytics that you don’t need.
• Combine multiple CSS files into one where possible to reduce HTTP requests.

If you’re deploying to GitHub Pages, which restricts some plugins, you can still pre-minify assets locally before pushing updates.

3. Enable Caching and CDN Delivery

Leverage caching and a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for global visitors. Services like Cloudflare or Fastly can cache your Jekyll site’s static files and deliver them faster worldwide. Caching improves both perceived speed and repeat visitor performance.

In your _config.yml, you can add cache-control headers when serving assets:

defaults:
  -
    scope:
      path: "assets/"
    values:
      headers:
        Cache-Control: "public, max-age=31536000"

This ensures browsers store images, stylesheets, and fonts for long durations, speeding up subsequent visits.

4. Compress and Deliver GZIP or Brotli Files

Even if your site is static, you can serve compressed files. GitHub Pages automatically serves GZIP in many cases, but if you’re using your own hosting (like Netlify or Cloudflare Pages), enable Brotli for even smaller file sizes.

SEO Enhancements to Improve Ranking and Indexing

Optimizing speed is only half the game — the other half is ensuring that your blog is structured and discoverable by search engines. The Mediumish Jekyll Theme already includes semantic markup, but here’s how to enhance it for long-term SEO success.

1. Improve Meta Data and Structured Markup

Every page and post should have accurate, descriptive metadata. This helps search engines understand context, and it improves your click-through rate on search results.

---
title: "Optimizing Mediumish for Speed and SEO"
description: "Actionable steps to boost SEO and performance in your Jekyll blog."
tags: [jekyll,seo,optimization]
---

To go a step further, add JSON-LD structured data (using schema.org). You can include it within your _includes/head.html file:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "BlogPosting",
  "headline": "How Can You Optimize the Mediumish Jekyll Theme for Better Speed and SEO Performance",
  "author": "",
  "datePublished": "02 Nov 2025",
  "description": "Learn how to optimize the Mediumish Jekyll theme for faster loading, better SEO scores, and improved user experience."
}
</script>

This improves how Google interprets your content, increasing visibility and rich snippet chances.

2. Create a Logical Internal Linking Structure

Interlink related posts throughout your blog. This helps readers explore more content while distributing ranking power across pages.

• Use contextual links inside paragraphs (not just related-post widgets).
• Create topic clusters by linking to category pages or cornerstone articles.
• Include a “Read Next” section at the end of each post for continuity.

Example internal link inside content:

To learn more about branding customization, check out our guide on 
<a href="/customize-mediumish-branding/">personalizing your Mediumish theme</a>.

3. Generate a Sitemap and Robots File

The jekyll-sitemap plugin automatically creates a sitemap.xml to guide search engines. Combine it with a robots.txt file for better crawling control:

User-agent: *
Allow: /
Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

This ensures all your important pages are discoverable while keeping admin or test directories hidden from crawlers.

4. Optimize Readability and Content Structure

Readable, well-formatted content improves engagement and SEO metrics. Use clear headings, concise paragraphs, and bullet points for clarity. The Mediumish theme supports Markdown-based content that translates well into clean HTML, making your articles easy for Google to parse.

• Use descriptive H2 and H3 subheadings.
• Keep paragraphs under 120 words for better scanning.
• Include numbered or bullet lists for key steps.

Monitoring and Continuous Improvement

Optimization isn’t a one-time process. Regular monitoring helps maintain performance as your content grows. Here are essential tools to track and refine your Mediumish blog:

Automating the Audit Process

You can automate checks with GitHub Actions to ensure performance metrics remain consistent across updates. Adding a simple workflow YAML to your repository can automate Lighthouse audits after every push.

Final Thoughts: Balancing Speed, Style, and Search Visibility

Speed and SEO go hand-in-hand. A fast site improves user satisfaction and boosts search rankings, while well-structured metadata ensures your content gets discovered. With Mediumish, you already have a strong foundation — your job is to polish it. The small tweaks covered in this guide can yield big results in both traffic and engagement.

In short: Optimize assets, implement proper caching, and maintain clean metadata. These simple but effective practices transform your Mediumish Jekyll site into a lightning-fast, SEO-friendly platform that Google and readers both love.

Next step: In the next article, we’ll explore how to integrate email newsletters and content automation into the Mediumish Jekyll Theme to increase engagement and retention without relying on third-party CMS tools.