vrt.be

Readiness by lane

Green: vrt.be. Thin bar: News & Media peer median.

Priority fixes for vrt.be

Ordered by impact and by how common each practice is among peers.

1. Priority 1 · Enable

   Meta description written

   Observed: The homepage had no meta description.

   Why it matters: Search engines often use it for the snippet under your link, so a clear description can improve click-through.

   What to do: Write a short, specific description of the page for people, not a list of keywords.

   95% of News & Media peers do this. Limit: Based on the homepage HTML delivered to an automated client; scripts that run later were not executed.

   Guide: Meta Titles and Descriptions That Match Search Intent

2. Priority 2 · Accelerate

   Modern image formats in use

   Observed: The homepage had 113 images and none used WebP or AVIF.

   What to do: Serve WebP or AVIF with a JPEG or PNG fallback, either through an image CDN or by generating both formats at build time.

   On Next.js: The next/image component serves optimized formats automatically.

   44% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: AVIF, WebP, JPEG, and PNG: Choose the Right Image Format

3. Priority 3 · Accelerate

   No render-blocking scripts in <head>

   Observed: The homepage <head> loaded 1 external script without async or defer.

   What to do: Add defer to scripts that need the DOM, async to independent ones such as analytics, or move them to the end of the body.

   On Next.js: Use the next/script component with an appropriate loading strategy.

   42% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: Control Third-Party Scripts Before They Control Your Page

4. Priority 4 · Enable

   At most one redirect to the homepage

   Observed: The homepage was reached after 2 redirects.

   What to do: Point every alternate address (http, www or apex, old paths) straight to the final URL in a single redirect.

   >99% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: Technical SEO Audit: A Practical Owner’s Guide

What vrt.be already does well

Practices fewer than half of News & Media peers use.

• security.txt publishedsecurity.txt with a contact found.6.2% of peers
• Nameservers spread across providersNameservers spread across more than one operator.11% of peers
• Content Security Policy presentContent-Security-Policy present.29% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://www.vrt.be/

Homepage response

HTTP 200, after 2 redirects

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

Amazon, 197-day validity, expiring 2026-12-27

CDN or edge

Amazon CloudFront

Platform or framework

Next.js

DNS operators

2 self-run or other nameserver domains

HSTS

max-age 365 days

DMARC policy

p=quarantine

Homepage HTML

423 KB, gzip

Images on homepage

113 (svg 13, jpg 1)

Limits: homepage only, one location, one moment. Header checks reflect the homepage response; other pages may differ.

Stack and providers

Seen in the homepage response, certificate and DNS. Provider pages compare how their customers configure the same checks.

All 31 checks

Select a gap for the method and fix. How each check works

Compare with other News & Media sites

• understandingwar.org75
• variety.com75
• vetogate.com75
• waz.de75
• wfmz.com75

News & Media readiness benchmark