What does Javascript have to do with search engine optimization? Javascript powers interactivity and animation on most sites. And based on how well it does that, you might end up having a more or less successful SEO strategy and user experience. 40% of consumers visiting a website on their mobile device will leave the page if it takes more than three seconds to load. Besides speed, responsiveness is also another major factor that affects search rankings. And this is where JS can be heavier on page performance compared to HTML or CSS.
That’s why if you’re using Javascript for your website, you should understand how Javascript SEO works and what are its peculiarities. Ignoring these could affect how search engine algorithms crawl and index your content. And when it comes to search rankings, this is a critical issue. This blog will explore the role of Javascript in SEO for boosting your website’s rankings and performance.
Javascript SEO FAQ
Javascript SEO is a technical aspect of search encode optimization, which can get complex, especially for newbies. To help you grasp the concept quickly, here are some answers to the most frequently asked questions.
What is SEO Content in Javascript?
People often have many questions about content optimization in Javascript. Should you make some special adjustments to your SEO content in Javascript? All the usual on-page optimization practices, such as meta titles, meta descriptions, meta robot tags, or alt attributes, still apply to JS. Yet, you must ensure that search engines can crawl, render, and index your SEO content in Javascript.
Search engine algorithms rely on Javascript to render the content of a page exactly like a browser. It lets them see it the same way the user does. This is important because many things could go wrong and prevent the site from being correctly rendered. For example, the links to other pages could be wrongly placed, or the crawlers could skip a piece of content contained within a Javascript.
Both internal links and external links are essential for SEO ranking. Good link-building, SEO content, and optimized JS all count toward web visibility. Sometimes, a website may incorrectly use tags that tell the crawler not to index a page. Fixing the Javascript ensures the content is accessible to search engines. This also impacts the loading and rendering of the webpage for the users.
What Are the Benefits of SEO for Javascript?
Paying attention to SEO for Javascript ensures that a website is search-friendly. What does this mean? You can fix issues that have the potential to harm web visibility. Tools like Google Search Console (GSC) are perfect for finding the bugs or errors preventing your webpage from being rendered. The URL inspection tool lets you see if Google can crawl the page. If the answer is no, then it's likely that the robots.txt file has blocked it. In this case, it has to be changed to allow the Googlebot access.
Another significant benefit of SEO for Javascript is a better user experience, which boosts organic traffic. Take, for example, websites that use animations and other interactive visuals to keep users engaged. These need to be adequately rendered. Otherwise, if they take too long to load, the website's organic traffic will take a hit.
How Does Google Process Web Crawling Javascript?
Most searches on the internet happen on Google, which dominates the industry and controls over 92% of the market. Understanding how it processes web crawling Javascript can help you design an effective SEO strategy. Here is what happens:
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The Google bot sends a get request to the server and, if allowed, proceeds to crawl and store the files needed to render the pages. This includes HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
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Next, it processes the files, including adding the links to the crawl queue. Using Javascript to create links to other pages instead of HTML anchor tags may slow this stage down.
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Next, the pages go to the renderer, which then checks the codes, including Javascript, and uses that to render the page into what the user would see.
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Javascript files often take longer to crawl and index, so a good Javascript SEO strategy would be to find ways of optimizing the code.
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After it indexes the content, it decides how to allocate resources to ensure each page gets properly rendered.
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Each site has a crawl budget, affecting how often each page is crawled, updated, etc.
What Are the Main Challenges of Javascript SEO?
Some common challenges of Javascript SEO include broken links, buttons, or missing features. This can happen when some users have Javascript disabled in their browsers. Sometimes, this can hinder the user from seeing or using JS-dependent content and features. Some web developers use accordion-style navigation systems, which are not accessible to crawlers. This can affect the organic traffic and visibility of the site as the pages may not get indexed.
Then there is also the common issue of heavy Javascript files causing a site to load slowly. And since most browsers render these files first, it can significantly impact the search ranking and user experience. Sometimes, the culprit could be a nonfunctional js code that takes up space. Another one is inserting Javascript in high-priority areas (like the head tags) instead of right before the closing body tag. This results in it causing the browser to try to load the JS file first before rendering the rest of the page. But placing it at the end will give a better response time.
Best Practices for SEO Content in Javascript
You can leverage SEO content in Javascript in several ways, including during site migration, without losing traffic or harming your SEO. For example, Merehead recommends creating a plan to analyze current metrics and crawl existing URLs. After this, you may also have to:
Fix Your URL Structure
Your URL structure should be clean to make it easy for the bot to understand and crawl your files, including the Javascript code. Break your page into multiple pages instead of using infinite scrolls, which can make it a bit harder for the bots to capture the complete content on your page fully. Does your canonical link tag work as intended? If not, check it out, as search engines rely on it to properly index and assign each content to the right page.
Prioritize Site Latency
Javascript SEO can make a difference in your site speed, thus boosting SEO. If the code is slowing down your website, it is best to optimize it. Clean up the code to remove anything that doesn’t perform any function. Some programmers and web developers chose to minify or compress the files or use CDNs to help improve loading speed. The good thing about using a CDN for your website is that it gives security, speed, and less downtime.
Regularly Audit and Test Your Site
Javascript issues can affect how search engine bots crawl and index websites, meaning the page won't appear in search results for specific keywords. This makes regular audits a necessity. One of the previously mentioned tools is the Google Search Console. Still, tons of SEO tools enable you to conduct a comprehensive site audit. You can check the loading speed, errors, etc. to help identify and fix issues on time. Doing this will help you stay ahead of any problems that can affect your search rankings.
Conclusion
Javascript SEO can help you design a responsive and appealing website. But more than that, it can enable you to create a search engine-friendly and user-friendly site. The more you implement the suggestions in this article, the better the overall performance of your website should be. The result is increased organic traffic, better visibility, and a boost in search ranking.
