- How to Make JavaScript Websites Successful in Google?
- A few words about myself
- I’m an SEO guy. I am not your enemy 😉
- I like programming
- With my colleagues: We have literally spent years on: Maria Cieślak Bartosz Góralewicz – researching the JavaScript SEO thing – helping multiple clients to ensure their JS websites rank high in Google
- My Ultimate Guide to JavaScript SEO was extremely viral
- So…
- Client: This is our website. We don’t rank in Google. Can you guys help us?
- We will help you.
- A JavaScript loader was the bad guy. Finally, we spotted the issue! LOADING…
- Now they are successful in Google!
- We need to go deeper
- Then we started researching The JavaScript SEO topic
- Yo! Here is a list of simple Hello World Projects utilising different JS frameworks used for JS crawling tests JSSEO.expert experiment
- “But I am a developer. Why should I care about traffic from Google?”
- “But I am a developer. Why should I care about traffic from Google?” ● Traffic from Google = Money
- We SHOULD care about traffic from Google. It’s REAL. ● Traffic from Google = Money ● Poor JavaScript SEO = Google Ranking Drops
- We SHOULD care about traffic from Google. It’s REAL. ● Traffic from Google = Money ● Poor JavaScript SEO = Google Ranking Drops ● Google Ranking Drops = Less money = Angry boss
- We SHOULD care about traffic from Google. It’s REAL. ● Traffic from Google = Money ● Poor JavaScript SEO = Google Ranking Drops ● Google Ranking Drops = Less money = Angry boss …and it makes cats grumpy
- A few examples of famous JavaScript website drops in Google
- Example #1
- Example #2 sports.yahoo.com
- Example #3 answers.yahoo.com
- The question…
- The answer…
- What if I told you that Google’s not perfect at rendering JS?
- Client-side rendering – the default technique It’s like a cooking recipe – Google and users have to render it on their own. It can be problematic for Google
- Yes… Recently, Google did a really good job with updating their Web Rendering Service BEFORE the 7th of May AFTER the 7th of May Google has been using an “ancient” 4-year old browser for rendering – Chrome 41. It wasn’t even supporting ES6! Google Web Rendering Service is based on the most recent version of Chrome It’s great news, but things are more complicated than that…
- …Google is still not perfect at rendering JavaScript
- Google is still not perfect at rendering JavaScript
- Google crawls JavaScript websites much slower than HTML Pages
- Two waves of indexing
- But how long do you HAVE to wait? Google’s John Mueller: “…usually it’s on the order of days to a few weeks even.”
- Google is still not perfect at rendering JavaScript
- The risk: Google may decide not to fetch some JavaScript resources
- The Risk: Google may decide not to fetch some JavaScript resources I think we DON’T need to download this JSON file
- Google is still not perfect at rendering JavaScript
- Googlebot doesn’t act like a real user It doesn’t click the buttons It doesn’t scroll! Watch out for your infinite scrolling!
- There are still many websites that implement infinite scrolling incorrectly… In the case of these websites Googlebot cannot access the second page of pagination.
- Google is still not perfect at rendering JavaScript
- Google’s rendering of JavaScript is not perfect TIMEOUTS
- Google limits: TIMEOUTS Remember: There are 130 trillion other documents waiting for Googlebot’s visit
- Googlebot is based on the newest version of Chrome. BUT it’s not the same! ● Googlebot declines user permission requests ● Cookies, local & session storage are cleared across page loads ● Browser always download all the resources For instance: Googlebot may not…
- Always check if Google has no issues with rendering your website Best tool: URL Inspection Tool (a part of Google Search Console). Avoid using Chrome for it.
- Google’s rendering errors may be a big deal Google encounters rendering errors Google stops executing JavaScript No content indexed No money
- Angular.io had JavaScript SEO issues in the past
- Igor Minar from Angular.io: “Given that we haven’t changed the problematic code in 8 months (…) I believe that something has changed in crawlers during this period of time which caused most of the site to be de-indexed, which then resulted in the traffic loss.” The issue: Google deindexed many pages of Angular.io due to rendering errors
- Let’s go back to our experiment… JSSEO.expert
- Initial results: Google DOESN’T support Angular 2
- Initial results: Google DOESN’T support Angular 2
- Google didn’t index our Angular experiment because of… errors in the official Angular documentation
- Now we know about Google’s limitations in rendering JavaScript
- JavaScript SEO Taming the Beast in 5 Easy Steps
- Step 1 Ensure that Google can render your content Use the URL inspection tool provided by Google ● It’s free
- Step 1 Ensure that Google can render your content Use the URL inspection tool provided by Google ● It’s free ● It shows rendering errors
- Ask yourself the following questions
- Ask yourself the following questions ● Is the main content visible? ● Can Google see the user-generated comments? ● Can Google access areas like similar articles and products? ● Can Google see other crucial elements of your page?
- What if Google cannot render your page properly? ● You blocked crucial JavaScript files for Googlebot ● Some errors occurred while rendering Here are some possible reasons: ● Google encountered timeouts while rendering
- Step 2 Make sure you didn’t block your crucial JavaScript files in robots.txt What is robots.txt?
- Step 2 Make sure you didn’t block your crucial JavaScript files in robots.txt Google’s URL inspection tool comes to the rescue!
- Step 3 Use the URL Inspection tool for spotting JavaScript errors
- Step 4 Check if your content has been indexed in Google How do you know if content is really indexed in Google?
- Step 4 Check if your content has been indexed in Google site:URL “fragment”
- Step 5 Make sure Google can discover your internal links Google needs proper <a href> links to discover the URLs on your website
- If you followed these 5 steps and it still doesn’t work…
- Consider dynamic rendering or hybrid rendering Example Recommended by Dynamic rendering YouTube Hybrid rendering (also called “universal JS” or “isomorphic JS”) Airbnb
- First option: Use dynamic rendering USERS SERVER RENDERERGooglebot Initial HTML+JS Static HTML BUT a static version for Googlebot ● Serving an interactive version for users
- First option: Use dynamic rendering Officially recommended by Google for rapidly changing websites
- Most popular dynamic rendering solutions Renderton Puppeteer Prerender.io Free Free Service/Free
- But dynamic rendering is not a silver bullet
- Disqus.com
- What went wrong?
- We informed Disqus about the issue
- Second option: Hybrid rendering How it works Initial, server-side rendered HTML is sent to users and search engines. Then JavaScript is loaded on top of that.
- Hybrid rendering? Which brands use
- If you use for hybrid rendering …tryNext.js is the next… BIG thing
- The State of JS 2018 Survey: 35% of developers heard of Next.js and want to learn it.
- It’s actively maintained
- Friends of Next.js Vue.js Angular
- So many choices…
- Relatively static website Dynamic website You can consider Client-side rendering ● Hybrid rendering, or ● Dynamic rendering
- It’s not only about Google! Other search engines struggle with JavaScript. Facebook, Twitter THE SAME!
- Technically, Bing can render JavaScript. But struggles with rendering JavaScript at scale
- Bing struggles with rendering JavaScript at scale
- Bing struggles with rendering JavaScript at scale
- Can Bing index the content of Angular.io?
- Bing struggles with rendering JavaScript at scale Can Bing index the content of Vimeo?
- Can Bing index the content of Vimeo?
- Let’s talk about… Twitter
- Angular.io is doing fine on Twitter
- Angular.io is NOT doing fine on Twitter Vue.js is doing MUCH better.
- Key takeaways ● It’s the HTML JS Era (lucky you!) ● Rendering delays are still a problem ● Even after Chromium update, Google still doesn’t support many modern JavaScript features (i.e. no service workers, no geolocation API) ● You should always ensure that Google can render and index your content (choose a sample of pages)
- Worth reading ● Ultimate Guide to JavaScript SEO https://www.onely.com/blog/ultimate-guide-javascript-seo/ ● How to Diagnose and Solve JavaScript SEO Issues in 6 Steps by Tomek Rudzki https://moz.com/blog/diagnose-and-solve-javascript- seo-issues ● How to prepare for a JS migration by Maria Cieślak https://searchengineland.com/how-to-prepare-for-a-js-migration-308795
- Thank you, everyone! @TomekRudzki /TomekRudzki
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