SEO & JavaScript: 6 Things You Need to Must Know

By admin February 19, 2019
Blog, Digital Marketing, Web Design 0

We know JavaScript is a popular programming language that helps make webpages dynamic and interactive. We also know SEO people place JavaScript into an HTML document or make a link/reference to it for better optimization results. We also know that professionals doing SEO should know the basics of JavaScript in order to do justice to their job profile and leverage optimization perfectly.

However, there is still some debate over whether crawlers can see a website content properly and evaluate user experience in a realistic manner. we know that a crawler can read HTML directly as it works with PHP, CSS etc, but we are not sure whether it can access a Java-Script website that easily. But yes, Google crawlers render the website only after first analysing the DOM.

It should also be noted that Google won’t require AJAX to render JavaScript-based sites. It’s also important for SEO guys to have a basic knowledge of DOM (Document Object Model) which can be assumed as a tool used by Google to explore and analyse webpages. After all, Google first gets an HTML doc and then identifies its JavaScript elements before the browser initiates DOM to let the crawler to render the page.

Clearly, SEO is more complicated than it appears from the outside. Given the potential it carries for business in terms of visibility on the internet, it makes sense to always trust a top SEO company India for optimization efforts and services.

SEO professionals should know some important things when it comes to JavaScript and SEO, including –

1. Search engines must get to see your JavaScript
For SEO people, the foremost priority is always to make search engines see their JavaScript. If they did not, the page will appear differently to web crawlers and users. And if that happens, all your hard work with optimization will go in vain. In that cases, search engines will never get the full user experience which may be interpreted by Google as cloaking.

So, a good SEO approach is to let web crawlers have all that helps them see webpages in precisely the way users do. Only then can you benefit from optimization and achieve the desired results with visibility of the site or web pages. You can talk to the developers and decide over the files that must be hidden from or made accessible to, search engines.

2. Never think of replacing internal linking with JavaScript
SEO people must know that internal linking is a powerful optimization tool that lets search engines see the architecture of your website and get directed to key webpages. That’s why using internal linking has value and you should never even think of replacing it with JavaScript on-click events. And if you did that, your website might not able to perform up to the mark in search engine result pages.
It’s true that web crawlers can find end URLs and crawl them with on-click events but then won’t even link them with the navigation of the site. That’s why it’s always a better option to have internal linking in the same way with regular anchor tags within the HTML, or within DOM. This will help users get a superior experience.

3. Have a clean URL structure
SEO professionals should know that Google does not recommend the use of lone hashes (#) and hash bangs (#!) within URLs. So, those JavaScript-based sites still including fragment identifiers within their URLs are not going to get any favour from web crawlers for sure. On the other hand, pushState History API is rather a helpful method as it will help update the URLs in the address bar and let JavaScript sites to use clean URLs.
You should also know that clean URLs are friendly to search engines as they contain a plain text which makes then easily decipherable by users without much of technical knowledge. In fact, pushState can also be used for infinite scroll which can help the URL get updated each time someone clicks a new part of the page.

4. Test your website for JavaScript feasibility
Although Google can crawl and understand most forms of JavaScript easily, it may still find some more challenging than the rest. The search engine however has unique mechanisms to interact with JavaScript in different frameworks. It’s however essential for admins or SEO professionals to first test their website so that they can find mistakes and problems and get value from their optimization efforts put for days on end.
While testing the website, it’s necessary to check whether the content on the webpages appears in the DOM. It’s also important to test some pages to see of Google is facing any issue in indexing the content. It’s must be checked whether Google can see the content and JavaScript in the robots.txt for doing analysis easily. You can also do manual checking of the content and giving them to Google to check if they appear.

5. Provide search engines with HTML snapshots
SEO guys must know that Google still supports HTML snapshots which may be required under some situations only. In cases where search engines are not able to read the JavaScript on a site, they can be offered with an HTML snapshot. This will be at least better than not getting the content indexed and understood at all. After all, websites have some arrangement to let the HTML snapshots shown to bots and users alike. So, you should use this method as and only when everything is not right with JavaScript.

6. Site latency
The priority of Google is always to first load content that are crucial for users. There are however chances that some JavaScript files or needless resources may clog up the page load speed. In such case, you can use a render-blocking JavaScript and let your pages enjoy their ability to appear faster. This is how site latency is worked with. You can also trust a top web designing company to do all the needful with JavaScript and add value to your website.

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