The JavaScript programming language is used to make web pages interactive and dynamic.
It’s also used for better optimization results in SEO by placing it into an HTML document to make a link or reference to it. It’s also true that Google does not require AJAX to render JavaScript-powered sites.
That’s why SEO professionals need to have a basic understanding of Document Object Model (DOM) as Google will first access an HTM doc and then identify its JavaScript elements before the browser commands DOM to make the crawler render the webpage.
There is a link between SEO and JavaScript which optimization professionals must know to do their job in a better manner. Your optimization efforts will always deliver great results if you know how to use JavaScript for your SEO work.
You can always rely on a team of experts for development so that all your optimization energy delivers the desired result for the site.
Here are some things to know about SEO & JavaScript:
1. Make Search Engines See the JavaScript
One of the key tasks for SEO professionals these days is to ensure that search engines see their JavaScript. Otherwise, the page will appear differently to users and crawlers which can make all the optimization effort go to waste. The focus should be on letting web crawlers see webpages in exactly the way users do.
This is one of the basics of SEO today and once it’s done, the desired optimization and visibility results will happen. So, it must be clear from the start which files have to be kept hidden or made available to search engines.
2. Don’t eveSEO & JavaScriptr Replace Internal Linking with JavaScript
Internal linking is an essential optimization tool that allows a search engine to see and understand the architecture of a website and reach web pages. Without internal linking, search engines will not be able to reach webpages which can hugely affect optimization results.
That’s why it’s always a wrong strategy to replace it with JavaScript. Web crawlers may find end URLs and crawl them with on-click events, but this can never get their linking with the site’s navigation. If you want to give users a great experience, make sure your internal linking follows the standard format with anchor tags within the HTML or DOM.
3. Have a Clean URL Structure
Google will never recommend the use of lone hashes (#) and hash bangs (#!) within URLs. For that reason, JavaScript-powered sites with fragments identified within the URLs won’t get any benefit from web crawlers. However, SEO professionals can use pushState History API to update the URLs in the address bar and allow JavaScript sites to use clean URLs.
After all, search engines like clean URLs as they have plain text and that’s why users can decipher sans technical knowledge. You can also use pushState for infinite scroll to get the UTL updated each time someone clicks the page.
4. Test Your Website for JavaScript Feasibility
Google is capable of crawling and understanding most types of JavaScript easily. It also has a unique mechanism for interacting with JavaScript in different frameworks. Despite that, SEO guys must test their sites to not let their optimization efforts go in vain.
The testing of a site should also involve the evaluation of whether the content on the web pages displays in the DOM. You should also test some pages to check if Google is finding it difficult to index the content. The test should also check whether Google can see the JavaScript and content in the robots.txt for analysis.
5. Let Search Engines have HTML Snapshots
Google still supports HTML snapshots and the utility of this concept may be needed under some situations only. There are however cases where search engines may not be able to read a site’s JavaScript. For such situations, it’s always needed to offer them an HTML snapshot.
This will neutralize the disadvantages that often come from not getting the content indexed by Google at all. Plus, websites can make the HTML snapshots shown to users and bots alike and that’s why this method becomes important for cases where everything is not fine with JavaScript.
6. Site Latency
Google always gives priority to first loading the content that is important and helpful for readers. In some cases, the page load speed may slow down due to some JavaScript files or useless resources.
To avoid this situation, an SEO professional can think of using a render-blocking JavaScript and make pages retain their ability to appear faster.
This is the fundamental of site latency which is always beneficial from a website point of view. It’s however always important to trust only a top web development India company to get everything right with JavaScript to keep the website as powerful and functional as needed.
