How Your JavaScript Can Benefit Your SEO
If you’ve ever been to a stunning, interactive website that makes you simultaneously want to throw confetti in the air and share it with your friends, there’s a good chance it was built with JavaScript.
In fact, any site that uses Google Analytics (and other tracking tools) or features interactive elements or web applications also uses JavaScript, a nearly omnipresent coding language. The possibilities are limitless.
The downside? If done wrong, it can tank your SEO. So, how can you use JavaScript SEO to your advantage and boost your search performance? Let’s dive in.
How to Make Your JavaScript SEO-Friendly
What is JavaScript SEO?
Before defining JavaScript SEO — let’s talk about the most common use cases for JavaScript. In addition to website development, JavaScript is an excellent option for gaming, computer programs, and more.
In web development, it’s primarily used for an interactive website, web and mobile apps, and dynamic content.
Once you know how the programming language is used, JavaScript SEO is simply about ensuring search engines can easily find any site built with JavaScript.
If your understanding of SEO is primarily limited to keyword optimization, you’re far from alone. There are ultimately three types of SEO — on-page, off-page, and technical.
On-page SEO focuses on the content that’s on your site (keyword optimization). Off-page SEO is concerned with your site’s reputation, popularity, and usefulness — and is mainly out of your control.
JavaScript SEO falls under the third category — technical SEO — which focuses on ensuring your site is searchable, indexable, and crawlable so people searching for the information you offer can find it.
Want to learn more about On Page and Technical SEO? Grab our free tutorial here!
How to Make Your JavaScript SEO-Friendly
Most of the JavaScript used on websites, including yours and mine, won’t significantly impact SEO. The biggest challenge comes when your developer uses JavaScript to build sections with lots of important information or entire pages.
The reason is simple: JavaScript can make it more difficult for search engines to read your site.
1. Use dynamic rendering (sparingly) as a workaround.
One of the most significant issues with JavaScript SEO and indexing relates to how your code is rendered — or how Google indexes (or doesn’t index) your site.
That means you must understand how your site can be rendered — server-side rendering, client-side rendering, and dynamic rendering.
Server-Side Rendering (SSR)
What it is: When JavaScript is rendered on the server before appearing in your browser or to Google’s crawlers.
How it affects SEO: It reduces the load time for your page’s most important content, which increases SEO performance.
The downside of SSR: SSR can drastically increase the time required if you need user inputs.
Client-Side Rendering (CSR)
What it is: CSR is when JavaScript is rendered on your browser with only a basic version of HTML, …read more
Source:: HubSpot Blog
