Javascript and SEO
-
I've done a bit of reading and I'm having difficulty grasping it. Can someone explain it to me in simple language?
What I've gotten so far:
-
Javascript can block search engine bots from fully rendering your website.
-
If bots are unable to render your website, it may not be able to see important content and discount these content from their index.
-
To know if bots could render your site, check the following:
-
Google Search Console Fetch and Render
-
Turn off Javascript on your browser and see if there are any site elements shown or did some disappear
-
Use an online tool Technical SEO Fetch and Render
-
Screaming Frog's Rendered Page
-
GTMetrix results: if it has a Defer parsing of Javascript as a recommendation, that means there are elements being blocked from rendering (???)
Using our own site as an example, I ran our site through all the tests listed above. Results:
- Google Search Console: Rendered only the header image and text. Anything below wasn't rendered. The resources googlebot couldn't reach include Google Ad Services, Facebook, Twitter, Our Call Tracker and Sumo. All "Low" or blank severity.
- Turn off Javascript: Shows only the logo and navigation menu. Anything below didn't render/appear.
- Technical SEO Fetch and Render: Our page rendered fully on Googlebot and Googlebot Mobile.
- Screaming Frog: The Rendered Page tab is blank. It says 'No Data'.
- GTMetrix Results: Defer parsing of JavaScript was recommended.
From all these results and across all the tools I used, how do I know what needs fixing? Some tests didn't render our site fully while some did. With varying results, I'm not sure where to from here.
-
-
Thanks! We probably should have combined JS with CSS and not built a site fully reliant on JS. This looks like what our competitors have done.
-
Thanks so much for the very helpful insights and for running our website through tests, I appreciate it. I'll try running the site on lighthouse. I agree we do have speed issues that we need to solve. Our page is also not showing up at all with GSC fetch and render.
Also, I tried Googling our brand + content within the expanding tabs and some did not show up on the SERPs. All other content not in expanding tabs showed up. I know Google still reads and indexes tabbed content but treats it with less importance. But I guess, not all of it will get indexed.
Thanks again!
-
Thanks for the response Nikki, I'll try to be as thoughtful about this as I can, but I am somewhat skeptical that your problem is javascript. It may be a contributing factor, but in general the concern that most SEOs would have with java is that Google can't crawl it and effectively the content rendered by java is invisible, making it completely impossible to rank as your page is deindexed, and yeah, this is a real risk. The fact that you're on page 1 right now for a competitive term though means that isn't likely your issue. And you're on a Wordpress site, so most of the js issues aren't going to be a problem for you, unless you're using an Angular integrated theme or something.
That doesn't mean there aren't any technical issues holding you back. I ran your page through a couple tools and I'm finding that the page is very heavy, slow to load, and has a very low performance score in terms of page load times and part of that is how js heavy your webpage is. I would recommend running your page through any of the free tools out there. The lighthouse extension for Chrome isn't great, but it was developed by Google so it gives you an idea how they might be measuring your page. Your page scored a performance rating of 4 out of 100, which again, big indication you have speed problems related to your js that could be tied to your rankings.
I think you're on the right track to investigate technical performance issues, but the easiest way to track this down is to start by making sure you don't have content that isn't being indexed. From there you should be able to see if there's any js that's blocking content from rendering for Googlebot. If Google is crawling and indexing the content, your js is okay from a visibility perspective and you can focus on the performance aspect.
If Google is displaying the page completely with fetch and render, you're probably okay, but try going into Chrome Dev Tools and disabling the cache, then reloading the page. Watch for any errors and try running lighthouse with that open. You'll probably be able to catch errors that way.
Good luck!
-
Hi Brett, thanks for your response, I've read a couple recently published articles, but this was the one that stood out - https://www.elephate.com/blog/ultimate-guide-javascript-seo/ and kinda alarmed me.
There is a part there that says: there is virtually no real life case of a client rendered JS website/brand/store ranking high. So I can’t guarantee that your JavaScript-rich website will rank as high as its HTML equivalent.
Our site was built on WordPress, but predominantly JavaScript. We have been really working a lot on on page content and link building the past 6 months, but we could not beat our competitors in the top 3 for the keyword 'seo brisbane'. The closest we've gotten was #6. We've been monitoring their sites as well and it looks like only 1 is doing active link building. The others seemed to be just cemented there.
We're looking at other reasons why we're not moving up and Javascript is one of them.
We have other sites we manage that are also experiencing slow progress. So you are right, my question is centered on how Javascript sites affect SEO and how to know if it's the culprit and how to fix.
Thanks!
-
Hey Nikki, I think your specific question is more centered on "Will having a website that is only fully enabled with Javascript be harmful to SEO?"
First, there's a lot of mythology about this in SEO land. There are outdated resources and it looks like you've read some of them. Google has advanced their ability to crawl and understand js and the content behind it to a very advanced degree and the tools you may use as proxies to understand Google's capabilities aren't so effective.
But before I move on, I want to verify something with you. When you're talking about javascript, are you specifically looking for answers regarding a website like WIX, built with AJAX? Because that can change my answer significantly.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Proxy Servers & SEO
Does putting a blog on a proxy server (the pointed at the main site) hurt SEO? i.e. can Google tell? And if they can, does it matter? My server people won't use PHP on their servers but we want a Wordpress blog. So their suggested solution is that they put the blog on a proxy server and point it at the ourdomain.com/blog subfolder on our site. So to all intents and purposes it's hosted in the same place. They assure me this is normal practice and point out that our (main site) images are already being sourced from a CDN. Obviously we'll deal with Google not seeing two separate versions of the same site. But apart from this, is there any negative effect we could suffer from in SEO terms?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abisti20 -
Javascript search results & Pagination for SEO
Hi On this page http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches we have javascript on the paginated pages to sort the results, the URL displayed and the URL linked to are different. e.g. The paginated pages link to for example: page2 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches#productBeginIndex:30&orderBy:5&pageView:list& The list is then sorted by javascript. Then the arrows either side of pagination link to e.g. http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=3 - this is where the rel/prev details are - done for SEO But when clicking on this arrow, the URL loaded is different again - http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches#productBeginIndex:60&orderBy:5&pageView:list& I did not set this up, but I am concerned that the URL http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=3 never actually loads, but it's linked to Google can crawl it. Is this a problem? I am looking to implement a view all option. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Top SEO Influencers 2015
Hello! I'm doing a little bit of research into key SEO players and thought I would get some opinions from the Moz community. Who's your go-to SEO guru? Who's up-and-coming in the world of SEO? Who are your favourite SEO influencers on Twitter? Cheers, Lewis
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Shopify and multiple stores for seo
Hi, We have a potential client who has multiple stores targeting different countries using Shopify. He has set the domains for specific countries using geo targeting in webmaster tools. Anybody had any experience on how fool proof this is? (all the sites have the exact same products/content on them) Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OnlineAssetPartners0 -
SEO Best practice for competitions
I am considering running a competition and wanted to get some feedback on SEO Best Practice. We will have a unique competition URL - following the completion of the competition it will be 301'd to home page Every entrant will be given a unique URL for the competition to share, if someone enters using there URL they get an extra ticket. This means we will create a large number of new unique URL's over a short period of time, the pages however will have the same content. Is this potentially bad for Duplicate content?Any advice? Perhaps a canonical tag on all unique competition entrant URLs? Any other considerations?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertChapman0 -
What is the best way to learn SEO?
I was wondering if it's worth taking an SEO Training course. If so is it better to take a live class or Online class. Or is better to just read all the SEO Books out there? Or is there a good video series anyone can recommend? What is the best way to learn SEO? I have a good understanding of SEO but I'm not a Pro ( Yet ). Obviously SEO is always evolving so even the Pro's are constantly updating their skill set but I want to make sure my foundation is solid and complete. Advice Please. Thank you all.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0 -
How do I make my URLs SEO friendly?
Hi all, I am aware that overly-dynamic URLs hurt a website's SEO potential and I want to fix mine. At present they look like this: http://www.societyboardshop.co.uk/products.php?brand=Girl+Skateboards&BrandID=153 What do I need to do to fix them please... do I add some code to the htaccess file? Many thanks, much apreciated. Paul.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul530 -
Dynamic SEO resources
Hi everyone, Could any of you recommend a good resource to learn about dynamic SEO? Thanks very much, Diana
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Diana.varbanescu0