If your work involves SEO at some level, you’ve most likely been hearing more and more about JavaScript and the implications it has on crawling and indexing. One thing we check is if any crucial content (links, on-page content) gets loaded in via JavaScript. You could also crawl the site (with a tool like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb) with JavaScript rendering turned off, and then run the same crawl with JavaScript turned on, and compare the differences with internal links and on-page elements. In my mind this would trigger an action to crawl the site with JavaScript rendering turned on to see if the title tags do appear (as well as checking manually). In other words, the answer to our first question for this pages is “yes, JavaScript is being used to load in crucial parts of the site.” Question 2: If yes, is Googlebot seeing the content that’s loaded in via JavaScript properly? Use Google’s new mobile-friendly testing tool At the moment, the quickest and most accurate way to try and replicate what Googlebot is seeing on a site is by using Google’s new mobile friendliness tool. If they appear here, Google is most likely seeing the content. Now we know that the domain is using JavaScript to load in crucial content and we know that Googlebot is most likely not seeing that content, the final step is to recommend an ideal solution to the client. Doing a site:search for visible content on the page. Give an ideal recommendation to client.
If your work involves SEO at some level, you’ve most likely been hearing more and more about JavaScript and the implications it has on crawling and indexing. Frankly, Googlebot struggles with it, and many websites utilize modern-day JavaScript to load in crucial content today. Because of this, we need to be equipped to discuss this topic when it comes up in order to be effective.
The goal of this post is to equip you with the minimum viable knowledge required to do so. This post won’t go into the nitty gritty details, describe the history, or give you extreme detail on specifics. There are a lot of incredible write-ups that already do this — I suggest giving them a read if you are interested in diving deeper (I’ll link out to my favorites at the bottom).
In order to be effective consultants when it comes to the topic of JavaScript and SEO, we need to be able to answer three questions:
- Does the domain/page in question rely on client-side JavaScript to load/change on-page content or links?
- If yes, is Googlebot seeing the content that’s loaded in via JavaScript properly?
- If not, what is the ideal solution?
With some quick searching, I was able to find three examples of landing pages that utilize JavaScript to load in crucial content.
I’m going to be using Sitecore’s Symposium landing page through each of these talking points to illustrate how to answer the questions above.
We’ll cover the “how do I do this” aspect first, and at the end I’ll expand on a few core concepts and link to further resources.
Question 1: Does the domain in question rely on client-side JavaScript to load/change on-page content or links?
The first step to diagnosing any issues involving JavaScript is to check if the domain uses it to load in crucial content that could impact SEO (on-page content or links). Ideally this will happen anytime you get a new client (during the initial technical audit), or whenever your client redesigns/launches new features of the site.
How do we go about doing this?
Ask the client
Ask, and you shall receive! Seriously though, one of the quickest/easiest things you can do as a consultant is contact your POC (or developers on the account) and ask them. After all, these are the people who work on the website day-in and day-out!
“Hi [client], we’re currently doing a technical sweep on the site. One thing we check is if any crucial content (links, on-page content) gets loaded in via JavaScript. We will do some manual testing, but an easy way to confirm this is to ask! Could you (or the team) answer the following, please?
1. Are we using client-side JavaScript to load in important content?
2. If yes, can we get a bulleted list of where/what content is loaded in via JavaScript?”
Check manually
Even on a large e-commerce website with millions of pages, there are usually only a handful of important page templates. In my experience, it should only take an hour max to check manually. I use the Chrome Web Developers plugin, disable JavaScript from there, and manually check the important templates of the site (homepage, category page, product page, blog post, etc.)
In the example above, once we turn off JavaScript and reload the page, we can see that we are looking at a blank page.
As you make progress, jot down notes about content that isn’t being loaded in, is being loaded in wrong, or any internal linking that isn’t working properly.
At the end of this step we should know if the domain in question relies on JavaScript to load/change on-page content or links. If the answer is yes, we should also know where this happens (homepage, category pages, specific modules, etc.)
You could also crawl the site (with a tool like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb) with JavaScript rendering turned off, and then run the same crawl with JavaScript turned on, and compare the differences with internal links and on-page elements.
For example, it could be that when you crawl the site with JavaScript rendering turned off, the title tags don’t appear. In my mind this would trigger an action to crawl the site with JavaScript rendering turned on to see if the title tags do appear (as well as checking manually).
For our example, I went ahead and did a manual check. As we can see from the screenshot below, when we disable JavaScript, the content does not load.
In other words, the answer to our first question for this pages is “yes, JavaScript is being used to load in crucial parts of the…
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