The main navigation is using JS, will this have a negative impact on SEO?
-
Hi mozzers,
We just redesigned our homepage and discovered that our main nav is using JS and when disabling JS, no main nav links was showing up. Is this still considered bad practice for SEO? https://cl.ly/14ccf2509478
thanks
-
Thanks Jose!
-
Googlebot does not render JavaScript
We hear very often about JavaScript rendering is the assumption that the crawler is responsible for the rendering. But that's not the case. The rendering is done by the indexer (from Google Caffeine).More specifically, the Web Rendering Service (WRS), which is part of Google Caffeine. And this is exactly where the second great difficulty lies in the area of JavaScript SEO.
Gary Illyes says: "Also, to clarify, WRS is a subsystem of Caffeine, just like the PageRanker (cos yes, we still use it) or the canonicalization algorithm."
The process flow between the crawler and the indexer:
HTML files are downloaded.
CSS and JavaScript data will be downloaded in parallel.
WRS (Web Rendering Service) (part of Google Caffeine) is used to run JS.
WRS renders all files.
Now Google Caffeine can index the content if necessary.
And that's when Googlebot can crawl new links.
Why is that a problem? For the crawler to be able to enter the content and follow the links, it must first pass the data to the indexer. The indexer renders the content and returns it to the crawlers. Only now can the crawler see the content and follow the links. On the next page, the game starts again. Page by page. (many processes)Unlike conventional pages, where the crawler crawls numerous pages and, after crawling, passes everything collectively to the indexer. (few processes)
This process presents another challenge to search engines.
Regards
-
The only bad SEO Practice regarding JS that I've of is trying to hide the JS files from Search Engines, apparently, Google needs to render a whole page as it indexing it; so blocking any JS (& CSS for that matter) isn't a good thing.
-
Hi There,
JS rendered UI isn't negative, it is however not a good practice also.
You can find complete information to the concept of JS rendered pages and UI on this link, https://www.portent.com/blog/seo/javascript-bad-for-seo.htm .
I hope this helps.
Regards,
Vijay
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
-
How to handle images (lazy loading, compressing, caching...) to impact page load and thus SEO?
Hi all, I am looking for a conclusive answer on how to handle images on Wordpress websites. Most of the time we encounter the same problems regarding images. There are several options to make sure that images don't increase page load too much: Page caching and compressing: standard Lazy loading: helps decrease page load time, but Google might not crawl the images so not good for SEO. See this article on Googlebot scrolling. Correct image format (for example WebP): tried it several times and doesn't help much to decrease page load time. What is best practice? Are there standards or preferred options for the image dimensions and quality (max height, width, number of pixels, rectangular or square) before you upload it, also regarding responsiveness? Is it better to use .jpg, .png or WebP? To sum up, what should you do by default to handle images on websites so you can still have a good page speed even with loads of images? Thanks for your answers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C0 -
How long will old pages stay in Google's cache index. We have a new site that is two months old but we are seeing old pages even though we used 301 redirects.
Two months ago we launched a new website (same domain) and implemented 301 re-directs for all of the pages. Two months later we are still seeing old pages in Google's cache index. So how long should I tell the client this should take for them all to be removed in search?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Liamis0 -
May integrating my main category page in the index page improve my ranking of main category keyword?
90% of our sales are made with products in one of our product categories.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
A search for main category keyword returns our root domain index page in google, not the category page.
I was wondering whether integrating the complete main category directly in the index page of the root domain and this way including much more relevant content for this main category keyword may have a positive impact on our google ranking for the main category keyword. Any thoughts?1 -
Why does some sites rank with no seo
Why is it that some site rank with zero efforts? I have been working on some seo for a while on my main site and i have been getting more info competition analysis with sem and moz. Looking at the states from this website which tends to popup often in the searches on page 1-2 before my site. This site is not keyword optimized, meaning they arent even trying to rank.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CooperStrzelecki
There is no content, articles etc.,
6 backlinks (nothing powerful just 2 directory links and 2 from developer)
Site really isnt even designed to get traffic as its a trade only ecommerce website
I doubt they are hiding anything as far as backlinks etc. as it will get them too many visitors they dont want
The city i am searching isnt even on the page (it is a city within a city so maybe google still relates it)
PA 24 DA 15 Now my site:
Optimized reasearched keywords
175 backlinks
All my main pages have content with images, alt tags, internal linking
full of content, blogs, videos, products (probably 4000, could a site being too big be an issue?)
Site gets regular updates
I probably have 200 citations
All the social media which gets done often
PA 32 DA 20 They do get a good bit of traffic but that is probably the only thing i would see but it would be direct traffic mostly i believe as it would be people going to order regularly since it is a print reseller. They may have some age on me 15 vs 8 years. Could it be some kind of penalty i am not sure about lingering? According to what i know to check everyything looks ok, no shady links accoding to sem. I am working more and more on all the pages but this competittion site really doesnt have crap going on probably 8 pages and 1 page does all the ordering. What the hell does google want from me exactly!0 -
SEO vs 301
I have a website about "Download of games" and im planning open one about "games online" i know that "games online" its super hard to get good ranks, soo im thinking and do a 301 from my website of "download games" to my new website, do you think that is a good strategy ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nafera21 -
What would be the SEO benefits of using Lulu ? (ebook)
Hi there, how are you guys doing? We wrote an ebook to promote our new website and I was investigating the idea of putting it on Lulu. Did anyone ever use Lulu? If so, do you have any feedback please? I got a free ISBN number on Lulu and it looks like I may be able to distribute it on Amazaon. Also, I'm giving out the ebook for free. Thanks guys! I hope you're having a great day
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ericc220 -
We are changing ?page= dynamic url's to /page/ static urls. Will this hurt the progress we have made with the pages using dynamic addresses?
Question about changing url from dynamic to static to improve SEO but concern about hurting progress made so far.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | h3counsel0 -
SEO question
Hi i changed my page titles for a competitive keyword last week and noticed it has dropped 9 search engine ranking positions. Was ranking 37 and now it 46. Would you guys leave it and see if it starts creeping back up or change again? the page title i used was across my pages for example was Primary keyword | secondary keyword | Heading on page thanks for you help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wazza19850