JavaScript Dynamic Rendering — An Ultimate Solution for SEO Issues — ZealousWeb

JavaScript is a widely-used, object-oriented programming language formerly created to build interactive web-pages. Originally designed to run in browsers that could execute JavaScript code, it could not function out of the bounds of a browser. After the introduction of a C++ program called Node, JavaScript was allowed to run outside of a browser bypassing the code into Node; this allowed developers to use this multi-purpose language for creating Mobile/Web Applications, Real-Time Networking Applications, Command Line Tools, and Games.

Sometimes, it may seem like a redundant effort to re-write the same code for a different task. JavaScript frameworks provide developers with pre-written JS code for routine programming features. Popular frameworks like AngularJS, React, VUE, etc.have gained popularity by establishing their importance within the JS community.

For all the epicures out there — Isn’t it always better to create something within the proportional measures mentioned in the recipe as opposed to being a nonconformist?

One can always choose to begin from scratch and do things their way, but here are a few benefits of using JS Framework that may change your perspective;

1) Efficiency and Speed:

JavaScript Framework consists of pre-written codes that reflect a function without having to type the entire code a thousand times over, which increases the productivity of a developer.

2) Same Language Platform for Teams:

Using a JavaScript framework generates a common understanding between both frontend and backend developers. Everyone speaks a common language.

3) Cost:

Since most JS frameworks are open source and free to use websites and applications built using this framework are very cost-effective.

4) Security:

Security is very important in the digital world. All major JS frameworks are developed considering security in mind. They provide the highest level of security. Also, there is a huge pool of developers who helps to find and debug issues.

These may not be the ultimate advantages of using JavaScript as a programming language, but these might be enough to consider the shift.

JavaScript and SEO — The perfect match?

Another myth revolving around JavaScript Dynamic Rendering — An Ultimate Solution for SEO Issues is its aversion towards Search Engine Optimization. JavaScript Dynamic Rendering — An Ultimate Solution for SEO Issues could only perform functions in a particular browser before it could be embedded into host software. Once it began performing server-side functions in web servers and databases, things turned around in the realm of JavaScript and SEO.

Before we establish a relationship between the two, let’s look at the three important concepts of SEO:

a) Crawling:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process of targeting keywords to increase traffic on your website. Whenever you search for something on any search engine, there are a million pages that are indexed to match your search feed. These pages are indexed by the method of crawling; it fetches pages related to your search, operating on the keywords, then follows the links on those pages to find more pages. The process of crawling uses software programs such as spiders (a.k.a web crawlers) to find multiple webpages.

b) Indexing:

While spiders try to create a database of pages found through the keywords, they club it all together creating an index out of it. An index is a collection of data as a result of crawling and that enables search engines to rank each webpage, based on the keywords they satisfy in SERPs.

c) Ranking:

After the web pages are indexed, there ranking in SERPs depends on search engine Algorithm and User query. Each webpage is potent enough to be indexed via crawlers, but their ranking depends on their ability to provide meaningful content by matching the search query in SERPs.

Above are the three essential stages for webpages to increase their visibility. We’ll now look at prominent JavaScript rendering stages :

1) Server-Side Rendering:

Server-Side Rendering is the ability of a JavaScript application to render on the server rather than in the browser. By doing so, it enables a website to have less load time that allows search engines to index your page quickly in comparison to million others.

But along with its quick loading time, there are a few drawbacks

• A system with limited internet
• If a server receives too many requests, the loading time increases due to processing difficulty, which will cause issues in UX.
• Requesting far away from the server

2) Client-Side Rendering:

Unlike SSR, Client-side rendering enables a developer to render the website on the browser instead of the server. CSR doesn’t fetch the HTML document, but it fetches the skeletal of the HTML and renders it in a JavaScript file directly into the browser.

There are a few drawbacks of rendering a webpage directly on the browser:

• Everything has to be processed at the client’s end, which takes more time at the user end to load the page.
• Crawler put pages to be rendered in the queue and process them with time, which causes a delay in indexing by Search Engines.

3) Dynamic Rendering — A Saviour

Dynamic rendering is a process of switching between client-side rendered and pre-rendered content based on the detected user agent. If the content is rendered on Client-side, then it is directly sent to the user, and if the content is rendered on the Server-side, then is it sent to the Search engines or crawlers to be indexed. Dynamic Rendering is recommended for websites whose content changes frequently and use JavaScript features. Dynamic Rendering requires the server to detect the User-Agent and server them content based on this

Some of the common Pre-Renderers used are:

• Puppeteer — A renderer from Google. It can help to generate screenshots and PDFs of web pages, create pre-rendered content to deliver, and the best part is, it’s free.
• Rendertron — A Renderer available on Github, it is designed to render web pages that Googlebot can’t execute.
• Prerender.io — This is a paid solution and will cost money if you are planning to render bulk pages.

Dynamic Rendering solves the SEO problems and gets pages crawled and indexed by the search engines. The following are a few factors that one needs to check to make sure that it’s working in the right direction.

1) Use Caching for Faster Server Response

Caching can be used to speed up the response time and reduce the load on your server.

2) Avoid Accidental Cloaking

Googlebot doesn’t consider dynamic rendering as clocking. But there may be a case, where implementation might go wrong, which results in cloaking.
Let’s take an example to understand this:

If you are serving different versions to Search bots and browsers, you need to make sure that there is a minimum difference in both the versions. If you are serving keyword and text reach version to search bots and something else to the browser, that will not work in your favor. It will be considered as cloaking.

3) User-agents

Ensure that device-specific versions for both search engine bots and browsers get the same type of content.

4) Monitor Logs

Ensure that hits to the pre-render snapshot/cache are monitored regularly, so if something goes wrong, we can fix it immediately. There are cases where there are no changes for users but there has been an impact on Google’s indexing.

5) Perform SEO Auditing For Bots

SEO Expert needs to make sure that they audit the website for Search engine bots to check the dynamic rendered version of the page and can make a quick fix if any issue is found.

Conclusion

JavaScript frameworks make it easy to create outstanding, user-friendly web content but that content isn’t bot-friendly and is not recommended by SEO professionals. To make them bot friendly, one needs to implement dynamic rendering which can render JavaScript content and pass on to bots to get it crawled and indexed. It will help search engines to index the pages and reward those websites with more exposure in SERPs.

Though this implementation might seem simple at a glance, in real life, it’s a complex solution and requires an experienced and qualified development & SEO team to implement in the right way.

Originally published at https://www.zealousweb.com on December 19, 2019.