How to Diagnose and Solve JavaScript SEO Issues in 6 Steps

• Updated on: 2019-04-08
• Read original article here

It’s rather common for companies to build their websites using modern JavaScript frameworks and libraries like React, Angular, or Vue. It’s obvious by now that the web has moved away from plain HTML and has entered the era of JS.

While there is nothing unusual with a business willing to take advantage of the latest technologies, we need to address the stark reality of this trend: Most of the migrations to JavaScript frameworks aren’t being planned with users or organic traffic in mind.

Since there's no turning back, SEOs need to learn how to deal with JavaScript websites.

But that’s easier said than done because making JavaScript websites successful in search engines is a real challenge both for developers and SEOs.

This article is meant to be a follow-up to my comprehensive Ultimate Guide to JavaScript SEO, and it’s intended to be as easy to follow as possible. So, grab yourself a cup of coffee and let’s have some fun — here are six steps to help you diagnose and solve JavaScript SEO issues.

The URL inspection tool (formerly Google Fetch and Render) is a great free tool that allows you to check if Google can properly render your pages.

The URL inspection tool requires you to have your website connected to Google Search Console. If you don’t have an account yet, check Google’s Help pages.

Open Google Search Console, then click on the URL inspection button.

In the URL form field, type the full URL of a page you want to audit.

Once the test is done, click on VIEW TESTED PAGE.

And finally, click on the Screenshot tab to view the rendered page.

Scroll down the screenshot to make sure your web page is rendered properly. Ask yourself the following questions:

Why does the screenshot look different than what I see in my browser? Here are some possible reasons:

If Google cannot render your page properly, you should make sure you didn’t block important JavaScript files for Googlebot in robots.txt

It’s a plain text file that instructs Googlebot or any other search engine bot if they are allowed to request a page/resource.

Fortunately, the URL Inspection tool points out all the resources of a rendered page that are blocked by robots.txt.

But how can you tell if a blocked resource is important from the rendering point of view?

You have two options: Basic and Advanced.

In most cases, it may be a good idea to simply ask your developers about it. They created your website, so they should know it well.

Obviously, if the name of a script is called content.js or productListing.js, it’s probably relevant and shouldn’t be blocked.

Unfortunately, as for now, URL Inspection doesn't inform you about the severity of a blocked JS file. The previous Google Fetch and Render had such an option:

Now, we can use Chrome Developer Tools for that.

For educational purposes, we will be checking the following URL: http://botbenchmarking.com/youshallnotpass.html

Open the page in the most recent version of Chrome and go to Chrome Developers Tools. Then move to the Network tab and refresh the page.

Finally, select the desired resource (in our case it’s YouShallNotPass.js), right-click, and choose Block request URL.

Refresh the page and see if any important content disappeared. If so, then you should think about deleting the corresponding rule from your robots.txt file.

If you see Google Fetch and Render isn’t rendering your page properly, it may be due to the JavaScript errors that occurred while rendering.

To diagnose it, in the URL Inspection tool click on the More info tab.

Then, show these errors to your developers to let them fix it.

Just ONE error in the JavaScript code can stop rendering for Google, which in turn makes your website not indexable.

Your website may work fine in most recent browsers, but if it crashes in older browsers (Google Web Rendering Service is based on Chrome 41), your Google rankings may drop.

If you want to know why it happened, read my Ultimate Guide to JavaScript SEO.

Side note: If for some reason you don’t want to use the URL Inspection tool for debugging JavaScript errors, you can use Chrome 41 instead.

Personally, I prefer using Chrome 41 for debugging purposes, because it’s more universal and offers more flexibility. However, the URL Inspection tool is more accurate in simulating the Google Web Rendering Service, which is why I recommend that for people who are new to JavaScript SEO.

It’s not enough to just see if Google can render your website properly. You have to make sure Google has properly indexed your content. The best option for this is to use the site: command.

It’s a very simple and very powerful tool. Its syntax is pretty straightforward: site:[URL of a website] “[fragment to be searched]”. Just take caution that you didn’t put the space between site: and the URL.

Let’s assume you want to check if Google indexed the following text “Develop across all platforms” which is featured on the homepage of Angular.io.

Type the following command in Google: site:angular.io "DEVELOP ACROSS ALL PLATFORMS"

As you can see, Google indexed that content, which is what you want, but that’s not always the case.

If you’re fine, go to the next step. If that’s not the case, there may be a couple of reasons why this is happening:

There are a few simple rules you should follow:

As simple as that is, plenty of big companies make these mistakes.

Googlebot, in order to crawl a website, needs to have traditional “href” links. If it’s not provided, many of your webpages will simply be unreachable for Googlebot!

I think it was explained well by Tom Greenway (a Google representative) during the Google I/O conference:

Please note: if you have proper links, with some additional parameters, like onClick, data-url, ng-href, that’s still fine for Google.

A common mistake made by developers: Googlebot can’t access the second and subsequent pages of pagination

Not letting Googlebot discover pages from the second page of pagination and beyond is a common mistake that developers make.

When you open the mobile versions for Gearbest, Aliexpress and IKEA, you will quickly notice that, in fact, they don’t let Googlebot see the pagination links, which is really weird. When Google enables mobile-first indexing for these websites, these websites will suffer.

If you haven’t already downloaded Chrome 41, get it from Ele.ph/chrome41.

Then navigate to any page. For the sake of the tutorial, I’m using the mobile version of AliExpress.com. For educational purposes, it’s good if you follow the same example.

Open the mobile version of the Mobile Phones category of Aliexpress.

Then, right-click on View More and select the inspect button to see how it’s implemented.

As you can see, there are no , nor links pointing to the second page of pagination.

There are over 2,000 products in the mobile phone category on Aliexpress.com. Since mobile Googlebot is able to access only 20 of them, that’s just 1 percent!

That means 99 percent of the products from that category are invisible for mobile Googlebot! That’s crazy!

These errors are caused by the wrong implementation of lazy loading. There are many other websites that make similar mistakes. You can read more in my article “Popular Websites that May Fail in Mobile First Indexing”.

Note: it’s common to use “link rel=”next’ to indicate pagination series. However, the discoveries from Kyle Blanchette seem to show that “link rel=”next” alone is too weak a signal for Google and should be strengthened by the traditional links.

“We can understand which pages belong together with rel next, rel=”previous”, but if there are no links on the page at all, then it’s really hard for us to crawl from page to page. (...) So using the rel=”next” rel=”previous” in the head of a page is a great idea to tell us how these pages are connected, but you really need to have on-page, normal HTML links.

Don't get me wrong — there is nothing wrong with using

. On the contrary, they are beneficial, but it’s good to combine these tags with traditional links. Checking if Google can see menu links Another important step in auditing a JavaScript website is to make sure Google can see your menu links. To check this, use Chrome 41. For the purpose of the tutorial, we will use the case of Target.com: To start, open any browser and pick some links from the menu: Next, open Chrome 41. In the Chrome Developer Tools (click Ctrl + Shift + J),  navigate to the elements tab. The results? Fortunately enough, Google can pick up the menu links of Target.com. Now, check if Google can pick up the menu links on your website and see if you’re on target too. Step 6: Checking if Google can discover content hidden under tabs I have often observed that in the case of many e-commerce stores, Google cannot discover and index their content that is hidden under tabs (product descriptions, opinions, related products, etc). I know it’s weird, but it’s so common. It’s a crucial part of every SEO audit to make sure Google can see content hidden under tabs. Open Chrome 41 and navigate to any product on Boohoo.com; for instance, Muscle Fit Vest. Click on Details & Care to see the product description: Now, it’s time to check if it’s in the DOM. To do so, go to Chrome Developers Tools (Ctrl + Shift + J) and click on the Network tab. Make sure the disable cache option is enabled. Click F5 to refresh the page. Once refreshed, navigate to the Elements tab and search for a product description: ">

As you can see, in the case of boohoo.com, Google is able to see the product description.

Perfect! Now take the time and check if your website is fine.

Obviously, JavaScript SEO is a pretty complex subject, but I hope this tutorial was helpful.

If you are still struggling with Google ranking, you might want to think about implementing dynamic rendering or hybrid rendering. And, of course, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter about this or other SEO needs.