The crawling, indexing, and ranking of webpages that rely heavily on JavaScript is a hot topic in the SEO industry at the moment. There are lots of people performing tests and sharing their results, as well as opinion pieces and perspectives from outside of the SEO echo chamber. And of course we have official documentation from search engines themselves, with varying degrees of usefulness.
Because there is no one single resource to send people to when they want to learn about JavaScript and SEO, I created this list of articles and resources which will be continuously updated when new content is published. If you know of a resource that should be on this list, please use the form at the bottom to submit it.
Official Google Resources:
- Understand the JavaScript SEO basics – Google’s guide to JavaScript SEO
- Fix Search-related JavaScript problems – Troubleshooting your JavaScript issues
- Introduction to Indexing – How Google discovers and indexes content
- Learn how Google gets your site content – Support documentation on crawling & indexing
- Get started with Dynamic Rendering – A solution for client-side JS websites
- Headless Chrome – An answer to server-side rendering JavaScript sites
- Rendertron – A dockerised, headless Chrome rendering solution
- JavaScript Sites in Search Working Group – Google forum on JavaScript and Search
- Aug 2019: Googlebot evergreen rendering in our testing tools – Google Webmaster Blog
- May 2018: Deliver search-friendly JavaScript-powered websites – Google I/O [vid]
- Jan 2017: What Crawl Budget Means for Googlebot – Google Webmaster Blog
- Dec 2017: Rendering AJAX-crawling Pages – Google Webmaster Blog
- Oct 2015: Deprecating our AJAX crawling scheme – Google Webmaster Blog
Explainers, Guides, and How-To’s:
- Sept 2019: The Ultimate JavaScript SEO Glossary – Impression
- Mar 2019: Tips & Tools for Testing JavaScript Rendering – SearchEngineJournal
- Feb 2019: JavaScript Frameworks & SEO – A Guide For Stakeholders and Developers – Love2Dev
- Jan 2019: Understanding JavaScript Fundamentals – SearchEngineJournal
- Dec 2018: PWAs SEO, Developing Optimized PWAs and How to Validate them – Aleyda Solis
- Sep 2018: Mobile First, Chrome User Experience Report, and JavaScript – Elephate
- Jun 2018: The Minimum Viable Knowledge You Need to Work with JavaScript & SEO Today – Moz
- Jun 2018: Priorities for diagnosing JavaScript-powered websites – Search Engine Land
- Jun 2018: Indexable PWAs, Making Progressive Web Apps Perform for Users and Search Engines – Shopify
- Apr 2018: SEO for ReactJS Websites – PMG
- Feb 2018: The Ultimate Guide to JavaScript SEO – Elephate
- Feb 2018: How Does Google Handle Javascript When Crawling, Rendering & Indexing Pages – Hobo
- Jan 2018: Why View Source Still Matters and How to Quickly Compare it to a Rendered DOM – Polemic
- Dec 2017: What we’ve learnt so far about using JavaScript for SEO – theWebShed
- Nov 2017: How to Crawl JavaScript Websites – Sitebulb
- Oct 2017: Google Shares Details About the Technology Behind Googlebot – Moz
- Aug 2017: JavaScript & SEO, The Difference Between Crawling and Indexing – State of Digital
- Aug 2017: Beyond Google: Are Search Engines Ready for JavaScript Crawling & Indexing? – Moz
- Jun 2017: JavaScript & SEO, Making Your Bot Experience As Good As Your User Experience – Moz
- Jun 2017: AngularJS SEO, Make Your Angular Site Indexable – Geoff Kenyon
- May 2017: JavaScript and SEO, Best Practice Guide – Ryte
- May 2017: How to Implement SEO Changes Using Google Tag Manager – Moz
- Feb 2017: JavaScript SEO, Crawling, Indexierung & Auditing von JS-Webseiten – Kosch Klink Performance
- Jan 2017: Introduction to Crawling JavaScript – Screaming Frog
- Jan 2017: How to Combine JavaScript & SEO With Isomorphic JS – Search Engine Journal
- Nov 2016: Progressive Web App SEO – Builtvisible
- Oct 2016: Auditing JavaScript for SEO – Briggsby
- Oct 2016: Core Principles of SEO for JavaScript – Briggsby
- Aug 2016: JavaScript Framework SEO in AngularJS – Builtvisible
- Aug 2016: Angular JS and SEO – DeepCrawl
- Jun 2016: Using Google Tag Manager to Dynamically Generate JSON-LD Tags – Moz
- Jun 2015: Eliminate Duplicate Content in Faceted Navigation with Ajax/JSON/JQuery – Moz
JavaScript Tests and Case Studies:
- May 2018: Prerender.cloud: Server-side rendering API
- Mar 2018: The JavaScript Indexing Drag Race – StrategiQ
- Jan 2018: JavaScript vs Crawl Budget – Elephate
- Jan 2018: Hacking the Console Log To Spy on Googlebot – CodeSEO
- Jan 2018: Googlebot’s Javascript random() function is deterministic – Tom Anthony
- Dec 2017: Everything You Know About JavaScript Indexing is Wrong – Elephate
- Dec 2017: Some of the things you know about indexing might be wrong – Ohgm
- Dec 2017: More JavaScript SEO Experiments with Google Tag Manager – searchVIU
- Nov 2017: Serverless-SEO.com – Peter Driessen
- Nov 2017: Breaking the Head (Quietly) – Ohgm
- Aug 2017: SPA and SEO, Google properly renders Single Page Applications – Lucamug
- Aug 2017: Implement Hreflang with Google Tag Manager – searchVIU
- Jul 2017: Does Google Use pre or post-DOM HTML for Hreflang? – searchVIU
- Jul 2017: Pre-rendering SPA for SEO and improved perceived page speed – Gajus Kuizinas
- May 2017: Early Results from Split Testing JavaScript for SEO – Distilled
- May 2017: Can Google Crawl & Index JavaScript Frameworks? – Elephate
- May 2017: Evidence of the Surprising State of JavaScript Indexing – Moz
- May 2017: Optimizing AngularJS Single-Page Applications for Googlebot Crawlers – Moz
- May 2017: Long Term CSS JavaScript Hidden Text Experiment – Reboot
- Jan 2017: JavaScript & SEO Backfire, a Hulu.com Case Study – Elephate
- Oct 2016: SEO vs React, Web Crawlers Are Smarter Than You Think – Patrick Hund
- Aug 2016: SEO and JavaScript Redirects: Evidence they do pass PageRank – Branded3
- Mar 2016: SEO friendly React.js app architecture for multimedia content – Builtvisible
- Nov 2015: Can You Now Trust Google To Crawl Ajax Sites? – Search Engine Land
- Oct 2015: JSCrawlability.com – Growth Gauge
- May 2015: We Tested How Googlebot Crawls Javascript – Search Engine Land
Presentations and Videos:
- Jan 2019: Demystifying discoverable web apps – Google [vid]
- May 2018: Deliver search-friendly JavaScript-powered websites – Google [vid]
- May 2018: What SEOs need to know about JavaScript and PWA – Maria Cieślak [pres]
- Apr 2018: Demystifying JavaScript & SEO – Botify [pres]
- Feb 2018: Troubleshooting SEO for JavaScript Frameworks – Patrix Stox [pres]
- Feb 2018: The Rise of JavaScript and What it Means for SEO – Patrick Hathaway [pres]
- Dec 2017: SEO Best Practices for JavaScript Based Websites – Max Prin [vid]
- Dec 2017: Search and Javascript Sites – Google Developers India [vid]
- Dec 2017: Understanding the impact of JavaScript on SEO – Botify [pres]
- Nov 2017: JavaScript & SEO, The Real Problems – Barry Adams [pres]
- Oct 2017: JavaScript Indexing and SEO: The Naked Truth – Bartosz Góralewicz [pres]
- Sep 2016: SEO best practices and requirements for modern sites – John Mueller [vid]
- Apr 2016: How afraid should SEOs be of JavaScript? – Colin Woon [aud]
- Oct 2015: SEO and JavaScript, New Challenges – Eric Wu [vid]
Suggest a Resource
If you want to have a piece of content added to this list, please submit it through the form below: