Do you ever have to explain the importance of Domain Authority to clients or co-workers who have little or no SEO experience? If so, this week’s WBF host — Andy Crestodina — walks through how to get your message across successfully.
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Video Transcription
SEO is actually really hard to explain. There are so many concepts. But it's also really important to explain so that we can show value to our clients and to our employers.
My name is Andy Crestodina. I'm the co-founder of Orbit Media Studios. We're a web design company here in Chicago. I've been doing SEO for 20 years and explaining it for about as long. This video is my best attempt to help you explain a really important concept in SEO, which is Domain Authority, to someone who doesn't know anything at all about SEO, to someone who is non-technical, to someone who is maybe not even a marketer.
Here is one framework, one set of language and words that you can use to try to explain Domain Authority to people who maybe need to understand it but don't have a background in this stuff whatsoever.
Search ranking factors
Okay. Here we go. Someone searches. They type something into a search engine. They see search results.
Why do they see these search results instead of something else? The reason is: search ranking factors determined that these were going to be the top search results for that query or that keyword or that search phrase.
Relevance
There are two main search ranking factors, in the end two reasons why any web page ranks or doesn't rank for any phrase. Those two main factors are, first of all, the page itself, the words, the content, the keywords, the relevance.
SEOs, we call this relevance. So that's the most important. That's one of the key search ranking factors is relevance, content and keywords and stuff on pages. I think everyone kind of gets that. But there's a second, super important search ranking factor. It's something that Google innovated and is now a really, really important thing across the web and all search.
Links
It's links. Do these pages have links to them? Are they trusted by other websites? Have other websites kind of voted for them based on their content? Have they referred back to it, cited it? Have they linked to these pages and these websites? That is called authority.
So the two main search ranking factors are relevance and authority. Therefore, the two main types of SEO are on-page SEO, creating content, and off-site SEO, PR, link building, and authority. Because links basically are trust. Web page, links to web page, that's kind of like a vote.
That's a vote of confidence. That's saying that this web page is probably credible, probably important. So links are credibility. Good way to think about it. Quantity matters. If a lot of pages link to your page, that adds credibility. That's important that there's a number of sites that link to you.
Link quality
Also important is the quality of those links. Links from sites that they themselves have many links to them are worth much more. So links from authoritative websites are more valuable than just any other link. It's the quantity and the quality of links to your website or links to your page that has a lot to do with whether or not you rank when people search for a related key phrase.
If a page doesn't rank, it's got one of two problems almost always. It's either not a great page on the topic, or it's not a page on a site that is trusted by the search engine because it hasn't built up enough authority from other sites, related sites, media sites, other sites in the industry. The name for this stuff originally in Google was called PageRank.
PageRank
Capital P, capital R, one word, PageRank. Not web page, not search results page, but named after Larry Page, the guy who kind of came up with this, one of the co-founders at Google. PageRank was the number, 1 through 10, that we all used to kind of know. It was visible in this toolbar that we used back in the day.
They stopped reporting on that. They don't update that anymore. We don't really know our PageRank anymore, so you can't really tell. So the way that we now understand whether a page is credible among other websites is by using tools that emulate PageRank by similarly crawling the internet, looking to see who's linking to who and then creating their own metrics, which are basically proxy metrics for PageRank.
Domain Authority
Moz has one. It's called Domain Authority. When spelled with the capital D and captial A, that's the Moz metric. Other search tools, other SEO tools also have their own, such as SEMrush has one called Authority Score. Ahrefs has one called Domain Rating. Alexa, another popular tool, has one called Competitive Power. They're all basically the same thing. They are showing whether or not a site or a page is trusted among other websites because of links to them.
Now we know for a fact that some links are worth much, much more than others. We can do this by reading Google patents or by experiments or just best practices and expertise and firsthand knowledge that some links are worth much more.
But it's not just that they're worth a little more. Links from sites with lots of authority are worth exponentially more. It's not really a fair fight. Some sites have tons and tons and tons of authority. Most sites have very, very little. So it's on a curve. It's a log scale.
It's on an exponential curve the amount of authority that a site has and its ranking potential. The value of a link from another site to you is on an exponential curve. Links from some sites are worth exponentially more than links from other smaller sites, smaller blogs. These are quantifiable within these tools, tools like Moz, tools that emulate the PageRank metric.
And what they can do is look at all of the pages that rank for a phrase, look at all of the authority of all of those sites and all of those pages, and then average them to show the likely difficulty of ranking for that key phrase. The difficulty would be more or less the average authority of the other pages that rank compared to the authority of your page and then determine whether that's a page that you actually have a chance of ranking for or not.
This could be called something like keyword difficulty. I searched for "baseball coaching" using a tool. I used Moz, and I found that the difficulty for that key phrase was something like 46 out of 100. In other words, your page has to have about that much authority to have a chance of ranking for that phrase. There's a subtle difference between Page Authority and Domain Authority, but we're going to set that aside for now.
"Squash coaching," wow, different sport, less popular sport, less content, less competitive phrases ranking for that key phrase. Wow, "squash coaching" much less competitive. The difficulty for that was only 18. So that helps us understand the level of authority that we would have to have to have a chance of ranking for that key phrase. If we lack sufficient authority, it doesn't matter how awesome our page is, we're not likely to ever rank.
So it's really important to understand one of the things that Domain Authority tells us is our ranking potential. Are we sufficiently trusted to be able to target that key phrase and potentially rank for that? That's the first thing that the Domain Authority defines, measures, shows. The second thing that it shows, which I mentioned a second ago, is the value of a link from another site to us.
So if a super authoritative website links to us, high Domain Authority site, that Domain Authority in that case of that site is showing us the value of that link to us. A link from a site, a brand-new blog, a young site, a smaller brand would have a lower Domain Authority, indicating that that link would have far less value.
Conclusion
So bottom line, Domain Authority is a proxy for a metric inside Google, which we no longer have access to. It's created by an SEO tool, in this case Moz. When spelled with a capital D, capital A, it's Moz's own metric. It shows us two things. Domain Authority is the ranking potential of pages on that domain. And secondly, Domain Authority measures the value of another site should that site link back to your site. That's it.
Hope this was helpful. Feel free to pass this along to anyone that you're trying to explain this to. Add to it. Let us know in the comments. Hope this was useful, and it was a huge pleasure and honor to be able to make a Whiteboard Friday for Moz. Again, Andy from Orbit Media. Thanks, everybody.
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This guide is a labor of love that Moz has worked on through the toughest year in local SEO, with hopes of a stronger 2021 for local brands. It’s free, it’s jam-packed with over eight chapters of actionable local search marketing strategies for your agency or local business, it's…
Moz is publishing this free guide to support digital marketing agencies and local business owners who want to gain an excellent understanding of topics and tactics within local search marketing.
This multi-chapter guide covers:
Understanding Google’s local SERPs
Assessing demand and analyzing local markets
Analyzing on-page SEO and local business listings
Analyzing and developing a reputation and reviews strategy
Analyzing local business content and creating a publishing strategy
Crafting a robust local marketing strategy
Local search automation, analytics, and reporting
It also includes a special chapter on local SEO in the time of COVID-19 and a handy local search glossary.
Who will get value from this guide?
Any reader who has a beginning-to-intermediate acquaintance with local SEO should find next-level education in this guide to improve their skill set. Experts will find useful and practical perspectives to help them communicate with teams, stakeholders, and clients, thus improving the chances of buy-in for projects.
If you’re responsible for marketing any aspect of a local business, The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide contains workflows you can implement today to achieve local brand and agency goals.
Share this guide with:
Single and multi-location local businesses.
Brick-and-mortar models, service-area businesses, and hybrids.
All relevant staff at your local brand, from in-house marketers to key customer service personnel, from bloggers, to webmasters, to social media managers.
Incoming staff at your digital marketing agency who need training in local SEO to become a greater asset to your company.
Any member of your team tasked with the many facets of marketing local businesses.
Friends, family and colleagues who own a local business and could use a great playbook for a better 2021.
What makes this guide different?
This highly detailed and illustrated guide is special, in that it teaches not just the “how” of local SEO, but the “why”.
Expert explanations will help you see the big picture of local SEO as a sensible whole, rather than just random tactics in no particular order. We’re not aware of another free guide on the market that delves more deeply into the mindset of serving local communities with the objective of turning a local business into a local household name.
This robust guide will help you put the three pillars of local search — proximity, prominence, and relevance — to work for the brands you’re marketing, and build the visibility and reputation essential to success.
Moz knows local businesses are the backbone of the economy, and we want to do everything we can to support sustainable, diverse, thriving towns and cities through the presence of strong local brands. We hope you’ll take this guide as our gift to help build a better future for the local businesses you’re marketing. Unwrap it today!
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Monthly SEO reports are a vital part of any SEO strategy because they provide an outlet to educate customers, show ROI, and guide the conversion for upsells.
While SEO reports are crucial in many ways, they are usually reduced to boilerplate PDF templates sent to clients each month with a generic message. If this describes your SEO reporting approach, you’re missing out on vital opportunities to retain clients and upsell with carefully crafted storytelling strategies.
SEO reporting has always been an important part of my deliverables. Whether I'm working with clients through my agency, StrategyBeam, or when I worked in a corporate team, I found that good reporting made a big difference with trust building and overall strategy. Regardless of who you're working with — national brands or local businesses — I’ve found that solid SEO reporting helps ground the client relationship. Over the past eight years, I've been able to grow StrategyBeam to a mid-six-figure agency. Customer service and results have always been our bread and butter, and SEO reports help us show how we stand out from the competition, and create long-term relationships with our clients.
Be sure to incorporate SEO reports into your regular cadence if you are struggling to keep a client, or you just want a way to engage with your clients in a deeper way. Now, more than ever we need to show clients the value we bring to the table.
So, let's take a look at the things all useful SEO reports should include, and how you can use storytelling tactics to build a relationship with your customers, prove your strategies' value, and uncover upsell opportunities today!
1. Organic impressions, clicks, and CTR
While SEO has a broad reach, you need to get the right message to the right people if you want them to click through to your content and convert.
This is why a good SEO report should include high-level metrics like organic impressions and clicks. While this information doesn’t provide much insight into on-page performance, it does offer a jumping-off point for you to talk to your customer about changes in market trends and user behavior.
I like to cover high-level data at the start of each reporting call to set the table for more detailed discussions with customers. I've used this data to recommend additional work for clients and use these metrics to show YoY improvement, and justify work during specific periods.
I present data from Google Search Console and Google Analytics to help my clients understand how we can influence their site's overall performance. Here are a few points that I touch on based on current click and impressions:
What it means: Impressions = how often content appears, clicks = how many times people click on SERPs.
Where to find it: Google Search Console
When to use it: Identify content and build approach. Build sprints to address problem areas. Pages that are performing between 3-12 should be optimized, and low CTR should improve meta, interlinking, and technical considerations.
How to optimize: High impressions + low clicks = update title and meta description. Low impressions = add FAQ schema.
Even though clicks and impressions don't convey too much information about a website's performance, you can use this part of your SEO report to ease into upsell opportunities and show your SEO chops when it comes to the broader scope of SEO marketing and how everything is interconnected.
2. Keyword ranking
Since SEO is all about getting specific pages to rank for target keywords, you need to include keyword performance and rankings in your SEO report. I love using keyword information to jumpstart a conversation with my clients around user intent and bringing SEO strategy back to their business goals.
I love using this time to show that I understand SEO is more than keywords and Google. At the end of the day, if my SEO strategy is not driving qualified traffic and boosting conversions, then my clients will find another agency.
Keywords are the basis of search engines, and I like to use keyword ranking data to tie in the "bigger picture", along with specific SEO tactics and push to secure more sales.
Here are a few talking points to consider with keyword performance in my monthly SEO reports and client check-ins:
Show snapshots of keyword tools like Moz Keyword Tool and Ahrefs to show patterns. Tie MoM changes into an SEO report template to show progress and boost each client call's energy.
Recommend content optimizations, outreach, and other SEO tactics to drive target keywords. Tie keyword ranking to your services, results, and your client's business goals.
Run a quick technical SEO audit and content audit to provide new opportunities for additional work. This is a great way to improve your client's site's performance while also increasing trust and monthly income.
Keyword rankings give a strong signal around user intent, market trends, and competitor strategies. You can use keyword rankings in your SEO reports to focus attention on success and move the conversation towards upselling opportunities to shift gears and align your SEO strategy with your clients' business goals.
3. Describe how people engage with your content
SEO strategies are typically described in abstract terms, so it's our job as SEO professionals to connect the dots for clients whenever possible between SEO metrics and their business goals.
You probably spend a lot of time talking about different SEO marketing angles, like the customer journey, website performance, and user intent. All of these factors influence how search engines rank content, and even more importantly, all of these factors influence conversion rates.
However, SEO is abstract and challenging for our clients to understand. That's why we need to include concrete terms, visuals, and explanations in our reports for ongoing education and trust-building measures.
For example, I manage SEO and content for a large player in the shipping industry. This industry is extremely niche, but each sale can lead to 8-figure deals for my client. I was able to illustrate to the client about how they could increase leads by expanding their existing content Hub/Spoke model and use their SEO reports to talk them through different aspects of their business like:
Categorize content on your site and assign specific metrics and goals for your clients.
Track content based on topics and what content moved people through the customer journey.
Use Content Drill Down in Google Analytics to show how readers move through the website. This information is valuable to highlight opportunities to optimize content.
Jumpstart a conversation around other SEO tactics like interlinking, blogging, and on-page optimizations.
Showing how people engage with my client’s website was a key part to increase education, and help visualize how your monthly SEO work impacts your client's website. If you can point out a bottleneck in the customer journey and offer CRO, interlinking, or on-page optimizations, then you are on your way to build client trust and slide into an upsell opportunity.
4. Google Analytics events
Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager can be used to show how your SEO and CRO strategies impact user behavior when they reach your website. You can educate your customers about on-page SEO by tracking clicks on specific CTAs throughout individual pages.
In recent months I've started working with several clients on CRO and content optimization projects. Not only are these great ways to help clients reach their goals, but they are also high-margin projects that can show immediate results.
One of the metrics I focus on when I review clients' results is how people engage with their CTAs. This means that I have to connect Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics to show that our optimizations push more website visitors to valuable pages like contact forms and sales pages.
For example, I recently ran a small test for a client to show them that with some on-page SEO tweaks we could improve CTR for various posts and pages. I identified a few pages that would show the best results, closed the project, and after a month of testing I was able to include CTA clicks on different pages that I optimized.
After a few months of on-page optimizations I can see a big improvement for CTR and lead generation on their site. Here is a quick screenshot of CTA clicks on the client’s site from the pages/posts I optimized:
This small test was a success and lead to ongoing monthly optimizations across their deep content library. As a result, I am able to show the impact our on-page optimizations make to their lead quality and bottomline.
This is a perfect example of how we can use reports to build rapport, show our knowledge, and test ideas with clients. Plus, it can all lead to beneficial upsells- but none of this is possible without a good looking and informative report to backup our claims.
While this is not a big part of my SEO reporting process, I try to include metrics around user behavior to explain how people engage with on-page content. This information can also help tie high-level SEO metrics to business goals, which are significant parts of the overall story I convey to my clients each month.
5. Add local SEO info
Local SEO is an essential part of an SEO strategy to drive qualified leads and sales for local business owners. You can save a lot of time by using a tool like Moz Local to keep NAP and listings consistent for your clients, and you can use excellent local SEO reporting tools to show the results of your local SEO tactics.
I have several clients that offer local SEO services. Not only do these services offer immediate value to these clients, but the local SEO services also provide me with a great way to pitch additional services like outreach, page optimizations, and blogging.
While local SEO is not a great fit for all of your clients, you can unwrap great opportunities if you offer honest solutions to address their needs and present precise data to show your efforts' value.
Be sure to include local SEO metrics in your SEO reports when it makes sense, and point out the metrics that matter to business owners like phone calls, foot traffic, and driving directions!
Use SEO analytics to tell a story and build customer trust!
Reports are not the main reason many SEOs started in this profession, but monthly SEO reports help us paint a picture of our clients' SEO efforts. You'll be able to show the value of your SEO services and keep clients longer if you know how to tell a story around each metric, and tie results back to your agency!
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A comprehensive audit of your B2B website can mean the difference between winning new clients and losing them to the competition. In this brand new episode of Whiteboard Friday, guest host Carly Schoonhoven walks you through four areas that can take your audits to the next level.
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Video Transcription
Hello and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Carly Schoonhoven, and I'm a Senior SEO Manager at Obility. We're a B2B digital marketing agency here in Portland, Oregon. Now if you work for an agency, you know that sometimes a really valuable SEO audit can be the difference between winning over a client and losing out to someone else.
So something I sometimes struggle with is how to level up your basic SEO audit into something that's really impactful for a B2B company that is in need of a long-term, strategic plan. Now when I'm talking about an SEO audit, I'm not just talking about a technical audit, something you can just pull from Screaming Frog.
It's really about getting a clear picture of a site's current SEO compliance and most importantly showing the ways, both in the short and long term, that you can work with them to help them achieve their goals. So today I'm going to walk you through my approach to SEO audits and walk you through step by step. Now before we get started pulling data, there are a couple of things I like to figure out first.
Competitors and goals
Number one is competitors. So SEO, it doesn't exist in a vacuum. If we want to improve our rankings, a competitor is likely going to have to lose rankings. So it's really important to get an idea of what competitors you're going to be looking at so you can see how you stack up in relation to them. Now, again, it's really important to make sure that your competitors are realistic.
I can't tell you how many times I've been given Google as a competitor. Now maybe they're a competitor for you, but it's really important to make sure that you're being realistic and finding competitors that are of a similar size so that the insights you're providing are actually going to be valuable and actionable. So if someone gives you Google as a competitor, think about it, maybe provide some alternatives.
Another thing I like to take a look at is goals. So if you're evaluating a company, ask them what their goals are. Maybe they just launched a new product and they really would like some specific insights as to how they can improve that content. Or maybe they're going through a site migration in a few months, and they really want some insights related to that.
So good audits are not one size fits all. So you can really level up your audit by making sure that it's tailored to the site and the company you're looking at specifically. So now that we've got our competitors, we've got our goals, let's get started by taking a look at keywords.
1. Keywords
Obviously, keywords are so important. It's where you need to start because keywords are the backbone of SEO. Now this is an audit. We're not doing a full keyword research strategy here. This shouldn't take you all day. But there are a couple of tools that you can use so that you can get some really interesting and helpful information about keywords without having to put in a whole bunch of time.
So Moz's Keyword Explorer is a really great place to start. I love to use the Compare Link Profiles tool, and this is a really good way to take a look at one site versus its competitors and see how it's doing from a really high level. It'll help you identify if there's someone who's really elite, who's ranking for 20 times more keywords than you, that's maybe not the most realistic competitor to monitor yourself against.
You can see if maybe there's a site that's really comparable. Or if there's a site that's not ranking for hardly any keywords, that's not going to be one you have to worry about. So it's a really good place to start just to get sort of an idea of the competitive landscape. Another really helpful thing to look at is the keyword overlap. So we've seen total keywords.
But what are those keywords specifically that are performing well? So my lovely drawing here of a keyword overlap chart gives you an idea. So let's say the blue is your top competitor, green is competitor two, and then the red is you. So you really want to take a look at that area where your competitors overlap but you don't have any keywords that are ranking.
This is so important, because maybe you'll identify a topic area where all of your competitors have content for, but the site you're looking at doesn't. This is a really good place to start and can help you provide some initial content suggestions and get sort of a window into your competitors' content strategies. So speaking of content, let's talk about looking at content for an SEO audit.
2. Content
So this is probably where I spend the most time personally when I do audits, because it's really valuable and there are also so many different things to look at and you can find something new pretty much every time. When you're looking at a B2B site in particular, however, one thing you want to make sure you're taking a look at is the funnel. Do they have content for all of the funnel stages, and are they funneling people from one stage to the next?
So take a look at their site like you're someone visiting it for the first time. Take a look at their awareness content and see: Are there mid-funnel CTAs? Are they making the next step they want me to take clear? Or what is that ultimate conversion that they want people to take in the purchase stage? Do they have a really clear contact form?
Is it easy to navigate to the demo, if that's a really important conversion to them? Take a look at their content and what they're doing, specifically making sure that they have content for the full funnel. This is another good opportunity to evaluate your competitors. So do the same thing on your competitors' sites. See if there's something they're doing really, really well, that the site you're looking at is not.
Take some screenshots. Share some specific things a competitor is doing that maybe you can learn from and find a way to do your own version of on your site.
3. Technical
All right. Another area to always make sure you include is technical, because we all know that even if you have the best, amazing content on your site, if your technical SEO is a mess, it's not really going to matter if you're not able to get that content indexed.
So a good place to start is to do Moz's On-Demand Crawl so you can take a look at things like 404 errors, duplicate content, maybe they have missing metadata on all of their really valuable top pages. That's good information to have and to share. Then you also want to expand that to look at things like site speed. Maybe they have really poor site speed, and it's nothing that they've ever prioritized.
Use Google's Page Speed Insights. See if there are some specific recommendations that you can give them and that you can help them fix, because ultimately it's about trying to get them to want to work with you and showing how you could help them fix those issues. You can also take a look at things that might be impacting indexation. Take a look at their robots.txt.
Take a look at their sitemap. Just check all the boxes and make sure that there's nothing that might be impacting their search appearance.
4. Off-site
Finally, I always like to take a look at off-site. This is another great use of Moz. I love to use Moz's Compare Link Profiles option to get an idea of how you stack up with your competitors when it comes to off-site.
Now I know that off-site is really difficult. Link building is hard, and it takes a long time to really show results. But knowing how you stack up against your competitors, when it comes to Domain Authority and it comes to total links, really helps you get an idea of how hard it's going to be and how long it's going to take to catch up with your competitors in the search engine results page.
So I always like to take a look at Domain Authority, external links, linking domains and really just finding insights as far as who's going to be the most difficult, who is the most authoritative, and where do we stand today. You can also take a look at specific backlink profiles and link overlap, very similar to the competitor overlap.
See if there's a site where all of your competitors have backlinks from and you don't. Maybe it's really relevant, an industry publication, and you can provide them that and you can help them eventually, hopefully, get a link from there too. All right. So we've taken a look at keywords, content, technical, and off-site. If you followed all the steps, you should have a really great audit with some super actionable, short-term and long-term action items to provide.
So I hope this was really helpful, and thank you for joining me.
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If there’s one thing that most marketers have in common, it’s that we want more leads.
Sure, not all leads are good. Some are even downright unqualified. But leads are what drive business, and as a result, many of us are held accountable for generating more of them.
Out of all of the lead generation strategies out there, there’s one that I find particularly effective: search engine optimization (SEO) and conversion rate optimization (CRO) working together.
While this may seem obvious, you’d be surprised how many marketing teams are really good at one or the other, but fail to find the balance between both.
Below, I’ll share why it’s critical to find alignment between SEO and CRO, and how to do it so that both of these functions work together to drive qualified leads for your business.
SEO and CRO: Why you can’t have one without the other
Being discoverable is more important than it’s ever been. If a prospective buyer can’t find your business online, there’s a good chance that you’re leading them right into the arms of your competitors.
By now, most businesses understand the importance of having a presence in organic search results. SEO is more than just a buzzword, it’s a given. And it’s critical to growing brand awareness and driving traffic to your website.
But there’s a catch.
Traffic doesn’t magically turn into paying customers and revenue. Ask yourself, when someone clicks on an organic result and lands on your website, what kind of browsing experience are they having? Is your site easy to navigate? Are your web pages optimized to guide the user towards an action?
Traffic without conversions is essentially just a vanity metric. CRO is the piece that ties it all together.
Put simply, conversion rate optimization is the process of optimizing a web page to lead a user toward a desired action. Typically, this action comes in the form of a conversion. This can be a demo request, email newsletter sign up, webinar registration — you get the gist.
The idea here is to entice the user to move further down the marketing funnel in some way.
SEO is what brings people to your website and CRO is what gets them to convert.
It sounds like a match made in marketing heaven, but achieving alignment is often easier said than done.
Start with a strong SEO foundation
I could write thousands of words on what it takes to build a strong SEO foundation for your website, but that’s not what this article is about. With that being said, a discussion about the relationship between SEO and CRO wouldn’t be complete without a mention of it.
Earlier, I said you can’t have SEO without CRO. But this goes both ways.
While it’s true that conversions are a meaningful standalone metric, you can’t have conversions without web visitors. Plus, experimentation and testing is a big part of what makes CRO so effective. It can be difficult to run tests if your website doesn’t get a healthy amount of traffic. More on this later.
A successful SEO strategy fuels the inbound marketing engine to bring new prospective buyers to your site on a regular basis. With SEO, your entire marketing team could be on PTO for a week and your website will still be generating traffic on its own.
If you’re still working to build a powerful SEO strategy, there are countless SEO resources that are available to you.
Be intentional about your content
Content and SEO go hand-in-hand.
When a buyer goes to a search engine, they want to find content that brings them an answer to their question.
As marketers, we want to create that content and match it to a buyer’s specific search query. We do this through extensive keyword research and on-page optimization to ensure that every piece of content that’s published has a likelihood to rank on page one.
Although this approach to content creation is effective at generating organic traffic, sometimes we forget to think about how a piece can drive impact beyond just ranking number one for a keyword.
CRO doesn’t just apply to landing pages or core solutions pages. There are elements of CRO that apply to your long-from content as well.
When strategizing topic ideas and doing keyword research, assign a goal to every piece of content that you publish. Ask yourself, “what action do I want the reader to take when they land on this page?”
Build this goal into your content calendar and incorporate it as a call-to-action (CTA) on each page that you publish.
As always, be mindful of the reader and their position in the funnel. Someone that lands on “The Beginner’s Guide to Marketing Automation” probably isn’t ready for a live demo just yet.
Instead, guide that reader toward a less intimidating action, such as signing up for your email newsletter. A good CTA shouldn’t feel spammy or overly promotional, it should provide additional value to the reader overall.
Following this process forces you to think beyond just traffic — you’re focusing on conversions before you even hit the “publish” button.
Test, optimize, and repeat
User experience (UX) is at the heart of both SEO and CRO.
If your website is slow, glitchy, and hard to navigate, it’s going to negatively affect both traffic and conversions. The goal is to continuously refine your website to ensure that anyone who lands on it has a frictionless browsing experience — thereby increasing their likelihood to convert.
Split testing, sometimes referred to as A/B testing, is the process of testing multiple variants of a web page to determine which one converts at a higher rate. This is a core practice among marketers who specialize in CRO. You can test different types of lead forms, CTA buttons, copy variants, and even page layouts.
Here’s an example of a split test between a single and multi-step lead form:
Some SEOs may be hesitant to run split tests because they worry it will negatively affect organic rankings. The truth is that Google not only encourages testing, but it even has its own tool that helps marketers to run split tests.
As long as you’re abiding by Google’s webmaster guidelines, you should see no major negative impact on organic traffic due to testing.
It’s also worth noting that you can’t reach statistical significance in your split tests without a big enough sample size. In other words, you need traffic to have accurate test results.
There’s no hard and fast rule for what counts as “enough traffic” but the general consensus is that your web visitors should be in the thousands, at least. I recommend using this sample size calculator tool to get a better idea of a number that’s unique to your website.
This is yet another example of how closely intertwined SEO and CRO truly are. Earlier we discussed how important it is to start with a solid foundation in SEO, now you know how it fits into the bigger picture.
The common thread here?
CRO and SEO have a symbiotic relationship. What’s good for one is good for the other. And both are working toward the same common goal of generating revenue.
Identify marketing funnel gaps
When looking at the big picture of your inbound marketing efforts, SEO and CRO can help you identify and fix any gaps in your funnel.
Let’s say you have a product page that ranks #1 for its primary keyword and generates lots of traffic. But, when you dig into the conversion data, you notice that only a small percentage of users that land on that page actually convert.
This is a red flag that something is off with the page.
It could be the messaging, the offer, or the lead form. Just because it works for Google doesn’t mean it’s working for your audience. And their opinion is the only one that matters.
This goes the other way around too.
Say you have a product page that’s converting at a high rate, but you notice that it’s one of the lowest-trafficked pages on your site. This should alert you to revisit the content on that page and identify opportunities to re-optimize it. If you don’t, there are likely hundreds of potential conversions that you’re missing out on.
Final thoughts
SEO and CRO is kind of like the digital marketing version of the chicken and the egg. You can’t be really good at one without the other.
Realistically, it doesn’t matter what came first. What does matter is achieving alignment between these two key marketing tactics. By doing so, your website has the potential to become a major driver of leads and revenue for your business.
If there’s one thing you take away from this article, it’s to integrate your SEO and CRO efforts and view them as one cohesive part of your lead generation strategy.
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As an SEO Manager, you’re responsible for growing your company’s organic search traffic. You’re working with your dev team on some technical improvements, but you notice a big slice of the opportunity lies with content. Your company has a content team, but you notice they’re not using keyword research to inform their articles. You’ve tried to send them keyword ideas, but so far, they haven’t been receptive to your suggestions.
Or how about this scenario?
You’re a marketing director at a startup. You know that you need content, but don’t have the expertise or time to do it yourself, so you ask your network for recommendations and find yourself a freelance writer. The only problem is, you’re not always sure what to assign them. With little instruction to work off of, they produce content that misses the mark.
The solution in both of these scenarios is a content brief. However, not all content briefs are created equal.
As someone who lives with one foot in content and the other in SEO, I can shed some light on how to make your content briefs both comprehensive and beloved by your content team.
Let’s start by agreeing on some terminology.
What’s a content brief?
A content brief is a set of instructions to guide a writer on how to draft a piece of content. That piece of content can be a blog post, a landing page, a white paper, or any number of other initiatives that require content.
Without a content brief, you risk getting back content that doesn’t meet your expectations. This will not only frustrate your writer, but it’ll also require more revisions, taking more of your time and money.
Typically, content briefs are written by someone in an adjacent field — like demand generation, product marketing, or SEO — when they need something specific. However, content teams usually don’t just work off of briefs. They’ll likely have their own calendar and initiatives they're driving (content is one of those weird roles that needs to support just about every other department while also creating and executing on their own work).
What makes a content brief “SEO-focused”?
An SEO-focused content brief is one among many types of content briefs. It’s unique in that the goal is to instruct the writer on creating content to target a specific search query for the purpose of earning traffic from the organic search channel.
What to include in your content brief
Now that we understand SEO-focused content briefs in theory, let’s get into the nitty gritty. What information should we include in them?
1. Primary query target and intent
It isn’t an SEO-focused content brief without a query target!
Using a keyword research tool like Moz Keyword Explorer, you can get thousands of keyword ideas that could be relevant to your business.
For example, in my current job, I’m focused on creating content for retail store owners and others in the brick and mortar retail industry. After listening to some sales and support calls on Gong (many teams use this to record customer and prospect calls), I might find out that “merchandising” is a big topic of focus.
So I type “merchandising” into Keyword Explorer, add a couple more helpful filters, and boom! Tons of keyword suggestions.
Pick a keyword (check your existing content to make sure your team hasn’t already written on the topic yet) and use that as the “north star” query for your content brief.
I think it’s also helpful to include some intent information here. In other words, what might the searcher who’s typing this query into Google want? It’s a good idea to search the query in Google yourself to see how Google is interpreting the intent.
For example, if my keyword is “types of visual merchandising,” I can see from the SERP that Google assumes an informational intent, based on the fact that the URLs ranking are largely informational articles.
2. Format
Dovetailing nicely off of intent is format. In other words, how should we structure the content to give it the best chance of ranking for our target query?
To use the same keyword example, if I Google “types of visual merchandising,” the top-ranking articles contain lists.
You might notice that your target query returns results with a lot of images (common with queries including “inspiration” or “examples”).
This better helps the writer understand what content format is likely to work best.
3. Topics to cover and related questions to answer
Picking the target query helps the writer understand the “big idea” of the piece, but stopping there means you risk writing something that doesn’t comprehensively answer the query intent.
That’s why I like to include a “topics to cover / related questions to answer” section in my briefs. This is where I list out all the subtopics I’ve found that someone searching that query would probably want to know.
To find these, I like to use methods like:
Using a keyword research tool to show you queries related to your main keyword that are questions.
Looking at the People Also Ask box, if one exists, on the SERP your target query triggers
Finding sites that rank in the top spots for your target query, running them through a keyword research tool, and seeing what other keywords they also rank for
And while this isn’t specifically search-related, sometimes I like to use a tool called FAQ Fox to scour forums for threads that mention my target query
You can also create the outline yourself using your research with all the H2s/H3s already written. While this can work well with freelance writers, I’ve found some writers (particularly in-house content marketers) feel this is too prescriptive. Every writer and content team is different, so all I can say is just use your best judgment.
4. Funnel stage
This is fairly similar to intent, but I think it’s helpful to include as a separate line item. To fill out this portion of the content brief, ask yourself: “Is someone searching this term just looking for information? Inspiration? Looking to evaluate their options? Or looking to buy something?”
And here’s how you can label your answer:
Top-of-funnel (TOFU or “problem aware”) is an appropriate label if the query intent is informational/educational/inspirational.
Middle-of-funnel (MOFU or “solution aware”) is an appropriate label if the query intent is to compare, evaluate options, or otherwise indicates that the searcher is already aware of your solution.
Bottom-of-funnel (BOFU or “solution ready”) is an appropriate label if the query intent is to make a purchase or otherwise convert.
5. Audience segment
Who are you writing this for?
It seems like such a basic question to answer, but in my experience, it’s easy to forget!
When it comes to SEO-focused content briefs, it’s easy to assume the answer to this question is “for whoever is searching this keyword!” but what that fails to answer is who those searchers are and how they fit into your company’s personas / ideal customer profile (ICP).
If you don’t know what those personas are, ask your marketing team! They should have target audience segments readily available to send you.
This will not only help your writers better understand what they should be writing, but it also helps align you with the rest of the marketing department and help them understand SEO’s connection to their goals (this is also a critical component of getting buy-in, which we’ll talk about a little later).
6. The goal action you want your readers to take
SEO is a means to an end. It’s not only enough to get your content ranking or even to get it earning clicks/traffic. For it to make an impact for your company, you’ll want it to contribute to your bottom line.
That’s why, when creating your content brief, you not only need to think about how readers will get to it, but what you want them to do after.
This is a great opportunity to work with your content marketing and larger marketing team to understand what actions they’re trying to drive visitors to take.
Here are some examples of call-to-actions (CTAs) you can include in your briefs:
Newsletter sign-ups
Gated asset downloads (e.g. free templates, whitepapers, and ebooks)
Case studies
Free trials
Request demo
Product listings
In general, it’s best to use a CTA that’s a natural next step based on the intent of the article. For example, if the piece is top-of-funnel, try a CTA that’ll move them to the mid-funnel, like a case study.
7. Ballpark length
I’m a firm believer that the length of any article should be dictated by the topic, not arbitrary word counts. However, it can be helpful to offer a ballpark to avoid bringing a 500-word blog post to a 2,000-word fight.
One tool that can make coming up with a ballpark word count easier is Frase, which among other things, will show you the average word count of pages ranking for your target query.
8. Internal and external link opportunities
Since you’re reading the Moz blog, you’re probably already intimately familiar with the importance of links. However, this information is commonly left out of content briefs.
It’s as simple as including these two line items:
Relevant content we should link out to. List out any URLs, especially on your own site, that could be natural fits to link out to in this article.
Existing content that could link to this new piece. List out any URLs on your site that mention your topic so that, after your new piece is live, you can go back and include links in them to your new piece.
The second item is especially important, since adding links to your new post can help it get indexed and start ranking quicker. A quick way to find internal link opportunities is to use the “site:” operator in Google.
For example, the following search would show me all posts on the Moz blog that mention “content brief.” These could be great sources of links to this blog post.
9. Competitor content
Search your target query and pull the top three-or-so ranking URLs for this section of your content brief. These are the pages you need to beat.
At risk of creating copycat content (content that’s essentially a re-spun version of the top-ranking articles), it’s a good idea to instruct your writer on how best to use these.
I like to include questions like:
What’s our unique point-of-view on this topic?
Do we have any unique data we can pull on this topic?
What experts (internal or external) can we ask for quotes to include on this topic?
What graphics would make this more visually compelling than what our competitors have?
You get the idea!
10. On-page SEO cheat sheet
One thing I always like to include in my briefs is some form of an “SEO cheat sheet” — tips and resources for helping your writers with important on-page SEO elements.
Here’s an example of one I’ve used in the past:
Important caveat: Writers have varying levels of SEO expertise. Some content teams are very bullish on SEO (companies like G2 and HubSpot come to mind), so the writers may not need much help in this area. For others, SEO is fairly new to them. Determine what’s necessary for your unique situation so that you can avoid over or under-prescribing in this area.
What to avoid when writing content briefs
Sadly, “SEO” has become a dirty word to many writers. Understanding why will help us avoid the major pitfalls that can lead to ignored briefs and interdepartmental tensions.
Don’t provide suggestions after that asset has been written
When writing for search, we’re creating the output. The keyword is the input. In other words, target queries are questions to be answered, not something to be stuffed into copy that’s already been written.
Google wants to rank content that answers the query, not just repeats it on the page.
For this reason, I would avoid having an optimization step after your writing step. If you don’t, you risk the content not matching the intent of the query, which means it has little-to-no likelihood of ranking, and you’ll also likely upset your writers, who don’t want to cheapen their editorially excellent content by stuffing keywords into it.
Don’t favor keywords with high volume over high intent match
I once saw a brief where the SEO Manager requested that the writer use a certain phrase instead of another phrase because it had search volume while the other didn’t.
The problem? While seemingly similar, the keywords actually had totally different intents.
Don’t do this.
At best, targeting keywords purely for volume’s sake can result in vanity traffic that never converts. At worst, you’ll be trying to fit a square peg in a round hole and likely missing intent-match completely.
Don’t blindly follow keyword tools
Keyword tools are helpful, but they’re not perfect reflections of search demand. For example, because they’re not always updated incredibly often, you may mistakenly think a query has no demand when in fact it has a ton.
A good example of this is COVID-19 related keywords. As a newly trending topic earlier this year, many keyword research tools didn’t register that they had any search volume, when in fact they did. If you would have blindly followed the tool, you may have missed out on the opportunity.
To solve for this, you can use tools like Google Trends or even Google Search Console (if you have content on a trending topic or similar topic on your site already, you should be able to see impressions/interest spiking within a few days).
Don’t instruct writers to “include these keywords” (especially a certain number of times)
When listing out the target query (or queries) in your content brief, it’s important that we instruct our writers that this is the main question to answer rather than this the word I need you to sprinkle throughout the content.
There’s no magic number of times you can stick a keyword in your copy so that it ranks for that term. Instead, instruct your writers to focus on answering the intent of the searcher’s question comprehensively.
Don’t try to jam keywords into articles that weren’t intended for search discovery
Organic search is not the only channel for content discovery. As someone coming from an SEO background, this took me a while to learn.
That means adding search content to your content calendar, not trying to cram keywords into everything on the calendar.
While it’s important to get the on-page SEO basics right (title tag, heading tags, links, etc.) for every piece, not every piece lends itself well to organic search discovery.
For example, if we only created content based on keywords that a tool told us gets searched a certain number of times per month, we’d never write about new concepts. It takes a lot of thought leadership off the table, as well as things like case studies and interview/feature story pieces.
Organic search is powerful, but it’s not everything.
Tips for getting your content team bought in
Even the best content briefs won’t make an impact if your content team refuses to use them — and I’ve heard of plenty of situations where that happens.
As an SEO, it can be mind-boggling that your content team doesn’t want to use this: “Don’t you want traffic?!” But as someone who leads a content team, I understand why they’re often rejected.
Thankfully, in many cases, this can be avoided by taking the following actions.
Involve them in the planning process
No one likes to be micromanaged, and thorough content briefs can sometimes feel like micromanaging. One great way to avoid this is by bringing them along for the process. Make content briefs a joint effort between SEO and Content.
For example, connect with the Content Lead and see if they’d be willing to sit down with you to create the content brief template together. By each of you bringing your unique expertise to the table, it can feel less like dictating and more like collaboration (plus, you’ll probably end up with a better brief template that way).
Make it clear that not all content has to be search content
SEO Managers live and breathe the organic search channel, but content teams have a more varied diet. They take a multi-channel approach to content, and sometimes are even writing content to support post-conversion teams like customer success.
When working with your content team on this, make sure you emphasize that this is a new content type that can be added to editorial planning. Not something that’ll replace or need to change the types of content they’re already writing.
Respect their expertise
Writing is hard. Doing it well requires immense skill and practice, but sadly, I’ve heard many SEOs talk about writers as if they didn’t know anything, just because they don’t know SEO.
As an SEO, you’ll get far with your content department simply by respecting their expertise. Just as many SEO Managers aren’t writers, it’s unfair of us to expect writers to have the SEO knowledge of a full-time SEO professional.
Before you implement a content brief process, sit down with the Content Lead and members of the content team to gauge their search maturity. What do they actually need your help with? Then trust them with the rest.
Show results
One of the best ways to get and maintain buy-in is by showing results. Show your content team how much of their traffic is coming from organic search and how, unlike many other content discovery channels, that traffic is staying consistent over time. Give the writer a shout-out when you notice their article ranking on page one.
Remember, we’re on the same team, and stronger together than we are apart.
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The web is in a golden age of front-end development, and JavaScript and technical SEO are experiencing a renaissance. As a technical SEO specialist and web dev enthusiast at an award-winning digital marketing agency, I’d like to share my perspective on modern JavaScript SEO based on industry best practices and my own agency experience. In this article, you'll learn how to optimize your JS-powered website for search in 2021.
What is JavaScript SEO?
JavaScript SEO is the discipline of technical SEO that’s focused on optimizing websites built with JavaScript for visibility by search engines. It’s primarily concerned with:
Optimizing content injected via JavaScript for crawling, rendering, and indexing by search engines.
Preventing, diagnosing, and troubleshooting ranking issues for websites and SPAs (Single Page Applications) built on JavaScript frameworks, such as React, Angular, and Vue.
Ensuring that web pages are discoverable by search engines through linking best practices.
Improving page load times for pages parsing and executing JS code for a streamlined User Experience (UX).
Is JavaScript good or bad for SEO?
It depends! JavaScript is essential to the modern web and makes building websites scalable and easier to maintain. However, certain implementations of JavaScript can be detrimental to search engine visibility.
How does JavaScript affect SEO?
JavaScript can affect the following on-page elements and ranking factors that are important for SEO:
Rendered content
Links
Lazy-loaded images
Page load times
Meta data
What are JavaScript-powered websites?
When we talk about sites that are built on JavaScript, we’re not referring to simply adding a layer of JS interactivity to HTML documents (for example, when adding JS animations to a static web page). In this case, JavaScript-powered websites refer to when the core or primary content is injected into the DOM via JavaScript.
App Shell Model.
This template is called an app shell and is the foundation for progressive web applications (PWAs). We’ll explore this next.
How to check if a site is built with JavaScript
You can quickly check if a website is built on a JavaScript framework by using a technology look-up tool such as BuiltWith or Wappalyzer. You can also “Inspect Element” or “View Source” in the browser to check for JS code. Popular JavaScript frameworks that you might find include:
Here’s an example: Modern web apps are being built on JavaScript frameworks, like Angular, React, and Vue. JavaScript frameworks allow developers to quickly build and scale interactive web applications. Let’s take a look at the default project template for Angular.js, a popular framework produced by Google.
When viewed in the browser, this looks like a typical web page. We can see text, images, and links. However, let’s dive deeper and take a peek under the hood at the code:
Now we can see that this HTML document is almost completely devoid of any content. There are only the app-root and a few script tags in the body of the page. This is because the main content of this single page application is dynamically injected into the DOM via JavaScript. In other words, this app depends on JS to load key on-page content!
Potential SEO issues: Any core content that is rendered to users but not to search engine bots could be seriously problematic! If search engines aren’t able to fully crawl all of your content, then your website could be overlooked in favor of competitors. We’ll discuss this in more detail later.
JavaScript SEO for internal links
Besides dynamically injecting content into the DOM, JavaScript can also affect the crawlability of links. Google discovers new pages by crawling links it finds on pages.
As a best practice, Google specifically recommends linking pages using HTML anchor tags with href attributes, as well as including descriptive anchor texts for the hyperlinks:
However, Google also recommends that developers not rely on other HTML elements — like div or span — or JS event handlers for links. These are called “pseudo” links, and they will typically not be crawled, according to official Google guidelines:
Despite these guidelines, an independent, third-party study has suggested that Googlebot may be able to crawl JavaScript links. Nonetheless, in my experience, I’ve found that it’s a best practice to keep links as static HTML elements.
Potential SEO issues: If search engines aren’t able to crawl and follow links to your key pages, then your pages could be missing out on valuable internal links pointing to them. Internal links help search engines crawl your website more efficiently and highlight the most important pages. The worst-case scenario is that if your internal links are implemented incorrectly, then Google may have a hard time discovering your new pages at all (outside of the XML sitemap).
JavaScript SEO for lazy-loading images
JavaScript can also affect the crawlability of images that are lazy-loaded. Here’s a basic example. This code snippet is for lazy-loading images in the DOM via JavaScript:
Googlebot supports lazy-loading, but it does not “scroll” like a human user would when visiting your web pages. Instead, Googlebot simply resizes its virtual viewport to be longer when crawling web content. Therefore, the “scroll” event listener is never triggered and the content is never rendered by the crawler.
Here’s an example of more SEO-friendly code:
This code shows that the IntersectionObserver API triggers a callback when any observed element becomes visible. It’s more flexible and robust than the on-scroll event listener and is supported by modern Googlebot. This code works because of how Googlebot resizes its viewport in order to “see” your content (see below).
You can also use native lazy-loading in the browser. This is supported by Google Chrome, but note that it is still an experimental feature. Worst case scenario, it will just get ignored by Googlebot, and all images will load anyway:
Native lazy-loading in Google Chrome.
Potential SEO issues: Similar to core content not being loaded, it’s important to make sure that Google is able to “see” all of the content on a page, including images. For example, on an e-commerce site with multiple rows of product listings, lazy-loading images can provide a faster user experience for both users and bots!
Javascript SEO for page speed
Javascript can also affect page load times, which is an official ranking factor in Google’s mobile-first index. This means that a slow page could potentially harm rankings in search. How can we help developers mitigate this?
Minifying JavaScript
Deferring non-critical JS until after the main content is rendered in the DOM
Inlining critical JS
Serving JS in smaller payloads
Potential SEO issues: A slow website creates a poor user experience for everyone, even search engines. Google itself defers loading JavaScript to save resources, so it’s important to make sure that any served to clients is coded and delivered efficiently to help safeguard rankings.
JavaScript SEO for meta data
Also, it’s important to note that SPAs that utilize a router package like react-router or vue-router have to take some extra steps to handle things like changing meta tags when navigating between router views. This is usually handled with a Node.js package like vue-meta or react-meta-tags.
What are router views? Here’s how linking to different “pages” in a Single Page Application works in React in five steps:
When a user visits a React website, a GET request is sent to the server for the ./index.html file.
The server then sends the index.html page to the client, containing the scripts to launch React and React Router.
The web application is then loaded on the client-side.
If a user clicks on a link to go on a new page (/example), a request is sent to the server for the new URL.
React Router intercepts the request before it reaches the server and handles the change of page itself. This is done by locally updating the rendered React components and changing the URL client-side.
In other words, when users or bots follow links to URLs on a React website, they are not being served multiple static HTML files. But rather, the React components (like headers, footers, and body content) hosted on root ./index.html file are simply being reorganized to display different content. This is why they’re called Single Page Applications!
Potential SEO issues: So, it’s important to use a package like React Helmet for making sure that users are being served unique metadata for each page, or “view,” when browsing SPAs. Otherwise, search engines may be crawling the same metadata for every page, or worse, none at all!
How does this all affect SEO in the bigger picture? Next, we need to learn how Google processes JavaScript.
How does Google handle JavaScript?
In order to understand how JavaScript affects SEO, we need to understand what exactly happens when GoogleBot crawls a web page:
Crawl
Render
Index
First, Googlebot crawls the URLs in its queue, page by page. The crawler makes a GET request to the server, typically using a mobile user-agent, and then the server sends the HTML document.
Then, Google decides what resources are necessary to render the main content of the page. Usually, this means only the static HTML is crawled, and not any linked CSS or JS files. Why?
According to Google Webmasters, Googlebot has discovered approximately 130 trillion web pages. Rendering JavaScript at scale can be costly. The sheer computing power required to download, parse, and execute JavaScript in bulk is massive.
This is why Google may defer rendering JavaScript until later. Any unexecuted resources are queued to be processed by Google Web Rendering Services (WRS), as computing resources become available.
Finally, Google will index any rendered HTML after JavaScript is executed.
Google crawl, render, and index process.
In other words, Google crawls and indexes content in two waves:
The first wave of indexing, or the instant crawling of the static HTML sent by the webserver
The second wave of indexing, or the deferred crawling of any additional content rendered via JavaScript
Google wave indexing. Source: Google I/O'18
The bottom line is that content dependent on JS to be rendered can experience a delay in crawling and indexing by Google. This used to take days or even weeks. For example, Googlebot historically ran on the outdated Chrome 41 rendering engine. However, they’ve significantly improved its web crawlers in recent years.
Googlebot was recently upgraded to the latest stable release of the Chromium headless browser in May 2019. This means that their web crawler is now “evergreen” and fully compatible with ECMAScript 6 (ES6) and higher, or the latest versions of JavaScript.
So, if Googlebot can technically run JavaScript now, why are we still worried about indexing issues?
The short answer is crawl budget. This is the concept that Google has a rate limit on how frequently they can crawl a given website because of limited computing resources. We already know that Google defers JavaScript to be executed later to save crawl budget.
While the delay between crawling and rendering has been reduced, there is no guarantee that Google will actually execute the JavaScript code waiting in line in its Web Rendering Services queue.
Here are some reasons why Google might not actually ever run your JavaScript code:
Blocked in robots.txt
Timeouts
Errors
Therefore, JavaScript can cause SEO issues when core content relies on JavaScript but is not rendered by Google.
Real-world application: JavaScript SEO for e-commerce
E-commerce websites are a real-life example of dynamic content that is injected via JavaScript. For example, online stores commonly load products onto category pages via JavaScript.
JavaScript can allow e-commerce websites to update products on their category pages dynamically. This makes sense because their inventory is in a constant state of flux due to sales. However, is Google actually able to “see” your content if it does not execute your JS files?
For e-commerce websites, which depend on online conversions, not having their products indexed by Google could be disastrous.
How to test and debug JavaScript SEO issues
Here are steps you can take today to proactively diagnose any potential JavaScript SEO issues:
Visualize the page with Google’s Webmaster Tools. This helps you to view the page from Google’s perspective.
Use the site search operator to check Google’s index. Make sure that all of your JavaScript content is being indexed properly by manually checking Google.
Debug using Chrome’s built-in dev tools. Compare and contrast what Google “sees” (source code) with what users see (rendered code) and ensure that they align in general.
There are also handy third-party tools and plugins that you can use. We’ll talk about these soon.
Google Webmaster Tools
The best way to determine if Google is experiencing technical difficulties when attempting to render your pages is to test your pages using Google Webmaster tools, such as:
The goal is simply to visually compare and contrast your content visible in your browser and look for any discrepancies in what is being displayed in the tools.
Both of these Google Webmaster tools use the same evergreen Chromium rendering engine as Google. This means that they can give you an accurate visual representation of what Googlebot actually “sees” when it crawls your website.
There are also third-party technical SEO tools, like Merkle’s fetch and render tool. Unlike Google’s tools, this web application actually gives users a full-size screenshot of the entire page.
Site: Search Operator
Alternatively, if you are unsure if JavaScript content is being indexed by Google, you can perform a quick check-up by using the site: search operator on Google.
Copy and paste any content that you’re not sure that Google is indexing after the site: operator and your domain name, and then press the return key. If you can find your page in the search results, then no worries! Google can crawl, render, and index your content just fine. If not, it means your JavaScript content might need some help gaining visibility.
Here’s what this looks like in the Google SERP:
Chrome Dev Tools
Another method you can use to test and debug JavaScript SEO issues is the built-in functionality of the developer tools available in the Chrome web browser.
Right-click anywhere on a web page to display the options menu and then click “View Source” to see the static HTML document in a new tab.
You can also click “Inspect Element” after right-clicking to view the content that is actually loaded in the DOM, including JavaScript.
Inspect Element.
Compare and contrast these two perspectives to see if any core content is only loaded in the DOM, but not hard-coded in the source. There are also third-party Chrome extensions that can help do this, like the Web Developer plugin by Chris Pederick or the View Rendered Source plugin by Jon Hogg.
How to fix JavaScript rendering issues
After diagnosing a JavaScript rendering problem, how do you resolve JavaScript SEO issues? The answer is simple: Universal Javascript, also known as “Isomorphic” JavaScript.
What does this mean? Universal or Isomorphic here refers to JavaScript applications that are capable of being run on either the server or the client.
There are a few different implementations of JavaScript that are more search-friendly than client-side rendering, to avoid offloading JS to both users and crawlers:
Server-side rendering (SSR). This means that JS is executed on the server for each request. One way to implement SSR is with a Node.js library like Puppeteer. However, this can put a lot of strain on the server.
Hybrid rendering. This is a combination of both server-side and client-side rendering. Core content is rendered server-side before being sent to the client. Any additional resources are offloaded to the client.
Dynamic rendering. In this workaround, the server detects the user agent of the client making the request. It can then send pre-rendered JavaScript content to search engines, for example. Any other user agents will need to render their content client-side. For example, Google Webmasters recommend a popular open-source solution called Renderton for implementing dynamic rendering.
Incremental Static Regeneration, or updating static content after a site has already been deployed. This can be done with frameworks like Next.js for React or Nuxt.js for Vue. These frameworks have a build process that will pre-render every page of your JS application to static assets that you can serve from something like an S3 bucket. This way, your site can get all of the SEO benefits of server-side rendering, without the server management!
Each of these solutions helps make sure that, when search engine bots make requests to crawl HTML documents, they receive the fully rendered versions of the web pages. However, some of these can be extremely difficult or even impossible to implement after web infrastructure is already built. That’s why it’s important to keep JavaScript SEO best practices in mind when designing the architecture of your next web application.
Note, for websites built on a content management system (CMS) that already pre-renders most content, like WordPress or Shopify, this isn’t typically an issue.
Key takeaways
This guide provides some general best practices and insights into JavaScript SEO. However, JavaScript SEO is a complex and nuanced field of study. We recommend that you read through Google’s official documentation and troubleshooting guide for more JavaScript SEO basics. Interested in learning more about optimizing your JavaScript website for search? Leave a comment below.
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