SEO optimization for PWA
What from the user’s perspective is one of the most important determinants of a positive website rating? In addition to responsiveness, it is primarily the speed of its charging. It is particularly important in the case of mobile devices, which are increasingly used by users when browsing, for example, online stores. When you bet on Progressive Web Apps (PWA), you are guaranteed a good website appearance and creating the same experience in using the website regardless of the device from which your recipient enters. However, how can you make your website highly ranked in search results and what to do to be optimized for SEO, but above all – for Googlebots?
THE SPEED OF THE SITE
Because a fast page loading largely determines whether or not the client will take action on it or leaves and goes to the faster side of the competition, you should make sure that the website works as soon as possible. This is also one of the factors determining your position in the search results. Googlebots scanning websites take their speed into account. If you want your online store to be high in the list of search engine rankings, you need a website that will be optimized at a high level. Such feature has PWA, which is well optimized for SEO.
Another important advantage of Progressive Web Apps is its multi-channeling. Google takes into account not only compatibility between multiple devices, but also compatibility on different browsers, and even older versions of browsers. If your site does not meet these requirements, it should be upgraded. It is worth considering switching to PWA.
REPAIR OF ERRORS
If you use PWA on JavaScript, remember to fix errors through which Googlebot may have trouble indexing your site. The problem may be, for example, the lack of a closing tag. In the case of HTML, the browser will fix this error itself. However, in JavaScript, this error must be removed manually. Next, Googlebot must be notified about the removed vulnerability, e.g. by cache-busting or revalidation.
INTERNAL LINKS
Googlebots are able to find links to creep through data attributes. However, in the case of JavaScript, they will not pass through internal links. The method for visualizing internal links for indexing engines is to use standard HTML <a href=””>. If you add this code to JavaScript, the link you enter will be sent to Googlebot after scanning the first page. Because Googlebot does not work like a user and does not move around the site by clicking and scrolling, it’s the only way to make the crawlers scan the content of the site.
TRANSLATION FROM JAVASCRIPT TO ES5
Some features of JavaScript with ES5 are available in the Chrome browser, so they should be used by Google. There are tools, such as Babel, that allow you to translate codes from one language to another, e.g. from JavaScript to ES5. You do not need to worry about compatibility with Googlebot or older browsers. This, however, can change when Google decides to update its crawlers to the new version of Chrome.
OPTIMIZING PICTURES FOR INDEXING
Just as hyperlinks in data attributes are invisible to Google, images attached to attributes will not be scanned by Googlebots. In order for your images to display Google Images, you must use HTML <img src = “”>. The Srcset attribute allows you to adjust the image resolution to the device that downloads it. However, if images download slowly, they should be tagged with <noscript> so that Googlebot can reach them.
Optimization of the PWA website in the JavaScript programming language under SEO has some guidelines that must be met in order for Googlebot to be able to index your website. However, if you take care of compliance with these basic principles, Google crawlers will not have any problem with your website.
According to specialists, the optimization process is simple. Using the right tools, such as Nuxt.js, Next.js or Angular Universal, you can improve the loading speed of the site through Server Side Rendering (SSR) without writing a single line of code. This means an optimized website ready for use from the very beginning. Thanks to the extensive community that cares for Open Source resources, PWA can be modified within a few minutes without specialist programming knowledge. It’s a big time-saver, which you can invest in the development of your online store without worrying about indexing by browsers.
