Recently a client in Crosby messaged us about JS and how it could/is affecting his SEO. This is a common question and one that can be easily remedied. It is a question we get every now and again.
GoogleBot is the web crawler used by Google to discover and index new content.
It’s important to note that Googlebot cannot execute JavaScript.
So if your site is not rendering content but relying on JS you could face issues.
Check Server Side Rendering
Making sure Google can read and understand your site is extremely important in your SEO planning and should influence how you choose a theme or template for your website.
If you’re not sure how to check if your site is being rendered server-side or client-side, there are a few things you can look for. There are a few ways to check if .js is rendered server-side or client-side.
View Source
One way is to look at the source code of the page.
You can quickly do this To do this, copy a piece of text from the webpage as you see it in the browser and then open “view source” and search for that phrase.
If you can see the text in “view source,” the page does not rely on JavaScript to generate that text.
If the .js is included in the source code, then it is likely being rendered server-side. Another way to check is to use a tool like the Web Developer Tool
Disable JS
Another way to check how much Js your theme or website is using is to If your server-side rendering is working correctly and there are no JS errors in the browser, your server-side rendering is functioning properly. The tracking may not function as intended, however.
Modern Themes
However most of the time and with most modern themes there is not need to check this the in-line script or JS library that the browser must call will be client-side. You may monitor how it is loaded and executed with a variety of tools. Chrome Dev tools (network tab) and Webpagetest.org.
Overall
If the 2000+ websites we have worked with there has only been one site that had a problem with indexing after some JS changes. Nearly all modern themes take this into account and so should be an issue.
If you are having js issues or if js is affecting how Google is indexing your site feel free to reach out to us and we would be happy to help!
