The audit of a JavaScript-based website is primarily a manual process. You have to manually inspect individual elements. Even though certain SEO tools may be able to crawl the websites, you should still not put all your faith in any tool. Read our blog on COMMON SEO CRAWL ERRORS AND HOW TO FIX THEM to know about the possible errors. This post is about how to audit JavaScript-based websites.

Like all websites, JavaScript websites too are not immune to technical issues. Thus, evaluating and auditing a website has become quite important. Auditing will help you to find errors and fix them in order to provide a seamless user experience to the website visitors. To perform a JS audit for SEO, you can use Google developer tools from Google Chrome and web developer extension for Chrome. Go through our blog and know about 8 STEPS TO A BETTER TECHNICAL SEO AUDIT to fix errors that occur on your website and may negatively affect rankings.

Steps involved in auditing JavaScript websites

Steps involved in auditing JavaScript websites

  • Visual inspection: The first step to audit JavaScript based websites is visual inspection. In this step, divide the content of the website into 5 parts. These include visible content, interactive content, hidden content, user-generated content and product recommendations. By doing this you can narrow down those elements of the website which use JavaScript. 
  • Checking HTML code: Once you have turned off CSS, JavaScript, cookies, etc., inspect the remaining code. Ensure to check the elements which are controlled by JavaScript as well while doing a JS audit for SEO.
  • Checking rendered HTML: Deactivate JavaScript and CSS before loading the website again. You can use a tool like the Google search console to check the rendered HTML. You can even use the Google search console to test JavaScript websites. It will allow you to see any problems in the rendering of a website. Also, it notifies you of missing JavaScript elements which have been blocked for crawling.

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Things that need to be taken into consideration to audit JavaScript based websites

There are certain JavaScript elements for Search Engine Optimization which must be taken into consideration while auditing a JS based site. JavaScript elements for Search Engine Optimization include:

  • Indexable URL: It is crucial that the website must have indexable URLs. If your website cannot be called up via its own URL, search engines might find it hard to index such a website. If a URL cannot be linked in JavaScript code, it might relate problems in indexing as well.
  • Data attributes: Resources on JS based websites are stored in data attributes. However, these resources cannot be loaded, rendered or indexed by search engine bots. So, it would be better to incorporate such resources through HTML. 
  • PushState: With PushState method, JavaScript URLs can be changed. This is important to ensure that the original URL is relayed, otherwise duplicate content can arise.

Tools which can help JS website to be crawled

  • Google search console: The Google search console allows you to check JavaScript elements by rendering individual URLs or websites and reporting any possible crawl errors.
  • SEO.JS: This tool makes the JS code more crawlable by rendering it as HTML. It can also create an XML sitemap with JavaScript websites.
  • Brombone: By using this program you can check if the JavaScript is functioning correctly. DOM changes can be checked as well.
  • Prerender.io: This is an open source software that can optimize the rendering of a JavaScript website.

It is important to remember that a crawler tool is just a simulation of the bot behavior. Thus, log file analysis and manual auditing is necessary for proper optimization for JS websites. To audit JavaScript-based websites, it is important to look out for delays in content loading, data attributes, and any errors in pushState or crawling. It is not easy to implement auditing. In case you find it difficult to handle, you always have the option to contact SEO professionals to help you out in the whole process. You can go through another blog written by us on JAVASCRIPT AND SEO: BEST PRACTICES FOR JS BASED SITES in order to know more about JavaScript based sites.

UNI SQUARE CONCEPTS

Uni Square Concepts is an advertising agency located in New Delhi, India. By initiating The Uni Square Blog, we aim to provide a comprehensive portal where readers can educate themselves about the various aspects of advertising and marketing. The articles and blogs are written by our professional team of content writers, under the guidance of senior leaders of Uni Square Concepts including its CEO, Uday Sonthalia.