JavaScript SEO: The Beginner’s Guide To Ranking JS Sites

My first “real” client website, built back around 2017, was a thing of beauty. I used React, and it was fast, fluid, and interactive. The animations were slick. The client was thrilled. We launched.

And then… nothing.

Crickets. The traffic chart was a flat line. Weeks went by, and their old site’s rankings had vanished. I was checking Google Analytics every hour, my stomach sinking. When I finally used an old-school “Fetch as Google” tool, I saw what Google saw: a completely blank white page with a single line of HTML: <div id="root"></div>. My beautiful, interactive site was a ghost. All the content, all the products, all the text was being “injected” by JavaScript after the page loaded, and Google, at the time, just didn’t wait around to see it.

That was my brutal, trial-by-fire introduction to the world of JavaScript SEO.

Look, Google is way smarter now. Googlebot, its crawler, can actually run JavaScript… mostly. But that’s the trap. The problem didn’t disappear; it just got sneakier. The new fight isn’t “Can Google see my site?” It’s “Can Google see it fast enough, and cheap enough, before it gives up?”

If you’re a developer staring at a beautiful React site that’s invisible on Google, or an SEO who just inherited a Vue app with zero traffic, I see you. I was you. This is the guide I desperately needed back then.

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Key Takeaways

Let’s get this out of the way first. If you remember nothing else from this article, remember these five things:

• Google Crawls in Two Steps: Googlebot does a “Wave 1” crawl of your basic HTML. Later (days or weeks, even), it comes back for “Wave 2” to run the JavaScript. This delay is poison for new content.
• Rendering Isn’t a Guarantee: Google runs on a “render budget.” It will not waste time and money running the JavaScript on a slow, complex, or broken site. It’ll just skip it, leaving your content invisible.
• Client-Side Rendering (CSR) is the Enemy: This is the default for tools like Create React App. The server sends a blank shell, and the browser does all the work. It’s the entire reason the two-wave delay exists.
• Server-Side Rendering (SSR) is the Fix: This is the answer. Frameworks like Next.js or Nuxt.js build the full HTML page on the server before sending it. Google gets a complete page instantly. Problem solved.
• Google Follows <a> Tags. Period. If your site’s navigation uses <span> or <div> tags with onClick events, Google cannot follow them. Your site is a collection of dead-end pages.

So, What Exactly Is JavaScript SEO?

Simply put, JavaScript SEO is the job of making sure Google can see, crawl, and index all your cool, JS-powered content.

For ages, SEO was dirt simple. Googlebot asks for a page. The server sends a single, complete HTML file. Google reads it. Done. What you “Viewed Source” on was exactly what Google saw.

But then, frameworks like React and Vue changed everything.

They gave us a new default: Client-Side Rendering (CSR). Now, the server sends a tiny, empty HTML file and a giant JavaScript file. It basically tells the browser, “Here, you build the page.”

The problem? Googlebot isn’t a patient user. It’s a robot on a schedule with millions of other sites to get to. That disconnect—between the blank file the server sends and the beautiful page the user eventually sees—is the entire battleground of JavaScript SEO.

Why Is Everyone Talking About This? Didn’t Google “Get” JavaScript Years Ago?

I hear this all the time. “Dude, Google renders JavaScript. This isn’t a problem anymore.”

That is a dangerously misleading sentence.

Yes, Google’s web rendering service (WRS) can run JavaScript. But how and when it does this is the entire game. You have to understand the two-wave system.

What Happens in Wave 1: The “Crawl”?

The first time Googlebot hits your URL, it does a fast, simple crawl of the raw HTML. It does not run your scripts.

It’s just grabbing the basics:

• Any plain text it can find.
• Your <title> and <meta name="description">.
• Crucial tags like rel="canonical" or meta="robots".
• And most importantly, any <a> tags with href attributes, so it can find your other pages.

If your site is like my first React disaster, Google’s Wave 1 visit sees… nothing. Just <div id="app"></div>. It might actually index that blank page. It throws the URL into a second line, the “render queue,” but you’re already listed in Google as having no content.

What Happens in Wave 2: The “Render”?

Sometime later—hours, days, or even weeks—your page gets its turn.

A “headless” Chrome browser fires up, loads your page, and finally runs all that JavaScript. It waits to see what content appears. This is when Google sees your blog post or product. It then takes this “rendered HTML” and uses it to re-index your page.

This delay is the problem. Got a news site? Your story is three days old and irrelevant. Launched a new product? You were invisible for the entire launch.

Why is This “Render Budget” Thing So Scary?

You have to understand: rendering is wildly expensive for Google. Running JavaScript takes way more CPU and time than just reading plain HTML.

So, it gives every site a “render budget.”

It’s an invisible quota on how much of its resources Google is willing to spend on your site. If your site is a sluggish, error-filled, bloated beast, Google will quit. It’ll just stop. It won’t render all your pages. It might see your homepage but give up before it ever finds that important product page buried four clicks deep.

This is why JavaScript SEO is critical. We have to make rendering as cheap and easy for Google as possible.

How Do I Know If My Site Has a JavaScript SEO Problem?

Don’t guess. Check. It takes 10 seconds, and it’s free.

Can I Just “View Source”?

This is the oldest trick in the technical SEO book, and it’s still the best.

Go to your site in Chrome. Right-click. Select “View Page Source.”

Now, you’re looking at the raw HTML. Hit Ctrl+F and search for a unique sentence from your homepage.

• You find your text: You’re golden. This means you’re likely using Server-Side Rendering (SSR) or a classic setup like WordPress.
• You see a blank page: If you search for your headline and find nothing but <div id="root"></div> and a pile of <script> tags, bingo. You’ve got a client-side rendering problem.

What About Google’s Own Tools?

The “View Source” test shows you Wave 1. But what does Google see in Wave 2?

• Google Search Console: This is your crystal ball. If you own the site, open the URL Inspection Tool. “View Crawled Page” is Wave 1 (the blank HTML). Now, click “Test Live URL.” This runs Google’s real renderer. After it finishes, check the “Screenshot” and “HTML” tabs. Is your content there?
• Mobile-Friendly Test: This is a fantastic public tool. It always does a full render. When the test is done, click “View tested page” to see the screenshot and the rendered HTML. If your content shows up here, it means Google can render your site. The next question is whether it will bother to do it on a regular basis.

My Developer Mentioned “Rendering.” What Are My Options?

This is where we get to the solution. I remember my first big agency project where we hit this wall. We built this gorgeous, slick Vue.js app for a client. It was an amazing user experience.

And it was completely invisible to Google.

The client’s traffic flatlined. The marketing team was in a panic. I had to have a very awkward talk with my dev team, and we had a crash course in rendering strategies. We had to fix it, and fix it fast.

Look, “rendering strategy” is just a fancy term for one question: Who builds the HTML? The server or the browser?

The Problem: Client-Side Rendering (CSR)

This is the default for frameworks like React (using Create React App) and Vue. It’s the source of all your pain.

1. Server: Dumps a blank HTML shell and a big JavaScript file.
2. Browser: Does all the work. It downloads the JS, runs it, fetches data, and then paints the content.
3. SEO Impact: A complete disaster. Google’s Wave 1 sees a blank page. You’re 100% reliant on the slow, unreliable Wave 2.

The Fix: Server-Side Rendering (SSR)

This is the ultimate solution. It’s “back to the future.”

1. Server: Does the work! When a request comes in, the server runs the JavaScript (using Node.js), builds the full HTML page, and sends that complete page to the browser.
2. Browser: Gets a real HTML page. It can show it immediately. It then downloads the JS in the background to make the page interactive (this part is called “hydration”).
3. SEO Impact: Perfect. Google’s Wave 1 sees a complete, content-rich HTML page. You get indexed instantly and correctly.

Modern frameworks like Next.js (for React) and Nuxt.js (for Vue) are built specifically to do this.

The Speed Demon: Static Site Generation (SSG)

This is the fastest, most secure, and most SEO-friendly option, but it’s for sites where content doesn’t change every second.

1. Server (at “Build Time”): Before any user ever visits, you pre-build every single page of your site into a static HTML file.
2. Server (at “Request Time”): When a user or Googlebot asks for a page, the server just sends the pre-built, static HTML file. No JS is run. No database is queried. It’s instant.
3. SEO Impact: Unbeatable. It’s even better than SSR because the response is lightning-fast, which Google loves.

This is the dream for blogs, portfolios, documentation, and marketing sites. Frameworks like Gatsby, Astro, Eleventy, and Next.js (in SSG mode) are masters at this.

The Best of Both: Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR)

This is a genius idea from the Vercel team (creators of Next.js). It’s the “best of both worlds.”

It works like SSG (you pre-build your pages), but you set a “revalidation” timer. For example, “rebuild this page every 60 seconds.” The first user to visit after 60 seconds gets the old (static) page, but it triggers a rebuild in the background. Every other user then gets the new, freshly-built static page.

This gives you the crazy speed of SSG with the data freshness of SSR.

What About Dynamic Rendering? Is That Still a Thing?

You’ll hear this term. Dynamic rendering is a hack, not a fix.

It involves “sniffing” the visitor. If it’s a human, you send the normal CSR app. If it’s Googlebot, you route it to a separate, pre-rendered version.

Google used to suggest this as a stop-gap. Now, they’re clear: use SSR or SSG instead. It’s complex, you have to manage two versions of your site, and it’s easy to get wrong. Only use this if you’re truly stuck with a massive, ancient CSR app that you simply cannot rebuild.

Okay, I Can’t Rebuild My Site. What Quick Wins Can I Implement Right Now?

Right. So you can’t just migrate your entire app to Next.js tomorrow. I get it. If you’re stuck in CSR-land, you must do these things to stop the bleeding.

Are Your Links Actually Links?

This is the #1 mistake I see. It’s so simple, it’s painful.

Google navigates the web by crawling <a> tags that have an href attribute. That’s it.

Many new developers, especially in React, build “links” that aren’t links at all:

THE WRONG WAY: <span onClick={() => navigate('/about-us')}>About Us</span>

Google cannot see this. It doesn’t run onClick events during crawling. Your other pages are invisible.

THE RIGHT WAY: <a href="/about-us">About Us</a>

Even if you’re using a framework router (like React Router’s <Link>), the final rendered HTML must be an <a> tag. Go to your site, right-click your main navigation, and “Inspect Element.” If you don’t see <a href=...>, you have a 5-alarm fire. Fix it. Now.

Is Your Metadata Hiding?

Your <title> tag and <meta name="description"> are vital. In many CSR apps, this metadata is managed by a JavaScript package (like React Helmet).

The problem? This metadata is only added during Wave 2.

In Wave 1, Google just sees the default, empty tags from your index.html shell. For days, your page might show up in search results as “React App” instead of your actual title.

The fix is to ensure your base index.html file contains sensible, default metadata. A generic title is better than “React App.” A better fix is to use a pre-rendering service to “inject” this metadata before the page is served.

What’s Hiding in Your robots.txt?

This is the “oops, I unplugged the server” of JS SEO. Your robots.txt file tells bots what they can’t crawl.

Sometimes, a well-meaning developer will block the wrong thing. For example:

Disallow: /static/js/ Disallow: /build/

They think, “Google doesn’t need to crawl my messy JavaScript files.”

They are catastrophically wrong.

If you block Google from crawling your JavaScript files, it cannot render your page. It can’t download the scripts, so it can’t execute them. It will only ever see your blank Wave 1 page. Go check your robots.txt right now. Make sure you aren’t blocking any critical .js, .css, or API files.

Does My JavaScript Framework (React, Vue) Hurt My SEO?

Let’s be clear: React is not bad for SEO. Vue is not bad for SEO.

How you use them is.

The libraries themselves are “un-opinionated.” You can build an SEO disaster or an SEO champion with the exact same tool.

How Do I Fix JavaScript SEO in React?

The answer is Next.js.

Stop using create-react-app for public-facing, content-driven websites. create-react-app builds a client-side rendered app by default.

Next.js is a framework built on top of React by Vercel. It provides SSR, SSG, and ISR out of the box. It has file-based routing, image optimization, and a built-in <Head> component for managing your metadata perfectly. It is the community-accepted, Google-endorsed solution.

What About SEO for Vue.js?

Same story, different name: Nuxt.js.

Nuxt.js is to Vue what Next.js is to React. It’s a framework that provides all the server-side rendering and static site generation you need. It solves all the core JavaScript SEO problems before you’ve even written your first line of code.

And Angular? Isn’t It Different?

Angular has had a server-side solution called Angular Universal for a long time. It’s a bit more “built-in” than the React/Vue ecosystems. When implemented, it does the same thing: it pre-renders your pages on the server and sends complete HTML to the crawler.

What Are Some Advanced JavaScript SEO Techniques?

Once you’ve solved the big rendering problem, you can start fine-tuning.

How Does Lazy-Loading Affect My SEO?

Lazy-loading (not loading an image until you scroll to it) is fantastic for performance.

But does Google see the lazy-loaded content?

Yes! Googlebot’s renderer will scroll down the page to trigger these events. But you have to do it right.

• For images: Use native lazy loading. It’s simple and bulletproof: <img src="my-image.jpg" loading="lazy" width="800" height="600"> Google fully supports this.
• For content: If you’re lazy-loading entire sections, make sure you are using the Intersection Observer API. This is the modern, efficient way to detect when an element is on-screen. Googlebot’s renderer understands this.

What About Code-Splitting?

Code-splitting is another great performance win. Instead of sending one giant bundle.js file, you split it into smaller “chunks.”

This is fantastic for JavaScript SEO.

Remember the render budget? By splitting your code, you make the initial page-load much faster. Google’s renderer can get the minimal JavaScript it needs to render the current page without downloading your entire site’s-worth of code. This makes rendering cheaper and faster for Google. Modern frameworks like Next.js and Nuxt.js do this automatically.

How Should I Handle Infinite Scroll?

Infinite scroll is a classic SEO trap. The user scrolls, and new articles load in at the bottom.

The problem? Googlebot does not “scroll infinitely.” It will load the first batch of content, see no links for “Page 2,” and assume that’s all there is.

The solution is to implement paginated URLs alongside your infinite scroll.

1. Your initial page loads at /blog.
2. When the user scrolls to the bottom, your JavaScript loads the content for Page 2 and uses the History API (pushState) to change the URL in the browser bar to /blog?page=2.
3. Crucially, that URL (/blog?page=2) must be a valid, loadable page. If a user or Googlebot requests it directly, your server must send the content for Page 2.

This gives you the best of both worlds: a fluid experience for users and a set of discrete, crawlable URLs for Google.

Is JavaScript SEO Really the Future? Or Just a Headache?

It’s not a headache, it’s just… the web. The web is no longer a collection of static documents. It’s a collection of interactive applications. JavaScript powers all of it.

The line between “SEO” and “web developer” is gone. A modern technical SEO must understand rendering. A modern front-end developer must understand indexing.

That first failed React site was a painful, expensive lesson. But in the end, it made me a much better developer, not just a better SEO.

The great news is that the tools have caught up. Frameworks like Next.js and Nuxt.js have made JavaScript SEO the default. They bake in the best practices, so you can focus on building amazing user experiences, confident that Google can see every single word.

I know this seems like a lot, but it all comes back to that one simple question I failed to ask all those years ago: “Can Google see my content?”

Start there. Use the “View Source” test. Use the Mobile-Friendly Test. Understand your rendering strategy. If you’re starting a new project, for the love of god, start with SSR or SSG from day one. If you’re fixing an old one, prioritize real <a> tags and a plan to move to a better rendering solution. The effort is worth it. You’re not just building a better site for Google; you’re building a faster, more accessible, and more powerful site for your users.

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