Technical SEO for Single-Page Applications (SPAs)
Single-page applications are a comfortable and visually pleasing way to create web experiences. That’s why it has become very common on the web. The biggest problem of using SPA as the primary model for creating your website is that it becomes much harder to do SEO.
However, it’s not impossible to do single-page application SEO, just different than for traditional websites that reload a new HTML document for every page. In this article, you’ll learn modern techniques of its execution.
What Is A Single Page Application (SPA)?
Your average web page looks like this. It has an HTML code document that stores the general layout of elements and all text, imagery, and videos on the page. This HTML document uploads CSS and JavaScript elements as needed. When you interact with the site, it will typically redirect you to another web page and load it completely.
The HTML in single-page applications only stores JavaScript code, typically in Angular, React, or Vue.js, instead of content. This code loads the content and the formatting for the page upon interaction and uploads new content as required instead of jumping to another web page.
Benefits and Challenges of Using SPA
This way of creating web pages provides benefits to the user and to the website owner, but also challenges come with it.
Issues With SPA
The biggest issue SPA developers run into is that it becomes harder to do SEO for these setups. Google primarily looks at the content of HTML on pages to crawl, render, and index them. When a page doesn’t have any content and, instead, generates it dynamically with JavaScript, Google may not understand what the page is about.
However, that used to be a major problem in the past. Now, you can avoid most issues with this by writing code compatible with Google search bots.
What it can’t fix is incomplete indexing. If you have a single page on your site, Google will likely only serve it for your main keywords. Other notable challenges include:
- Lack of a detailed URL structure users can bookmark
- Slow initial loading time with client-side rendering
- Lack of unique metadata on pages
For all of these, there are standard workarounds.
Benefits for Users and Business Owners
The main benefit of using single-page applications as your web development model is enhanced customer experience.
Since users don’t have to load each page individually but instead load content based on interactions with the website, it reduces the overall waiting time and makes the experience of browsing your website smoother.
Using JavaScript to load content dynamically also means it’s easier to develop websites that can perform well across desktop and mobile platforms without compromising user experience.
Since a great customer experience improves customer loyalty, you could also argue that SPAs might indirectly influence overall sales and growth if used correctly.
Technical SEO Strategies for SPA Websites
When SPAs first became popular, accomplishing SEO for them seemed impossible. Now, as a more widespread practice, SPA SEO is a bit different.
Some core practices are the same as those used for SEO for regular websites. For instance, controlling for the basic technical SEO standards, like avoiding duplicate content or long page loading time.
These basics ensure your SPA is in line with Google guidelines, but checking each page manually to confirm it’s okay is impossibly long. Instead, use a tool like Website Audit Tool by SE Ranking to find those problems quickly and effectively. It will return a list of possible issues in different areas, from JavaScript slowing down loading time to missing alt tags in images.
This tool also will suggest ways to fix those problems.
Whatever tools you use, not all might work through SPA sites perfectly. Most will leave a few issues out due to JavaScript processing problems, but it’s better than checking it all manually.
Ensuring your site follows the basics every website should strive for is only the first step. Now, let’s take a look at technical SEO strategies specific to SPA websites.
For a more comprehensive approach, consider consulting with a local SEO company that specializes in optimizing SPAs. They can provide tailored strategies and insights that are particularly effective for local search visibility and overall SEO performance.
Whatever tools you use, not all might work through SPA sites perfectly. Most will leave a few issues out due to JavaScript processing problems, but it’s better than checking it all manually.
Ensuring your site follows the basics every website should strive for is only the first step. Now, let’s take a look at technical SEO strategies specific to SPA websites.
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Server-side Rendering or Pre-rendering
An important element to improve SEO for single-page applications is to use a form of pre-rendering. This allows you to render the JavaScript code into HTML with content on your server and serve the HTML to users instead of rendering it in the browser.
Google has changed its bots to render pages in the browser so that they can index pages with client-side rendering. However, Google queues pages for crawling and rendering. Leaving all rendering to the client side might influence crawling budgets. Google bots also can’t process all JavaScript code, so they may be unable to render some of the pages. You’d have to specifically use parts of it that are easy to render for Google bots.
That’s why Google recommends using SSR. Not all bots can run JavaScript, and server-side or pre-rendering makes the crawling and rendering process faster and avoids unnecessary mistakes.
When you use server-side rendering, you form HTML for user interaction on the server and reduce user device loading via the browser. This means faster initial loading time and smoother navigation on the site.
Pre-rendering is a simpler process that serves a basic HTML layout to the user from the server and has the client’s browser render the rest with JavaScript.
Pre-rendering and SSR improve the time from interaction to seeing new content and reduce the bounce rate. But there is a tradeoff. Using server-side rendering for every user interaction takes a load on your server bandwidth and requires careful data management.
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SEO-friendly URLs
An important SEO component of a single-page app website is its URL. It allows Google to neatly structure the website into separate pages and understand how to serve each page in search.
For the last decade, the two best approaches to indexing URLs in SPAs were to either use ?_escaped_fragment_ or #! Now, Google suggests using HTML5 History API to process URLs properly on websites that don’t use server-side rendering.
In terms of SPA SEO, URLs should be static, semantic, and stay the same for each page, with meaningful names. Yoursite.com/25-05-2024-id2387372 would be a bad practice, while yoursite.com/services is the standard you should look for.
Following these two tips will make your SPA both more understandable for users and easy to crawl and index for search engines.
Make sure to make the links crawlable. Google can’t discover content across different content views if you don’t include it using the <a> tag and href attribute. If a user navigates to content you want to rank as a separate page, refrain from using a code like:
<a href=”javascript:goTo(‘mens-jackets’)”>
Instead, use the URL.
<a href=”/products/category/mens-jackets” onclick=”javascript:goTo(‘mens-jackets’)”>
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Optimized Meta Tags
Google uses meta tags to determine what the page is about. Users will also use title and meta description tags to gauge whether a page can help them with their goal.
Make sure to dynamically generate unique, descriptive title and meta description tags that contain keywords you want a page to rank for. You can also generate robots meta tags to prevent a page from indexing or set indexing rules, like limiting the maximum snippet length or disabling image preview.
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Lazy Loading and Performance
Website loading speed is crucial for UX, which influences sales and SEO indirectly, as a high bounce rate is a negative ranking signal. A study by Portent shows websites that load in one second have double the conversion rate of those that load in six.
Using single-page applications and server-side rendering decreases loading time, as you don’t have to use a GET request when a user interacts with the site. But it can be made even better with lazy loading.
The easiest way to do this is to use Intersection Observer API, which loads the elements as they enter the user’s browser viewport. You could also use the “loading” attribute in <img> and <iframe> tags to lazy load them natively without using external libraries.
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Structured Data
Structured data is additional data that feeds Google information about your page. It’s used to display additional elements in SERP, like pricing, availability, rating, or images like this.
You can add this data by generating it with custom JavaScript. Make sure to check the documentation on generating the required JSON-LD data and using it in your CMS before implementation and test with Rich Results Test.
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Mobile Optimization
Ideally, your single-page application should be designed with accessibility in mind, enhanced with mobile optimization. It’s been stated that 60% of website traffic comes from mobile devices. Ignoring this might alienate a large part of potential visitors.
You can test mobile optimization with your browser inspection tool. Google Chrome tool lets you use popular smartphone and tablet dimensions, as well as set your own.
Check your website for other accessibility features, like availability to users with JavaScript turned off. To view your site this way, turn off JS in your browser or use a text-only browser.
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Analytics and Tracking
Tracking customer behavior on the site is also easier with traditional website structure, but GA4 guidelines for SPAs offer a simple solution.
If your single-page application uses History API, you can use page changes based on browser history events to track virtual page views. If it uses DocumentFragment objects, set up custom events to count screen changes as virtual page views.
These will give you access to all features of Google Analytics 4.
Great Examples Of Single-Page Applications
Single-page applications are all over the web. Notably, most online tools, from Trello to Gmail, are single-page applications but don’t need indexing aside from a main page.
X, called Twitter recently, is a good example of an SPA that has to index most of its pages. Content in the X feed is loaded dynamically based on user preferences instead of being static.
Google users can navigate to individual pages of creators or, sometimes, individual tweets. How does X do it?
HTML5 History API lets X update the visible URL to make an impression as though a new page was loaded. In reality, it’s generated with JavaScript code and mocks a regular website.
When a user clicks on a link, they get served the HTML code to show that particular tweet or account, and JavaScript code loads the rest of the website as a single-page app.
X even took care of accessibility by serving users with no JS support a traditional version of the site that reloads the UI every time you click on another link.
This is a great example of how a good web developer balances transforming an SPA accessible to all users, including those with no JS support, and improving SPA performance for all.
Summary
Single-page application SEO isn’t as difficult as it used to be. Google has adjusted a lot to the new realities of the web, and a new tech stack provides more opportunities for indexing and optimizing SPA pages.
The main takeaways are to use server-side rendering and a proper URL structure to make parsing and indexing your site easier for Google bots. Follow the rest of our tips in this article to optimize your SPA for search even more.
