The Future of Technical SEO | Women in Tech SEO 2019 | Rachel Costello

Rachel Costello
Technical SEO & Content Manager
THE FUTURE OF
TECHNICAL SEO
@rachellcostello womenintechseo

The new web technologies that impact SEO
and how to handle them.
WHAT WE’LL COVER
How to make your pages crawlable and
accessible for users and search engines.
Bridging the gap between SEOs and
developers to ensure website success.

THE BIGGEST
CHALLENGE IN
TECHNICAL
SEO

The latest challenge:
Keeping up with
developers.

The latest challenge:
Keeping up with
developers.
And helping Google
keep up too.

Developers keep
building
technologies that
we need to learn
how to maintain.

DEVELOPER KNOWLEDGE GAP
https://twitter.com/trypnotik/status/1121089330473160706

SEOs don’t know
enough about web
technologies, and
devs don’t know
enough about
search.

This is a huge
problem.

WebTechnologies
SearchEngines

WebTechnologies
SearchEngines
SEOs

HANDLING
JAVASCRIPT

JAVASCRIPT USAGE
JavaScript is everywhere, and
JS interest and usage are still
on the rise.

JAVASCRIPT USAGE

JAVASCRIPT USAGE
@rachellcostello womenintechseohttps://httparchive.org/reports/state-of-javascript#bytesJs

EMMA WEDEKIND,
UX ENGINEER AT LOGMEIN
JavaScript allows you to add complex
animations, fetch customer data, use open
APIs to integrate with popular technologies,
and enhance user experience. JavaScript
will never disappear.
”
”
https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/white-papers/javascript-seo-guide/

JavaScript opens
up a world of
opportunities for
developers...

...but what about
for SEOs?

?
...and for search engines?

JAVASCRIPT CHALLENGES
If your website relies on JavaScript
to power its content and
navigation, search engines could
end up seeing a blank screen with
nothing to crawl or index.

JavaScript
enabled
JavaScript
disabled

JavaScript disabled:
No body content, only navigation links.

Crucial content should be
accessible without JavaScript
enabled and without the client
having to render. It should ideally
be contained within the HTML.

Challenge:
Most search engines can’t render JavaScript or
crawl links generated by JavaScript.
CRAWLING JAVASCRIPT

Challenge:
Most search engines can’t render JavaScript or
crawl links generated by JavaScript.
Solution:
Implement pre-rendering or server-side rendering
for improved link discovery.
CRAWLING JAVASCRIPT

Challenge:
Processing and executing JavaScript is expensive
and time-consuming.
PROCESSING JAVASCRIPT

Solution:
Prioritise important resources for rendering and
optimise the critical rendering path.
Challenge:
Processing and executing JavaScript is expensive
and time-consuming.
PROCESSING JAVASCRIPT

Challenge:
Testing JavaScript rendering can be diﬃcult, but we
need to see how search engines are impacted.
TESTING JAVASCRIPT

Challenge:
Testing JavaScript rendering can be diﬃcult, but we
need to see how search engines are impacted.
TESTING JAVASCRIPT
Solution:
Use a headless browser and DOM comparison
tools to analyse contents of output code.

Luckily, JavaScript can be crawled.
https://www.deepcrawl.com

Compare source code and rendered code.
https://www.diﬀchecker.com/

HANDLING
PWAS

PWA USAGE

Challenge:
PWA pages can generate content dynamically, but
search engines can’t interact like a user can.
CRAWLING PWAS

Challenge:
PWA pages can generate content dynamically, but
search engines can’t interact like a user can.
CRAWLING PWAS
Solution:
Make sure key content can be accessed from a
unique URL and is served in the HTML.

Challenge:
PWAs are often built using complex JavaScript
frameworks which can cause rendering issues.
RENDERING PWAS

Challenge:
PWAs are often built using complex JavaScript
frameworks which can cause rendering issues.
RENDERING PWAS
Solution:
Perform thorough rendering testing with tools like
the Mobile-friendly Test and Chrome DevTools.

PWAs are crawlable too.
https://www.deepcrawl.com

You don’t have to be
an expert in every
framework to be able
to do an SEO audit on
them.

You don’t have to be
an expert in every
framework to be able
to do an SEO audit on
them.
You just need to know
what to focus on.

All unique content needs to
exist on its own crawlable
URL.

Use descriptive titles for
each page to give context
on what page is about.

Use semantic HTML
markup for key page
elements.

Ensure crucial resources
aren’t being blocked in
robots.txt.

Implement pre-rendering or
server-side rendering so
content is accessible.

Make sure output code
contains the content you
want to rank with.

Use clean <a> links to
ensure link discoverability
and crawlability.

WORKING WITH DEVELOPERS
Remember, SEOs can’t
do all of this alone.
Get developer support.

Learn from the development team about
what is possible for your website.

Code splitting
Compression
Miniﬁcation
Asynchronous loading
Concatenation
Dynamic imports
Resource hints
Progressive enhancement
Graceful degradation
Defer loading
Preload
Prefetch
Ask your developers about these terms:

KEEPING UP TO DATE
How I stay up to date with the engineering
community:
Dev.to
Interviews
Twitter
Conferences

1. TWITTER

2. DEV CONFERENCES

2. DEV CONFERENCES
Chrome Dev
Summit ‘18 topics:
JavaScript
Site Speed
Lazy-loading
Google I/O ‘19
topics:
Search Console
Mobile
PWAs

3. DEV.TO

Learn more about
devs and how they
work by sitting
down and talking to
them.

A realisation from
one of my
conversations with
a female engineer:

IMPOSTER SYNDROME
Imposter syndrome is a
blessing in disguise.

IMPOSTER SYNDROME
https://twitter.com/LadybugPodcast/status/1158757369888702465

Embrace your
insecurities and
turn them into your
biggest strength.

Keep up to speed with the latest technologies
devs are building by talking to them.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Make sure key content and links are accessible
for search engines.
Being open to learning new things will help you
achieve success as a technical SEO.

RESOURCES
https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/white-papers/javascript-seo-guide/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSwzfEn5-6A&list=PLKoqnv2vTMUPOalM1zuWDP9OQl851WMM9
https://builtvisible.com/progressive-web-app-seo/
https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/hangout-library/javascript-rendering/
https://www.deepcrawl.com/blog/events/google-javascript-rendering-secrets-chrome-dev-summit-2018/
https://www.deepcrawl.com/blog/events/google-io-2019-recap-key-takeaways-for-seos/

THANK YOU
Rachel Costello
Technical SEO & Content Manager

The Future of Technical SEO | Women in Tech SEO 2019 | Rachel Costello

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