The Ask an #SMXpert series continues the question-and-answer (Q&A) segment held during sessions at
Search Marketing Expo (SMX) West 2018.
Today’s Q&A is from the JavaScript & PWAs: What SEOs Need To Know session with Max Prin, with an introduction from moderator Barry Schwartz.
Barry Schwartz
As more and more developers and publishers discover the powers of using JavaScript and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) to power their websites, it is important to be aware of the challenges and workarounds of making content on those pages crawlable and indexable so they can rank in the search results.
In the following Q&A, Max Prin discusses what may come up during development and how to utilize technologies to build a richer user experience and not hinder search traffic.
Max Prin
Slide deck: JavaScript & Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)
Question: I’m sold on PWAs. Where do we start? What is the level of effort for dev team?
Max: I would start here for an introduction to PWAs and a general understanding of them.
The level of effort will depend on the state of the current website. An already JavaScript-powered website (i.e, built on a JavaScript framework such as Angular or React) is a good candidate to be turned into a Progressive Web App because it is already a web app.
Any website can install and benefit from PWA features such as offline access via a service worker. However, the best results will happen with a website that is fast, dynamic, mobile-friendly and so on, which basically already has an “app feel.”
A simple WordPress blog, for example, might need a full redesign (new code base, away from WordPress) in order to be a good PWA.
Question: Do PWAs have a bad effect on search ranking?
Max: No. PWAs are “just” websites, and the challenges webmaster could run into when it comes to search ranking are the same any JavaScript-based site can have: crawlability, rendering and therefore, indexing.
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