Search is changing quickly, but one requirement remains: crawlers need to access your content and discover the links between your pages.
That sounds obvious. With modern JavaScript websites it deserves a closer look, though.
A page can look perfect in your browser while delivering very little useful HTML in its initial response. If the content depends on JavaScript executing successfully, a rendering failure can leave crawlers with missing text, missing navigation, or an empty application shell.
Google can render JavaScript. That doesn’t mean every crawler visiting your site can do the same, or that Google will always see the page you expected. - This is also due to the different nature of the crawlers that visit your site. Some are structural crawlers, some are content crawlers. - Crawling is resource intensive and ever more, if a crawler has to render stuff.
Hydration errors are one issue I’ll explore in this series. - This has nothing to do with drinking more water (which you should anyways), but much rather when the rendered website shows different stuff than the code.
They don’t automatically make a page unindexable, particularly when the server already delivers meaningful HTML. The useful question is: what content and links are actually available before and after JavaScript runs?
I’ll write about common technical SEO problems and misconceptions, including:
- Client-side rendering and crawler access.
- Internal links that work for users but are difficult for crawlers to discover.
- The differences between crawling, rendering, and indexing.
- How to check what a crawler can actually access.
A little about me: I’m an SEO consultant with more than 20 years of experience, and I run Guaranteed SEO Services.
I choose the topics and write from my own experience. I’ll also use AI to help draft and edit parts of this series, with technical claims checked against documentation and, where possible, reproducible tests. I am a nerd, after all - and not a writer, and I hope that my content helps you to identify and leverage your website problems.
What have you run into on your own projects? If there’s a rendering issue or technical SEO question you’d like me to investigate, leave a comment.
Top comments (0)