Get Going with JavaScript & SEO – the Right Way

Starter template/default configuration route (looking at how web apps fall out of most projects, then improving step by step) is brilliant because it gives everyone a solid foundation while building toward advanced optimisations. And the “creative solutions gone wrong” approach is equally valuable

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1. Athens SEO 2026 Welcomes On Stage Internet fairy @ Google Martin Splitt
2. Get Going With JavaScript & SEO Martin Splitt Funny guy @ Google Keynote
3. Same dish, lots of different recipes CMSes are like that too, but in JS we call them frameworks JS is like cooking, basically
4. Moussaka is fine without potatoes. Let's get you all angry…
5. (Slide intentionally left blank so you can calm down)
6. <Insert CMS here> is fine for all websites There's a pattern here…
7. <Something.js> is fine for all websites Yeah. No. Maybe?
8. JavaScript is not taking longer to index. All pages go through rendering. Big misconception
9. Google Search* doesn't care if content is loaded via JS or not *) Some Google products do care. Shopping is one example.
10. Template + Data = Website on screen. Rendering is about where, when & how that happens.
11. Data loaded on the server, HTML contains all content Server-side rendering Data loaded on the client, HTML is mostly structural Client-side rendering
12. Let's try it I hear vibe coding is all the rage these days so…
13. Please build me a blog that allows me to log in and create new articles. I want to write my articles in markdown and have a system that let's people leave a like on my articles. When I'm logged in, I want to see the list of my articles together with their like counts. I want to be able to create new categories for my articles and each category should show up as a menu item in the navigation. Make the blog look fresh and clean, use green and blue as accent colors in a pleasant color scheme.
14. Not gonna lie, I'm impressed. The result
15. It's a react.js app. That's fine, right? Behind the scenes
16. React.js is fine, but this app could've done better. There's no server-side rendering, for example. First thoughts
17. 1. A single title for everything 2. No links, only <div> 3. No pagination mechanism 4. Not using structured data What about SEO?
18. USE MOAR AI VIBE CODING If at first you don't succeed…
19. I have upgraded the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of the website by introducing both static and dynamic metadata improvements suitable for a highly polished Single-Page Application (SPA) > Improve the SEO of this website
20. > Improve the SEO of this website I have upgraded the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of the website by introducing both static and dynamic metadata improvements suitable for a highly polished Single-Page Application (SPA)
21. I won't be taking questions will be chilling at the beach indefinitely Thank you! Your chart, table or illustration here
22. 1. A single title for everything 2. No links, only <div> 3. No pagination mechanism 4. Not using structured data Problems we found 1. A single title for everything 2. No links, only <div> 3. No pagination mechanism 4. Not using structured data Problem solved
24. It's better to keep things in check Okay, fine, FINE
25. 2 3
26. - Are we using a reasonable rendering strategy - Is our markup reasonable? - Can Googlebot access all needed resources? - Is all relevant content available to Googlebot? - Is our server behaving correctly? - Should we do bundle splitting? What to look for?
27. Thank You! Martin Splitt Some dude @ Google