Progressive web apps (PWAs) are websites that take advantage of mobile features. They are strengthening online businesses with attractive storefronts. PWAs are mobile-friendly web applications that look and behave like native mobile applications. It is the latest web technology for improving user experience and lead generation.
🔥 Creating a progressive web app is not enough to lead your business. Your site should appear in the search results. You may not know that your web app is SEO-friendly or crawlable. So, check whether your PWA site is indexable and linkable.
This article offers the best practices to optimize your PWA SEO for your business. Check the list of ways to build SEO-friendly progressive websites for search engines.
Table of Contents
10 Ways to Optimize PWA SEO in 2022
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Avoid Fragment Identifier
Fragment Identifiers allowed browsers to fetch new content from a server without reloading the page via AJAX. This process is known as client-side rendering. However, some web tools, frameworks, and protocols do not support the fragment identifier syntax, such as Facebook’s Open Graph protocol. The History API can help to update URLs without a fragment identifier.
Avoid: Don’t Use of the #! In the URL structure to create unique ones: https://www.example.com/#!product/25/
Best Practice: Create URLs without fragment identifiers ( # or #!).
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Mark Canonical URLs
While indexing, it is common to get confused when the same content is available under multiple URLs. The best way to eliminate the duplicate content is to specify one page canonical.
Avoid: Don’t duplicate the content across multiple URLs.
Best Practice: Include rel=”canonical to the link element to reduce ambiguity for URLs.
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Create Crawlable Content
PWA websites use client rendering to update the content when the user navigates. It does not require reloading the page. But, it redirects users accessing deep links back to the homepage.
Avoid:Deep linking and serving an error page should be avoided.
Best Practice:Use hybrid rendering, which combines server-side and client-side rendering. When a user navigates directly to the URL, server-side rendering is activated, and client-side rendering is activated when the page first loads. Using hybrid rendering, users will receive the content in the initial payload.
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Responsive for multiple devices
No matter what device your customers use, they should have a better user experience when navigating your progressive application. So, you should create a responsive design that loads dynamically on any screen resolution.
Avoid: Super high-resolution images, fixed-size fonts, different content, and small images.
Best Practice: Include the srcset attribute to fetch different resolution images for different screens. Ensure that your text can be read on any device regardless of the font size and line height. In addition, ensure padding and margins scale correctly. You can test screen resolutions using the Chrome Developer Tools.
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Analyze Site using Google Search Console
How does Google search view your site? Google crawls your progressive website and fetches individual URLs for the users. You can use the Google Search Console to test the content of your progressive web application.
Best Practice: Analyze the content on your page: Go to Crawl > Fetch. Or Use Google Sitemaps to explore all pages of your site. Go to Crawl > Sitemaps.
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Ensure Better PWA Performance
Users leave the website If it takes more than 2 seconds to load. Google bots are also getting frustrated with slow PWA. So, try to keep the web application performance high or improve PWA loading speed to attract potential customers.
Best Practice: Web page performance can enhance SERPs ranking on the Google search engine. Starbucks is the best PWA example that always keeps the site performance high.
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Use Progressive Enhancement
Browse features play an important role in optimizing PWA SEO. It is better to test whether the browser supports all PWA features. You can use feature detection to test your web browsers and which features it supports.
Avoid: Don’t enable or disable features while updating the site.
Best Practice: Service workers can help to enhance progressive web apps. But, try not to break their compatibility in the process.
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External Linking
External linking is far more effective than internal linking. It has more power to improve the ranking. It can boost your web app reputation by providing the viewers with references. So, you need to learn about external linking too while optimizing PWA SEO.
Avoid: Not all the time Google can index the external links.
Best Practice: Use “ ahref” to index the link on Google to make it easily crawlable.
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Test Cross-browser Compatibility
Ensure that your PWA app behaves the same across all web browsers, regardless of device. They can adapt to different screen sizes. It should be similar in size to iPhone, tablet, android phones, Windows laptops, etc.
Best Practice: Developers can use modern tools to build rich and cross-browser-compatible websites. Also, there are tools to test PWA cross-browser compatibilities, such as BrowserStack.com, Browserling.com, or BrowserShots.org.
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Structure Metadata
Metadata helps XML-based applications categorize the content and improves the click-through rates (CTRs) that impact the SEO ranking. It helps Webmasters identify relevant search queries for the content.
Best Practice:Structured metadata can enhance your sharing on social media channels. Verify that your Schema.org metadata is correct using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
- Keep the URLs for each free from fragment identifiers.
- Use the scrset attribute to let the browser choose between specified images.
- Use structure metadata to make pages indexable.
- Make each page specify its canonical.
- Do External linking as they possess ranking power.
- Test your PWA with multiple browsers and devices.
- Keep the PWA performance high.
- Use feature detection to test web browsers’ features.
- Use Google Search Console to analyze the content.
- Test cross-browser compatibility using browsing tools.
Key Takeaways
Final Note
Progressive web apps combine the web and mobile world. If they are optimized enough to crawl in search engines, it can bring more traffic and increase conversion rates. Consider all these ten tips to optimize PWA SEO while developing them. Well, Magemart, a PWA development agency, can create optimized and stunning web applications for your business.