Multilingual Content Generated by JavaScript & SEO
Multilingual Content & Search Rankings
So, you think you’ve got this content thing figured out and then… Boom! You get hit with a big bag of multilingual content that needs a sprinkle of SEO magic. There’s only one problem. You’ve never dealt with global SEO, multilingual SEO, international SEO, or whatever it is that they are calling it nowadays. To make matters worse, the majority (or all) of your multilingual content is generated by JavaScript. Stick around, you’re going to want to hear this…
Using JavaScript to Deliver Multilingual Content
Shall we jump into an example of multilingual content generated by JavaScript? We shall. Let’s say you’re using Localize, which is a translation management and delivery system. With Localize, you‘ll install a super tiny code snippet into the <head> of your website. As you visit the pages of your site, Localize will pull both your text and images from your site and import them into your Localize dashboard. From there you can add translations and localized images for pretty much any language.
Swapping Content
This part is pretty cool; Localize will detect the preferred language of your visitor and display/ deliver your content to them in that language (assuming it’s a language you have enabled in your Localize dashboard). For the sake of this example, let’s say that our website is in English and we’ve used Localize to translate our content in Spanish.
The Results Are In
Here’s the big question that you are all wondering:
Will Googlebot crawl my website in my translated/ target language (which is Spanish), or will it only see my source language (in our case, English) content?
Short answer, YES.
SEO Myth Debunked
This may or may not be a shocker to you, but Googlebot is in fact smart enough to know that there is content generated by JavaScript on your site. It just needs to be rendered. As depicted above, you should keep in mind that Googlebot actually performs this action separately. During the first crawl of your site, if Googlebot suspects you have content that needs to be rendered it will throw your site in its Render Queue so that it knows that it needs to come back and grab your remaining content. Googlebot comes back, the rendered HTML is then indexed, and Boom.
Google themselves have stated that having content generated by JavaScript which requires rendering DOES NOT hinder your search rankings. Good news, right? I told you that you’d want to stick around.
No Bot-y Standing In Your Way
Okay, now that we’ve exposed the truth about JavaScript and SEO, what’s next? You now know all the things are possible, but where do you start? Hang on tight, it’s going to be a doozy! Check out our next article for Best Practices for Global SEO in 2020.
