Quick summary – Angular is a developer-friendly framework that has been around for a while. It’s used to make dynamic web pages with content from web services. Angular Universal, aka server rendering, allows a developer to make an Angular SEO friendly web app. Let’s find out how it can be done!
The Angular framework is a javascript-based structural framework for web applications. It’s used to make dynamic web pages with content from web services. Angular is a developer-friendly framework that has been around for a while, amassing a robust community of tools and utilities such as Angular CMS tools, backend frameworks, and more.
JavaScript frameworks such as Angular are constantly adapting to developers’ requirements and upgraded to meet the needs of search engines and crawlers scouring the web. You may already use standard SEO techniques, but your results could be better.
However, a transition or upgrade to Angular Universal, a bundle designed to make Angular SEO friendly web app, could be the solution to your problems. Angular 11 and later include libraries that allow you to edit and execute meta tags. You can even tell Angular Universal to pre-render the data as it loads.
Before that, let’s understand the basics first.
Table of content
Why Is Angular Important?
Most clients and developers are drawn to Angular because it is a comprehensive framework for developers to use when creating large-scale applications. Top companies such as Forbes, Xbox, BMW, and others use Angular for frontend development. Angular is most commonly used to create SPAs.
Angular apps are called Single Page Applications because when they load, they dynamically render other pages rather than reloading the web pages. This is made possible by the robust framework of Angular, which dynamically modifies the web pages by running JavaScript codes or loading only specific content. This allows users to have a more seamless experience without waiting for pages to reload.
It is now pretty apparent that Angular is highly user-friendly. It aids in developing visually appealing, fully functional, and scalable web app solutions. This implies that it should be one of the best options for your app development needs, right? Almost there! Any app must be user-friendly and SEO-friendly to produce the best results. Because of its SEO limitations, Angular is widely derided. Before getting into the difficulties with Angular and SEO (search engine optimization), we should know why it is essential.
Why Your Website Should Be SEO-Friendly?
Spiders, robots, and bots are other names for search engine crawlers. These are programs or scripts that browse the web and read the pages they visit to add them to the index of their search engine. This is an important activity because search engine crawlers indexing your website’s content assist search engines in reading your content and understanding your company’s end goal.
When users search for something, search engines rank your content based on the query they receive. The easier it is for search engine crawlers to index your content, the more likely your website will appear near the top of search results for your services. This will assist you in driving more traffic to your website, increasing your chances of conversion and overall success.
SEO For Ordinary Web Applications
SEO (search engine optimization) is one of the most important investments for any online business in a tech-dominated world. Previously, web applications were relatively simple and mainly consisted of static pages. All of the necessary information was pre-coded into these pages. As web application development progressed, we entered an era of dynamic content rendering, in which web page content is stored and retrieved as needed.
Following are the techniques to do so:
Client-side Rendering
The content is rendered in the browser rather than on the site’s server when using client-side rendering. When using a JavaScript framework, this is the default rendering method.
It is the most dependable and scalable method of providing dynamic web pages to web app users because it reduces server load. This increases the load time by milliseconds to seconds, resulting in longer-than-desired wait times for users. Search bots must return to the web app to render the JavaScript as resources become available. This second round of indexing could take a while.
Server-side Rendering
Some use SSR to reduce the number of server requests and round trips for data collection and templating on the client-side. An application’s ability to convert HTML files on the server into fully rendered HTML pages for the client is referred to as server-side rendering. The web browser first requests information from the server, and the server responds immediately by sending a fully rendered page to the client. Partial indexing and missing content are extremely unlikely with SSR. SSR, instead of client-side rendering, has fewer crawl-budget-related SEO and page speed issues. One of the main disadvantages of SSR is that third-party JavaScript rarely works with it.
Dynamic Rendering
Dynamic rendering means that you send client-side content to the user and server-side content, i.e., the HTML files, to the bots, who will produce the HTML pages and content seen by the user. One of its advantages is that it allows Google to crawl and index your content without needing JavaScript.
Another benefit of re-rendering content for humans and bots is that it saves developers time and resources. It also addresses issues with the crawl budget, which is linked to page speed. This allows Google to crawl more pages on the site. However, interactive features that require JavaScript continue to benefit human visitors.
While each method has advantages and disadvantages, keep in mind that other factors will influence speed and response. The hosting service, bandwidth, location, and device you use will also affect speed and performance.
Determine which rendering method is best for your specific situation by assessing the quantity of your content, the power of your equipment and staff, and the traffic volume.
Previously, server-side rendering of pages was the norm due to a lack of sophisticated client-side rendering frameworks. There were numerous languages and frameworks available to handle the situation. PHP, Java Spring, NodeJS with Handlebars, and other frameworks, for example, render the pages in advance and send only plain HTML content to the frontend.
This method ensures that the page has the correct meta tags and that all content has been rendered before the search engine crawler accesses it.
As a result, traditional web applications were practically trivial when it came to SEO. They did, however, have the disadvantage of taking longer to load. Processing thousands of page requests became complex with low-end servers. This introduced frontend frameworks such as Angular into the picture.
Complications In SEO With AngularJS
Following are the woes that an Angular developer may face with SEO:
Bots May Miss To Read Content
From what we’ve learned about Angular, we know it doesn’t reload pages unless explicitly instructed to do so. It supports dynamically changing the Metadata of web pages, but this is entirely based on JavaScript. JavaScript is not search-engine-crawlers-friendly. As a result, Angular apps may fail to render the correct content or Metadata. Most of the user’s content is visible on an Angular website or the Angular app; the bots cannot see it because they are fetching data from the source. Furthermore, Angular does not store data on the source.
Single Page Application use API connections to access content, which removes all crawlable content from the page’s actual code. Most websites are built with HTML, containing all of the website’s content; however, SPAs only keep the basic page structure. The text appears as a result of a dynamic API call. As a result, Google crawlers cannot find any actual HTML code in the source code.
Sluggish Loading
Another significant limitation of Angular apps that makes them fewer SEO-friendly is their slowness. Angular apps are scalable, user-friendly, and robust. What they aren’t usually is speed optimized. Most angular sites load as blank screens for a few seconds before rendering the home page. As a result, visitors abandon the website before even reaching it or experiencing it.
Techniques To Make Your Angular SEO friendly Web app
There are, thankfully, solutions for resolving this SEO conflict with Angular apps. Because Angular is one of the most popular frontend JS technologies, they have recognized these limitations. They have implemented some practical solutions to provide you with a website that is both user-friendly and SEO friendly. Let’s look at some options for making your Angular SEO friendly web app.
Switch To Dynamic Rendering
The leading SEO limitation of Angular websites is that they retrieve data via API calls and do not have many HTML files for Google to crawl. A simple solution to this problem is to use a dynamic rendering tool to help you create static HTML files that web crawlers can easily consume and index. You can then configure your web server to direct search engine crawlers to the pre-rendered pages while human visitors are redirected to the standard Angular website.
Implementing Angular Universal
Why Angular Universal?
Angular Universal is a technology developed by Angular that allows you to render your Angular Applications on the server. When a user visits your website for the first time, this tool allows the server to pre-render your Angular application. There are numerous SEO advantages to utilizing Angular Universal. It also helps to improve your Angular web app’s overall performance and accessibility.
How Does Angular Universal function?
When we use Angular Universal, it renders the HTML and CSS files that are displayed to the users in advance. We can do this during the build process or on the fly-on server when the user requests the page. By doing so, the user will initially be served with the HTML and CSS files, allowing them to view some content on the website as they visit. With server-side rendering, we are addressing the issue of long load times that can irritate visitors to an Angular website. This, however, is only half of the story. We will ship a standard client-side Angular Application to the browser and the server-side rendered HTML.
How to implement Angular Universal?
Step 1– Make a New Angular Application
ng new project-name--style=sscc
Step 2: Install Angular Universal and make any necessary changes to your project files. Angular Schematics can add Angular Universal to your project with a single command.
ng add @nguniversal/express-engine --clientProject project-name When you run the step 2 command, your Angular app creates and updates these files in your application: CREATE src/main.server.ts (298 bytes) CREATE sc/app/app. server.module.ts (318 bytes) CREATE tsconfig.server.json (325 bytes) CREATE server.ts (2015 bytes) UPDATE package. JSON (2110 bytes) UPDATE angular. JSON (5247 bytes) UPDATE src/main.ts (432 bytes) UPDATE sc/app/app.module.ts (359 bytes)
Step 3 – Test your app
Testing your app is one of the most important aspects of any app development project. Once you’ve completed all of the preceding steps correctly, run this command to test your app:
pm run build:55R && npm run serve: SSR
Lazy Loading
The page load speed has a significant impact on your SEO score. It is critical to keep the initial page load time as low as possible to keep the user on the page. Under-five seconds is an excellent initial load time to keep the user waiting.
Angular applications, as we all know, are significant. The angular team is working hard to reduce the bundle size, but it remains significant. This means that the initial loading time of our Angular application may be slower, negatively impacting your SEO performance.
Lazy loading comes into play here. Lazy loading is a method of breaking down your application module into smaller chunks so that modules can be downloaded on-demand and at leisure.
Setting titles and Metadata
Search engine crawlers collect information from all the titles and metadata on a web page. All you need to do to dynamically add metadata and change the page title in your Angular app is use these modules.
Go to your home and update the home.components.ts file with the following changes:
import { Component, OnInit } from @angular/core
import ( Meta, Title } from @angular/platform-browser*
@Component ({
selector: 'app-home'
templateUrl:./home. component.html
styleUrls:['./home.component.ess']
})
export class HomeComponent implements OnInit {
constructor (private meta: Meta, private title: Title)
this.meta.addTags({
{name:’description', content:"Home page of SE0 friendly app'},
{name:"author" content:"enprowess"}
{name: "keywords" content: "Angular, enprowess"}
]);
this. setTitle('Home Page' );
{
public setTitle( newTitle: string) {
this title setTitle (newTitle);
}
ngOnIt () {
}
}
After making these changes, look at the tile on the browser tab. As the user navigates through the pages, it will change dynamically. If you inspect the code in the browser console, you’ll notice that the corresponding Metadata is included. However, the page source content remains unchanged.
This means that if JavaScript is allowed, we can generate dynamic titles and metadata, but not if it is not. So we must figure out how to send the rendered page’s content to users. This is referred to as pre-rendering. So far, we’ve discussed two solutions, one of which still doesn’t address the loading speed issue and the other of which has the limitation of pre-rendering, which can be solved with Angular Universal.
Wrapping It Up
Though Angular is a developer-friendly app, it poses complications in crawling; hence you need to implement the techniques mentioned above to make it SEO-friendly. If you feel like hiring experienced Angular developers, don’t hesitate. We are an offshore development firm and have experience working with global tech firms. Feel free to ping us for a quotation.
FAQs
What are the three different types of search engines?
There are mainly 3 different types of search engines. They are- directories, sponsored links, and web crawlers. These search engines use different methods like crawler databases to gather and retrieve data that is publicly available.
Is it possible to do SEO (search engine optimization) in Angular?
Like any other JavaScript framework, Angular requires special tools to optimize SPAs for search engines. Those tools allow you to implement SSR (server-side rendering) and meet all technical SEO requirements for correct page indexation and good ranking.
What exactly is Universal Angular?
Angular Universal, also known as server-side rendering, is a tool that allows the server to pre-render an Angular application when a user first visits your website. Server-side rendering has numerous advantages for SEO, performance, and accessibility of your web application!
Is Angular Universal SEO-friendly?
Angular Universal allows us to create apps that combine the performance and user engagement benefits of single-page apps with the SEO friendliness of static pages.
Is it possible for Google to crawl Angular pages?
Google believes it can crawl an Angular Website and has done so in the past. They strongly advise people to create an Angular universal SEO website; otherwise, indexing the pages will be difficult.
How do we add a meta tag in Angular?
Importing the Meta service from @angular/platform-browser and injecting it into a component or service is required to use it. You can use the add tags method to set them all at once if you have multiple meta tags.
