Angular universal and SEO

If you’re using Angular for your website, then you may come across the extra hurdle when it comes to SEO, but there is angular universal that can get past it.  it’s not that easy though, and you need to use some technical wizardry for it. But, here we’ll explain angular universal, and why it’s useful for marketers.

Angular is great for delivering great apps that are user friendly, but it’s not that good for SEO for a couple of reasons.  For starters, Angular uses script for content delivery, so most bots won’t see the content that the user sees, and many times, you’ll see that content, wonder if it’s indexed, but if you right click on it, you’ll notice that you’ll get over 100 different source code lines, and not your content.  The problem with angular, is that humans will see your content, but bots will see the source, and that doesn’t have content! The secondary problem is the fact that the pages are slow to load, where some will show a blank screen for a few seconds before you get the homepage, and people are impatient. that’s how humans are, and it will hit your rank if you don’t hold it quickly. 

So is there a way to make it SEO-friendly? The answer is yes, and one of the more popular ways is dynamic rendering, where you use a tool to generate static HTML files that the web crawlers will consume easily. Then, you can configure the web server to direct the search bots to the pre-rendered pages while the human visitors get the regular angular app.  You also may want to consider angular universal.

Which runs on the server as opposed to the browser.  Angular apps are client-side applications, and many times the bots may not process the client side like the browser may do with a webpage, which is why you may see a discrepancy between the angular universal documents and the source code, since angular universal handles the SSE and will pre-render your content, so a user will get the HTML page instead of the client side, so it will load quicker, and at the end of the day, everyone will win.

you need angular universal if you’re going to try to get exposure.  For example, if you’re already reaching out to influencers, posting social media updates, and optimizing, you’ll be great.  You can’t rank if you’re not indexed though, which is why angular is powering your website, so you’ll need to take more steps to get this fully handled. Angular universal is the best way to do it, but the biggest downside is that it will cost money, cause you need qualified development to add SSR to the website, and that’s an expertise that while it will pay for itself, might cost a little more at the beginning. But, if you want to rank, this is how, and it’s the best and easiest solution that you have, especially if you want rankings.