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I want to understand why client side rendering makes it bad for SEO? Are there any articles about this? Isn't the data rendering already from the server and it's just a matter of making it look like anything we want in JavaScript, how will this affect SEO?

Thank you.

Brittany Rutherford
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2 Answers2

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The simple answer is that when you render the site with JavaScript you require JavaScript to see the page, right? Well, Google bots don't run JavaScript so in the best case they'll just see plain text.

Nothing wrong with plain text though. The most important thing is that the same info is on the page even without JavaScript.

Can you be more specific on how you planning to implement client side rendering?

Tony Gustafsson
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  • Thanks Tony, the data comes from SharePoint as json, and you have the ability to override its rendering using javascript file, using this javascript file you can make the output as table forr example. so if we do the rendering this way, is it against SEO? I am not sure how SEO works and why would it prefer server rendering more than client side rendering? – Brittany Rutherford Apr 04 '15 at 03:32
  • Like I said, Google won't run JavaScript, so if it's required to see the data, google won't find anything, and cannot index any information. But if you output the default Sharepoint info if JavaScript is not enabled it's ok. – Tony Gustafsson Apr 05 '15 at 10:12
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Why would you like to use SEO for a SharePoint site? SharePoint has already a very good native search engine.

Please take in count that using sharepoint as a public website is no longer recommended, furthermore Microsoft and any SP professional will discourage you from using it in that way. Microsoft has already dropped the public website feature from SharePoint Online (Office 365), and as you may know the current Microsoft strategy is “Cloud first, Mobile first” so you can expect that in the middle term most of the ways and patterns will be equivalent in SP Online and SP on-premise. So I'm not saying that you can't do this with a SharePoint server exposed to internet, however you shouldn't continue doing it, considering that you can use web services to call/get sharepoint content from any other web platform in case you need to publish some sharepoint content in a public website.

http://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3027254/en-us

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sharepoint-public-website-platform-any-more-marwan-tarek

Isaac E. Krauss
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  • Another good article about this topic http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-confirms-it-is-dropping-public-website-feature-from-sharepoint-online/ – Isaac E. Krauss Mar 29 '15 at 01:10
  • Hi Isaac, thanks for your answer, SharePoint as public site is not recommended by Microsoft for Office 365 sites, but it's supported for on premises. like Ferrari.com. So in this case, if we use client side rendering, will it be against SEO rules? – Brittany Rutherford Apr 04 '15 at 03:28