How does flarum run the SEO

westwoods

Hi
I am now working for a flarum site and I feel confusing about how does flarum achieve SEO function in the source code.
As I know, flarum has SSR template contains noscript code. But I can't find in the page displayed on my browser. ( It just display in the develop tools in Chrome )
Can anyone tell me some more?
Thank you very much.

clarkwinkelmann

westwoods which SEO features are you referring to ? We have many different things, and also still multiple missing things.

You're correct, a noscript page exists for browsers or search engines without javascript support. You should see it when you disable javascript in your browser. It has very limited features. basically just discussion browsing and reading.

If you're trying to locate something in Flarum source code, let us know.

westwoods

clarkwinkelmann
Thank you for you explain.
As I understand, tha page render process is start from SSR which is the template pass from server, and in that template, there is script such as flarum.core.app.load() or flarum.core.app.boot(); to start Mithril component which is what we see in the browser at last.
If so, all search results we can see from search engines like "Google" are from SSR template and Mithril dynamicly generate DOM so it cannot be used for SEO.
Am I correct?
Many thanks.

clarkwinkelmann

westwoods SSR template

I find SSR has now become a ambiguous term.

SSR as in React SSR, the server-side rendering of single page apps to improve load time and SEO: Flarum is not using that.

SSR as in simple server-side generated HTML, Flarum is using that to generate the noscript view (via Laravel Blade templates)

Flarum has both a noscript HTML template, and the single page app that runs client side.

I'm not sure what each search engine sees, but they will see one or the other. From what I understand Google does run javascript, so they are probably able to read the page as it looks from the single page app (like in any javascript-enabled browser). Other "less advanced" search engines will see the noscript version.

Everything header and meta-related is the same in both cases as it's part of the base HTML of the page, whether the search engine can read javascript or not.

TheyCallMeTojo

Are you afraid that Google's web crawlers will not pick up vital HTML tags and other related SEO markup? Everything looks good to me.

Response Header:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2019 02:26:15 GMT Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Transfer-Encoding: chunked Connection: keep-alive Set-Cookie: __cfduid=dabc0e07f0b379518ac3c750eb7801b3a1574735175; expires=Thu, 26-Dec-19 02:26:15 GMT; path=/; domain=.flarum.org; HttpOnly Vary: Accept-Encoding X-CSRF-Token: f14W7Hs0qlwNij3apbZORCIMWny3FOdaaS5mPJ48 Set-Cookie: flarum_session=qYhm1K8HwySGnwsvPAL6zZgbMocolDP2ah7aLYv2; Path=/; Expires=Tue, 26 Nov 2019 04:26:15 GMT; Max-Age=7200; Secure; HttpOnly X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff CF-Cache-Status: DYNAMIC Expect-CT: max-age=604800, report-uri="https://report-uri.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/beacon/expect-ct" Server: cloudflare CF-RAY: 53b86a9c4c15e11e-IAD

Here is output from a crawler bot from this very thread: https://gist.github.com/nartamus/07b565c6cf50d9a1a401cf20ba667c3f

westwoods

clarkwinkelmann
Back for work.
Thanks for your answer and merry chrismas.
As you say, both templates and SPA can be used for different SEO engine and google may use single page app as it does run JS? Seems I need to find out how SPA can be used for SEO..

clarkwinkelmann

westwoods I'm not super familiar with that, but from what I've heard it seems Google first crawls the no-js page, then comes back for the javascript version based on some logic and probably their server load. So it's still very important to have a no-js version, but Google will also probably look at the javascript version.

westwoods

clarkwinkelmann
So put no-js code at template will be a good way to solve SEO.
I will keep try some more.
Thanks for your help.

Hari

This could be the problem?

Google has updated its help documentation on dynamic rendering to say "dynamic rendering is a workaround and not a long-term solution for problems with JavaScript-generated content in search engines.

"Instead, we recommend that you use server-side rendering, static rendering, or hydration as a solution," -- Google added.

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-dynamic-rendering-workaround-33897.html

Since you discussed about SSR earlier I had to link you from an old post clarkwinkelmann i am considering switching to WordPress just because of SEO issues but at the same still thinking of every possible way to continue using flarum. is it possible to make one flarum extension and change flarum behaviour to SSR? .. is it possible to get rid of SPA?