Is JavaScript Killing Your Website?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

You might be tempted to use JavaScript for all sorts of things on your website that you could do in other programming languages. Don’t. JavaScript has its advantages, but the disadvantages can be more disadvantageous than the advantages can be advantageous. If you can do something in another language then you should.

Why? Two reasons.

1. JavaScript is uncrawlable and therefore not optimizable. A site full of JavaScript is a negative where search engine optimization is concerned. Sure, you can do some cool things, but I’d rather rank well. Wouldn’t you?
2. The second reason JavaScript should be avoidable if possible is because it is code heavy. Very code heavy. And all that code on your web pages means that the search engines are running through looking for content to crawl and index. The JavaScript just gets in the way. Plus, the more code you have the slower your website could load and the more likely you are to have negative factors weighing your site’s SEO down.

Don’t get me wrong. JavaScript can do some cool things. And you might need it. But try another language first. If something can be done in another language – for instance, you should use CSS to style your design elements – then do it in that other language. When JavaScript is the only thing that will work then use JavaScript.