Are Jamstack sites SEO-friendly?
While search engine optimization is still important, it has outgrown simple keyword placement and tag optimization. There are hundreds of ranking factors (if not more) that Google takes into account when placing pages in SERPs. However, we do not know the exact importance and value they have in ranking algorithms.
What we know is nowadays, if you want to properly implement search engine optimization, you have to think about more than the desired keyword, title and other tags. You should also consider branding, audience behavior, search intent, user experience, backlinks, analytics, and competition. And from May 2021, page control signals are also taken into account in Core Web Vitals.
And believe it or not, having a Jamstack site helps a lot to meet most of these requirements, including the Web Vitals metrics.
What is SEO?
In simple terms, the goal of SEO is to help your content rank better in search engines for desired or targeted keywords and get into the spotlight of your potential audience. In practice, it is important to be able to place your content in the top 5 positions of the first search page, as they receive the majority of all clicks from that search results page.
A good SEO strategy will help your website get more traffic, increase brand awareness, and show more authority than the competition.
Why are Jamstack sites so SEO-friendly?
Compared to their dynamic counterparts, static pages are better when it comes to SEO, mainly due to performance. Faster load times mean better search engine optimization as the engines prioritize pages with faster load times when indexing a site.
Sites on the Jamstack can increase your page's presence on search engines by creating sitemaps, so that search engine crawlers can do their job efficiently. With static sites, creating sitemaps is easy because the content is already available and ready to be organized. Moreover, many static site generators either have built-in sitemap functionality, or it is available through a plugin, which further simplifies the task.
The convenience of working with Jamstack sites is also important. Many static site generators and headless CMS have been created for content management. Unlike traditional tools, in Jamstack backend and frontend are separated, which allows you to get all the benefits of improved content delivery (static caching) without losing the flexibility of the publishing workflow (CMS).
In addition, Jamstack tools are usually file-based rather than database-based, making it easier to control all changes made to content.
From a search engine optimization point of view, this makes it easy to edit SEO attributes. The author fills in the title, description fields, and also uploads a picture for sharing in social networks - no need to use plugins, as was the case with WordPress. The developer only needs to set up the output of these fields using code.
What is the best way to optimize a Jamstack site if you are not a developer?
If you are already familiar with Jamstack , you will be pleased to know that this innovative approach has now become much more accessible through various SaaS.
SaaS takes all the tools needed for a site stack (theme, static site generator, CMS, and deployment) and quickly merges them into one visual tool. There are usually several options available in each category, so you can combine the tools in your stack and use the ones that best suit your needs.
An example of such a service is Stackbit. This is a no-code solution that does not require the involvement of developers to create the site interface, but allows you to implement the Jamstack approach.
Stackbit is a wizard that allows you to build and deploy a fully functioning static site using one of the supported static generators, with theme, CMS, and functional deployment. This way, you don't have to worry about creating static pages, all you need to do is set up your SEO. Moreover, search engine optimization features are already built into Stackbit themes. You can add these features to your themes as well.
Stackbit offers SEO features such as titles and meta descriptions, alt tags for images, and social media sharing.
Does site performance affect rankings that much? What about backlinks?
Backlinks are links that allow you to navigate from a page on one site to another. When someone posts a link to your site, your site receives a backlink from them. When you link to another site, it has a backlink from you.
Search engines like Google see backlinks as signs of trust. In general, the more credibility your web pages have, the higher they will rank when delivering results for relevant search queries.
Backlinks are believed to influence a site's ranking the most. But as for performance, no one knows for sure how it affects the position of the site in the search results.
At the same time, site performance is important to users. Not optimizing it would be a shame, especially since with Jamstack it has become easier to achieve high speed and fast loading of the site. The faster the pages of your online store load, the more purchases you will have.
What's the bottom line? What are the SEO benefits of Jamstack Sites?
They load faster, and loading speed is one of the most important SEO ranking factors. In other words, the faster the site, the higher its ranking.
Static sites are pre-rendered, which means that the content is created in advance and not in real time. Because of this, they are faster than dynamic ones.
These sites are easier to index by web crawlers, because they are built from static HTML and CSS files. A simple sitemap also helps with indexing, not only by Google, but all search engines.
Choosing a static website means complete SEO control. You can modify and optimize any page on your site however you want. On the other hand, when optimizing a dynamic site, you may need one or even several plugins. And it is not a fact that they will cope with all the tasks.
And don't forget about the cost of placement and support. Since static websites are made up of simple HTML files, they don't need as much space on the hosting server as dynamic websites. Hosting a static website can even be free.
Ultimately, do not ignore performance and Core Web Vitals. While backlinks are still considered the main SEO factor, Google gives more and more preference to those sites that are convenient and useful primarily for the user. With Jamstack great user experience has become a lot easier to achieve.