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If you’ve been in the SEO industry for a while, you probably know that one of the key components to success is continuous learning and improvement.

Whether you’re running your own SEO projects. have your clients work at an agency – as a good SEO specialist, you should always be looking for ways to expand your skillset and gain advantage over your competitors.

Search engines are the ocean and we are the sharks in it. We must always keep improving, otherwise we suffocate and drown.

So, if you’re at a point where you feel like it’s time to level up your SEO game – this article is for you.

I’m going to give you 8 reasons why Javascript is exactly what you’re looking for.

Buckle up and let’s get started!

Why Javascript Is So Good For SEO

Easy Learning Curve

Even if you’ve been doing SEO at least for a bit, you are most certainly familiar with Google Sheets by now.

Google Sheets is by far the most popular tool used in SEO industry.

It is used for a variety of tasks, including (but not limited to):

• Keyword research
• Content planning
• Competitor analysis
• SEO audits
• Backlink outreach
• Project management
• Data storage
• CRM
• etc.

Most likely by now you are familiar with some basic Google Sheets formulas:

• if / ifs
• counta / countif
• query
• vlookup
• concatenate
• transpose
• etc.

Here’s the thing: Google Sheets formulas syntax is somewhat similar to Javascript syntax.

So, if you’ve written Google Sheets formulas yourself – then you’re already a bit familiar with JS (Javascript).

Google Sheets:

=IF(A1 >= 18, "Adult", "Minor")

Javascript:

if(age >= 18) {
console.log("Adult")
} else {
console.log("Minor")
}

If you are a more advanced Google Sheets user, you’ve probably already tried Apps Script.

This is a powerful development platform that extends the functionality of Google Sheets (and other Google’s products).

It unlocks the potential to automate workflows, integrate with other services, process complex data and do many other things Google Sheets alone doesn’t do.

Best part?

Apps Script uses Javascript.

Buy One – Get Two!

Running even a dozen (let alone hundreds) of SEO campaigns requires a lot of work and attention, so SEOs are typically pretty busy people with not a lot of free time.

Here’s where JS shines again.

Before 2009, JS was purely a front-end language.

If you needed a solution that involves back-end technology, you’d have to learn another programming language (PhP, Python etc).

With the release of Node.js in 2009, JS has become both client-side AND server-side programming language.

This means that now you could utilize JS for:

• API integration
• Task automation & scheduling
• Website / SERP scraping
• Server-side rendering
• and more

JS And Page Performance

Technical optimization and page loading speed has always been an integral part of SEO.

Moreover, during the recent years Google has been continuously shifting more weight towards website performance and speed.

In March 2020, Google has release Core Web Vitals – a set of page performance metrics.

On March 12, 2024, Google has released “Interaction to Next Paint (INP)” – a metric that evaluates page responsiveness.

So, what does JS have to do with all of that?

JavaScript plays a crucial role in both rendering speed and how interactive content behaves.

It is the only programming language that all major browsers support natively for client-side scripting.

Unlike other programming languages, JavaScript can interact directly with the webpage’s document structure (DOM).

This makes JS the primary tool for building interactive web pages.

The understanding of Javascript’s interactive capabilities (user input / event handling), DOM manipulation and asynchronous behavior (async / defer scripts, lazy loading) will allow you to create websites that Google will love!

Data Tracking

Another integral parts of SEO is data tracking and reporting.

You can’t improve what you don’t measure.” Peter Drucker

Many marketers, including SEOs, use Google Tag Manager (GTM) as a low-code solution for managing their marketing tags as well as tracking custom events on the website.

For example, if you would like to track the number of times someone dowloads a PDF file on your website – you could do that with Google Tag Manager.

So, whether you are a freelancer, employee or running your own agency – GTM is most likely a part of your tech stack.

What does JS have to do with it?

• JS is GTM’s backbone, since it’s implemented on websites through a JavaScript snippet
• GTM uses JavaScript to detect user interactions (like clicks, form submissions) as triggers to fire tags, which can be configured to send information to analytics or marketing services
• The data layer is a JavaScript object that GTM interacts with to store and manipulate data dynamically
• JavaScript enables GTM tags to execute in real-time based on user interactions, ensuring timely data collection and reporting
• The GTM JavaScript snippet loads asynchronously, meaning it doesn’t block the loading of other elements on the page

Therefore, if you’ve used GTM before – then you are already slightly familiar with JS.

Data Reporting

Just like data tracking, data reporting and visualization is a key part of SEO process.

There are many marketing reporting solutions out there, however one of the most popular tool is Looker Studio (former Google Data Studio).

It’s an easy-to-learn drag and drop dashboard builder, that’s absolutely free to use and integrates with many other Google’s products (GA4, Search Console, Adwords and more).

Also, because of a rising popularity of Looker Studio, many tools and services are creating their connectors to make their data available for integration with Looker Studio.

For example, you can visualize your Ahrefs data on a Looker Studio dashboard.

So, what about JS?

The backbone of Looker Studio is Apps Script, which is Javascript.

This means that the tool and it’s components are built using Javascript.

For example, using JS, you can create custom visualizations or build your own data connectors that you can use for your workflow or for marketing purposes by publishing them on Looker Studio gallery.

Also, Javascript is perfect for building dynamic reporting dashboards with custom visualizations.

Its seamless integration with web environments, wide range of visualization libraries and frameworks (D3.js, Chart.js, Three.js, Plotly.js) and real-time reporting capabilities make JS a leading solution for data reporting and visualization.

JS For Web Crawling

The release of Node.js revolutionazed JS by enabling server-side programming and creating many opportunities beyond the browser.

On top of that, Node.js introduced asynchronous processing.

Imagine you are analyzing a new niche.

You need to parse 50,000 URLs to extract their HTML content and analyze it.

With traditional server architectures, your application sends a request to URL 1, then waits for the response, and only then proceeds with the list.

Every website’s response time is different, and if one of them takes 3 minutes to respond – that means your whole application is blocked, waiting for that one slow website.

Doesn’t sound fun, huh?

Well, with Node.js, your application can send a request to URL 1 and immediately proceed to URL 2.

In the meanwhile, your Node application will wait for the resposnse from URL 1 in background and will complete the analysis once it receives the response.

This technology allows your Node applications to handle thousands of concurrent connections.

Can you already see how this technology can power up your SEO?

Here are a few examples:

• Efficient SERP parsing (backlink outreach, competitor analysis, client outreach, collecting data for studies / resources and many more)
• Real-time broken link detection
• Backlink monitoring
• Competitor monitoring
• Website crawling
• Collecting data from multiple sources and streaming it to a centralized data warehouse (in real time)

Workflow automation

Another important part of SEO is workflow automation.

If you only work on a few SEO campaigns, you might be able to get away with manually copy / pasting Google Sheets and other documents, creating Google Drive folders, aggregating data from various apps etc.

However, this will very quickly becomes overwhelming and you will start looking for ways to integrate different platforms and services to a single workflow.

For example, you may want to create a Trello card every time a new order is placed on your website.

Or, you would like to create a new record in your CRM along with a Google Drive folder for each new client.

Typically, agencies and freelancers select no-code solutions like Zapier or Pabbly, which are definitely great tools for make different apps work together.

However, as your operational workflows grow – so will your recurring cost for automation tools.

You may eventually find yourself in a situation where your whole agency is now held hostage by an expensive Zapier plan.

With its asynchronous nature and function chaining capabilities, Node.js becomes a powerful (and free) alternative to paid automation tools.

And if you work for an SEO or marketing agency – your value inside your company will skyrocket.

E-commerce tracking setup

One of the most common ways to track transactional events on your online store is to use Google Tag Manager datalayer.

A datalayer is basically a centralized storage container that collects information about user actions (events):

• item views
• add to cart
• begin checkout
• add shipping info
• add payment info
• purchase
• etc

Then, it sends this data from your website to marketing platforms (for example, GA4).

So how can Javascript help you to setup e-commerce tracking?

See, the whole tracking setup is done purely using Javascript:

1. Initializing the datalayer (JS object)
2. Tracking user actions (JS event listeners)
3. Adding user actions data to the datalayer (using JS push method)
4. Configuring GTM to listen to custom user events and send the data stored in datalayer to GA4

The knowledge of JS will allow you to setup, maintain and troubleshoot tracking for e-commerce websites.

JSON schema markup

This one may not be specific to JS, however it’s still worth mentioning.

A key component in most programming language is the JSON format.

It’s a very popular format that has a lot of uses in programming.

Some examples are:

• JSON is a common format for sending data from client to server (for example, when you submit a form and your data is sent to the backend)
• Most REST APIs use JSON to provide public data

In SEO context, we have the JSON-LD format that’s often used to structure data so that search engines can better understand the content of the page.

Proper structured data markup can improve your rankings, increase your chances to show up in the rich snippets and knowledge graph.

When is Javascript NOT the best solution?

Let’s be fair – this article wouldn’t be objective and unbiased if I only mention the strengthes of Javascript.

There are indeed cases when JS is not the best solution and it’s important to keep them in mind.

WordPress

If Google Sheets is SEO’s best friend, then WordPress is the second best.

Despite all the hate and complaints from “real developers” – WordPress is an awesome tool.

it allows us, SEOs, to create websites quickly and have enough time on actually ranking them.

The thing is… WordPress is powered primarily by… PhP (((

So, if you need to customize your WordPress websites, create plugins, or scale website creation – you need to learn PhP.

Unfortunately, the knowledge of JS is not going to give you much in this case.

Data analysis

While it’s not very common for SEOs to dig very deep into data, sometimes it happens.

For example, doing SEO for big websites often involves working with thousands or even millions of pages.

Analyzing on-page factors, search performance metrics, identifying query performance trends across millions of data points is just way beyond living human’s capabilities.

In cases, when you need to analyze (and make sense of) A LOT of data, Python is going to be a much more effective solution.

Python’s data analysis libraries and frameworks (Pands, NumPy etc) are not leaving a chance to Javascript.

Bottom line

If you’re looking to broaden your SEO skillset, mastering JavaScript is a powerful ace up your sleeve.

With its capabilities extending from front-end enhancements to comprehensive server-side applications (thanks to Node.js), JS enables a wide range of automation and integration possibilities that simplify complex SEO tasks and scale your operations.

Learning JavaScript is a strategic upgrade that broadens your professional scope and capability in the digital marketing arena.