While attending WordCamp Porto, I had the opportunity to Ivan Popov presentation Headless WordPress. This is one of the obscure areas of SEO, and I wanted to share some insights with SEJ readers.
Headless WordPress offers the opportunity to serve many channels from your WordPress installation.
Data from WordPress can be pushed to:
- mobile application.
- website.
- third-party applications.
Image credit: Slides from Ivan Popov’s talk at WordCamp 2022It makes WordPress more than just a CMS; it integrates into the entire web and mobile application ecosystem, and users can still take advantage of the WordPress admin panel.
It also brings developers with modern technologies like React.js or Node.js into the WordPress world and attracts a younger generation of developers who like to learn modern programming languages.
However, the main question for SEO remains, “What does this mean for SEO?”
To learn more, I did a short interview with Ivan Popov, CEO of Vipe Studio and speaker at WordCamp Europe 2022.
Headless WordPress is one of the obscure areas of SEO. A lot of SEOs don’t understand why or what it should be used for. When should you use Headless WordPress and when should you not?
Ivan Popov: “I believe the real value of Headless comes when we have a high-traffic website, for example, a website that is actually visited. We’re not talking about hundreds of visits, we’re talking about millions of users.
They need real power, they need real value, because it’s not just a technology for startups. I really recommend going with a more expensive site only if your site gets enough value and is big enough. “
The average hourly rate for React developers is higher than WordPress.Image credit: Slides from Ivan Popov’s talk at WordCamp 2022“Also, SEO issues can be solved. It can fully support SEO, but it’s not like WordPress where you can simply install a plugin and make it work.
Here, you need a developer to do the job – even the simplest tasks require a developer to do it.
As long as you can invest in your technical team, every SEO problem you might face is solvable — totally solvable. “
If you have a simple business website, such as a company website or a simple store, you don’t need to worry about using Headless. You mentioned it’s for high traffic sites. How many users per day, hourly?
Ivan Popov: “We’re talking about high-traffic sites. For example, if they have 1,000 visitors per second, or 10,000 readers are reading news online now, we’re actually talking about high-traffic sites.
Headless does not rely on caching, which is critical for highly dynamic sites with personalized content, job postings, or listing sites with hundreds of thousands of pages.
Caching prevents users from always receiving fresh copies of web pages, while Headless will always provide real-time data. “
Do you see any indexing issues that a headless site might suffer from? Any SEO issues with Headless?
Ivan Popov: “Not only did I not see any issues, but I also saw benefits because the headless WordPress site, for example, gave a perfect green (Core Web Vital) score from the Page Speed Tester Tool and Web Dev Tools Tester.
Because of these green results and good grades, these sites are actually benefiting from SEO rather than having problems. “
So, you don’t see any indexing issues, like pages removed from the index?
Ivan Popov: “No, as long as everything is set up correctly, there should be no problems.”
So, it boils down to the basic best SEO practices that should be implemented with Headless WordPress. If implemented, will the site rank properly?
Ivan Popov: “Absolutely. The problem here is that it’s not just plug-and-play like a plug-in.
You need a technician who needs to do everything manually. But as long as it’s set up correctly, there’s nothing to lose you in rankings. “
What educational materials do you recommend for those who want to learn Headless WordPress?
Ivan Popov: “Because everything is open source, you can try to learn this as you traditionally approach new technology. Read as much material as you can. There are also many free materials.
Everything is open source. There is a community. So, everything is just beginning. Start a project – the first project is the hardest – then try to do as complex as possible and you’ll learn as naturally as any new technology. “
In your presentation, you mentioned that Headless WordPress based on NextJS is more SEO friendly than ReactJS. Can you elaborate on the problems you might run into when using ReactJS and what opportunities NextJS offers as you named it a more SEO friendly framework?
Ivan Popov: “For example, if we use the settings React JS And read data from REST API, then we rely on real-time communication between REST API on WordPress and ReactJS website.
That’s why at some point this communication can interfere or get something, which isn’t very reliable in terms of SEO, because SEO relies on Google for quick access to meta, SEO titles, description titles – that sort of thing.
These are the issues that can cause, but for example if you’re using the next website, let’s say, a graphic communicator, we have everything on the server side pre-rendering, and then we’re completely fine. “
Basically, Google is able to index the meta description as part of the HTML rather than at the rendering stage. Rendering can sometimes be computationally intensive, and Google may quit indexing during rendering.
Ivan Popov: “Yes, that’s right.”
If it’s e-commerce, when would you recommend Headless? For ecmmerce stores with a certain number of products, customers, etc., it is only possible to consider switching to Headless.
Ivan Popov: “We should be very careful when using it for e-commerce. It’s for big-box stores, not just any store, but big-box stores. We’re basically building everything from scratch.
When it comes to e-commerce, we have plugins for payment types and shipping providers. If you are switching to Headless, our developers will need to code these integrations.
So now our developers need to write code for payment provider and shipping provider integration.
So we still benefit because our web store is getting super fast and serving millions of customers all over the world, but on the other hand the investment is much bigger because you need to invest in everything you need to do with your website Every function involved is coded. “
In the case of e-commerce, would it be better to consider other platforms instead of Headless?
Ivan Popov: “I can’t say that because I’m a big fan of WordPress, but you need to make sure the investment is worth it.”
in conclusion
Headless WordPress is a complex technology and its use should be in line with business goals.
When you have a basic website or blog, using Headless WordPress is completely redundant and a waste of budget.
When you need cross-platform functionality or a highly dynamic website with hundreds of thousands of pages, whether you use Headless or not always Google Search Console’s URL check tool to see how Google crawls your pages.
Featured image: Primakov/Shutterstock
