Are you planning to build an app? Building apps takes determination and money. One needs to have an innovative idea and a clear set of goals for what the app will offer to the end customers.
Going by the current trends, web applications and single page apps are gaining popularity. They also come with many functionalities and HTML extensions. With many features similar to HTML extensions for single-page apps, AngularJS is a fantastic choice for creating web applications.
However, the one critical unanswered question here is, "Will Google crawl my AngularJS application?". The answer is Yes! Since they can adapt to any screen size, single-page apps are becoming more effective and efficient. Nowadays, the majority of people browse the internet on their mobile phones, and single-page apps perform best on these devices. You can then also use your single-page application to create a native or hybrid application to bring even more traffic to your website and brand.
Moving forward, let’s briefly talk about what exactly is the AngularJS framework before we dive into how it can help you build an SEO friendly application.
An Overview of AngularJS Framework
AngularJS was developed by Google in 2009 as an open-source framework for front-end development. It is a Javascript framework that has gained its fame for creating some of the most renowned single-page applications and progressive web applications.
Since AngularJS has been around for a while, it has had the chance to improve itself with latest versions and accumulate a powerful community of different tools and utility services.Through AngularJS, developers can use HTML, CSS, and Javascript to build complex web apps quite easily.
The applications built on the AngularJS framework are called Single Page Applications (SPAs) because once a web page is loaded, the user doesn’t need to reload other web pages as it’s done dynamically.
Another reason for the popularity of AngularJS is that it allows developers to create cross-platform apps because of its responsive design. This feature further aids its SEO-friendliness.
Given the nature of this framework, it is bound to be home to some of the most popular apps that the general public is familiar with and using with great ease and enjoyment. Therefore, to demonstrate what you can achieve by building your app on this framework we have this next segment of the top performing apps that were built on AngularJS.
Top Performing Apps Made On AngularJS
Given the all rounder features of the AngularJS framework, it is no wonder that this platform became a popular choice for building web applications and mobile applications. Without further ado, let’s check out the most famous apps built on AngularJS.
1. Gmail- According to recent data, gmail has over 1.8 billion active users every month. It is a single-page application that speaks volumes about the prowess of AngularJS framework. It supports real-time data rendering and has so many new features like grammar and spell check, as well as predictive writing while supporting such heavy traffic.
2. Youtube- This popular video-streaming platform uses AngularJS for creating its progressive web apps. The YouTube TV app for Sony’s Playstation was developed using the AngularJS platform. It is yet another great example of an app with heavy traffic while ensuring smooth user experience.
3. Upwork- This freelancing platform is one of the most renowned platforms for freelancers to connect and conduct business activities. It boasts of a thriving community of over 18 million users and over 5 million registered clients. It was built on AngularJS and offers its users features such as in-app calling, testing, and payment gateways facilitated by the AngularJS framework.
4. PayPal- Paypal is considered one of the best online payment apps in the world. Both, the mobile and the website version of this high-end payment platform were designed on the AngularJS framework and have since continued to render flawless real-time money transfer and other transactions globally.
5. Netflix- Netflix, the company that revolutionized home video streaming, is also built on AngularJS. The AngularJS web application framework makes it possible for the users of this platform whether on website or mobile app to experience similar streaming services.
Inspired by these top-shelf brands, do you also want to build your app on AngularJS? You can always research the best AngularJS developers in the industry and reach out to them.
These top performing apps of the world show us that right from online video streaming giants, to the most renowned fintech companies, all use AngularJS to build their apps.
Does this tickle your curiosity as to why that might be the case? Here are some advantages that AngularJS platform offers to developers that will be helpful in answering the above question.
Advantages of Using AngularJS
AngularJS can single handedly handle the whole front end development work and thus is a complete package for developers. But to highlight some of its most popular features that has big brands choosing this framework over others here is the list of advantages for using AngularJS:
- SEO-friendly SPA with the help of AngularJS Universal.
- Component-based architecture that allows and promotes code resuability.
- Two-way data binding that allows bi-directional data flow and automatically syncs any modifications between View and Model layer.
- Dependency injection that allows AngularJS to separate the task among different services to remove code dependency.
- It has cross-platform compatibility that allows developers to create solutions for different platforms like progressive web apps (PWAs), native mobile apps, and even desktop applications.
- AngularJS has a wide range of powerful tools that can help developers build features with great speed and reduce the overall app development time considerably.
How To Create An SEO Friendly App In AngularJS Framework
Whether it may be ecommerce or fintech, each industry has its own set of top performing apps and upcoming apps that are disrupting current tech in their respective genre. And although AngularJS framework is not SEO-friendly by default since websites built on this platform are made to operate on the client side, it can easily be rendered SEO-friendly through AngularJS Universal.
Let us introduce to you some essential features of SEO and how you can implement them in your AngularJS application to make it more SEO-friendly and increase page performance.
Add Metadata
Google and most other search engines use crawlers to retrieve titles and metadata such as meta descriptions of different components on your website. However, if those bots are unable to retrieve this information from your website, then it is likely that your page will have a low ranking.
Since AngularJS apps don’t automatically provide this information as they are rendered on the client side, meaning the users of the website will be able to see the content and information but the bots won’t, it doesn’t help with page ranking.
Adding metadata components to your web page will allow search engine crawlers to understand and verify your data resulting in increased authenticity of your information on SERPs. You can make the metadata dynamic in nature so that it adjusts accordingly to the information being displayed and allows crawlers to catalog your web content.
Add Meta Tags
Indexing your content properly is always an added bonus in SEO. Professional AngularJS developers that are building your AngularJS app can easily ensure that your content is properly indexed by adding the right meta tags in your HTML pages.
You can make use of the AngularJS ng-meta library to cross-check whether you are adding the appropriate meta tags or not. You can refer to the following to add metadata to your HTML pages:
- updateTag()
- addTag()
- removeTag()
- addTags()
- removeTagElement()
Dynamic URL
You can use the AngularJS router to create user-friendly URLs. SEO-friendly URLs are important for the optimization of your website, and the shorter and easier to remember the URLs are, the better it is.
Using keywords in URL often helps in getting to the right audience and gaining the right kind of traffic that helps your business. With the help from the AngularJS router, you will be able to create dynamic URLs for the current situation of your website.
And although the search engine bots don’t rely on URLs to understand your web content, it does give credibility to your content and website from the user’s perspective.
To explain better, a successful example of this would work like this: The AngularJS app grabs the server-side page for the initial browser result when a search request hits your server while the dynamic (client-side) content is processed and soon replaces the static HTML code. During the user session, the app keeps on running in client mode. This allows website viewers to interact with content quickly and flawlessly, without any slowness.
The Image User Sees:
The Image Google Caches:
(Credit: seoclarity.net)
Optimised Images
Images are also required to be optimized to reap the full benefits of SEO strategy. Optimizing images is quite easy in the AngularJS framework with the help of its image processing library that allows you to resize, and compress your images.
The crawling bots only consider the alt-text for your image and not the image itself while crawling and indexing your content, hence it is important to place appropriate alt-text on your images for them to appear in search results.
Optimized images also improve page loading time and that is an added benefit for both the users and developers.
Real-Time Rendering
Due to their dependent nature on API data, AngularJS apps are often not considered SEO friendly. However, this issue can be simply solved by employing dynamic rendering. Developers can use dynamic rendering tools to create HTML files that bots can crawl so that search engines can index their data and give them a higher ranking.
This can be achieved by configuring your server to direct the web crawlers to a pre-rendered static HTML page while directing users back to your AngularJS page. Both the users and the crawlers can view site data this way.
Optimize Visibility
One common but essential practice of SEO is internal and external linking. This helps drive viewers to your website. You can also use a sitemap to create a more optimised linking strategy and AngularJS has several libraries and tools that can help you make a sitemap and share it with a search engine.
Apart from that you can also use AngularJS to build dynamic pages that change as per the user’s search criteria to give your website a better chance at being viewed and add relevancy and authenticate your content for different search results.
To Summarize
Usually, popularity is considered as one of the parameters to gauge the success of an app and in this blog, not only have we mentioned some of the top performing apps that were built using AngularJS but also shed light on some other factors such as the advantages of AngularJS framework.
With its bundle of all rounder features, the AngularJS universal, is a complete package that can help developers build the most SEO friendly apps that can pave their way for success. 
Additionally for entrepreneurs, to commission projects and learn more deeply about the latest tech, you can always reach out to GoodFirms to check out our listing of professional experts across the fields of software development and mobile app development.
