# Does Googlebot trace route-href? (SEO tips)

**URL:** <https://discourse.aurelia.io/t/does-googlebot-trace-route-href-seo-tips/4502>\
**Category:** Best Practices\
**Created:** [December 7, 2021, 9:56am UTC](https://discourse.aurelia.io/t/does-googlebot-trace-route-href-seo-tips/4502 "2021-12-07T09:56:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![HIRANO-Satoshi](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex027/user_avatar/discourse.aurelia.io/hirano-satoshi/32/2583_2.png) [@HIRANO-Satoshi](https://discourse.aurelia.io/u/HIRANO-Satoshi)\
**Post date:** [December 8, 2021, 1:48am UTC](https://discourse.aurelia.io/t/does-googlebot-trace-route-href-seo-tips/4502/2 "2021-12-08T01:48:48Z")

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(As I misunderstood route-href, I rewrote all.)

Googlebot requires `href="link"` on the `<a` element to follow the link. We can use either route-href or href for Googlebot, because route-href adds an href attribute.

Both a relative link (URL) and an absolute URL are good for SEO according to [a Google person](https://www.seroundtable.com/google-absolute-vs-relative-urls-26001.html).

Even if the `<a` element has click.delegate=“func()” and the func() calls router.navigate() or router.navigateToRoute() for routing, the element should have href or route-href for Googlebot.

I think use of href and pushState is the easiest SEO.

For somebody who needs SEO without server side rendering or Rendertron, here are some tips. Please add if you know more.

1. Read [this](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/javascript/javascript-seo-basics) and [this](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/javascript/fix-search-javascript) to know Google’s policy on Javascript execution.
2. To use pushState, provide your main bundle as the 404 page. And have `config.options.pushState = true;` in configureRouter(). If your base URL is not ‘/’, set it to config.options.root and also specify it to baseUrl on webpack.config.js so that index.ejs has a proper base tag.
3. Provide href for Googlebot with `<a route-href="route: viewName; params.bind=params` or `<a href="${router.generate(viewName, params}" `
4. Use navigator.webdriver to know your code runs on a browser or a bot. You can skip an opening dialog with it.
5. To test how Google renders a URL, use [Mobile friendly test](https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly). You can see a screenshot.

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