• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, November 9, 2016

Building progressive Web apps isn't easy, especially ones that are easily indexed in Google search results. So Google has published its first set of best practices and recommendations on how to get PWAs indexed, discovered, and ranked higher.  

What's a PWA? "Progressive Web Apps bring features we expect from native apps to the mobile browser experience in a way that uses standards-based technologies and run in a secure container accessible to anyone on the Web," according to one source.

Each recommendation in Google's best practices posted by Tom Greenaway, a developer advocate at Google, describes the process, why it is used, and details the dos and don'ts of building the apps, "regardless of whether you're building a Progressive Web App or a simple static website."

The checklist to guide marketers through the process of building successful PWAs includes topics such as making the content crawlable, producing clean URLs, specifying canonical URLs, designing for multiple devices, developing iteratively, and using progressive enhancements.

It also details testing with search console, annotation with Schema.org structured data, annotating with open graph and Twitter Cards, testing with multiple browsers, and measuring page load performance.

For instance, design for multiple devices is important because it provides the best possible viewing experience for Web sites, regardless of the device. Google suggests making the site responsive in its design such as fonts, margins, padding, buttons and more. Small images scaled up for desktop or tables can provide a poor experience and may take longer to download, slowing the page load time.

Marketers and developers can read more here.