Javascript
-
Hi there,
Quick question:
Does Google parse javascript?
I have a html ad which contain the anchor text linking to one of our product pages, however the ad unit are javascript based and from this the code is not visible on page source through the browser.
Kind Regards
-
Yeah, I know can you believe it
Anyway, look we know lots of websites are doing it, yes even the big brands and are ranking well due to this strategy, I suppose having a big budget to play with, the temptation is just too much.
I am paranoid also, isn't everyone in this industry, I mean if you do follow Google's guidelines, there is no way you are going to rank well for competitive keywords, I look across all industries, especially retail and they are all it.
You have got to be more aggressive I think to gain good SERPs
-
What? Google allows people to rank who have exact anchor text on sites they are so clearly paying for links on? Get out!
No, I totally agree with you. It is pretty ridiculous what gets let through. It makes it really tough to do the "right" thing and follow Google's standards.
If I were you, I would look at how high value this domain is where you are placing the ad. If it has a really strong domain authority and a good reputation overall (it ranks, it gets traffic, it has decent social performance, etc.) then I would definitely keep the ad link set to "nofollow" just because it is more likely to be found since that site is higher profile. A low profile site you might get away with it.
That being said, I'm paranoid and I tend to err on the side of "nofollow" because I don't want to ever tell a client "Uh, yeah, you know that thing I did on that link...yeah, sorry Mr. Client, it got you penalized." Despite many flaws, Google is getting better at detecting these things so I don't want to put sites I manage in a situation where they could be at risk as a result of some Panda-on-steroids type change.
As for guest posting, is that really forcing it in a spammy way? I mean, if you build a relationship with a webmaster and get a guest post there as a result of that, then the guest post is a result of a natural relationship. If you are paying for the guest post, that would be spammy.
-
Thanks for the reply Matthew.
Is it really that spammy? I'm just trying to get the most out of my advertising.
Look it's far less spammy than what my competitors are doing, these guys are big brands, they have exact anchor text links on non-relevant websites, all the big players are doing it, i'm not saying monkey see monkey do, I just thought it was thinking outside the box a little rather than putting exact anchor text links on non-relevant websites, and the bizarre thing is, my competitors are ranking well for these keywords, and yes it's the only link building strategy they have and been doing so for years.
I'm sure it's not a big surprise to hear the above, even with the panda update, it just does not catch these websites out.
One of my main strategies is writing guest posts and these are improving the SERPs for the target keywords, if you sticking to the guidelines, even guest posting would not be allowed, I mean your deliberately forcing the back-link, Google says everything should come naturally, yeah right!
-
On the PR fall, was it just one link or several links? If it was just one link, it would be hard to believe the penalty for just that link was that severe. What about other factors - like domain authority in OSE, rankings, organic traffic, etc.? Did that change as a result of the follow/nofollow?
Gary, in response to your question - you are right, you do lose that second opportunity from having SEO value and traffic value. Honestly though I would play by Google's rules on this one and nofollow that link. I don't think the penalty would be so severe that you would lose rankings immediately but you don't want to get caught doing something spammy - there is no long term value there.
With that link no followed though what other link opportunities are on that site other than the ad? For instance, if it is a news website or blog (let's say) where this ad is placed, can you talk to the editors of that site about them interviewing you about the product you are promoting? Or, if it is a blog, can you write a guest post? What I'm getting at is then you can have the link from this website along with having the ad. That way you get the SEO value plus the traffic value from the same website.
-
I doubt that the fall in PR was because you did not have a nofollow.
-
Well, if you don't use the nofollow for a promotional link you risk your site to be penalized.
I experienced that, a fall from PR 5 to PR 4 for my home page at www.jobintourism.it. Then, a few days after that I had changed the link, filling in the correct value for the rel attribute, the PR was 5 again. It may be a dangerous game. -
Hi Matthew,
Thanks for the reply.
Ok, the ad is on an external website, usually these ads are just images pointing to our website, however I thought that by producing the ad in a way that the text on the ad can be read by search engines, I would get 2 benefits, first of all the ad will generate traffic to the website, plus it will pass SEO value to the website with the ability of being able to read the anchor text, OK, yes I have paid for this ad, however if I use a nofollow, surely this is a great opportunity lost in gaining a great back link from an authority website.
Thanks
-
Google does crawl some JavaScript. Here is a brief news update on that from last November: http://searchengineland.com/google-can-now-execute-ajax-javascript-for-indexing-99518
I have seen JavaScript elements get indexed in Google on some of my client's websites - especially simple JavaScript (for example, deep pages linked to using the document.write() method do get indexed and those deep pages are not linked elsewhere).
All that to say, if you are trying to use the link for pure SEO value then you really should pull the link out of JavaScript just to be 100% certain Google crawls that link and reaches the page. After all the link building and site architecture work, why risk Google not seeing an important link?
One final question back to you. You mentioned that this was an HTML ad. Is this an ad internally on your website or an external ad? If it is an internal ad, trying to drive traffic deeper into your website, then I would change that to plain HTML instead of JavaScript so that Google has the ability to access that page easily (and sees the internal promotion easily).
However, if it is an external ad that you are paying for on somebody else's website, that link should have a rel="nofollow". Here is Google's webmaster support section and they say very plainly "Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such." They go on to say that one of the ways to designate a paid link as advertising is by "[a]dding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a>tag". If that is the case, within the JavaScript, you can include the rel nofollow as part of the</a> <a>tag that is output.</a> <a></a> http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66736
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to solve JavaScript paginated content for SEO
In our blog listings page, we limit the number of blogs that can be seen on the page to 10. However, all of the blogs are loaded in the html of the page and page links are added to the bottom. Example page: https://tulanehealthcare.com/about/newsroom/ When a user clicks the next page, it simply filters the content on the same page for the next group of postings and displays these to the user. Nothing in the html or URL change. This is all done via JavaScript. So the question is, does Google consider this hidden content because all listings are in the html but the listings on page are limited to only a handful of them? Or is Googlebot smart enough to know that the content is being filtered by JavaScript pagination? If this is indeed a problem we have 2 possible solutions: not building the HTML for the next pages until you click on the 'next' page. adding parameters to the URL to show the content has changed. Any other solutions that would be better for SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MJTrevens1 -
How good is Google at reading geo-targeted dynamic content -- Javascript?
We are using a single page application for a section of our website where it generates content based on the user's geographical location. Because Google's Search Console is searching from Virginia (where we don't have any content), we are not able to see anything render in Google Search Console. How good is Google at reading geo-targeted dynamic content? Do we have anything to worry about in terms of indexing the content because it's being served through JS?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imjonny1230 -
Pagination, Javascript & SEO
Hi I need some help identifying whether we need to rethink the way we paginated product pages, On this page http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches when clicking page 1,2, etc - we have javascript to sort the results, the URL displayed and the URL linked to are different. e.g. The URL for these paginated pages is for example: page2 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches#productBeginIndex:30&orderBy:5&pageView:list& Then the arrows either side of pagination, link to the paginated landing page e.g. http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=3 - this is where the rel/prev details are - done for Google However - when clicking on this arrow, the URL loaded is different again - http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches#productBeginIndex:60&orderBy:5&pageView:list& & doesn't take you http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=3 I did not set this up, but I am concerned that the URL http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=3 never actually loads, but it's linked to Google can crawl it. Is this a problem? I am looking to implement a view all option. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Javascript to fetch page title for every webpage, is it good?
We have a zend framework that is complex to program if you ask me, and since we have 20k+ pages that we need to get proper titles to and meta descriptions, i need to ask if we use Javascript to handle page titles (basically the previously programming team had NOT set page titles at all) and i need to get proper page titles from a h1 tag within the page. current course of action which we can easily implement is fetch page title from that h1 tag being used throughout all pages with the help of javascript, But this does makes it difficult for engines to actually read what's the page title? since its being fetched with javascript code that we have put in, though i had doubts, is anyone one of you have simiilar situation before? if yes i need some help! Update: I tried the JavaScript way and here is what it looks like http://islamicencyclopedia.org/public/index/hadith/id/1/book_id/106 i know the fact that google won't read JavaScript like the way we have done with the website, But i need help on "How we can work around this issue" Knowing we don't have other options.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SmartStartMediacom0 -
JavaScript Issue? Google not indexing a microsite
We have a microsite that was created on our domain but is not linked to from ANYwhere EXCEPT within some Javascript elements on pages on our site. The link is in one JQuery slide panel. The microsite is not being indexed at all - when i do site:(microsite name) on Google, it doesn't return anything. I think it's because the link's only in a Java element, but my client assures me that if I submit to Google for crawling the problem will be solved. Maybe so, but my point is that if you just create a simple HTML link from at least one of our site pages, it will get indexed no problem. The microsite has been up for months and it's still not being indexed - another newer microsite that's been up for a few weeks and has simple links to it from our pages is indexing fine. I have submitted the URL for crawling but had to use the google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url/ method as I don't have access to the top level domain WMT account. p.s. when we put the microsite URL into the SEOBook spider-test tool it returns lots of lovely information - but that just tells me the page is findable, does exist, right? That doesn't mean Google's going to necessarily index it, as I am surmising...Moz hasn't found in the 5 months the microsite has been up and running. What's going on here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jen_Floyd0 -
Eliminate render blocking javascript and css recommendation?
Our site's last Red flag issue is the "eliminate render blocking javascript and css" message. I don't know how to do that, and while I'm not sure if I could spend hours/days cutting and pasting and guessing until I made progress, I'd rather not. Does anyone know of a plugin that will just do this? Or, if not, how much would it cost to get a web developer to do this? Also, if there is not plugin (and it didn't look like there was when I looked) how long do you think this would take someone who knows what they are doing to complete. The site is: www.kempruge.com Thanks for any tips and/or suggestions, Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Main content - javascript/ajax
Hi, On most of our pages Javascript is displaying our main content, so it doesn't show up on the page source and I assume isn't being crawled by Google to the best of its ability. It's also not showing up on MOZ's page grader and crawl results, making analysis and testing harder. What's the easiest way, without having to completely redo our website, to have this content crawled by search engines and moz?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | S.S.N0 -
Ever Wise to Intentionally Use Javascript for Global Navigation?
I may be going against the grain here, but I'm going to throw this out there and I'm interested in hearing your feedback... We are a fairly large online retailer (50k+ SKUs) where all of our category and subcategory pages show well over 100 links (just the refinement links on the left can quickly add up to 50+). What's worse is when you hover on our global navigation, you see the hover menu (bot sees them as ) of over 80 links. Now I realize the good rule of thumb is not to exceed 100 links on a page (and if you did your math, you can see we already exceeded that well before we let the bots get to the good stuff we really wanted them to crawl in the first place). So... Is it wise to intentionally shield these global nav links from the bots by using javascript?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrwestern0