.lbi file - SEO friendly or not?
-
Up until yesterday afternoon i had never heard of a .lbi file. It turns out it is a library file used by Adobe Dreamweaver. From what i can tell it works like a client side included but i am unsure of the technology behind it.
The issue:
When running through a recent SEO audit for a new client i found these .lbi files being used all over there site for site wide callouts and even navigation. When viewing this content through firebug or in the browser you can see the executed HTML content but when viewing the source or the page in seo-browser.com the content is nowhere to be seen.So my thought is this is not SEO friendly and is the same as displaying content in any client-side script like JavaScript or JQuery.
Any feedback or thoughts on this subject would be awesome, especially if anyone has used these previously. Unfortunately i cannot share the client site but i would be more than happy to answer any questions if more detail is needed.
Thanks in advance - Kyle
-
Code is my life right now (redesign of website and 2 web apps) - So I see it clearly at this point - it is reality that eludes me.
-
Shane - thank you for the insight and great spot on the ajax! I was so wrapped up with the .lbi that i didn't even realize the other elements.
-
Hi,
It looks as though the code being inserted by the .lbi is inline and ajax - This is why.
And kind of weird?
It is almost like they are using Assets to place a dynamic piece of code (ajax), which seems redundant to me?
But this seems to be why - It is not due to the .lbi itself, it is because the code being placed by the .lbi is Ajax.
I would assume the reason for Ajax is the easy management of adding new items, but the use of .lbi seems redundant.
(at least this is how it appears from code)
But you loose me at Ajax, as I am not sure at what levels ajax is readable and executable by bots.
Shane
-
Interesting...
When i view the page they have a section called press releases with a handful of content and links. In the browser it looks great. They have 3-4 releases intros listed out with links to the full article.
When i look at the source it looks like this:
Press releases
When i look at seo-browser.com it looks like this:
Press releases View press releases <-- with this item being a link
-
No not client side, dreamweaver side - It works exactly like a .dwt - but used for repetitve code such as secondary navigation, or quick links.
I verified with my own site on seo-browser.com, and as anticipated all my .lbi placed code was viewable, just not the .lbi itself as it is commented out
It is not client side, and not server side - It is just a system of "Macros" i guess would be a way to explain.
When you drag an .lbi "asset" into page it automatically places code in .lbi into page real time, no processing other than in dreamweaver to keep sync data. (or at least it does if implemented correctly)
-
Thank you for the insight on how the technology works, Shane!
I have used .dwt many of times in the past but never .lbi files. It sounds like it works like a client side include which normally means search engines cannot crawl any of that content.
-
Hi,
The Actual call for the .lbi file is much like php - Although it is per page, not necessarily server side. And the HTML is actually dropped in using a call like
I currently use .lbi and .dwt HEAVILY ( although currently redesigning to use .php includes)
Is your question--- is the .lbi file followed?
Not if it is commented out, as the .lbi does no server side processing, it only drops the HTML or whatever code snippet is in the referenced .lbi live in dreamweaver, thus making it just embedded HTML (or whatever code was in .lbi)
Then - If you change the master .lbi any files that have will also be changed (not seamlessly like .php includes) Dreamweaver keeps background notes, and sync data - that each time you make a change it profiles the site, finds any that have the referenced .lbi, and will change accordingly per page.
Shane
PS. After second read, it seems as if the content from .lbi is not being seen by seo-browser.com if this is true, then this IS NOT the norm, and there must be something wrong in the implementation - as the .lbi itself should be commented out to not be followed, but the code it places SHOULD be seen by bots
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 a change in IP address affects SEO?
Our domain is pretty mature, has several quality backlinks - ranks well for our key terms - but we need to change our IP address because we use a cloud provider and it's a shared IP that has had a security breach. How will this affect rankings? www.layer7.com
Technical SEO | | Layer7Tech0 -
Internationalised Domain Names (IDN’s) and SEO
Hi, recently Internationalised Domain Names (IDN’s) are supported. Can anyone give me any indication if there is any SEO benefit in registrering that type of domain names? With Internationalised Domain Names I mean domain names containing "strange characters" like à, é, è, ô, ... . Typical characters used in French, German, Swedish, ... It is now possible to register domainnames (ex. www.hörmann.be). And I was wondering if anyone sees any SEO substance in having this type of domain names.
Technical SEO | | TruvoDirectories0 -
SEO for mobile
Hey everyone! I had just finished building my first mobile website and i wanna focus on SEO for mobile search. Now, since there is a redirection once a visitor enter to the web domain to the mobile site automatically (e.g. sample.com to m.sample.com). Question is: Where should i refer my back links to to improve my ranking on mobile result page? Would love for some help..
Technical SEO | | Tit0 -
What SEO factors do you consider when selecting a CMS?
I'm assisting evaluating 5 different CMS solutions for a client. As a part of this evaluation, I want to ensure we fully explore the SEO capabilities and short comings of the different platforms. Which factors would you recommend we consider? Currently, I'm thinking: custom URLs custom page titles, meta data, etc automatic sitemap updates customize robots/indexing settings site load times rel canonical support code & css quality 301 redirect functionality What else should be on this list? Is there anything on my list that you would de-prioritize? At risk of making this question too large: any opinions out there on what the most SEO friendly CMS systems are?
Technical SEO | | amastix0 -
SEO Campign Wont Synch up with facebook
Bonjour.... After enthusiastically telling a client we had a new offering where we could offer more insights into social media activity i enthusiatically dived into SEO Moz's social reporting tab with the ainm of synching the report to the clients facebook page. But after 20 mins of getting an error message it was clear I could not get SEO moz's socail media reporting tab to sunch up with http://www.facebook.com/#!/TennantsAuction or
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
http://www.facebook.com/TennantsAuction Here is a screen shot of my frustration:http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/cant-hook-in-facebook-seo-mozcopy.jpg I realise i have to have admin access to the facebook account which the client can give me but i need to know please is the feature broken or am i doing something wrong? Thanks in advance, David0 -
Title elements too long - good for SEO?
As I was reviewing a client's web pages I noticed that most of the pages have titles that exceed the 70 characters limit. By looking in more details it seems that Google uses all keywords from this long titles. I wanted to reduce the titles under 70 characters but realised that I may cut some important keywords. By reducing to 70 characters, do you think I can damage the performance?.
Technical SEO | | DavidSpivac0 -
Same image file with different alt text?
I have an image that represents 'widgets'. The image works for more than one kind of widget. I have two pages, one optimized for 'blue widgets' and one optimized for 'red widgets'. I would like to use the same 'widgets' image on both pages but change the alt text to be 'blue widgets' or 'red widgets' depending on the page it is used on. Should I: (1) use the same image on different pages with different alt text. (2) duplicate the image file and have two copies 'red_widgets.jpg' and 'blue_widgets.jpg' and then use each copy on the page optimized for the corresponding phrase. (3) create distinct, unique image files (where the pixels are different, not just the file names) for each kind of widget. This is a simplified example of a larger SEO problem where I have 1 image that can be useful on 20 pages that are each optimized for 20 different phrases. Should I use the same image with 20 different alt tags, or create 20 identical (but renamed) copies of the image, or create 20 slightly different image files (with different pixels in each image)? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | scanlin0