Javascript, PhP and SEO Impact?
-
What are the Pro's and Con's of using Java Script and PHP in a site when factoring in SEO?
-
Alan's answer is spot on.
Avoid javaScript or carefully follow best-practices so Google can crawl all content without reading javaScript. Alan is exactly right when he said: never count on Google crawling through your JavaScript to find content, but also never count on being able to hide anything from Google via JavaScript.
Whether you use PHP or not is not directly relevant. PHP is executed server-side, so Google never sees your PHP code and doesn't care. What matters is whether your programmer writes PHP code that will generate search friendly HTML code, url structure, etc.
-
JavaScript is one of several technologies that offers severe limitations in search engines and their ability to properly see content, then just as important but often overlooked, properly and cleanly evaluate that content from an SEO perspective.
Specific considerations:
- Google does a "fair" job at discovering content passed through JavaScript (either on-page or at the code level)
- A "fair" job means it's hit and miss as to whether their system can actually find that content
- Whatever content the Google system CAN find via JavaScript is NOT necessarily able to be used to properly evaluate content intent, focus or relationship to other content
So - the best practices recommendation is if you want/need content to be found and properly evaluated by Google (or Bing) do NOT pass it through JavaScript.
And also, if you want to HIDE content from Google, don't assume you can successfully do so via JavaScript either.
As for PHP, its the most widely adopted and utilized web programming language out there. The language by itself is essentially SEO neutral. It's all in how a programmer utilized PHP that matters. In the hands of a programmer that either truly understands SEO or collaborates closely with an SEO expert (who also understands the limitations/pitfalls that can arise with "bad" (SEO-unfriendly) PHP coding, it's a great language.
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
-
Doing SEO for single page applications / Prerender.io
My dev and I are migrating an existing multi page application to a single page application with prerender.io. Does anybody have any experience with doing SEO for single page applications? Any other consequences we should take into account? Anything important to expect. Any insights would be 10/10 appreciated.
Web Design | | Edward_Sturm0 -
Wordpress SEO/Tag plugin recommendation for sports (soccer) website
I own a Wordpress website which covers soccer in the DC MD VA area called DMV Soccer http://www.dmvsoccer.com/ We write weekly recaps where we tag a player who has scored a goal or performed well in a game. For each player, obviously, a tag is created. What I'm looking for is a plugin or solution that would allow me to tag a player, but also automatically assign a team to that player so that the team name and player's name are optimized on the individual player's tag page. So if I were to tag George Murphy on a recap, and I assign him to a team, let's say DC United. The tag page would have a title, something like: George Murphy Soccer Player for DC United and the meta description: George Murphy, soccer player from MD who players for DC United archives Or something similar, if that makes sense. Should I skip using tags and instead start assigning each player as a sub-category under each team? I'd like to try to avoid that, because not each category will be based on a player. Any suggestions in terms of existing plugins or other recommendations?
Web Design | | georgetsn1 -
Responsive design to serve different page for IE8 - SEO Implications?
A client is planning on developing a responsive designed website which redirects visitors using IE8 to a static webpage that encourages users to visit in another browser. What are the SEO implications of a server redirect just for IE8 visitors? Possible solutions: would containing a link on the static page to "continue browsing" and give the visitor access to the entire site in IE8 work well? Or should a CSS overlay message appear to IE8 visitors, no redirect, that encourages them to visit in another browser? Or serving a separate stylesheet for IE8 visitors, and not giving a responsive experience be optimal? Any suggestions or thoughts are appreciated. Cheers, Alex
Web Design | | Alex.Weintraub0 -
Geo targetting and SEO
Hi all!
Web Design | | lhernandezBum
We are about to launch a new geotargetting feature on our site. Basically, nowadays we have a normal Homepage (example: myHomepage.com). Next week, the homepage will depend on your localization (checked through IP): For example, for Texans there will be a myHomepage.com/Texas (automatically redirected), for New Yorkers a myHomepage.com/Newyork. My question is, how can this affect SEO? Where will the bot go? Hopefully the answer is not "depending on where the bot is hosted"... because this can be dangerous. Also, I don't think that "telling the bot to go to a generic Homepage" is a good idea, as Google dislikes when you show them something different from the human users. Thanks0 -
Does page speed worth for SEO?
I always broken my head to try to follow all pagespeed guidelines. I increase my pagespeed significantly, but i didnt saw any effect in my SEO performance. In my keywords, my concorrents are crap on it (I have score of 90 and they are at 60-70).Does google gives importance to it?
Web Design | | Naghirniac0 -
Should I Remove URL extentions for SEO?
We are having a developer design our website with Magento. I noticed the main pages such as About Us have no file extention in the URL. But the product pages have a .html file extention. I was once told to remove the file extentions. Are there benefits to removing the .html file extension and if so, is there a way we can do this using Magento?
Web Design | | hfranz0 -
Can including advertising slots have a negative effect on SEO?
Can including advertising slots at the top and side of pages have a negative effect on SEO? Can Google detect these advertising slots? Can they work our advertising pixels to page content pixels ratio? Any ideas, suggestions, comments and opinions are greatly appreciated!
Web Design | | Peter2640 -
Need an SEO pro to build us a new fine art website
Hey Seomoz friends My friends and I started buying and selling art 5 years ago. We did it all on ebay. Two years ago I decided to try an attempt at building us a website to further our business outside of ebay. www.originalartbroker.com I used homestead.com software aka intuit to do this. I was able to get a lot of first page results in seo after a ton of work and willing to do a lot more. I'm sure the homestead site slowed my efforts down. I need more power 🙂 What we do. We sell fine art. We are trying to aspire to the leading seller of fine contemporary art online. We will do whatever it takes to get there. Our issue is not our product. Our issue is getting traffic to the site. I only have 175-200 visitors a day. I need better results for the keywords of our artists and inquires that surround them. We have a bounce rate of 70%, average time on site of 1 minute 50 seconds, and a slow loading site that is almost impossible to create individual pages for pieces (mgmt nightmare) Outside of our site we have blogs, squidoo pages, facebook account with 2500 fans, twitter page with 2k followers, youtube channel, and a blog on the site for new arrivals. We have a 200-250 piece on our site at any given time. We add probably ten pieces on average a week. We don't need any kind of ecommerce management software as most of our sales are done over the phone being that it is higher end art. I need a site that out performs my competition. I need to be in the top three when someone types in "leroy neiman" "peter max" and so on. I, with limited knowledge, need to be able to use the software everyday to upload new art as it comes in. I want every piece to have its own page so that I can also add pieces to a google merchant account. When I add new pieces under a certain artists and it creates its own page i want it to create h tags and an url extension for each product as I add them based off the discription and artists name. I would like some sort of blog integration to post our new arrivals as we get them. I would like some sort of customer capture. I am thinking something along the lines of them prociding email, name, and zip code to see the prices on the site. You are the seo pro so you know what it takes. I would like to know what a solution would cost to get us on the ground with more seo power. A site with speed that is easily indexed. It doesn't need to have a lot of bells and whistles. Please look at my site and let me know what you think. You can get an idea from that of what we are doing. Please give me an idea of what you can do and what it would cost. Thank you
Web Design | | forecastedinvestments0