Navigation for Users vs Spiders
-
We're creating a new global site nav that provides a great user experience, but may be less than ideal for the search engines. The user selects an item from category A, and is then presented options to choose from in category B, and then chooses a specific product. The user does not encounter any actual "links" until they choose the specific product.
The search engines won't see this navigation path due to the way that the navigation is coded. They're unable to choose an item from A, so they can't get to B, and therefore cannot get to C, which is the actual product page.
We'd like to create an alternative nav for the browsers, so that they can crawl the category pages for A and B, as well as the specific product pages (C).
This alternative nav would be displayed if the user does not have javascript enabled. Otherwise, the navigation described above will be shown to the user.
Moving forward, the navigation that the user sees may be different from what is shown to the search engine, based on user preferences (ie they may only see some of the categories in the nav, while the search engines will see links to all category/product pages).
I know that, as a general rule, it's important that the search engines see the same thing that the user sees. Does the strategy outlined above put us at risk for penalties?
-
Here is the Google’s guidelines for developers that how they can make their AJAX code crawlable.... https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/174992?hl=en
I guess you should pretty much focus on your user’s experience and I believe Google crawlers can easy crawls your AJAX and JS codes...
Hope this helps!
-
Same response AJAX is a javascript method to get content from another page. Crawlers have no issues indexing that. Now a days, most BIG sites use AJAX, like the ones with infinite scroll.
The way they do it is: they put the link to the next page (that users don't see since you hide the "Next" via css) and both crawlers and users can navigate the site just fine. In your case, you can put links into each submenu option too, that way you will help both users and crawlers.
-
Sorry, I should have clarified, the navigation utilized AJAX, so the links don't actually appear anywhere in the source. We do have breadcrumbs on the product pages. Thanks!
-
Search engines are already good executing Javascript, so they WILL see those links too. I would suggest only the "user" navigation and add some bread crumbs in each product (the path the user followed to reach that product) so crawler and users can also navigate the site by category.
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
-
Google spider
If someone provide 1 or more cent discount to our customers who put up a link on their site, and wanted to actually show the referral discount in their shopping cart for that customer, can Google see that and realize they are providing a discount for a link? Can Google see what's displayed in our their web application - like in the upload, shopping cart and complete transaction pages?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | K_Monestel0 -
Link Building vs. Straight Earning Links Discussion
Hello, I'd like to start a discussion on link building outreach techniques vs. just building a good website with good 10X content. I don't like to receive unsolicited emails in my inbox, so why should the people in my industry? Also, I've seen plenty of evidence of 10X content soaring without link building outreach. But link building isn't dead of course, so can you tell me your personal experiences either way and the ethics of what you do? I especially want to hear if you've had luck with just building good websites and being successful based on the content itself, but an open discussion of either side is welcome. Leaning towards just building good websites and letting the Google algo do it's thing. Would love to hear your experiences either way. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW3 -
Hacked site vs No site
So I have this website that got hacked with cloaking and Google has labeled it as such in the SERPs. With due reason of coarse. My question is I am going to relaunch an entirely new redesigned website in less than 30 days, do I pull the hacked site down until then or leave it up? Which option is better?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Rich_Coffman0 -
Legit Editorial Placement vs Penalized Guest Posting
I'm planning to begin contributing to several different media outlets and blogs on the net, and hoping that I can get some decent placements for me and a few of my colleagues. Looking specifically at legit media outlets and corporate blogs with a structured and considered editorial process where we can contribute thought leadership pieces. In light of all of the Google algorithm changes surrounding guest blogging, I am curious if this would be viewed as legit editorial placements, or as guest posts that would either carry no weight or be penalized? Secondly, what are the considerations and value of including a high quality in-article link back to our site vs. a byline link, or both. Does anyone have any data or experience with this? Thanks in advance! Andrew and wondering if anyone has any experience or insights
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Alaniz1 -
Rel Noindex Nofollow tag vs meta noindex nofollow robots
Hi Mozzers I have a bit of thing I was pondering about this morning and would love to hear your opinion on it. So we had a bit of an issue on our client's website in the beginning of the year. I tried to find a way around it by using wild cards in my robots.txt but because different search engines treat wild cards differently it dint work out so well and only some search engines understood what I was trying to do. so here goes, I had a parameter on a big amount of URLs on the website with ?filter being pushed from the database we make use of filters on the site to filter out content for users to find what they are looking for much easier, concluding to database driven ?filter URLs (those ugly &^% URLs we all hate so much*. So what we looking to do is implementing nofollow noindex on all the internal links pointing to it the ?filter parameter URLs, however my SEO sense is telling me that the noindex nofollow should rather be on the individual ?filter parameter URL's metadata robots instead of all the internal links pointing the parameter URLs. Am I right in thinking this way? (reason why we want to put it on the internal links atm is because the of the development company states that they don't have control over the metadata of these database driven parameter URLs) If I am not mistaken noindex nofollow on the internal links could be seen as page rank sculpting where as onpage meta robots noindex nofolow is more of a comand like your robots.txt Anyone tested this before or have some more knowledge on the small detail of noindex nofollow? PS: canonical tags is also not doable at this point because we still in the process of cleaning out all the parameter URLs so +- 70% of the URLs doesn't have an SEO friendly URL yet to be canonicalized to. PSS: another reason why this needs looking at is because search engines won't be able to make an interpretation of these pages (until they have been cleaned up and fleshed out with unique content) which could result in bad ranking of the pages which could conclude to my users not being satisfied, so over and above the SEO factor, usability of the site is being looked at here as well, I don't want my users to land on these pages atm. If they navigate to it via the filters then awesome because they are defining what they are looking for with the filters. Would love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks, Chris Captivate.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DROIDSTERS0 -
Need clarification on what is a landing page vs. doorway page
Hello everyone - I just became a PRO member today and wanted to say hello and ask this question... I am launching a new product, but 6 months before I created 4 different domains with landing pages to "prime" my SEO for the keywords I am trying to pursue. Now that I have launched my new product, it resides on the main domain name (let's call it "MainDomain.com"). Here's my dilemma... I want to create landing pages on each of the different domains for my PPC and optimized organic search traffic. For example, on one of the other domains (let's call it "LandingDomain1.com"), I have created a page to optimize for the keyword "event planning software" and sending my PPC traffic for "event planning software" there as well as my email campaigns. This page has original content that I have written for it (it's not duplicate content used elsewhere), but it also has navigation and links pointing to MainDomain.com, which is where we convert and collect registrations. My question is, will this activity be considered a doorway page even though I'm using it for a landing page for a particular audience? And, if it could be considered a doorway page, would I be better off moving all these optimized landing pages to my MainDomain.com and then doing a 301 redirect from those other domains to the MainDomain.com. Your input is much appreciated ... thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DenverDude1 -
Links In Blog Posts: 1 Paragraph VS. Full Article
Hey guys, I've been using an article network to post unique articles (not spun). Been posting 1 paragraph articles with 1 text link. Just wondering what the main difference would be if I were to post a full article with 2 or 3 text links vs 1 paragraph with 1 text link, besides the fact that you get more links and save more time writing only 1 paragraph. Will the full article with 3 backlinks improve keyword ranks more or not by much? Cheers!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | upick-1623910 -
Influence of users' comments on a page (on-page SEO)
Do you think when Google crawls your page, it "monitors" comments updates to use this as a ranking factor? If Google is looking for social signs, looking for comments updates might be a social sign as well (ok a lot easier to manipulate, but still social). thx
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gt30