Javascript Redirects
-
So I have a client who uses a program called test and target by Adobe to test different pages of content for the best layout, design, etc. They use javascript redirects and css hide and show to hide content with div tags. I'm wondering if anyone has experience with test and target or knows about how these hidden div tags and javascript redirects will affect my indexing and SEO.
I'm hoping for some guidance fairly quickly as well
-
Great thoughts, thank you. I agree that companies really don't have SEO in mind when creating many tools. Some very useful tools are that way. There is a balance of options here - the benefit they see from using test and target (and they have seen great results improving userability on the site and refining their processes. It has created great efficiency that have led to improved site conversions), and the SEO factor.
I guess what I'm looking for is a few things: 1. What are the effects of using hidden div tags and javascript redirects. 2. Possible ways to mitigate any negative effects in my rankings of those pages.
From what I have read (and just the story of my SEO life) is that there really isn't much surety when it comes to this...no one seems to know exactly what will happen. I guess I'm looking for someone who has used hidden div tags or javascript redirects and how that has affected their ranking on those specific pages...as well as the site as a whole.
-
This is yet another case where a big company creates something they think will be useful to web designers, without fully comprehending the impact on others. Javascript and CSS are bot legitimate tools of web design and programming, however search bots and algorithms fail miserably at processing content that is manipulated by either method in a way that causes them to appear or disappear based on human interaction.
While Google has come a long way in being able to process Javascript, it's far from perfect. Hit and miss. And in the case of both Javascript and CSS, there's a very "maybe" situation indeed. Maybe their system will be able to parse it and not think it's there to fool the search engines. Maybe it won't. Maybe the result will be a devaluing of some or all of your content and links, maybe it won't.
They play this off in all their public statements, saying "if your intent is not to do evil, you should be fine." They tell you that if your intent is good, let their system figure it out.
Then they tell you they can't guarantee their system will figure it out properly. Or that their system won't penalize your site even if your intent is good.
Quite a while back, Matt Cutts specifically stated that he recommends never using any method that could hide content, regardless of your intent. That's what it really comes down to.
Until and unless you can truly test every possible scenario and can know with absolute certainty that what you're doing isn't causing SEO (or usability) problems, then it comes down to risk.
Is the client willing to risk having the site ranked lower than it might otherwise be? Are they willing to risk having usability problems? That's what it comes down to.
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
-
WordPress redirects are taking too long to navigate: Anyone ever faced this?
Hi community, We are using wordpress website. We have redirected hundreds of URLs from wordpress redirect manager for last 10 years around. Suddenly from last one week, the redirects are taking too long to navigate to the pages; like around 1 minute. Could you anybody face the same issue? Please help me on this. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Redirection Problem
Wondering if anyone could offer some tips here please. I cannot share the site name so will try and be as detailed as possible. My client had their site on a .com domain and have decided to move to a co.uk domain. The new site has been put on the uk domain with more or less the same structure, save for pages which have been removed or merged. I am now setting up 301 redirects to tell the engines about the moved site, however this is giving me no end of grief. I can get domain.com to redirect to domain.co.uk no problems, however, if I try and redirect any of the inner pages to their new locations they all end up on the .co.uk home not where they should be. Given the homepage isn't designed to rank for all the terms. The htaccess I am using is below, I cannot see anything wrong with it, can anyone else? Redirect 301 / http://newdomain.co.uk/
Web Design | | carl_daedricdigital
Redirect 301 /villa_rental.php http://newdomain.co.uk/villa_rental.html
Redirect 301 /new_home.php http://newdomain.co.uk/new_home.html
Redirect 301 /http://newdomain.com/villas.php http://newdomain.co.uk/villastyles.html
Redirect 301 /developments.php http://newdomain.co.uk/developments.html
Redirect 301 /solana_hills.php http://newdomain.co.uk/solana_hills.html
Redirect 301 /middle_east.php http://newdomain.co.uk/middle_east.html
Redirect 301 /denia.php http://newdomain.co.uk/denia.html
Redirect 301 /faq.php http://newdomain.co.uk/faq.html I have tried both relative and full paths for the old site but doesn't make any difference. Does it matter the old site is php and the new html? many thanks0 -
Help with redirects
Our travel company used to maintain a set of country destination guides on our site, under the www.oursite.com/destinations/country folder path. Because we offer tours all over the world, we used these pages as high-level guides to each country so a prospect could get a sense of the highlights of those destinations. These pages operated as landing pages too. Unfortunately the pages became stale and unfocused, and we decommissioned them. In order to bring them down, we put a 301 redirect on these URLs, pointing them to a faceted-search page that showed all of our tours to that country, with URLs: www.oursite.com/trips/country. These faceted-search pages were pulling double duty as both search pages and landing pages, which isn't ideal (from a users perspective). We are now in the process of redoing our search function and we'll need to move the search URLs off /trips/ and onto /search/. Within this transition, we are going to re-launch destination guides, and I think the best place for them will be back on the old /destinations/ subfolder. So, a few moving parts here. My question: Do you see problems with reversing the redirect path completely? Ie. where we currently redirect /destinations/country to /trips/country, we are now proposing to redirect /trips/country to /destinations/country. Our concern in this equation is that, over the last few years, we've built up significant link volumes and equity to the /trips/ pages, and we don't want to lose that.
Web Design | | Adventures0 -
301 Redirect from Old Domain to New Domain
I am building a new website and I plan to 301 Redirect my Old Domain (olddomain.com) to a brand new Domain (newdomain.com) in the upcoming months. To do this I was planning to update the htaccess file on both the old and new domains. The htaccess file on the old domain would look to 301 redirect all pages on the old domain to the new domain. The htaccess file on the new domain would detail any specific URL redirects I want to implement (ie. olddomain.com/EXAMPLE/TEST will redirect to newdomain/TEST) - this will ensure link equity is retained and bounce rates are kept at a lower level. Does this sound like the right approach? Also, what do I need to do with the old domain going forward? Do I need to keep this forever in order for the 301 redirect to work or can I eventually just forward the domain to the new one permanently?
Web Design | | DHS_SH0 -
Is it common to have some of error/warning(currency duplicate,redirect, etc...) in most website that rank well?
Hi could any body could give me some idea on 'on page optimisation' Currently in my campaign I have around 3000+ errors, 14,000+ warning, 7000+ notices for the following reasons: Overly-Dynamic URL
Web Design | | LauraHT
Temporary Redirect
Title Element Too Long (> 70 Characters)
Duplicate Page Title
etc... First of all I know these have negative effect on SEO. Now to fix towards those issues it involve lots of works and times. At the same time most of our important keywords/url rank position have not changed over the last 12 months. Does that mean the above has only limited negative effect? I just want to know is it worthy to invest the man/hour/money to clean those issues. As it involves decent development time. Is it common to have some of error/warning in most website that rank well? (e.g. I 've seem may big website have duplicate title/meta-desc on their currency variant page)0 -
Do I need to redirect soft 404s that I got from Google Webmaster Tools?
Hi guys, I got almost 1000+ soft 404s from GWT. All of the soft 404s produce 200 HTTP status code but the URLs are something like the following: http://www.example.com/search/house-for-rent (query used: house for rent) http://www.example.com/search/-----------rent (query used:-------rent) There are no listings that match these queries and there is an advanced search that is visible in these pages. Here are my questions: 1. Do I need to redirect each page to its appropriate landing page? 2. Do I need to add user sitemap or a list of URLs where they can search for other properties? Any suggestions would help. 🙂
Web Design | | esiow20130 -
Random 302 Redirect (Wordpress CMS)
So this new project that i am working on is a redesigned CMS site using Wordpress (php based). Before i started on the project they made a few major updates that include: Changed from ID based URLS to SEO friendly URLS Added multiple languages in directories www.domain.com/en www.domain.com/fr www.domain.com/de etc... Due to the new languages they wanted to have the previous home page, www.domain.com, redirect to the proper language based on their IP address. Currently they are using a 301 redirect through a php header. So if i was visiting the site from my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio and i type www.domain.com into the browser. I would automatically redirect to www.domain.com/en and i would have the option to switch languages if needed. The issue: When i first added their site into SEOMoz the crawl returned a large amount of 302 redirects coming from their old homepage www.domain.com. So i took a look at the header calls using IE's webmaster tools and Firebug in Firefox. In both profilers it showed the same problem. Before the 301 header redirect there was a 302 redirect called first When viewing the response header it mentioned an x-pingback of some file that didn't even exist on the site: www.domain.com/xmlrpc.php This is obviously a huge issue because any link value from the old homepage will be lost due to the 302 not passing the value. I have tried search the almighty Google for help but it has gotten me no where. I have a hunch it is something to do with Wordpress but that is based on nothing but my gut. Any help is greatly appreciated. I got to get that 302 gone or changed to a 301 🙂 Regards - Kyle
Web Design | | kchandler0 -
Type of redirect?
I'm almost ready to launch a website redesign. We are going to move what's currently being hosted on olddomain.com to newdomain.com. We want to do this early to avoid error and to have olddomain.com redirect to newdomain.com until the new content is ready. Once the redesign is complete, we'll push the new content to olddomain.com (as it holds a higher SEO value) and take away the redirect. A. Does this sound like a good idea? B. What kind of redirect should I use? 302? 307? Thanks, and sorry for the confusion 🙂
Web Design | | kylesuss0