Should I Use An Animated Javascript Responsive Site
-
Hi, hope someone might be able to help me with this. I am setting my son up with a website for his small painting and decorating company. However, I am a wordpress stalwart and he has seen a theme which is a javascript animated responsive theme from template monster. Its not my choice just he is adamant that he wants it. However, I am slightly concerned that Google cannot index as well with these kind of sites as they would with a standard HTML site.
I would be grateful if someone could confirm if they can be indexed etc. The content appears in what I can only describe as lightboxes.
Thanks
-
Hey There
Peter really gave you a great answer, but just wanted to add a few things. If you want to see things how a search engine might see theme there's a few options;
- <a>browseo.net</a> is an SEO browser, just plug in the URL of the sample theme for an SEO view
- use the web developer plugin - shut off javascript and CSS and look at the sample site. whatever you can see Google is 100% able to see.
- you can view Google's text only cache of a page by typing cache:http://www.example.com/sample-theme/ and click "text only" - this is very similar to the web developer plugin.
- if you own the site you can use something like "fetch as googlebot" within webmaster tools and examine the code it returns back. look for the text etc you want to be visible to google.
Basically, of those methods fail to show you the content (text mainly) you'd want Google to see, the javascript is being used incorrectly or too heavily.
-Dan
-
Hi Denis
Google is much smarter these days at dealing with JavaScript but that doesn't mean to say that excessive Javascript on a page would be OK too. Essentially, the more hoops a search engine has to jump through to find the content it is trying to index the harder it is and the less likely you will achieve the results you want to achieve.
The other aspect to consider of course is user experience which is a ranking factor in Google's algorithm. Sites with lots of bells and whistles can look amazing but sometimes they can be a hindrance to being able to access content too. It's one thing to wow the visitor, but it's another thing to engage with them and prompt them to pick up the phone to call you.
My business do a lot of video production and people often get excited about funky transitions, but in many cases they are just fluff. Most broadcast programmes on TV use just two transitions: straight cut and dissolve.
My point I think is the same as yours, effects can be great, but they need to be used sparingly. You can have the funkiest website but if its not found when someone searches then it's the funkiest website that no-one has ever seen.
Sorry, I have gone around the houses a little, but to answer in summary, yes Javascript heavy templates can be indexed, but maybe not as well as you would want them to be + of course the user experience issue of being able to access content simply to pick up the phone.
I hope that helps,
Peter
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
-
Should Our Mobile Responsive Version of our Ecommerce Site include the on Page content to Help with Rankings
Hello All, We are soon to launch our new redesigned website along with a mobile responsive version but i have noticed we currently don't include the on page Content we have on the mobile version which we have on the desktop version to help with rankings etc. I am not sure how google does mobile research with regards to rankings. We have designed our responsive version to be as user friendly as possible at the expense of having to much clutter/content but I am wondering now , if we will rank on mobile if all our on page content isn't present. Just wondered if we should include it at the bottom of the pages with say a "Read more" extension to help avoid clutter? Any advice greatly appreciated thanks Pete
Web Design | | PeteC120 -
Best SSL Certificate to Use
I am setting up an ecommerce website that will sell batteries and like most e-commerce sites we will be taking credit cards. I was exploring the different SSL certificates and providers and I was shocked at the difference in pricing. Anywhere from free to over $1000! What is really necessary and what is nice to have? Any suggestions on SSL providers? Thanks
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
Does IE9 use doucument mode IE9 Standards or Quirks???
Trying to set up the styling on a new Shopping Cart, and having trouble with Internet Explorer (IE) When I view it in IE, I click on F12 to identify the code viewer (like FireBug) and it lets me choose to view it using the browser IE9 or earlier. So far, so good... But right next to the browser selector is the "Document Mode" selector and sometimes it says "Quirks Mode" and sometimes it says "IE9 Standards" (when using IE9 browser) - and parts of the page styling goes crazy when I switch back and forth from Quirks to Standards. Help! Which does IE9 and IE8 actually use? Does it have to work for both? Is there a way to force it to one or the other? Any guidance or tips is appreciated. Thanks, Greg
Web Design | | GregB1230 -
What's the point of an EU site?
Buongiorno from 18 degrees C Wetherby UK 🙂 On this site http://www.milwaukeetool.eu/ the client wants to hold on to the EU site despite there being multiple standalone country sittes e.g. http://www.milwaukeetool.fr & http://www.milwaukeetool.co.uk Why would you ever need an EU site? I mean who ever searches for an EU site? If the client holds on to the eu site despite my position it's a waiste of time from a search perspective is the folowing the best appeasment? When a user enters the eu url or redirects to country the detected, eg I'm in Paris I enter www.milwaukeetool.eu it redirects to http://www.milwaukeetool.fr. My felling this would be the most pragmatic thing to do? Any ideas please,
Web Design | | Nightwing
Cioa,
David0 -
Many errors from previous ecommerce site. Domain is now just a localized wordpress site.
Many errors from previous ecommerce site. Do I need to redirect every single page that no longer exists at this domain? loveyourcabinets.com used to be loveyourkitchenandbath.com but we have since changed course. We want loveyourkitchenandbath.com to be our local site on Long Island and NYC. Loveyourcabinets.com will be an ecommerce project that I'll be revamping in the coming months. I think Moz as well as Google still has all of the old ecommerce pages indexed. And of course, Moz is shooting me a bunch of error all regarding pages from the ecommerce site that used to be on loveyourkitchenandbath.com. Any thoughts? Commentary? Thx
Web Design | | loveyourkitchen0 -
Pulling old site-map and URL structure of a site
Hey guys how do I pull an old sitemap or URL structure of a site ! This company I am helping out . Build a new site without any 301 redirect ! It's been about 2 months and hosting company sent me. SQL database file said we basically need to build another site ! Wondering if there are any other ways to see what exact urls were existent before their change over
Web Design | | BizDetox0 -
How is an SEO's time best used?
We have over 50 highly varied and niche sites in our company. Each website is for an annual event spread across the calendar. I am the solo SEO person here and was wondering what your opinions are about what would bring in the greatest SEO power in my limited daily allotment; link building? Keywords? Content? Oh, and to make my life even easier - its all based on SharePoint 2007!
Web Design | | DaveGerecht0 -
What Is Our Site Missing Causing Our Former Dominance To Slip?
So we have operated one of our retail sites, BonitaJ.com for many years now. Through a lot of work, link building and optimizing around 2009, we were in a prominent spot on the 1st page in google for just about every main term we were targeting. Towards the end of 2009, nearing December or so, we started slipping here and there, and began being displaced for our main terms by newer sites that according to several factors, don't have near the strength our site holds. And by strength, I simply mean, based on link volume, mozbar stats and many other factors, it seems we should rank well above most, but still find ourselves just hanging to 8-10 positions on page one, and in many cases somewhere on page two for terms it seems like we should be in the top 5 positions for. I believe some of our slippage is due to google's devaluing of many of our incoming links. We achieved our early ranking dominence off a lot of directory links and things like that over time, but ever since 2009 when links began getting devalued we immediately broke into getting quality blog links via LEGIT blog relationships where we'd offer up contests, bloggers would review our products and so on, and these relationships continue through today. We also do a lot of guest blog writing, article postings on various networks, as well as press releases, all with the goal of keeping our link profile happy and healthy. So we still have work to do there, but we're on the right track. So my thought is that to get back over the hump, we simply need to continue with the legit link building methods, but I'm also thinking that maybe we need to improve some things navigationally. Things I was hoping people would chime in on are.... 1. If we're mainly trying to target bridal/wedding related jewelry terms, should we ditch the "Jewelry Sets, Pearl Jewelry & Swarovski Crystal Jewerly" terms from our main navbar. They are featured inside each of the categories, and in the end, we don't rank or pull traffic for them anyway. Would ditching them from the main nav, help pass more juice from home page and other pages to the pages that better target our niche? 2. A while back, we ditched including actual product on each of the main category pages. I'm leaning towards breaking the main category pages up into sections, for instance once on the "Bridal Jewelry" page, it would list each of the sub-cats, with a 5-10 product sampling of the most popular items, with a link that says "view all necklaces" at the end of each sub-section. Do you think that more wise than just trying to direct them into the sub-cats with no actual product offering? 3. Anything else you see glaringly wrong with what we're trying to do? This site is just on the edge of blowing up from a ranking perspective if I can just get some confirmation on some things that I know I should do, but I'm wary due to fear of screwing things up. If I can get some solid feedback, the rest is history.
Web Design | | AarcMediaGroup0