What is the best method for getting pure Javascript/Ajax pages Indeded by Google for SEO?
-
I am in the process of researching this further, and wanted to share some of what I have found below. Anyone who can confirm or deny these assumptions or add some insight would be appreciated.
Option: 1
If you're starting from scratch, a good approach is to build your site's structure and navigation using only HTML. Then, once you have the site's pages, links, and content in place, you can spice up the appearance and interface with AJAX. Googlebot will be happy looking at the HTML, while users with modern browsers can enjoy your AJAX bonuses. You can use Hijax to help ajax and html links coexist. You can use Meta NoFollow tags etc to prevent the crawlers from accessing the javascript versions of the page.
Currently, webmasters create a "parallel universe" of content. Users of JavaScript-enabled browsers will see content that is created dynamically, whereas users of non-JavaScript-enabled browsers as well as crawlers will see content that is static and created offline. In current practice, "progressive enhancement" in the form of Hijax-links are often used.
Option: 2
In order to make your AJAX application crawlable, your site needs to abide by a new agreement.This agreement rests on the following:
- The site adopts the AJAX crawling scheme.
- For each URL that has dynamically produced content, your server provides an HTML snapshot, which is the content a user (with a browser) sees. Often, such URLs will be AJAX URLs, that is, URLs containing a hash fragment, for example www.example.com/index.html#key=value, where #key=value is the hash fragment. An HTML snapshot is all the content that appears on the page after the JavaScript has been executed.
- The search engine indexes the HTML snapshot and serves your original AJAX URLs in search results.
In order to make this work, the application must use a specific syntax in the AJAX URLs (let's call them "pretty URLs;" you'll see why in the following sections). The search engine crawler will temporarily modify these "pretty URLs" into "ugly URLs" and request those from your server. This request of an "ugly URL" indicates to the server that it should not return the regular web page it would give to a browser, but instead an HTML snapshot. When the crawler has obtained the content for the modified ugly URL, it indexes its content, then displays the original pretty URL in the search results. In other words, end users will always see the pretty URL containing a hash fragment. The following diagram summarizes the agreement:
See more in the....... Getting Started Guide.Make sure you avoid this:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66355
Here is a few example Pages that have mostly Javascrip/AJAX : http://catchfree.com/listen-to-music#&tab=top-free-apps-tabhttps://www.pivotaltracker.com/public_projects
This is what the spiders see: view-source:http://catchfree.com/listen-to-music#&tab=top-free-apps-tab
This is the best resources I have found regarding Google and Javascript
http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/ - This is step by step instructions.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=81766
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-allow-google-to-crawl-ajax-content
Some additional Resources:http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/proposal-for-making-ajax-crawlable.html
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-allow-google-to-crawl-ajax-content
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
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
-
Do You Work At Home As An SEO Or Have An Office?
I'm curious how many of you all work at home or mostly at home either through an company or freelance. Or are most of you employed at a corporation? My company was recently bought by a very large global company. Recently I found out that all the SEO and web design is contracted through outside sources. With the headquarters in Europe, this being my primary job function I kinda feel well you know.... down.. Websites I put my life into for the last 7 years are going to be handed over to a corporation to do with whatever they feel they should. I know they were never really mine, but when you spend so much of your life to making them the best you can, so much so to attract the attention of a global billion dollar company, you should feel great right? But I feel like my dog just died. I don't have a bad impression of the company but the shift of moving me to the IT guy has begun. Normal web updates I would have done, are now being pushed aside. I don't hate IT I like helping others, but I really loved being able to make a difference through the web. Now I'm left contemplating my future, big corporations have so much bs, I just don't feel comfortable. I would really appreciate you all giving me your thoughts and tell me about any similar experiences you have had in your life. Cheers, Don
Industry News | | donford0 -
I have a new domain, how should i best use it?
Hi all, Recently signed upto Moz and loving what i am seeing at the moment.I do alot of microsites and push both adwords and affiliate programmes and products and earn enough to give me some fun money. For a long time i have wanted to get into the mobile phone market as i have spoken to alot of people who get anything upto £100 a time from affiliate programmes. I have just purchased a new domain after doing some digging around and though that before i dive into doing things how i normally would , i thought id ask advice on how to best utilise the domain i have bought. Ive just purchased newiphone.co.uk and will put up a holding page once all of the registration has gone through and i have access to everything. According to Google keyword planner the term 'new iphone' gets around 368k searches a month. Moz says this is an extremely difficult keyword to rank for with a 80% difficulty rating so i appreciate i wont be at number 1 in a couple of weeks. Id appreciate your ideas and suggestions as a community to see how i go forward. Many tanks in advancePaul
Industry News | | Wilkesy0 -
Website ROI for organic SEO
A potential client would like to see published industry reports on ROI for SEO projects before they commit to doing. Please could you point me to some credible industry reports that shows the direct impact of organic SEO. I think that it would help if this report had organic click through rates, an increase in organic traffic as well as ranking info. if available. Thanks.
Industry News | | a-b-c0 -
Real-Life Negative SEO Study
This isn't so much of a question as an offer The Offer first, then the story. We are currently the target of a sustained negative SEO. This was only discovered in the last 3 or 4 days (Webmaster reports impressions down from 15,000 to 1,600!). I'm not asking for help, I believe we know what to do in order to combat it. My question is whether anyone at MOZ would like to use it as a real-life ongoing case study. We are not a new company and have never dabbled in black hat SEO. All current thinking suggests that this shouldn't have been possible given our age and reputation. A summary of our company/site below: 9 Year old domain $3m annual sales Previous Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Company 25,000 Facebook fans Hundreds of natural links including CNN.com, Washington Post, Inc.com I'm not the best writer and I'm not that technical. I would gladly give the right person full access to anaylics, webmaster tools, sales reports, interviews. Given that this is still ongoing (and there's always a chance we might not recover!) I suspect this would make a great case study for the community given the right author. gfbM8kV
Industry News | | experiencedays1 -
100's of versions of the same page. Is rel=canonical the solution???
Hi, I am currently working with an eCommerce site that has a goofy set up for their contact form. Basically, their are hundreds of "contact us" pages that look exactly the same but have different URLs and are used to help the store owner determine which product the user contacted them about. So almost every product has it's own "contact us" URL. The obvious solution is to do away with this set up but if that is not an option, would a rel=canonical tag linked back to the actually "contact us" page be a possible solution? Or is the canonical tag only used to show the difference between www vs non-www? Thanks!
Industry News | | RossFruin0 -
Why has my places ranking dropped off google?
I've recently worked for a company who up untill 3 weeks ago have shown up in the google places ranked at number 1 for the following key phrases. First Aid Training in Cornwall
Industry News | | it-ok
First Aid Courses in Cornwall
Health and Safety Training in Cornwall as well as several more... However over the past 3 weeks they have gradually dropped out of the places listing all together, and I'm struggling to understand why this might be. Yesterday I released a new website for them which has had a lot more SEO input in to the site, is this likely to have an affect on the places ranking? the website is www.insafehandstraining.com Any answers would be very appreciated.0 -
Google Directory no longer available?
Now, we will forever not know what is in the Google Directory. I just clicked on the link..... and everything is dead and points you to DMOZ. What does this mean for us? Is DMOZ going to get more editor juice, so submissions are actually reviewed for once? The Yahoo! directory has also been glitching - new submissions have been disabled for over a week now. Any comments?
Industry News | | antidanis0 -
My websites Internal page is not ranking.
Hi, I had "x1", "x2","x3" keywords ranked for my websites internal page that is "www.somesite.com/internal-page.htm" i was fairly doing well for my keywords mostly in top 5, but now the case is from last couple of weeks, my internal page url is gone & replaced with home page. And I don't see internal page anywhere mostly in top 1000, is that penalty to internal page ?If yes how can i troubleshoot this ? I see my other pages in top 20-30 but that specific page is not anywhere. Please let me know. -Sunny.
Industry News | | sunny.popali0