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Went Hot: October 18, 2007 - 5:32 pm
Posted By: MattMcGee 413 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: SEO
Unfortunately, that's not the case."
9 Comments
Went Hot: October 18, 2007 - 5:32 pm
Posted By: MattMcGee 413 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: SEO
Unfortunately, that's not the case."
9 Comments
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Comments
Another way to look at this, is that SEO needs to grow with technology. Search Friendly should not hinder technology, and Google should never be god and expect the Internet to translate at 100% to it's spider. Web 2.0 websites, are not without rankings on Search Engines either, and even without ranking, they still manage to produce a large number of visitors.
Isn't the reason for link baiting, social networking and other forms of off-site strategies due to the growth of Technology? Aren't the websites we are dependent on, to produce these off-site promotions based on Web 2.0?
The article is misleading, by scaring webmasters into staying away from rich media websites because based on SEO advice, they are not "search friendly", yet the Internet and Google and other Search Engines have displayed otherwise, by producing high rankings for websites built on Flash and Ajax. SEO Consultants who sit and deter their customers from producing the next grand web 2.0 idea is delusional in thinking that the internet is still based on text. The internet has grown, and so must SEO - so instead of sitting around complaining about how growth is passing us by, jump on the team that's looking for other ways to produce traffic and/or rankings. - because essentially, it is not the Job of the SEO consultant to Optimize a Website - but instead to produce traffic and increase sales.
If you are not making that your goal, then SEO will continue to simply be about text - and the internet will pass you by.
I'm actually tired of the widget mania. If it were SEO freindly, you might run the risk of being doohickied to death at the expense of actual text information. The Internet's primary use is still to spread information, not sell products. You can use the former to get the latter, but AJAX bells and whistles will never substantiate a sale the way concrete information will.
I, for one, appreciate the seperation engines currently provide. It keeps things more balanced between information and entertainment in terms of what is relevant to a searcher. Organizations who know how to leverage each to their fullest potential will be the ones who reap the greatest rewards.
Sphinning, because unlike most Flash/AJAX sites are not Search Engine Friendly, this article does not tell people to give up these technologies; it instead gives creative solutions to the issues that these technologies can have in terms of search friendliness.
The problem with AJAX is not the engines! Let me quote this site (that is actually a parody on Jacob Nielsens old article "Why Frames Sucks"): http://www.usabilityviews.com/ajaxsucks.html
"Ajax breaks the unified model of the Web and introduce a new way of looking at data that has not been well integrated into the other aspects of the Web. With ajax, the user's view of information on the screen is now determined by a sequence of navigation actions rather than a single navigation action. "
In other words: You can only link to the entry point of an AJAX application - not to an actual "page" within it and thefore the engines can't send users there either.
So untill there is a global standard agreed on how to navigate AJAX applications they will continue to be highly SEO unfriendly.
Also, I forgot to mention, that this quote from the article is not actually true: "Search engine spiders can't execute JavaScript commands ..." It is not that they can't - they could easily execute JavaScript, if they wanted - but it would serve absolutely no purpose if they can't send users back to the same point.
Lani, the point of this article wasn't to scare webmasters into staying away from rich media but instead to give them some tools, like progressive enhancement, to use when employing rich media.
Mikkel, good point, I should have said "Search engine spiders aren't programmed to execute JavaScript commands"
Another thing to keep in mind is that these "whiz-bang Web 2.0 interactive elements" are not only search-engine-unfriendly, but they may also be unfriendly to visually impaired users.
I wrote on this a few days ago: http://www.seodisco.com/2007/10/14/law-may-require-websites-to-be-accessible-to-disabled-users/
Full steam ahead is what i want to see. It took years for even DHTML to get "search friendly" so of course it will take a while for folks to figure out rich interfaces, but that shouldn't hold back progress.
I was looking at XUL years ago and it was awesome for many things. The more deep/rich interfaces I encounter as an SEO consultant, the harder I will work on the conceptual and practical aspects of search engine optimization of them. I suspect that is true for all of the SEOs willing to stretch the envelope to compete.
Keep going.. demand more... we'll make it work.
The problem with javascript / Ajax (Capital A, lowercase jax is the correct spelling for the term Ajax) and search engine compatibility is not with the search engines, or even the use of javascript. The problem is with the person writing the code. There is definitely a way to write spider friendly javascript. It's called un-obtrusive javascript. Which basically means javascript that displays if the browser supports javascript, but also displays if javascript is not supported. Hence -> un-obtrusive. There are many ways to do this besides using the noscript tag. I have an example on my site. You can test it by going to this page, testing out the javascript accordion, then turn off javascript in your browser prefs, and viola! all of the content still displays. This is the essence of un-obtrusive javascript. You can do the exact same thing using Ajax, or XHR (Xml Http Requests) by referencing files on a server using links that don't follow when javascript is enabled and putting the linked content on the page by appending it to the DOM (Document Object Model) with javascript. What you get then, is an Ajax application that works for the user with javascript capabilities, and for the search engine without javascript capabilities, it is simply a link to content. You can see an example of this also on my site. Ajax/javascript can be SEO and spider friendly, it's just a matter of how you do it!