Comments on: Can AJAX and SEO live together? http://www.dtelepathy.com/blog/telepathy/can-ajax-and-seo-live-together Design makes a difference - Committed to being designers of the web, we create experiences that deliver results. Sun, 12 Feb 2012 16:09:51 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Benj Arriola http://www.dtelepathy.com/blog/telepathy/can-ajax-and-seo-live-together#comment-85 Benj Arriola Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:36:41 +0000 http://blog.dtelepathy.com/digital-marketing/can-ajax-and-seo-live-together#comment-85 I started playing with the idea of <a href="http://www.ajaxoptimize.com" rel="nofollow">mixing AJAX and SEO together</a> 3 days ago. And came up with this. So far I think I followed all rules required for SEO and still getting to use the AJAX capabilities. Feel free to criticize it. If you think there will be any SEO issues. I started playing with the idea of mixing AJAX and SEO together 3 days ago. And came up with this. So far I think I followed all rules required for SEO and still getting to use the AJAX capabilities. Feel free to criticize it. If you think there will be any SEO issues.

]]> By: Jim M - Calgary Web Designer http://www.dtelepathy.com/blog/telepathy/can-ajax-and-seo-live-together#comment-84 Jim M - Calgary Web Designer Sat, 30 Dec 2006 18:14:53 +0000 http://blog.dtelepathy.com/digital-marketing/can-ajax-and-seo-live-together#comment-84 I am also glad to see people coming up with interesting solutions to fix this problem. But neither of you came up with the most simplistic approach that will work in 99.9% of all cases. I agree with Ed, browser detection is NOT a good idea. You can never satisfy everyone. What do you do when you have a screen reader hit your site? The failover rate is not good enough. There is hundreds if not thousands of spider/robot names. Conversely, there this many, many browser types also. I have not written an article yet on the advised approach, but I did present it at SES in Chicago earlier in the month and it was very well received. The summary is build the site so that it will for for all users, including search engines with all normal anchors linking to other pages use the rel atribute to identify your specific AJAX request. Then onload of the page, use JavaScirpt to comb through the site and change the functionality of the href to null, and add an onclick to run the AJAX requests. This will require advanced JS techniques to update the URL to ensure that you can click forward and backwards and bookmark and deeplink and all those wonderful things. If you do not beleive me, wait until the new http://www.rolex.com site launches. It is making use of this exact technique for the XHTML presentation layer. The site will be all Flash should you support it, but if not, the XHTML, CSS and JS layer will make use of AJAX. The site will display whatever it is you are capable of supporting, be completely spider friendly and user friendly. Cheers, Jim I am also glad to see people coming up with interesting solutions to fix this problem. But neither of you came up with the most simplistic approach that will work in 99.9% of all cases.

I agree with Ed, browser detection is NOT a good idea. You can never satisfy everyone. What do you do when you have a screen reader hit your site? The failover rate is not good enough. There is hundreds if not thousands of spider/robot names. Conversely, there this many, many browser types also.

I have not written an article yet on the advised approach, but I did present it at SES in Chicago earlier in the month and it was very well received. The summary is build the site so that it will for for all users, including search engines with all normal anchors linking to other pages use the rel atribute to identify your specific AJAX request. Then onload of the page, use JavaScirpt to comb through the site and change the functionality of the href to null, and add an onclick to run the AJAX requests. This will require advanced JS techniques to update the URL to ensure that you can click forward and backwards and bookmark and deeplink and all those wonderful things.

If you do not beleive me, wait until the new http://www.rolex.com site launches. It is making use of this exact technique for the XHTML presentation layer. The site will be all Flash should you support it, but if not, the XHTML, CSS and JS layer will make use of AJAX. The site will display whatever it is you are capable of supporting, be completely spider friendly and user friendly.

Cheers,
Jim

]]> By: Ed http://www.dtelepathy.com/blog/telepathy/can-ajax-and-seo-live-together#comment-83 Ed Wed, 11 Oct 2006 18:39:59 +0000 http://blog.dtelepathy.com/digital-marketing/can-ajax-and-seo-live-together#comment-83 I did consider this method when writing up my example of AJAX and SEO but after much deliberation I decided on the highly simplistic approach of using mod_rewrite and a dynamic HTML sitemap. My issue with user agent detection was one of manipulation. If Google changes it's referral string, <a href="http://www.threadwatch.org/node/7455" rel="nofollow">and it has been known</a>, then detects anything other than 100% identical content, it may 'decide' to judge against you. My laziness, low maintenance, easy fix chip kicked in and decided on a quick, long term solution. Either way, there are plenty of opportunities for exposing dynamic database content to the search engines and it's good more people are looking into various solutions to this. I did consider this method when writing up my example of AJAX and SEO but after much deliberation I decided on the highly simplistic approach of using mod_rewrite and a dynamic HTML sitemap.

My issue with user agent detection was one of manipulation. If Google changes it’s referral string, and it has been known, then detects anything other than 100% identical content, it may ‘decide’ to judge against you.

My laziness, low maintenance, easy fix chip kicked in and decided on a quick, long term solution.

Either way, there are plenty of opportunities for exposing dynamic database content to the search engines and it’s good more people are looking into various solutions to this.

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