In: Root » » Search engines optimization » Alash and Ajax can hurt dynamic sites
Flash and AjaxOh, Flash, we love you. You always look so pulled together and professional. And, Ajax, you’re so cute and modern: We’re starting to have feelings for you, too. But… but… there’s this one area of our relationship that just seems to be lacking. Why do you always fail us in the search engines? We explained the importance of segmenting your site into landing pages that speak to your separate target audiences. Flash and Ajax share a primary SEO disadvantage: These technologies both typically display loads of content and interactivity on a single HTML page. With Flash, you can view any number of topics and “pages” without leaving a single movie, and with Ajax, you can view a whole store’s worth of products without visiting a new URL. And what you gain in ’zazz, you lose in search engine friendliness. Simpler sites have content that’s displayed on a large number of separate URLs, each getting its very own morsel of search engine visibility. Remember yesterday, when You know that every URL should have its own content? Another disadvantage, of course, is that Flash and Ajax code often prevents the search engines from reading the site text. Too many categories of information in one page, and text information that’s obscured or invisible to the search engines this non-HTML territory is treacherous terrain for robots! If your site contains a significant amount of Flash or Ajax, drum up some courage, a budget calculator, and maybe a licensed massage therapist, and see if any of the following strategies are feasible for your site: Break up Flash or Ajax into separate HTML pages. Talk to your web developer about breaking up the Flash or Ajax so that each landing page has a separate URL. Flash and Ajax can be as-needed elements within HTML pages, rather than providing the entire navigation for the site. Your users will thank you for the browser Back/Forward button functionality and the ability to bookmark your pages, and the “linkerati” will be able to tag pages on social bookmarking sites and deep-link your site. Provide alternate HTML content for Flash. Four out of five search engines agree: Standard HTML content tastes better. Providing alternative content in HTML is not only helpful to the search engines, it’s also great for people without the Flash plug-in and for visually impaired site visitors. Just be sure that the HTML content exactly matches the content that would be visible to users with Flash otherwise, you’ll risk triggering spam penalties. Create an HTML addendum. If you can’t get your pages to show alternate HTML content, at least create some HTML pages in addition to the Flash or Ajax site. Beneath your Flash or Ajax content, add a standard HTML link or links to your most important content in HTML such as “Our Products,” “About Us,” and “Contact Us.” Focus on inbound links. If all else fails, optimize whatever HTML pages you have, and focus on getting inbound links. Dynamic Site SmartsSearch engines are good at indexing dynamic sites, and the advice in this article applies just as well to ASP and PHP pages and even pages with URLs containing a question mark as it does to old-school HTML. If your site is of the dynamic variety, follow some basic guidelines to avoid common pitfalls: • Be sure that search engines can follow standard links to every page on your site. Don’t expect search engines to fill out a form or run a search to drill down to your most juicy content. • You’re trying to appeal to humans, so use human-friendly URLs.Would you rather click on this: yoursite.com/church-bells/discount/ or this? yoursite.com/prod.php?id=23485&blt=234 • Limit the number of parameters in the URL to a maximum of two. • Use the parameter ?id= only when in reference to a session ID. • Be sure that your URLs function even if all dynamic parameters are removed. • When linking internally, always link with parameters in the same order and format. • Explore the idea of setting up an XML Sitemap if there is any reason to think that search engine robots aren’t seeing all of your pages. • Use robots.txt to exclude stub pages (autogenerated pages with no real content, such as empty directory categories and empty search results). Search engines want to index pages containing meaningful content, not empties generated by dynamic programs. Your dynamic site has a lot to offer. And now you know how to help it reach its full search engine potential! |
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