I have a page containing <div> tags with onclick="" code that calls an ajax request to get json data, and then iterates through the results to form links (<a />) to append to the page. These links do not exist in any other place on my website. How can I make these dynamically generated links crawlable?
My initial thought was to turn the <div> tags into <a> tags with a href="#", but with my limited knowledge of how typical crawlers work, i don't think this would solve my problem since the "#" would be what's recognized by the crawler, and not necessarily the dynamically generated output. This is besides the point that i don't want the scroll positioning to be altered at all, which would also rule out giving the <a> tag an id and having it reference itself.
Do I have any options aside from making a new page containing all of the links i need to be crawled? Thanks.
As a general rule, content that is created or made available through JavaScript cannot be found or indexed by search engines. Google does support crawlable Ajax but using it as the only means of accessing your content is bad for accessibility. Also, other search engines can't get to that content which is also not a good thing. Basically crawable ajax is a bad thing.
You should always make your content available without requiring JavaScript to get it. Then you can improve your site by adding JavaScript to make getting the content faster or easier. This is called Progressive Enhancement and is how good websites are built.
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I have added in the bottom of my html like this (just like how stackoverflow has it implemented):
<noscript>This site works best with Javascript is enabled</noscript>
but in one of my pages that has very little text, the text "Javascript is disabled" appears in Google search.
Is there a way to tell Google to avoid indexing this part? Or is there a better alternative instead of using <noscript> tag?
The issue is that Google often won't render Javascript. It can - but it often won't.
You either need to present a pre-rendered page or provide it with a meta description that accurately describes the content. Look up tags and how Google uses them to embellish it's search listings.
Other options like or can encourage Google from deviating from the provided description. However, a pre-rendered page for it to scrape is always more reliable.
I have a page where there are about 30 links and those links would have similar page except for a few contents changed(there is also pictuures). Now is there an efficient way to do that without repeating the codes and repeated nestings of the codes. thank you.
Using plain HTML you won't be able to do this.
The most straightforward way to do it, I think, is using server-side scripting to implement a rendering template. You could then have a default "main" template with everything those 30 pages have in common and then in each of those pages use the main template and load the custom content.
So if you want to modify something in the main template you'd only have to modify the main.html (or whatever you called it) page and not each of the 30 pages.
See this.
On my website, I have a booking widget at the top of each page to allow visitors to enter our booking engine. The code behind it uses quite a bit of HTML, pushing down the content on each page in the source. In an attempt to better my SEO, I decided to have the code placed in a DIV tag at the bottom of the page, and, when the DOM is ready, I use JQuery to physically move the DIV from the bottom of the DOM to the top where it needs to be to render correctly.
My question is if this is really helping SEO? Does Google look at the DOM/Source after all Javascript has run, or before? Does moving these few hundred lines of HTML to the bottom of the HTML source gain me any advantage?
Spiders do not process javascript. So any content that appears/moves or is created by javascript will appear as if it hasn't been moved or created at all.
I'd be really surprised if web crawlers execute the scripts on the page. They probably scan the raw response.
That doesnot have any effect on the SEO.
But placing the javascript at the bottom will defnitely help you to load the webpages faster.
There is no harm for SEO as well, you can defnitely proceed with your approach
There is a distinction between javascript executed on load versus during the user session. The on-load javascript is more times than not indexed by google. The dynamic content or alterations on the client side are not well indexed.
So, it can't be ignored.
I'm building a website with very small amounts of Javascript, just to add things to the page (like a contact form) without having to go to a new page.
I understand that I should build the contact page anyways (just in case the user doesn't have javascript turned on) and then use javascript if they've got it.
So where do I store the HTML for the form if I don't want to have it in two places?
(Normally I'm not so picky, but I'm curious on this one.)
If you have access to a server-side language, you can keep a separate snippet of the form in an external page. Then, you can include the snippet into the HTML content page with an appropriate include call. This has the added benefit that, for your JavaScript, you can pull the contact form from this snippet file using AJAX. In fact, many plugins allow you to display DHTML windows with HTML content. For example, check out ThickBox.
Without a server-side language, you can do something similar with frames. Just display the form snippet in a frame when you need to reference it. Personally, I don't like frames very much, so this isn't a very attractive solution for me, but you can use it if you choose (and style the frames appropriately).
Just put your HTML for the contact form in a .html file. Assuming you're using PHP or something, just include the file in your contact page and include it in the section for your dynamic contact form. The form should still submit to the same server-side page and have the same look and feel..
e.g. contactForm.html
<div class="contact-form">
<input ....>
</div>
I have setup some dropdown menus allowing users to find pages on my website by selecting options across multiple dropdowns:
eg. Color of Car, Year
This would generate a link like: mysite.xyz/blue/2010/
The only problem is, because this link is dynamically assembled with Javascript, I've also had to assemble each possible combination from the dropdowns into a list like:
<noscript>
No javascript enabled? Here are all the links:
<a href='mysite.xyz/blue/2009/'>mysite.xyz/blue/2009/</a>
<a href='mysite.xyz/blue/2010/'>mysite.xyz/blue/2010/</a>
<a href='mysite.xyz/red/2009/'>mysite.xyz/red/2009/</a>
<a href='mysite.xyz/red/2010/'>mysite.xyz/red/2010/</a>
</noscript>
My question is, if I put these in a tag like this, will I be penalized or anything by search engines such as Google? I've already been doing so for some navigational stuff which required offsets etc. However, now I would be listing a whole list of links here too. I want to provide them here, moreso so that google can actually index my pages - but for those without javascript, they can still navigate too.
Your thoughts? Also.. even though I have some links that appear to have been indexed, I AM NOT 100% SURE, which is why I'm asking :P
If the noscript code represents an alternative to the javascript code, then it should be fine I think, but Google does try to spot fishy seo and may penalize, so it's better to avoid doing this when possible.
In your case, consider spending some time making a drop down menu such that you can have the links on the page in a list item and use javascript + css to simulate a drop down menu, this way you will not need to use the noscript tag.
A decade ago, I made my website using image links for internal navigation (this at a time when CSS was brand-new and HTML4 Transitional was normal). I then added text navigation links at the bottom of the page.
I believe this (and your idea) is a common enough technique that, as long as you really aren't trying to do something sketchy, Google et al should interpret correctly.
I think the noscript tag is irrelevant, but having a giant list of links links may make their algorithms think you're doing some fishy SEO. Like having a wall of keywords.
Google (or whoever) would index these, and as long as you're not going overboard with a bunch of BS links I don't see a problem. Though from an SEO standpoint, it's not good to create menus from javascript or flash. I might look for an alternative that uses anchor tags with some CSS to dress it up.