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Geek Culture / Javascript and Search Engines

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dab
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Joined: 22nd Sep 2004
Location: Your Temp Folder!
Posted: 8th Jun 2007 07:50
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Ok, I'm working on a website. More specifically, my website. For navigation, I was thinking of doing a Javascript, tab typed navi. Basically, What I'll do is print out my navigation with PHP (My Custom made CMS is the reason behind printing out with PHP).

Then I'll have div tags (a multitude of tags) Each with a separate type of links depending on the first group. Where the javascript comes in is when I click on the links, it will show the respected Group of links. I was wondering if this is still Search Engine friendly to do. All I'm doing is modifying the CSS of the display property. So, I exchange which div tags become visible.

Here's what I mean:

This is the main navi
------------------------
Home | Contact | Other |
------------------------
------------------------
*div for home* Home | Games *div for contact* Email | Form *div for other* News | Blog
------------------------

The div for home group will only be shown when home is clicked.

The div for contact will only be shown when contact is clicked.

If you don't understand, I'll knock up an example. I just didn't want to work on something I won't use.


Thanks for your time everyone.
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indi
22
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Joined: 26th Aug 2002
Location: Earth, Brisbane, Australia
Posted: 8th Jun 2007 08:21 Edited at: 8th Jun 2007 08:22
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http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3246537.htm

my guess of that post is if its a full blown link then it should be safer then guessing if it doesnt.

and some more of the same but slightly more concise.
http://www.searchengineforums.com/apps/searchengine.forums/action::thread/forum::market-analysis/thread::1150664978/

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Nicholas Thompson
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Joined: 6th Sep 2004
Location: Bognor Regis, UK
Posted: 8th Jun 2007 12:03
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AFAIK Some SE's will check the CSS of an element. For example, a common keyword spamming technique is to have a hidden block of keywords at the top of your document. The SE see's this keyword rich block in the code and ranks your page highly for it. What the user see's is something else. I THINK Google can detect this and will mark you down for it.

This is the problem - animated drop down menu's are nice - but not HUGELY SEO friendly. I'd personally avoid them.

Plus - what happens to your site if a user disables Javascript? How nicely does it degrade?

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dab
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Joined: 22nd Sep 2004
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Posted: 8th Jun 2007 17:18
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Quote: "Plus - what happens to your site if a user disables Javascript? How nicely does it degrade?"


Hmmm. I didn't think about that... How would I do complex navigation horizontially? Ooh, just like TGC's website. What happens if I turn off JS? (Will go check it out now).
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Nicholas Thompson
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Location: Bognor Regis, UK
Posted: 8th Jun 2007 17:37
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Dont base your SEO on this forum Its pretty poor.

On this site - the title is set by Javascript AFTER a page load. That's SEO suicide.

There are no Meta description or keywords.

The primary navigation method is a form.

The URL structure is about as unclean as it could be.

I'm no slating the form - it works well and its secure. I'm just saying that from an SEO point of view it leaves a LOT to be desired.

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spooky
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Joined: 30th Aug 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 8th Jun 2007 18:10
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I would avoid doing javascript menus as search engines will be unable to spider your site properly. You may get away with things though if you have plenty of internal links and a good site map page that links to all other pages.

You can do very complex rollover mult-level menus with pure CSS but be prepared to do some serious headbanging understanding the CSS. Basic idea is to have nested UL's with LI's being each link.

You do need a bit of javascript though to cope with older version of IE but it's a simple generic bit of code.

Do a search for suckerfish menus and you will see loads of great examples. I'm in the middle of writing two sites for clients that do these types of menus and they work great in 99% of browsers, are search engine friendly, and easy to update.

Only thing I have improved which annoys me about lots of pure CSS menus is when mouse leaves edges of menus and menu dissapears immediately. I have found a great way of having an area round the menu that still acts as though you are hovering. With javascript menus you usually have a nice timeout value so that the menu only dissapears after a second or so if mouse leaves edges.

Boo!
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Nicholas Thompson
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Posted: 8th Jun 2007 18:16
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Alternatively - just have a side menu which is a tree structure (maybe have any nodes with the children collapsed until they're selected). Its FAR simpler to code, FAR easier to use, FAR more compatible and FAR better for SEO. Just my 2cents.

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Raven
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Joined: 23rd Mar 2005
Location: Hertfordshire, England
Posted: 8th Jun 2007 19:35
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a simply ajax sidebar system like they have on microsoft.com is quite good imo, and each page can link to an xml rss to boot. allow people to jump directly to points of interest.

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Nicholas Thompson
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Location: Bognor Regis, UK
Posted: 8th Jun 2007 19:41
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ajax sidebars are great for users - but crap for SEO. Then again Microsoft dont have to worry about SEO, their sites uber crawled by default

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dab
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Joined: 22nd Sep 2004
Location: Your Temp Folder!
Posted: 9th Jun 2007 07:10 Edited at: 9th Jun 2007 07:11
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Quote: "Alternatively - just have a side menu which is a tree structure (maybe have any nodes with the children collapsed until they're selected). Its FAR simpler to code, FAR easier to use, FAR more compatible and FAR better for SEO. Just my 2cents."


... hehe.

Edit: I'm gonna add you to my msn... Maybe you could help me out there.
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