Search Marketing Expo East

In search marketing conferences, there are so much to information that it is impossible to listen to everything so everyone chooses their tracks/sessions wisely to listen to the golden nuggets of information which may not be the same golden nuggets of everyone else. Depending also on each individual’s knowledge dictates if a nugget is really golden of not. So that is why I start my title with a “My” since this is what I found to be valuable to me. Below are my top 10 takeaways from the 2009 Search Marketing Expo East in New York City.

1. Yahoo announced they no longer use the Meta Keywords tag as a ranking factor

The moment this was announced, I had my doubts, I had to double check if it was true since in our own BusinessOnLine SEO Lab, we have tested this before and we all know it is only Yahoo that reads the Meta Keywords tag. With an erratic wifi connection at Javits Conference Center in New York, I relied on my iPhone to check our SEOLabs testing sites and true enough, our unique keyword that was used only on 1 page inside the meta keywords tag that used to show up in Yahoo does not show up anymore! Initial thoughts were, wow, totally useless tag now, we can probably just delete it out. But apparently, Danny Sullivan tested it out and it was showing that Yahoo still looks at the meta keyword tag. False announcement? Faulty system? Delayed search algorithmic processing? I don’t know.

2. A page blocked in robots.txt may still appear in Google search results.

You block it in robots.txt, but it get’s linked from elsewhere, it ends up in the SERPs but with no Title or Description, just the URL. This was best summarized in a video by Matt Cutts.

Learn more about robots.txt. – The Art of SEO (Theory in Practice) Buy the book now!

3. Images will tend to rank better if they are near the title/header of a page.

While listening to Google Engineer Maile Ohye on the session ask the search engines, it was nice to see a different face than Matt Cutts from time to time and she did mention about images ranking better in Google image search and Google onebox if they are near the title/header of a page which I believe totally makes sense. There are so many images a blog or news site can have and multiple articles can appear. Just knowing which image goes with which title can be challenging, so choosing the image closest to the header tag would make perfect sense.

4. Images with captions will help rank better in Google Image search.

Again for the same reasons above, it seems alternative text (the alt attribute of the <img> tag) is not sufficient to help these images rank well in universal search results, image search and onebox results. Maile summarizes it also well on her video on news search under the FAQs part of this presentation, starting at 11:03.

Image Database: Image and Search Retrieval – Buy this book now!

5. JPEGs will do better than PNGs and GIFs

If you listened to the video of Maile well, you should have heard this already as she summarizes it pretty well into clear cut bullet points. Maybe some of you think image search is not that important and may not give enough quality converting traffic, but it really depends on your product or service and what user intent you can spin around your images. In the presentation below by Peter Lindsey, he explains different places where images can appear, onebox, maps, shopping, image search, and various user intent like inspiration, shopping, research, health, and very interesting, as a visual dictionary. He explains how in image search it is not all about being number 1. Image searchers go through many pages before they find the perfect image to click on.

Image Databases: Search and Retrieval of Digital Imagery

6. Good Web Server and Scripts Security helps in SEO.

In the session Ask the Search Engines, there were representatives from Google, Yahoo and Bing. And the Bing representative, Sasi Parthasarathy talked more about network security, the importance of server hardening, and making your scripts secure. And he showed many examples of queries he just did the day before of various websites that were compromised where either new pages are coming our selling unrelated products like pharmaceutical products, or similar pages on spammed forums or blogs on .gov or .edu websites and more that can be harming the SEO efforts or simply hurting the reputation of the site that has been attacked. This was not really like new information to me, but it was a big reminder how many blackhats out there and that they are really many of them that could be harming your own ranking.

7. Do not use English keywords and simply translate using tools for international SEO.

For international SEO for other languages, and the lack of robust keyword research tools in other languages, some SEO practitioners use English keyword research and simply translates the words using online tools and thinks these keywords are already the best keywords for another language. Andy Atkins-Krueger who is one of the popular authorities in international search has explained this pretty clearly where a direct translation may not really mean the same thing in the translated language. It is always best to get a local speaker of the language and do the appropriate translation for you.

8. SEO factor to possibly consider: Readability

This was not from one of the SEO sessions I attended, but this idea was mainly from one of the exhibit booths, specifically from Bruce Clay who we all now is one of the pioneers in the industry and has been mapping out the search engine relationships from the very beginning and keeps on updating them and is now getting less and less confusing as the main players in the search industries keep decreasing. Going back to the topic, as I was spying out checking out their tools on how it can benefit me, everything seemed like I can find a tool or some equivalent tool I already know that I can use instead of using Bruce Clay’s SEO Tool Set, although one thing that I noticed that I have not seen in other tools is they take note of Readability.

Readability tests, readability formulas, or readability metrics are formulae for evaluating the readability of text, usually by counting syllables, words, and sentences. Readability tests are often used as an alternative to conducting an actual statistical survey of human readers of the subject text (a readability survey).

- Wikipedia definition of readability

There were a few scoring systems used which I can’t remember which ones were on the SEO ToolSet, but upon search on wikipedia, there are a lot of scoring systems:

• Accelerated Reader ATOS
• Automated Readability Index (ARI)
• Coleman-Liau Index
• Dale-Chall Readability Formula
• Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
• Fry Readability Formula
• Gunning-Fog Index
• Lexile Framework for Reading
• Linsear Write
• Raygor Estimate Graph
• SMOG (Simple Measure Of Gobbledygook)
• Spache Readability Formula

After a simple search of online tools, I was able to find two tools that can be used: SMOG online tool and using Read Able. Now would this be a critical search engine ranking factor? I am not sure, my gut feeling says it is not that critical but could still be a good factor for other purposes. Readability is a metric for showing how easy or how hard some text could be read by some age group, so it does make sense to optimize this for your readers, and not really for search engines, which is what search engines want you to do SEO anyway.

9. Google is getting better and better in reading JavaScript.

We have been reading this is various places being said by various representatives from Google in various ways, so I am convinced Google is pretty smart already in understanding JavaScript. In this specific situation where I was reminded again at SMX was during one of the sessions where Maile Ohye gave an example of using the Link Rel=Canonical tag showing various international sites in folders and using the link rel canonical to point all to the English version. I then asked if we can use geolocation detection by IP and run a JavaScript redirect so search engine would still look at the final English version as dictated by the Link rel canonical but users will experience something different depending on their geolocation and JavaScript will kick in to serve the appropriate page. I was given the answer that just because it is a JavaScript redirect does not mean Google will not follow the redirect. Conversation ended without a good answer since they asked me to ask this in the International SEO session instead. But with an answer like that, again confirms again that Google is really reading JavaScript.

10. Google is proposing the #! in URLs for crawling AJAX sites using a headless browser.

In the session where I was speaking more on CSS and code positioning and duplicate links order, there were two other Google representatives, Bruce Johnson and Kathrin Probst talking about crawling AJAX. They are proposing a new way to make AJAX sites. AJAX developers all know how convenient it would be to use the # symbol in URLs as a parameter since you can pass this around in the URL and the page does not even reload. You use it like a GET variable, but ideal for AJAX since AJAX sites do not require page reloading. And search engines normally will not see this since URLs with different text strings after the # symbol will all be treated like the same URL without the #.

Normally websites would treat these URLs as the same URL:

http://www.example.com/path/file.html

http://www.example.com/path/file.html#parameter1

http://www.example.com/path/file.html#parameter2

http://www.example.com/path/file.html#parameter1-valuex

And since the # parameters cannot be read by server-side programming languages (PHP, ASP, JSP, etc), and are read on the client-side by your web browser and JavaScript, search engines would not even see the changes on the page. So Google proposes something new, the use of the #!.

Now Google was proposing the use of a headless browser. This is a browser with no UI, but mainly like some script interpreting JavaScript code just like how a browser does. That way it will first fetch a page with the # parameters and render it first in the headless browser before Googlebot crawls the content. As this is only a proposal and is in experimental stages, to trigger the headless browser, you simply use #! instead of # in your URLs.

Being a developer myself and was sitting in that same session, I was curious to know how will we determine if Googlebot crawled the content correctly, and I asked if Google cache could be used. Kathrin replied no. And said they might make a separate tool for this. Maybe they would include it in Google Webmaster Tools. Vanessa Fox also added Google does crawl Flash links and Flash content but Google cache is also not a good way to see what Googlebot sees.

Interesting that AJAX for SEO is starting to get easier and easier and no need to do some complicated tricks once this headless browser crawling becomes a standard. This is definitely something the web analytics team would like to look at deeper for tracking AJAX.

Again this is “my” top 10 takeaways. Of course someone more interested in PPC, or SMO might have something else as their main takeaways.

After being on vacation in the Philippines during Typhoon Ondoy, speaking at SEMCon 2009 and SMX East 2009, I come back to work after 2 weeks and suddenly plays catch up with all the work that has been waiting for me and that kept me busy for the whole week that this SMX post is way overdue, but better late than later.

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Lightbox JS was popularized by Lokesh Dhakar where he made a nice friendly degradable JavaScript function where thumbnails can be linked to their larger images but load dynamically using JavaScript in a separate <div> box that loads in an animated manner. Many webmasters have adapted this and users like it too since there are no more page reloading and the need to hit the back button to go back to the thumbnail view. You can see demonstrations on the Lightbox JS website. After Lightbox JS came out, many other implementations of this technology emerged where the applications have been used not only for images, but for videos and also any content in general. The benefit of using this technique aside from the seamless fluid integration, they do not open as separate popup windows using a new web browser instance that is sometimes anti-popup blockers.

Generally, when would you use Lightbox JS?

When you need to display something briefly to the website visitor and you do not want them to leave the current page where the page has to reload again and to move back, you would have to press the back button. Often you see this in:

• Thumbnail Preview Images
  When clicked on, they open the larger image in a Lightbox.
  *Real life example. (Click on any image on the page.)
• Thumbnail Preview Videos and other Animations
  Similar to images, just using animations or videos.
  *Real life example Click on any video thumbnail.)
• Tips and Other Brief Helpful Information
  As guides to users on your website, you can give small tips here and there without them getting lost in the loading of a new page.
  *Real life example (Click for more information on each dog.)
• Fill Up of Quick Forms
  Quick questionnaires, surveys and other simple forms that would only take a few minutes or seconds to fill up. People may want to fill up these quick forms.
  *Real life example (Click on Request a Quote)

SEO Issues in using Lightbox JS and Similar Technologies

Depending on how you intend to use Lightbox, each way can have their own unique SEO issue.

• Content Written by JavaScript/AJAX
  If the content of the dHTML popup window is written by AJAX or even JavaScript alone, search engines disregard this content.
• Loss of keyword focus with multiple Lightboxes
  Content of a Lightbox JS popup can be already existing on the same page but are not displayed right away using some CSS and/or JavaScript tricks and their contents only appear when pulled by the dHTML popup. Here is an *example of this where three lightboxes are on top, but the content is actually on the page already as non-displayed <div> boxes.

  Somehow this is sometimes good because the content can be read by the search engines as they are all on the same page. This works well for photo galleries with picture descriptions. At least we know search engines can read the content.

  This does not work if various Lightbox popups were meant to have different topics and this mixes the focus of the keywords on a single page.

• Pulled from a different URL
  This may solve issues with keyword focus, as you selectively choose the content on the page and anything in a Lightbox can be on a separate page not diluting the content focus. Although the problem here is the content will be pulled in various ways, either AJAX or HTML iframes, where both have crawling issues.

SEO Solution to Lightbox JS content

There are many out-of-the box code, ready to use for the Lightbox JS effect. Here are a few:

• Lightbox JS
• Thickbox
• HighSlide
• Greybox
• Suckerfish HoverLightbox Redux
• Lighbox Gone Wild

You can totally make one from scratch or you can use one of the above and modify the code. For the purposes of this discussion, I chose Greybox. Because it is easy to use having the content source as a separate file. This solves the problem of content focus dilution. Greybox is pretty easy to implement by any web designer/developer and links are clean and degrades gracefully which is a good practice of using JavaScript and AJAX for SEO.

The solution does not rely on modifying Greybox in any way. The solution is really within the file that loads within the Greybox.

To explain this further, look at the *SEO friendly Lightbox JS example found here using Greybox.

There are two links found on that page. The first one is how you normally implement Greybox and the second is how it is done to make it SEO friendly.

The nice thing with these Lightboxes, the links are normal links with normal <a href=”…”> values, this way they are crawled properly by search engines which is good. The not so good part is when the contents of these Lightboxes get indexed by search engines, they are indexing a partial page and you do not necessarily want people to land on this partial page. Thus you can use JavaScript to redirect to a similar page with the same content but with the navigation and design elements the page normally has.

Why a JavaScript redirect?

Search engines disregard JavaScript, and this is what you really want to happen since the design elements are only for the users and not for the search engines. Just be very careful to make the content of both the Lightbox and standalone page exactly the same to avoid running into any red flags that may perceive the site do be hiding any content.

Notice in the examples above, there is no difference between the two implementations in terms of how it executes. Although as search engines crawl the contents of these Lightboxes, and when visited directly on a link from a search engine, people will see two different looking pages.

When both implementations will be crawled and indexed, the link found in search engine results will appear differently. The normal implementation will display a partial page that nobody would want to go to. This can be as worse as a 404 page. Because it seems to go nowhere and appears to be not part of the site. The optimized Lightbox JS example on the right will show something else. It will still pull in the correct page template and would work as a standalone perfectly fine. Thus pleasing both search engines and human visitors of your website.

Greybox uses an iframe running this file and parameter: greybox/loader_frame.html?s=0 Depending where you saved your greybox files, the absolute URL of this will be your referring URL. Using your favorite scripting language, detect the referring URL and redirect by JavaScript to a page for humans with the exact same content but with the design elements and Navigations. Also include a noindex tag on this page to avoid any duplicate content issues. In the examples posted, the SEO friendly Lightbox JS loads seofriendly.php, but if the referring URL is not Greybox, it redirects to a noindex page seofriendlyuser.php. This example used PHP with the following code:

<?php if($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]
!="http://www.ajaxoptimize.com/seogreybox/js/greybox/loader_frame.html?s=0"){ ?>
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
<!--
window.location = "seofriendlyuser.php";
//-->
</script>
<? } ?>

Although this example was in PHP, this could also be done in other languages. You may need to do your own research on that for .Net, ASP, Cold Fusion, Perl, MivaScript, JSP, Phyton, TCL and other languages

*Examples above are used to show that this is used by current day web designers. BusinessOnLine is not associated with any of the websites used above. The examples above may change or modify their website over time and may not be valid examples in the future but were valid examples during the time this blog post was first written.

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One of the things that I notice about a lot of Web Design firms and even creative agencies who say they bake SEO into everything they do, is that very few of them bake it into there own sites. Now I don’t want to call anyone out today but I do want to give people a quick little guide on the top five things to look for when evaluating the SEO ability of design firm that says they know SEO. I mean, if SEO is part of their overall offering, they would be silly not to SEO their own site right? And if they haven’t taken the time to do that, is that a firm that you can really feel confident in? I think you know my answer. *lol* So here is the top 5 things that I would look for in a design firms web site that will give you some idea if they know what they are doing:

1) Are their page titles unique on every page and are they keyword focused. If you see a site with Page Titles like “About Us – Company Name”, they have not been optimized. Page Titles should read like intelligent sentences or phrases and convey as much information about the content of the page as possible. If you see short page titles that lack keyword focus in relation to the content that is on the page, that’s a sure sign that the optimization skills of this company are lacking.

2) Are all their pages indexed in Google, Yahoo and MSN? Many times if a site is dynamic or has extra long URL strings with too many parameters, search engines can have some difficulty indexing pages. Doing a site:www.domain.com search on the company URL can tell you if the pages you see on the Web site are indexed. If they are not, or there are issues with duplicate content where content is indexed, your company might not be the best option for SEO.

3) And speaking of dynamic URL strings, if your design firm has you using URLs that are a mile long with more than 4 or 5 parameters, you want to recheck #2 to see if those pages are indexed. Google does fairly well with long URL strings nowadays although they are inconsistent at best. The other engines are farther behind in their ability to understand and rank these types of pages. So it’s best to be on the safe side and have URL strings which are as short and easy to understand as possible.

4) Flash – While there have been a lot of advancements over the last year in SEO, it is still not recommended that your site be completely based in Flash. Usability and accessibility concerns aside, unless your design team has a specific solution to optimize your Flash, like using FlashObject or one of the other Flash Solutions that Benj has recommended, your SEO millage may vary. And if they put your primary navigation for your site in Flash with no alternative way for spiders to see it, you have clearly found someone who does not have a SEO.

5) JavaScript – Again, if the entire site navigation is built in JavaScript with no alternative text link navigation or noscript tag, odds are the company in question has a very limited understanding of SEO.

Obviously there is a lot more to SEO than these five issues. But these are pretty easy to spot and can be a quick clue as to the relative sophistication level of your Web design firm or creative agency as it relates to SEO. If they don’t offer SEO as part of their services, then these types of issues may be expected. But if they do offer SEO and these issues exist, it might be time to re-evaluate whether or not you want to engage that company for SEO work.

I hope that helps a few people in their decision making process. Have a great week!

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I really think that 2008 is going to be the year that you see the study of Web site Usability move to the forefront of Search Engine Optimization. If your not familiar with Usability, here is a really good definition that we like to use here at BusinessOnLine:

“After all, usability really just means that making sure that something works well: that a person of average (or even below average) ability and experience can use the thing – whether it’s a Web site, a fighter jet, or a revolving door – for its intended purpose without getting hopelessly frustrated.” – Steve Krug, Don’t Make Me Think, 2000, p. 5

If you would like more information about Usability, I have two great resources for you. The first is a list of articles by usability guru Jakob Nielsen, who is considered one of the foremost authorities in the world on the subject. The second is to check out the blog of my co worker, Usability consultant Thanh Nguyen who is one of the most passionate people in the business. Fortunately for me, I have the opportunity to get her input on all our SEO solutions to make sure that we don’t sacrifice user experience for the sake of optimization. But aside from Usability concerns, which should almost always take precedence, it also makes a lot of sense from an SEO perspective to ensure that you always put the user first.

Search engine optimization encompasses many different variables. Search engines use things like links, content, meta data, server settings and other variables to try to determine how relevant a document is to a particular query. But as search engine technology advances, more and more variables that try to quantify positive user experience will be integrated into the search algorithms. Google wants to provide the best site to its users for any given search. Doing so ensures that the searcher will continue to use their search product. The word “best” is subjective and Google uses various signals like the variables mentioned earlier to help it determine which site really is “best” for a given user. And certainly part of the word “best” will encompass user experience. And therefore, having a site that provides a superior user experience will benefit a site’s search engine rankings. Whether it’s a time on site variable, positive references from social bookmarking and social sharing sites or just the propensity of quality sites to link to your site based on its excellent usability, there are a number of ways that usability already affects search rankings. And as technology advances, more metrics will be developed which will continue to make Usability a key ingrediant in the any successful SEO campaign.

In the meantime, I thought it would be a good idea to get together with Thanh and put together a top 5 list of ways that Usability and SEO can work together to not only enhance user experience, but increase search engine visibility as well. My thanks to Thanh for taking the time to help me put this list together:

1) #1 Don’t Use Flash or Java Script Based Site Navigation

Usability:
- Users without this technology cannot navigate your Web site (although according to Adobe 99% of users have Flash).
- Slow loading times for users without broadband Internet connections.
- Flash disables back button functionality.
- Bad for accessibility.

SEO:
- Search engines cannot see these links and therefore they will not contribute to your Internal Link Popularity, Page Reputation or Page Rank.

Instead use CSS or a No Script Tag for Java Script Based Navigation.
Use SWFObject for Flash Based Navigation

#2) Internet Architecture Should Be Keyword Focused

Usability:
- Your Navigation and Content Categories should closely align with the keywords that people are most often using when searching for your products, services or information.
- This improves the ability of users to find the information they need which not only improves their trust in your Web site but also increases conversions.

SEO:
- Increases the amount of keyword focused internal links.
- A link is considered a vote (even if its from your own site) that the page that is being linked to is important for the keywords that are contained within the link text.

#3) Images Should Have Keyword Focused Descriptive Alt Text

Usability:
- Users with disabilities, screen readers or that use browser with images disabled, will still be able to navigate the site in the event your images are linked.
- Additionally this user group will benefit from Alt text on non linked images because often times images convey a lot of important information that is necessary for the user to fully understand the page content.

SEO:
- Search engines use Alt text for Page Reputation (keyword relevancy) when the link is based on an image rather than text.
- Alt Text on images which are not links, helps with image optimization which is increasingly important with the advancement of universal search.

#4) Keyword Focused Breadcrumb Navigation

Usability:
- Immediately orients users to their position within the Web site in the event that a sub page is their first point of entry.
- Provide one-click access to higher site levels

SEO:
- Increases the amount of keyword focused internal links to deeper pages than the main site navigation (depending on the depth of content that the site has).
- A link is considered a vote (even if its from your own site) that the page that is being linked to is important for the keywords that are contained within the link text.

#5) Make PDF Documents Available in HTML Format

Usability:
- Users without this technology cannot understand your content.
- Don’t make your users reliant on 3rd party software in order to use your Web site or consume your information.

SEO:
- Search engines are inconsistent in their ability to understand the content within a PDF file.
- Search engines do not recognize link connectivity data within PDF Documents.
- More HTML pages equals more Page Rank.

New Year Bonus #6) Keyword Focused Title Tags

Usability:
- Your Page Titles should closely align with the keywords that people are most often using when searching for your products, services or information.
- This improves the ability of users to understand that your Web site has the information that they are looking for and therefore also increases search engine result click through rates.

SEO:
- Page Titles are still one of the most heavily weighted variables in the search engine algorithms for Google, Yahoo and MSN.

These six best practices are great for both SEO and Usability. And, if you do SEO for a living, being able to explain that these practices help Usability as well as SEO, increases the value of your services. Usability and SEO working together is an essential part of good SEO and the more SEO professionals familiarize themselves with the basic principles of Usability, the more effective their optimization skills will be.

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The content inside the no script tag (which looks like <”noscript”> <”/noscript”> but without the quotes) is invisible to browser users who have Java script enabled. Those users will be able to use the AJAX application as intended. But for users for do not have Java script turned on (like search engine spiders), the content that exists in the no script tag is visible. You should format it the same way you would normal html.

It’s really important to understand that this tool has the capacity to get you in trouble for spamming. Don’t use this tool for that purpose. The only content that should ever be contained in no script tag, is content that users with Java script turned on would be able to see. Don’t ever put anything in the no script tag that doesn’t exist on the page for all users. In other words, don’t cram a bunch of spam links in the noscript tag that are not representative of the links found in your AJAX.

Incidentally, the no script tag works great for old school pull down java script jump menus that search engines can’t normally see. This will really help you if your primary navigation is a jump menu (I don’t recommend that but I see it all the time). Navigation links in general have a big effect on your search listings if your links are keyword focused. So implementing this tag on all your Java navigation links will open those links to the search engines for the first time.

From a search engine optimization standpoint, using a noscript tag makes a lot of sense also because it keeps your content aligned with your link popularity and Page Rank metrics (versus creating an alternative set of Web pages that won’t have the same link connectivity).

Stay tuned because Benj will have another great article soon about SEO friendly Flash.

Have a great weekend.

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What is AJAX?

AJAX is a term coined publicly by Jesse James Garrett of AdaptivePath meaning: Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. As posted on Wikipedia:

AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), or Ajax, is a web development technique used for creating interactive web applications. The main intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user requests a change. This is intended to increase the web page’s interactivity, speed, functionality, and usability.

AJAX is asynchronous in that extra data is requested from the server and loaded in the background without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page. JavaScript is the scripting language in which AJAX function calls are usually made. Data is retrieved using the XMLHttpRequest object that is available to scripting languages run in modern browsers. There is, however, no requirement that the asynchronous content be formatted in XML.

AJAX is a cross-platform technique usable on many different operating systems, computer architectures, and web browsers as it is based on open standards such as JavaScript and the DOM. There are free and open source implementations of suitable frameworks and libraries.

Keeping the technical language to a minimum, the main observable benefit you have in running AJAX is having dynamic content load on your page without having the whole page to reload on a new URL. This gives you the benefit to only reload certain parts of a page making the resources load to a minimum aside from having it visually appealing to the user.

Problem 1: SEO Issues with Dynamic Content of AJAX

Search engines crawl websites using bots that are also called crawlers or spiders. These are nothing but programs that visit webpages on the Internet looking at all links and further visiting every valid link found crawlable. And content on the page is read and associated to the URL crawled.
Having that behavior, search engines will only be able to read the initially loaded content when the URL of the page is loaded. Any other content that loads by AJAX requiring a user click or some other event may not be read by the search engines.
Probably a good example of an AJAX site would be the Instant Domain Search. For every letter you type, new content is loaded. It loads fast and is appealing to people as they do not need to wait for a full page reload. Although all generated new content cannot be read by search engines.

Problem 2: Search Engine Crawling Problems of AJAX

Since search engines crawl websites looking at every link found on a page, search engines may not be able to check links going to other pages of an AJAX webpage. First of all, AJAX content does not need to reside on a different URL, it will have the same URL as how it loaded.
Normally a link going to a normal webpage may look like this:

• <a href=”path/page.html”>text to click on</a>

And AJAX powered sites may have links in various forms like:

• <a href=”javascript: functioname(content-parameter);”>text to click on</a>
• <a href=”#content-parameter”>text to click on</a>
• <a href=”javascript: void();” onclick=” functioname(content-parameter);”>text to click on</a>
• <a href=” #” onclick=” functioname(content-parameter);”>text to click on</a>

Having your href value not a valid webpage will just be disregarded by search engines, even if you do have a way to let search engines see the dynamically loaded content, this will still be on the same URL where it has to really be separated.
For my example of this, let me show you the AJAX Powered Agile Photo Gallery. Their demo page shows one URL and that URL will never change when you view the other photos or check the other pages. Their link format uses a JavaScript function right in the href value of the link.

Problem 3: Placing All Content On One Page Dilutes Keyword Focus

Instead of dynamically loading all content from a server-side scripting language or XML file, some people just place all content upfront and use JavaScript tricks to hide and display text. This may solve the problem of problem 1 issue mentioned above since there is no other content to crawl. And, in a way, solves the issue of problem 2 since there are no other links needed to be crawled. But, even if it solves these issues, the new problem of keyword focus arises.
Check the site of the popular Moofx All their main pages are all on one page and if you click on the bars, the content gracefully slides and, in reality, all content is already there and is not loading for every click on the page links. The content is just hidden using CSS and/or JavaScript techniques. In the case of Moofx it is not much of a big issue, but on other corporate sites with pages of various topics that should stand alone on their own page, this technique may not be ideal as the various keywords get all mixed up and loses keyword focus on a page.

Problem 4: Search Engines Spiders Do Not Read JavaScript Code

Depending on how your AJAX developer makes your web pages, they can make content being written by JavaScript or not. And, while it would be ideal to keep JavaScript to dynamically changing visual components of a page, it is not ideal to have JavaScript write the content itself using a document.write function. As much as possible, content and links of a webpage should be plain HTML text as much as possible. Search engines simply disregard the content written within the JavaScript code.

The SEO Solution to the AJAX Problems

Solution 1: Serve Alternative Content

On a single page, if a navigational element is written by AJAX on every page load and is wrapped up in JavaScript, a solution can be having some alternative navigation on the page. Using footer links on a page for instance will work.
And for these alternative links, these should lead to actual pages on their own URLs that would load the same content as what would load in the AJAX links.
This way you please users with the visual appeal of AJAX and you still give alternative navigation and content that search engines can read and index. Where, if people get to visit these URLs, they will still be drawn to the AJAX pages.

Solution 2: Using Hijax – Graceful Degredation of AJAX

A concept first mentioned by Jeremy Keith of Clear:Left has an excellent presentation on this. His technique goes into the specific details of how AJAX should be written so that it degrades well with less AJAX capable browsers. In the same way Search Engines behave, just like a less capable browser. Here are some examples of his unobtrusive JavaScript example from his presentation:

• JavaScript pseudo-protocol – Awful!
  <a href=”javascript:window.open(‘help.html’)”>contextual help</a>
• Pointless link – Bad!
  <a href=”#” onclick=”window.open(‘help.html’); return false;”>contextual help</a>
• Using the DOM – Better.
  <a href=”help.html” onclick=”window.open(this.getAttribute(‘href’)); return false;”>contextual help</a>
• No inline JavaScript – Best!
  <a href=”help.html” class=”help”>contextual help</a>

He also talks about externalizing JavaScript and CSS code. Another major advantage of having a gracefully degrading AJAX website is not having the need to create alternative content. It is simply having only one content source that degrades well when JavaScript is disabled which is mainly how search engine spider behaves, like browsers with JavaScript disabled. One of the perfect examples I have seen implementing SEO friendly AJAX using Hijax techniques is on AjaxOptimize.

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