Perfectly Coded AJAX with Fallbacks Still no Google Love

Free Newsletters

Part of the iEntry Network
over 4 million subscribers

	WebProNews NL
	AdvertisingDay
	CRMNewz

Send me relevant info on products and services.

Perfectly Coded AJAX With Fallbacks & Still No Google Love?

By Joost de Valk
Expert Author
Article Date: 2007-08-03

You've probably seen it too… Great looking websites coded with all sorts of fancy AJAX functions, and it's done absolutely right.

If you disable javascript, all the links that were first used to show content or do an action on the current page, now take you to a new page on which the content you're expecting is shown.

Some people claim this is the perfect mix. It's not. You know why?

Users don't browse with javascript disabled

"So what?" You might think.

Well, to rank, you need links.

To rank well, and to get all your pages indexed, you need both links to your domain, and deeplinks to your content pages.

The problem with a site as described, is that the user never ever sees the complete link. He's got his javascript on, and will just see the domain in his location bar, and that's it.

Now say this user likes this site so much, that he blogs about it to tell his friends. What do you think he will link to? If you're lucky, he links to the domain and you get at least some of the love.

If you're unlucky, he doesn't link at all.

It's all about Linkability

This is not just whether your great site, with perfect content or tools and your pretty layout will make people want to link to you.

It's also about making it easy for them to (deep)link to you, and to exactly the content they are interested in. Don't make the mistake of thinking you made it easier for people to use your site when you let them stay on one page.

People have been browsing the web for quite a while now, and they expect to go from one page to another when they click on a link. It's not that they'll leave if that doesn't happen, but you're denying them the possibility to deeplink.

In that process, you're denying yourself a whole lot of deeplinks. And thus a whole lot of Google love.

Comments

About the Author:
Joost de Valk is an SEO from Nijmegen, the Netherlands, who works for Onetomarket, an online marketing company. He has experience as a sales manager for several IT companies, is involved in open source projects like WebKit and Mozilla, and is the creator of the biggest online resource on CSS3. Joost blogs about web design and SEO, and writes all sorts of scripts for webmasters.