AJAX enabled website & SEO

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Hello All,
This is my first question on this site, so please accept my apologies in case i dont give proper explanation of my question. Post your comments for more clarification.

**************
I have a asp.net website developed in Framework 3.5. I have started building the website using 'AJAX enabled website' template from the

Visual Studio 2008. (On VS 2008 : i had to run a specific MSI file to include the template: AJAX enabled website.)

Anyways, my question starts here:

-Search engine optimization being my first goal upon developing the site i did make sure
*Meta data ,h1/h2 tags being properly used
*Keywords included appropriately,Image tags, Sitemap (Visual friendly and XML) etc etc..

But...
- I have used Tab container, Accordion control, hover extender control from AJAX control tool kit
- These controls have been added apart from the content that is plain HTML on the ASPX page for better visibility reasons.

NOW WILL THIS HAVE ANY IMPACT ON THE SEARCH ENGINES NOT BEING ABLE TO FIND MY WEBSITE PAGES?
From my understanding, since these controls are only part of the webpages they shouldnt impact the Search engine bots.Bots should be
able to index the rest of the content from the page leaving the content from the AJAX controls.

I have read many articles and seen so many blogs about AJAX and SEO, but i just need answer to what i exactly need.

COuld someone please answer my question above?
**************

Posted 25-Mar-13 7:11am

metharam

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jkirkerx · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-25T11:17:00

Solution 1

The basics to SEO apply here, and are the same for any technology.

Those controls should not impact your SEO, as long as you have made up for it in HTML. Just make a great website first.

First you need well formed HTML, with completed attributes such as the iamge alt=""
So test your website page on a HTML validator and fix all the errors

http://validator.w3.org/[^]

Use of the H1 and H2 tags are good for organizing content, but the title element and description element are priority one. The description element inserts that description in your search engine index record, so they don't do it for you. This is the text people will read to determine if they have any interest in your page.

Use as much HTML as possible, and limit text in images. No duplicate page titles, no duplicate pages.

Read this article
http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf[^]

You have to have a sitemap.xml file, and should have a robots.txt file as well.

[EDIT]

I just happen to be publishing a paper on this subject yesterday, and just completed the posting

HKB Project[^]

Posted 25-Mar-13 11:17am

jkirkerx

Updated 26-Mar-13 8:55am

v3

Comments

metharam 26-Mar-13 8:36am

Thank you very much for your reply.

And one more clarification needed from you : If you have noticed my say on creating the website itself as 'AJAX Enabled website'.
Does this impact anything in terms of SEO?

Yes, h1,h2,h3 tags exist, image alt exists, appropriate page titles with page specific meta data, sitemap.xml and robots file has been created.

Thanks for the article, it helps and i realize the importance of image sitemap from the article. On my way creating the same.

Again, appreciate your response.

jkirkerx 26-Mar-13 14:42pm

The description tag is key, and the information you type in it is marketing based, so you may have to edit your page titles and descriptions 4 or 5 times until you get it just right.

To answer your question, the AJAX stuff is just java script, so it really has no effect.
The key is to build your page with just HTML, and narrow the focus of the content withyour AJAX devices.

Analogy:

Most web pages have the main page with a broad explanation of the subject. Then you create a 2nd page with detailed information on the subject. You can create a 3rd page deeper, with super detailed information about the subject such as specs.

When using ajax, you can create the 1st page, and hide the 2nd and 3rd page on the first page, using css display block or none.

My experience has observed that one will purchase off the first page, after the purchase will go back and examine the 2nd page to solidfy that they made the right choice, or because they are excited and can't wait.

One my need the 3rd page to make sure it fits or it's compatible.

The general rule is just make a great website!, and then go back and optimize it.

Final thought on Ajax,

I use ajax on eCommerce sites, I use to make a page to add to cart, but crawlers kept adding to the cart, so I changed the design to Ajax add to cart, so only a human can do it.

Things I only wanted humans to do, where cloaked in Ajax, and things I wanted humans and machines to read was pure HTML.

So you use AJAX to your advantage, or for compressing information onto a page.

metharam 27-Mar-13 9:02am

Thank you for your detailed explanation.
I was only confused because i saw the article below.
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/
And since i have not used ajax extensively in the past I din't understand in the first place if the controls impact SEO or how extensive the use of Ajax controls will decide whether or not to follow the article below.

Anyways, your thoughts really helped and makes me feel good about what i have already developed.

-Thanks much!

jkirkerx 27-Mar-13 12:38pm

Thanks

I would not want to see you spend 3 years of your life trying to figure it out.

It's hard, and there's so much information out there on the topic.

Like I said,

I use Ajax like behavior to compress many pages into one single page, to keep the user on a single page, and use pages to represent individual topics and functions.

Your welcome.

Jim Kirker