11 replies to this topic

[arteworks]

In the most recent HighRankings Advisor, the following appeared:

"In terms of the search engines, linking to pages within your site is a way of giving them importance. The more pages on your site that link to any given page, the more important that page is deemed to be in the eyes of the search engines. "

Question: site using drop down javascript menu navigation. Can we assume that the links contained within this navigation are not readable by the engines? If so, based on the above quote, it would appear that a text link at the bottom of each page to "site map", which links to an html site map, would not be as effective hardcoding the entire site map (lets assume a site of less than 30 pages) into each page. My reasoning is this: if quantity of internal links are important, and drop down menus are not readable, then an html site map would only generate one internal link to each page, whereas anchor text links on each page to each other page would generate a number of internal links, although would not necessarily be very pretty (i.e. if a bunch of internal text links appeared at the bottom of each page).

Help?

[Jill]

site using drop down javascript menu navigation. Can we assume that the links contained within this navigation are not readable by the engines? If so, based on the above quote, it would appear that a text link at the bottom of each page to "site map", which links to an html site map, would not be as effective hardcoding the entire site map (lets assume a site of less than 30 pages) into each page.

That's correct. But instead of hardcoding a sitemap onto every page, simply make your javascript navigation spiderable by either changing it to CSS or using the noscript tag. Easy-peasy.

[OldWelshGuy]

But Jill, what about the secret sauce you KNOW people expect complicated answers, that is why some companies charge so much

[arteworks]

thanks jill. guess i wanted the secret sauce with my order.

[Randy]

Or you could simply switch away from the JS Dropdown and do it with via CSS using <li>'s. You can make 'em look the same, work the same as normal dropdowns for users, but be 100% spiderable.

There's your secret sauce.

[Jill]

Or you could simply switch away from the JS Dropdown and do it with via CSS

Umm...yeah...I think I said that!

[Randy]

But you forgot to label the advice as the elusive secret sauce.

[glengara]

On the noscript tag thing, anyone know what'll show up in the text only cache?

[Randy]

The noscript links.

There's an easy way to see it since Jill uses <noscript> on her home page. Look at the text only cache of her home page as compared to the JS-enabled browser version to see what happens.

[davenaff]

The noscript links.

There's an easy way to see it since Jill uses <noscript> on her home page. Look at the text only cache of her home page as compared to the JS-enabled browser version to see what happens.

I'm beginning to read some views (on WMW) that <noscript> links have been abused by spammers and are now being discounted by Google. Some go as far as saying that noscript links are being followed, but cannot pass PR.

Curious if anyone has any views on this?

[jehochman]

My view is that these rumors are completely unproven because many sites use JS menus with NOSCRIPT, and their rankings don't suffer for it. However, Google may soon start running JS, and then they very well may start to ignore NOSCRIPT. They have the technology, but they need to all come to a consensus to use it, and make it a priority.

[Jill]

It would be pretty crazy for Google to discount them all together, imo.