AJAX... Good for SEO or Just Cleaning House

AJAX…
Good for SEO or Just Cleaning House?

22
• About iCrossing
• AJAX – What is it? What it does?
• SEO Challenges with AJAX
• Tactical Suggestions
• SEO-Friendly AJAX Examples
• Key Takeaways
• Appendix
Overview
Copyright iCrossing - Proprietary and Confidential

33Copyright iCrossing - Proprietary and Confidential
• 600 employees
• 15 offices in the U.S. and Europe
• iCrossing clients include: Epson, Symantec, eBay, Adidas,
BMW, Allianz, The Coca-Cola Company, Office Depot, PR
Newswire, Toyota and Travelocity
• Technology-enabled service company with offerings at the
cross roads of search, social, mobile, web development and
analytics
About iCrossing

AJAX…
What is it? What is does?

AJAX – What is it?
s e r v e r
b r o w s e r
AJAX ENGINE
InitialHTTPrequest
HTML,CSS,JavaScriptAJAXengine
XmlHttpRequest
XmldataHTML,CSS
JScalls
1 2
3
4 5
6
What is it?
• (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)
is a group of web development
techniques used on the client-side to
create interactive web applications or
rich Internet applications
What it does
• AJAX enables client-side interaction
to display content between a browser
and a server without requiring page
loads
• Page content loads quickly and can
create a compelling user-experience
when displaying large amounts of
data

Common Uses for AJAX
• Maps
• Brick & Mortar Locations
• Glossaries
• Start Pages
• Mash-Ups
• Calendars
• much more…

AJAX Challenges
Crawling and Optimization

88
AJAX Crawling Issues
Extensive use of JavaScript
• Bots can have difficulty crawling JavaScript
• Google can crawl JavaScript
• Yahoo and Bing typically struggle with it
• Some success with href linking to complete
URL within quotes and any commands outside
URL quotes (ex. onclick, onmouseover)

99
Lack of Client-Side Crawlable Content
• Content is stored server-side and is rendered via AJAX engine

1010
Stop Crawl Parameters in URLs (#)
• Bots typically do not parse data past the “#”
• Data past the “#” is ignored

1111
AJAX Optimization Issues
All Content is rendered under one URL
• Mixed content themes dilute keyword relevancy
Lack of client-side content
• No visibile on-page content for optimization
• Applied keywords in title and meta data
• Difficult for competitive terms
• Primary opportunity is for brand-terms

1313
Tactical Suggestions
Create “IDENTICAL” Alternative
Content
• Leverage JavaScript applications
such as SWFObject or BrowserHawk
to render SEO-friendly version of
content or URLs
• Regular expression

1414
JavaScript Navigation
• Alter JavaScript Navigation to remove any commands within the URL quotes.
• Reference JavaScript control externally and call file via class or ID attributes.
DOM Scripting / Hijax / Progressive Enhancement
• Content / navigation crawled with JavaScript disabled (separation of content
HTML), style (CSS) and behavior (JavaScript)
Graceful Degradation
• Enables page rendering with minimal loss of experience for older browsers or
with JavaScript disabled

1515
Additional Crawlable Paths
• Sitemap page
• Footer navigation
• Tiered sitemap structure
Supporting HTML Content
• AJAX content renders with supporting HTML content
XML Sitemap file
• Submit XML file of all URLs via sitemaps.org protocol
Whatever method chosen, ensure unique content is displayed with unique
URLs, titles and meta data

SEO-Friendly Examples
Proof is in the SEO performance

1717
Bank Branch Locator
SEO Tactics Deployed
• Individual location URLs isolated from JavaScript controls
• Tiered sitemap structure linked from homepage (home > state > city > map of
locations; no clean links to location pages)

1818
Bank Branch Locator
Results
• 36 keywords (9 non-branded, 27 branded)
• Zero rankings within first 3 pages
• 9 out of 10 pages indexed in Google, 0 in Yahoo or
Bing

1919
Music News / Charts Publisher
SEO Tactics Deployed
• SEO-friendly alternative URLs (removal of “#” from URLs via SWFObject)
• All URLs contain unique page content (title, meta data, on-page content)
• Clean internal navigation
• Tiered-sitemap structure (home > charts > genre > 10 listings / page)
http://www.billboard.com/#/charts/rock-songs http://www.billboard.com/charts/rock-songs

2020
Results
• 36 keywords (29 non-branded, 5 branded), ~
5.4 mil. monthly searches (Google Exact
Match)
• 68 first page rankings (65% of keyword set,
Google, Yahoo and Bing)
• All pages indexed in Google, Yahoo & Bing
165
126106
37
32
27
27
24
21
16
www.billboard.com
en.wikipedia.org
www.mtv.com
music.aol.com
new.music.yahoo.com
www.amazon.com
www.rollingstone.com
www.vh1.com
www.nme.com
www.allmusic.com
# of First Page Rankings

2121
Billboard is a leader in natural search traffic amongst it’s
core-competitive set.

• Ensure URLs are crawlable (JavaScript Navigation)
• Ensure all URLs contain unique page elements
• Ensure client-side content is visibile
• Create easy-to-crawl site navigation (tiered sitemaps, footer
navigation, etc.)
• Solve for technical solutions for “#” and other obstacles
• Plan for SEO early in site / marketing process
Key Takeaways

• Google Advances in JavaScript
http://searchengineland.com/google-io-new-advances-in-the-
searchability-of-javascript-and-flash-but-is-it-enough-19881
• DOM Scripting and Hijax
http://domscripting.com/blog/display/41,
http://icant.co.uk/articles/from-dhtml-to-dom/from-dhtml-to-dom-
scripting.html
• AJAX (Google Webmaster Tools)
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=
en&answer=81766
• Google and SWFObject
http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/
Appendix

Thank You
Richard Chavez
SEO Director
iCrossing, Inc.
480-282-6059
Richard.Chavez@iCrossing.com
http://www.iCrossing.com

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