Is AJAX SEO Possible?
Among the stickiest of SEO conundrums is Ajax SEO. Just seeing those two words together—Ajax SEO—makes the SEO gurus shudder and lose a few hours of sleep at night. While the wonderful dynamism of Ajax web apps is so smooth and tantalizing, it has always posed a problem for SEO purposes. So, is AJAX SEO possible?
The Problem with Ajax SEO
SEO crawlers were originally designed for HTML. Somehow, they’ve never been able to totally crawl out of the HTML age, though they are getting better. However, because of this problem many Ajax pages simply are not crawled by the SEO robots. Other problems are prevalent among Ajax pages. Since one URL governs an entire Ajax page, SEO-crucial links and navigation are missing. SEO crawlers may even suspect unethical SEO techniques when crawling Ajax pages. Further problems abound—lack of indexing, crummy site navigation, and saving/sending/bookmarking problems abound.
A Helpful Tool for Ajax SEO
Ajax doesn’t support deep linking. It could create some frustration for bookmarking and site navigation. Even though Ajax alone doesn’t give you deep linking capabilities, there are ways to skirt this problem. Perhaps the most popular and widely used tool for creating unique virtual URLs is SWFAddress. This powerful tool essentially turns Flash and Ajax into simple HTML, allowing users to navigate, bookmark, save, e-mail and refresh Ajax pages. The SEO power of SWFAddress is that it creates actual HTML links that give the Ajax site more visibility to SEO robots. As long as the Ajax engineer submits an XML sitemap using SWFAddress to the search engines, there is a much better possibility of improving Ajax SEO.
Insightful Tips for Ajax SEO
Rather than create an entire site in Ajax, make a distinct URL for individual pages in order to get more visibility with the SEO robot.
Include keywords, and place them at the beginning of the site where they are more likely to be found by the SEO crawler. Use Ajax only when it’s necessary, not merely for a flashy site. Ajax is helpful for achieving a page’s dynamic interaction with the server. The fact still holds true that although you can obtain some degree of Ajax SEO, it will not be as high as a non-Ajax site.
In case you are craving a yes or no answer to the article title, here it is. Yes, AJAX SEO is possible. Of course, there is a disclaimer. Ajax SEO is limited. By following the insightful tips above, you’ll obtain at least some level of AJAX SEO.
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