Site Structure: How do I deal with a great user experience that's not the best for Google's spiders?
-
We have ~3,000 photos that have all been tagged. We have a wonderful AJAXy interface for users where they can toggle all of these tags to find the exact set of photos they're looking for very quickly.
We've also optimized a site structure for Google's benefit that gives each category a page. Each category page links to applicable album pages. Each album page links to individual photo pages. All pages have a good chunk of unique text.
Now, for Google, the domain.com/photos index page should be a directory of sorts that links to each category page. Alternatively, the user would probably prefer the AJAXy interface.
What is the best way to execute this?
-
I'm not sure that I totally understand your question: are you building a site and wondering if you should make it beautiful with AJAX or readable for search engines with a clear category structure? Or do you already have a site with AJAX and now you've taken the time to come up with a category page structure, but you're hesitating to implement it?
If it's the first, I don't think that you should think that your choices are 1) be usable/beautiful, or 2) be search-engine friendly. There are a lot of ways to make an HTML site beautiful. You can use new enhancements in HTML5, or build a standard HTML site and then use JavaScript to make elements more interactive.
If it's the second, I'd go with Thomas's suggestion and test your AJAX site to see how readable it is for Google. AJAX isn't readable by Google, but the underlying HTML is, so there may be enough HTML links that Google can still get around your site.
Once you've tested how readable your site is, then you have to decide if this interface is worth pages being missed or ranked lower by Google. My guess is that you can probably keep your site the way it is primarily, but you'll have to make some tweaks. It's hard to give specifics without knowing specifics, though.
Good luck!
-
the best thing to do right now is have a look at
Prior to building or finishing the site it would be a good idea to look at how Google is crawling the Ajax version of your planned directory or category I would use
the spider tool as well as the image tool
http://www.feedthebot.com/tools/spider/
http://www.feedthebot.com/tools/alt/
All tools
http://www.feedthebot.com/tools/
After your certain that the Ajax start causing any issues for Google bot I believe the best way to move forward is summed up in 2 links below very well.
https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/case-study-determining-site-architecture-from-keyword-research/
https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/why-you-should-map-out-your-sites-information-architecture/
I have not seen your website so I can't tell you if the user would prefer the Ajax However Google bot does not do well with Ajax vs text
"Problem 5: AJAX and URLs"
check out problem 5 in this link as well
https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/fixing-seo-problems-with-html5/
Sincerely,
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
A client rebranded a few years ago and doesn't want to be associated with it's old brand name. He wishes not to appear when the old brand is searched in Google, is there something we can do?
The problem is there was redirection between the old branded site and the new one, and now when you type in the name of the old brand, the new one comes up. I have desperately tried to convince this client there is nothing we can do about it, dozens of news articles crop up with the two brands together as this was a hot topic a few years ago, but just in case I missed something I thought I'd ask the community of experts here on Moz. An example for this would be Tyco Healthcare that became covidien in 2007. When you type tyco healthcare, covidien crops up here and there. Any ideas? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Netsociety0 -
When rebranding, what's the best thing to do with the new domain before rebranding?
A. Do nothing
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Maxaro.nl
B. Redirect to legacy site (current domain)
C. Create a placeholder with information about the rebranding
D. Other... What do you think is best?0 -
Is the image property really required for Google's breadcrumbs structured data type?
In its structured data (i.e., Schema.org) documentation, Google says that the "image" property is required for the breadcrumbs data type. That seems new to me, and it seems unnecessary for breadcrumbs. Does anyone think this really matters to Google? More info about breadcrumbs data type:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ryan-Ricketts
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/breadcrumbs I asked Google directly here:
https://twitter.com/RyanRicketts/status/7554782668788531220 -
We are switching our CMS local pages from a subdomain approach to a subfolder approach. What's the best way to handle this? Should we redirect every local subdomain page to its new subfolder page?
We are looking to create a new subfolder approach within our website versus our current subdomain approach. How should we go about handling this politely as to not lose everything we've worked on up to this point using the subdomain approach? Do we need to redirect every subdomain URL to the new subfolder page? Our current local pages subdomain set up: stores.websitename.com How we plan on adding our new local subfolder set-up: websitename.com/stores/state/city/storelocation Any and all help is appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO.CIC0 -
A few questions on Google's Structured Data Markup Helper...
I'm trying to go through my site and add microdata with the help of Google's Structured Data Markup Helper. I have a few questions that I have not been able to find an answer for. Here is the URL I am referring to: http://www.howlatthemoon.com/locations/location-chicago My company is a bar/club, with only 4 out of 13 locations serving food. Would you mark this up as a local business or a restaurant? It asks for "URL" above the ratings. Is this supposed to be the URL that ratings are on like Yelp or something? Or is it the URL for the page? Either way, neither of those URLs are on the page so I can't select them. If it is for Yelp should I link to it? How do I add reviews? Do they have to be on the page? If I make a group of days for Day of the Week for Opening hours, such as Mon-Thu, will that work out? I have events on this page. However, when I tried to do the markup for just the event it told me to use itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Event" on the body tag of the page. That is just a small part of the page, I'm not sure why I would put the event tag on the whole body? Any other tips would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | howlusa0 -
Dealing with Spammy Affiliate Site Copies
We have a longstanding site that sells media files with a large number of digital products. We offer a referral program with rewards for those that tell others about us. In the last year, we have seen some sites popping up primarily in China that appear to be spammy looking advertisement based copies of our own site with product pages that link back to our actual products using a referral link/code. (no-follow links.) These sites started popping out more when we noticed that some of their pages were outranking our own actual product pages. Any thoughts on this? Our affiliate policy states that the affiliate program is meant to help and not harm our site. In one sense this is traffic to our site which is supposed to be a good thing, but if these pages are ranking above our own, that is not what we are wanting. I would bet these pages might get clicked on and due to the spammy nature of these sites, the user bounces and never actually gets to our website. How would you handle something like this? Thanks!! Craig
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheCraig0 -
There's NO reason these sites should be beating mine...Or is there?
Hi Over the past 10 months, my internal page rankings (previously excellent) have plummeted. I'm now trying to recover them. I haven't received an unnatural links warning in Google Webmaster Tools. Also, I used to have hundreds of internal links to each of these 21 pages using the same exact-match anchor text eg, Tuscany real estate, Umbria real estate, etc. I changed this about 6 months ago. So why am I still ranking poorly for these (only moderately competitive keywords) behind sites with poorer metrics? 1) Keyword: lake como real estate My page here – **http://tinyurl.com/d34k8m ** -- used to rank No1 or No2 neck-and-neck with this page www.immobiliarevacanzelago.com/. He's still No1 but I’m down to about No13. Yet when I look in Open Site Explorer virtually all my metrics beat his.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jeepster0 -
What's the best practise for adding a blog to your site post panda? subdomain or subdirectory???
Should i use a subdomain or a subdirectory? i was going to use a subdirectory however i have been reading a lot of articles on the use of subdomains post panda and the advantages of using them instead of using subdirectories. Thanks Ari
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dublinbet0