Developing a drop down menu: Do I use javascript or pure css?
-
I am developing a drop down menu and am trying to decide if using javascript instead of just css is worth it.
I've done some research on the topic and the opinions seem dated. I know that at one time not using javascript for a drop down menu was important but now less so. Google constantly says that they will not discount the links just because they are not shown until javascript is ran.
What I want to know is has anyone discovered from testing that using javascript instead of css for a drop down makes a difference?
Note: the links will not be located in an external javascript file.
-
Hey Zachary!
It's a good idea to use pure css menus when the design and functionality are the same as using a menu with javascript AND the actual menu items are in a clean
html list (not delivered through the JS). But keep in mind that cross-browser functionality can be an issue with pure css menus. Internet Explorer is a real problem in this regard.
As for SEO, I doubt inline javascript that adds functionality to a clean html list will make search engines burp. We used to worry a lot about that like 5 years ago because JS used to cause slow load times, but nowadays the Internet is a lot faster, servers are faster, caching is better, etc... All the same, it's good coding practice to remove inline JS from HTML.
If you want something fast and cross-browser supported look for jquery menus. There are free samples all over the place and they are brilliantly fast and you can list your menu items in a plain html list (the important thing).
Happy coding... - P
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
-
Brushing up on my SEO skills - how do I check my website to see if Javascript is blocking search engines from crawling the links within a javascript-enabled drop down menu?
I set my user agent in my Chrome browser to Googlebot and I disable javascript within my Chrome settings, but then what?
Technical SEO | | MagnitudeSEO0 -
Nofollow links on our site menu
Hi Our site's front page has almost 900 internal links on it (it's an ecommerce site with about 25,000 products). A lot of these are on a pretty involved dropdown menu, which is on every page. I can't really do anything to get this figure down (its outside my remit), but one thing the developers have done is make all the menu links nofollow on the mobile version of the menu (site is responsive) - otherwise there would be even more links! My question is as to whether doing this for the mobile menu is a good idea, in terms of SEO?
Technical SEO | | abisti21 -
Canonical Tag when using Ajax and PhantomJS
Hello, We have a site that is built using an AJAX application. We include the meta fragment tag in order to get a rendered page from PhantomJS. The URL that is rendered to google from PhantomJS then is www.oursite.com/?escaped_fragment= In the SERP google of course doesnt include the hashtag in the URL. So my question, with this setup, do i still need a canonical tag and if i do, would the canonical tag be the escaped fragment URL or the regular URL? Much Appreciated!
Technical SEO | | RevanaDigitalSEO0 -
Should I rename URLs to use hyphens instead of underscores?
Hello. We are about to launch a redesigned and significantly expanded site that has traditionally used underscores as separators between words in its URLs. Would you recommend replacing all the underscores with hyphens? That would then require many 301 redirects to maintain any links that might be out there. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | nyc-seo0 -
What is "evttag=" used for?
I see evttag= used on realtor.com, what looks to be for click tracking purposes. Does anyone know if this is an official standard or something they made up?
Technical SEO | | JDatSB0 -
Use of Location Folders
I'd like to understand the pro's and con's of using a location subfolder as an SEO strategy (example: http://sqmedia.us/Dallas/content-marketing.html), where the /Dallas folder is holding all of my keyword rich page titles. The strategy is to get local-SEO benefits from the use of the folder titled /Dallas (a folder which is unnecessary in the over all structure of this site), but how much is this strategy taking away from the page-title keyword effectiveness?
Technical SEO | | sqmedia0 -
Sudden drop in rank and OSE index
I had improved the rank of chairmats.net from page 3 to top of page 2 in Google over the course of a few weeks using on-page, content building, and "low-hanging fruit" link building. All the sudden in the last 2 weeks, we have dropped to 22nd, have dropped out of the OSE index (chairmats.net doesn't show up, but some old links to www.chairmats.net show up), and PA is now 1. DA wasn't high before but also dropped a point. I don't know why the sudden shun (I read about an exact keyword match for low quality websites update with Google recently, but this site has been around for awhile, and is a large supplier of chair mats.) I'm working on getting quality links, it seems a little tougher for a supplier company like this. Any suggestions on recovering?
Technical SEO | | Joes_Ideas0 -
Is it ok to just use the end of the url when using a Rel Cononical Link?
Hi, I am working with an account and the previous SEO used a Rel Canonical link that just uses the end of the url. Instead of the full url When I look it up on the web I see most people are using the full url. Is that the proper way to do it or does is suffice to just use the end of the url? Wanted to check before I take the time to change them all. -Kent
Technical SEO | | KentH0