• Bot-friendly menus

    Author
    Topic
    #416306

    The main way of navigating round my website is by using a javascript menu. There are several big advantages to using this – perhaps the biggest being whenever the content/structure of my site changes, I only need to edit one file (the .js file) rather than every single page. But the biggest disadvantage is that whenever my site is scanned by search engine robots (which apparently don’t read .js files), there are no “real” links for them to follow – so only the first page is indexed and much of my content goes unnoticed by search engines.

    Does anyone have a clue as to how I can make my site navigation bot-friendly without compromising on the easy updating and stylish navigation that a javascript menu brings?

    (PS “stylish navigation” means no frames, in my book at least!)

    Viewing 0 reply threads
    Author
    Replies
    • #931016

      Assuming that search bots do not execute JavaScript, you could do whatever you might do for visitors who do not trust JavaScript and have it turned off in their browsers. grin Maybe having a “Site Map” or “Links” link that you use JavaScript to hide would be good for this? Then you would only have one file to update. Oh wait, you already do have a Site Map link. Well, I’m not sure what to do then. I thought the bots followed all the links they could find…

      • #931033

        No, actually you’re right – I’ve been really thick. Although there are three links to the site map on every page, all three are generated by javascripts (d’oh!). And I’ve been incredibly lazy – there’s not a single tag anywhere on my site! I think I’ve taken too many shortcuts… time to start putting some tags in…

        Thanks anyway

    Viewing 0 reply threads
    Reply To: Bot-friendly menus

    You can use BBCodes to format your content.
    Your account can't use all available BBCodes, they will be stripped before saving.

    Your information: