Know-How Exchange : SEO/SEM

Generally, from an SEO standpoint, you should have a nice HTML page with unique page title, URL and description for each and every product. I am not sure AJAX is a good solution in this situation. I guess I would have to see it to offer more of an opinion.

I don't have personal advice, but have found a number of articles that may shed some additional light:

https://www.seroundtable.com/archives/006889.html
https://www.searchmarketingstandard.com/articles/2008/03/ses-update-css-aja...
https://www.nikhilk.net/AjaxSEO.aspx
https://www.ajaxprojects.com/ajax/newsdetails.php?itemid=30
https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/11/spiders-view-of-web-20....
https://seoblog.intrapromote.com/2006/05/seo_considerati.html
https://www.marketposition.com/blog/archives/2006/08/implementing_aj.html
https://www.seroundtable.com/archives/012451.html
https://www.hybrid6.com/webgeek/2007/01/ajax-web-20-and-seo.php
https://www.johnon.com/270/seo-for-ajax.html
https://www.davidpirek.com/blog.aspx?n=AJAX-and-SEO:-How-to-have-an-SEO-Fri...

Hi,
Specifically for a navigation, AJAX will hinder your SEO efforts. The best navigation from a search-engine standpoint would be HTML or CSS based. Beyond that, I would limit use of AJAX or Flash to sidebars and "below the fold" graphics, making sure to place compelling content, in HTML, above the fold.

Your questions above lead me to decipher that you may need a full SEO analysis of your site. One good tool to get a quick snapshot of the issues is www.seoquake.com. Beyond that, you may want to enlist the services of a professional SEO consultant to diagnose and resolve any problems. My company provides SEO consulting services to companies in many industries, and I would be happy to speak with you further regarding our services. Other strong SEO companies include Overdrive Interactive (overdriveinteractive.com) or you could do a Google search for companies in your local market.

I hope this information was helpful to you,
Melissa

If the URL does not change then the site will likely only have one indexed page. One question I have is whether the domain is masked. One reason for utilizing a mask is to compensate for a shopping cart system that is incapable of being being properly configured through DNS.

If that is the case, I see this as a serious limitation of the cart system and a hindrance to your marketing efforts.

I also thought this page might be helpful with regard to AJAX and navigation:
https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/11/spiders-view-of-web-20....

Another issue is that the HTML pages will likely be indexed (assuming they do not suffer from the URL issue) and they will become the true entry point for most search visitors. At that point I challenge whether the AJAX pages have any value other than to complicate matters.

Additionally, Javascript is not beneficial to SEO (though, it doesn't have to be detrimental if used properly). Nor is containing information in external XML files. The search engine may actually index your XML files but, they will be indexed separately from the pages they are presenting data on. This creates a disconnect in regards to context and increases the code to content ratio disproportionately. You could theoretically end up with a page of code which relates to structure, style, etc and have zero content.

I'm a huge fan of AJAX for certain functions - especially those which are repeated from page to page (IE: a form). It's also amazingly good at private content (IE: passworded pages like control panels) or on pages which by design are unlikely to be ranked well. I'm sure the group could come up with a long list of functions it serves well.

Like flash, it's probably best implemented as a page element rather than as an entire page/site.