SEO 101: Search Engine Robots Can't Follow Links in Pure JavaScript Menus

I've recently been receiving some interesting quotes for SEO services with Florida Search Engine Optimization. As part of the standard procedure I employ when reviewing a prospective client's site, I inform them that site architecture is very important and therefore must be taken into consideration. On several occassions I've suggested the removal of JavaScript based menus, and was met with a challenge. One of the prospective clients asked me why it was neccessary. So, I explained the mechanics of a crawler to him in some detail. The other prospective client wasn't all that trusting at first, so he decided to get a second opionion from another SEO before giving me the go ahead. I didn't have any problem with that ... I've been doing SEO for a while now and I've yet to find a client that accepted my opinion of a site review on blind faith regardless of the successful campaigns I've demonstrated.

SEO Experience Required - A Case for SEO Standardization?

What happened next really suprised me. I expected the need to debate my case with the prospective client that was not all that warm to me. However, I was actually opposed by both client's SEO's. Yes, that's correct. Both of the prospective client's SEO's were baffled as to why I suggested having text based menus. Oh yeah ... we SEO's tend to think they know everything ...

After receiving the suggestion for the menu removal, one of the SEO's mentioned to my client, "It's not important ... just make an XML sitemap so the robots can find you ... " I found that rather amusing. However, I found the other SEO's comment to be just as interesting as the first's. He simply stated that "He's even made Flash based sites rank on the first page ... " Thing is, the client requested a quote for services with me primarily due to the SEO's lack of effectiveness ... said SEO didn't so much as provide one case-in-point example - Pwned. So an experienced SEO is essentially stating that by providing an XML sitemap to the navigation of a site, serious issues arising from JavaScript based menus can be resolved. Okay - I don't think so ... But, let's see how accurate this is ... or isn't.

To Crawl or Not to Crawl? That Is ... Important.

A web site's internal link structure is very important when considering SEO. Almost any Decent SEO will attest to this. So why is it important? Because a web site is really nothing more than a group of pages linked together. Granted the linking relationships can become quite complex but it's really just a  Web of Links. When robots can't determine what is and isn't a link, they can't move from link A to B ... Link A was never realized.

To demonstrate ... Let's take a look at a site that employs JavaScript navigation and may not neccessarily require having highly crawlable links. I'm going to use Deluxe-Menu.com for this example - It's a very nice site that uses a JavaScript based menu, and does so with impunity - The site's entire theme is provided on the home page.

From the Eyes of a Spider - Where's the Web?

So what we see here is a screen shot of the site's navigation ... We can clearly see the links for Home, Product Info, Samples, Download, Purchase and Support in the menu. Simple enough. However, if we inspect the internal linking of the page through a text-only browser such as Lynx,  it also shows that there are no visible traces to these links. The screen shot below is from the SEO text browser over at domaintools.com which, I have quite a habit of using ...

So what are we're looking at here? This basically provides a detail of the elements a search engine robot would recognize when they visit a site. Blue signifies an anchor or link element. Red signifies images - for this example it isn't relevant to us whether those images are also links. The first link we see at the top of the page is for the site's logo, deluxe-menu.com. The next link we see in the document structure is for the site's sitemap which comes directly after the JavaScript menu. Notice how there are no links elements recognized by the text browser for the menu. A crawler would not identify this as a link either.

Okay, so I wouldn't expect someone in the C-Suite to be able to gauge the performance or effectiveness of a web site. But for an SEO? This should be first year  ... I find an unusually high amount of people claiming to be a "professional SEO" that don't know the first thing about web design, web development, Server Side programming or even HTML for that matter ...

In short ... This is old hat.

Hyves Google Web Site Penalty Checker » As I was perusing through the updates on Seo Master List, I saw an interesting post from Search Engine Watch regarding checking whether your web site is penalized or banished from Google by simply adding "hyves." Before your domain name ... IE (hyves.google.com) Though it may seem strange ... it apparently works. All you have to do is add the name hyves before your domain name and you will get the results ...

According to Marcus Tandler, AKA Media Adonis, the resulting PageRank from the addition of the sub-domain will return the result in the form of the following grades on the Google Tool Bar PageRank indicator:

• PR 0 » The site is banned in Google
• PR 4 » The site has received a Google Penalty
• PR 7 » The site is okay.

You might want to take a look at your site's condition soon though ... once this gets out to the mainstream it's only a matter of time before the big G gets it offline ...

While doing my morning crawl through my email I ran across an article from Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting regarding a recent interview he had with Angus Norton of Microsoft ... after reading the article, I was persuaded to go check out Eric's site to see if there is anything valuable to the SEO world that he was kind enough to share with the rest of the us ... and sure enough there was ...

Perusing through the linkbuilding category on his site, I found a reference to LinkDiagnosis.Com ... knowing Eric to be of a discriminating taste, I investigated a little more ... and I'm glad I did ... This is one gold mine of a tool ...

Once you go to LinkDiagnosis.Com ... you need to click on the download link and install the firefox extension (Sorry IE users) and then restart your browser ... then return to the page and enter your URL or your competitions ...

I'll let you be the judge of the rest ...

That's it ...

Well, it seems that the mighty Google is back at their PageRank updates again. At the time of writing this post, the Tool Bar PageRank of Florida Search Engine Optimization and SEO Fort Lauderdale went down a point. That's interesting since Matt Cutts recently mentioned the possibility of this happening on his blog ...

However, I'm not too sure the update has stabilized yet - many sites I visit often have also dropped a point from the prior rankings and I've noticed some new sites that had no PageRank a day or two ago now showing up as PR 4 and 5. This leads me to suspect that this ain't over yet.

Okay, so the wind of change is screaming at Microsoft ... That's not all that shocking. However, it seems that the incumbent software giant is trying to one up Google by coming out with a late-in-the-game answer to the PageRank algorithm - BrowseRank.

Now, it seems a bit strange that the geniuses at Microsoft would be so thoughtless of the current search community, so "Microsoft", they would actually create the name of their project with only a one word difference from Google's - BrowseRank? Wasn't the name for Google's PageRank algorithm based on Larry Page?

So, does Microsoft have an engineer named Browse? Apparently they want to be known as the knock-offs of the search industry. I wonder if they figured that metric in to their "User Behavior Data" concept.

If you want to see the details on their "unique" idea - letting visitors vote for web page importance ... you can check out the PDF on "Microsoft's research" ...

But wait a minute ... didn't Google recently decide to start the beta testing for implementing a Digg like interface which, is slated to let visitors vote for sites?... Oh yeah ... and didn't Google and Microsoft recently start their preparations for Bidding on Digg?

Now, I may not be smart enough to write a search algorithm or a business plan to capture market share ... but it sure seems like Microsoft needs to rethink their business strategy a bit when it comes to the search industry. The last thing we need is to find out that Larry Page has a brother named Browse that's trying to take over the search market.

That's it.