SEO Step-By-Step Guide – 172. Dealing with AJAX

At times, search engines may not allow us to make the best use of the latest technology and tools. One of the clear examples of this is to be seen in the use of AJAX in our websites. AJAX is one of the powerful platforms and we can achieve a great deal when it comes to website functionalities. We can do many cool things using AJAX but search engines do not like AJAX.

One of the reasons why search engines do not like this platform is because it is uses JAVA Script which is not supported by the search engines. Several lines of JAVA Script codes in the web pages frustrate the search engine spiders.

Moreover, search engines cannot read the content that is delivered by AJAX, but using AJAX scripting will make the functionality of the website fast. Your website’s response time will improve dramatically as AJAX is client side scripting. Because of this search engines cannot gain access to the content delivered by AJAX. In case if you are going to use AJAX for your website’s navigation because it enhances user experience, then search engine spiders will have no way of accessing the inner pages of your website unless there is an alternative search engine friendly option.

This does not mean that you will have to lose out on all the benefits AJAX scripting can bring. However, you must know that it is not a search engine friendly platform. You must know how you can make use of AJAX without interfering with your website’s navigation. All the content of your website should be easily accessible and all the important pages should be static pages. You can use AJAX scripting in forms and in other places that will not matter much to your website’s ranking. You can use AJAX scripting in the backend of the pages that require login and in pages which you do not want to be indexed.

By taking a balanced approach, you can easily win over the search engines and at the same time enhance user experience. You should not compromise on the user experience completely to please the search engines. All the trouble that we are taking to get good rankings is to have more users on our website and if they are not going to have a good experience in our website, all the other efforts will go in vain. Often webmasters lose focus on this aspect and end up having problems at a later stage. Do not make the same mistake.

At times webmasters use excessive AJAX in their website to offer cool features to their website users without realizing that it will affect their online performance. This too should not happen. Therefore, it is important to keep yourself informed about the pros and cons of using any platform that you choose for your website.

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