ASP.NET SEO Fundamentals: Allow bots to navigate your pages
Yes, this is remedial ASP.NET SEO, but I’m including it for completeness. Not all of us operate inside the bubble, and for some this blog is first exposure to SEO with ASP.NET.
1. We can’t assume that Googlebot, Slurp and other spiders interpret Javascript.
2. ASP.NET navigation is traditionally done via postbacks - a model where ASP.NET uses Javascript to automatically prepare a request back to the form that was originally rendered.
3. Search engines can’t understand such nonsense. They need links, regular <a> tags.
So.. what are we to do? Three tips:
1. Separate content into different pages. Quit using panels to manage the entire functionality of your app in one form. Use postbacks for utility, not for navigation.
2. Rely on query strings to allow deep-linking and a crawlable site. If you do use postbacks a lot, create mirroring functionality with a form using query strings. Then use site maps and simple navigation to point spiders to those forms.
3. Override complex controls to be navigable using query strings.
There is no reason to use postback for navigation in a public-facing site. If you do, provide an alternate, regular way to access the content so Googlebot can see it.
February 1st, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Is this .NET’s dirty little secret or are most .NET devs just blissfully unaware? I’m relatively new .NET, but search engine visibility has been on my radar for a long time. Yesterday I actually viewed the html source of some of my user controls I’m working on and I noticed every link was in JavaScript. I went to my resident in house .NET guru and voiced my concerns. He said he was not aware of the issue and had never seen it discussed. He suggested I do a bit of research and surprisingly your’s was the only site I found with any decent info. How come nobody seems to see this as a big issue? All of my clients, most of whom are non-technical and range in size from mom and pops to fortune 500, voice SEO as a major requirement during the sales process. How is it that .NET is so off the mark on this?
March 21st, 2007 at 3:59 am
I think the same of Anon! I’ve made a little nuke for my own purpose and also to sell it to my customers but I noticed that the sites builded in this way didn’t have indexed by SE: the most of links was builded using javascript and so the most of pages was hided to SE…
Now I’m rebuilding all the navigation system with standard <a> link :-(( but I was surprised that nobody find this problem. I’m looking on internet a lot of days and the once site talking about is this!
Thanx for your stay here! :-)