HTML and SEO
The Use of Javascript and Forms
People are always trying to make their website flashier or more hip than the other guys. So in pursuit of this endeavor many have embraced DHTML. DHTML stands for dynamic hypertext markup language and is really just a fancy way to say Javascript and CSS. Many people are implementing DHTML menu systems and other features on their sites. Doing this is generally a bad idea because spiders can't read Javascript so they will not be able to follow your DHTML menu and they will not even see the rest of your site. Sometimes people also like to use forms for navigation. This is also a bad idea as spiders also do not follow forms.
Besides navigation people use these technologies for other things. In some cases people actually use Javascript to display their content. Doing this is literally search engine suicide and will immensely hurt your rankings. Never use DHTML to display something important because search engines will not see it.
Do not despair yet over this, you can still use those DHTML menus if you have to, just so long as you prepare for the spiders. The <noscript></noscript> HTML tags set apart a section of content that Javascript enabled browser ignore, thus it will only be displayed to browsers that are not Javascript enabled, like spiders. If you are going to use forms or DHTML for your navigation what you need to do is include a <noscript> section that has standard HTML links in it for the spiders to use. In this instance, thanks to the <noscript> tag, you can have your cake and eat it too.
Also I should note that some DHTML menus can be read by search engines, these menus have normal HTML, including properly formatted links, inside layers and the DHTML simply moves the layers around. Since search engines just see source code they have no problems picking out the links. So check your script, if you can properly formatted HTML links in your script then search engines will probably see those links as well.
You can also use the lack of support for javascript and form based navigation to your advantage. For instance if there is a page you do not want search engines to index you could only link to it using one of these methods.
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