Hey Guys, Just read the SEO tutorial in this section. Have a question. Does using Javascript REALLY hurt your website rankings by SEO spider engines??? Have read multiple SEO tuts & this is the first time I've come across this comment/oppinion. Anyone have the straight info ??? Anyone have direct personal experience with this issue?? Any posted opinions or URLs on this issue?? Any comments/help appreciated. Thanks RGPHNX

Reply

Are you talking about JSP or JavaScript?

Reply

bjrn,
Not really certain. What I'm concerned about is using a program that encrypts certain elements of my webpage HTML using the Java language (Javascript??). The post I read in this forum section (re: how to optimize SEO etc.) said that using Java language in my source code would adversely affect my website rankings. Apparently this (if its true) is because the search engine spiders can't read some type of Java language correctly or at all.
Can you clarify this issue ??
Thanks
RGPHNX

Reply

JavaScript is not Java. JSP is a Java technology.
Java is a programming language, a language you can write applications with, JavaScript is a scripting language often used for client-side scripting on webpages.

About having JavaScript "encode"[1] your page and SEO:
If you are storing your pages encoded and using JavaScript to decode them for the browser then it will probably hurt your rankings. Because most (all?) search enginge spiders don't understand javaScript they won't be able to read your site properly.

I wouldn't do it in any case. You won't be stopping anyone who really wants to see what your markup and css looks like with it. The only ones you would be stopping are total newbies.



[1] The so called encoding I've seen is often nothing more than using alternative encoding for normal characters, just like you see in many URLs (like http://something/something%20something%20else/index.php).

Reply

Bjrn,
The Java Script "encryption" program I'm using allows for full customization of which page elements are affected. As I'm not worried about the css, I'll only be encoding the original artwork (ie. PICs), the links, the e-mail addresses. If I leave the page headers & the page metatags & the pages' body text in regular HTML, then the search engines should still be able to "read"/spider my pages correctly- Right??.
Any further Comments appreciated.
RGPHNX

Reply

I guess you should be okay in that case. Note that I am just making educated guesses, I have no proof either way.

Reply