| Drop-down Menus & Search Engines |
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Written by Sandy Keller
February 27, 2006
I first want to thank all of you who contribute to this list. I have learned so much since I first began receiving it and I've avoided spending some big money with a couple of SEO companies that I was warned here to avoid.
My question is about drop-down menus. My site is being professionally re-designed, for one reason, because I discovered that the previous designer has my left navigation as images and so all of those words are not helping me in search engines at all. I am concerned because while the company I hired is in Colorado, the person doing the work on the site is in India and I'm not convinced he knows how to maximize what I am trying to accomplish.
I've been looking at a lot of sites which have been recently updated, and a lot of my competitors are using drop-down menus, which I understand are accomplished with Java script.
Do any of you have any suggestions for how to maximize the SE friendliness of the Java script necessary to have my navigation in drop-down menus? I was told that the first level is most important, the second level is somewhat SE friendly, but after that, whatever keywords we use will really not help us except in navigating the site.
Sandy Keller
AdvantageBridal.comWritten by James Miller February 28, 2006
I actually don’t like java-script menus, as I prefer everything to be just one click to get from page to page. Some are good, but others are definitely not that. So I tend to have a two level menu, which I put across the top of the page under the banner, with traditional tool-tips. As these days I tend to design all web sites to A4 pages so they can be easily printed, it works well.
But you really want to make sure that the web site gets entwined properly around the search engines.
So I always make a web site a series of individual pages with their own URLs, just like most of the BBC’s web site. And then make sure that all pages are linked from the home page that is submitted to the search engine. (One of the reasons, I wrote my Web Site Spider, was to check that all pages are linked to the home page, even if the route is rather long!)
If you are using a complicated java-script and it is not obvious to the search engine how you get to certain pages, then make sure you have some links in the text. You can always use a site map, which on some web sites, is the best way to find the page you want
anyway.
James Miller
Daisy Analysis
Written by Stephen Mareches February 28, 2006 Sandy,
This is a very pertinent question.
Several years ago we were developing JavaScript drop down menus and came to the understanding they aren't intelligible to search engines who are trying to index your pages. You are correct, pictures for navigation don't serve up much for the search engines except what is in their ALT tags. But JavaScript drop downs are even less likely to provide them with what they want because they do not index scripts and all the hyperlinks in your drop downs will be in script, essentially hiding their content from search engine spiders.
Your best bet is to use text hyperlinks; you may spice these up a bit by using relevant keywords within the text of the hyperlinks. For example a hyperlink with "Gulf Shores Vacation Rentals" in it will do much more for you than "Vacation Rentals" in a hyperlink.
Stephen Mareches, Web Consultant
Sophia Solutions
I use Javascript navigation on one of my sites; crawlers cannot crawl the links because of the way the Javascript is coded.
I use a site map to accomplish two things: one, it allows SE crawlers to index the entire site despite the Javascript navigation; two, it allows people with Javascript disabled in their browers for security reasons, to navigate the site. At the bottom of every page, is a link to the site map. It clearly says the purpose for the site map is to facilitate navigation for people with Javascript disabled in their browsers.
So far, I have not taken a penalty on this, I have #1 in Google SERPs for a number of keywords that all appear on second-level pages (ie: "hidden" from crawlers, other than by using the site map.) (phal flasks, phal stems, etc.)
Robert Bedard
Written by Mark Bishop March 1, 2006
> I actually don’t like javascript menus, as I prefer
> everything to be just one click to get from page
> to page. Some are good, but others are
> definitely not that.
In my opinion, there are actually good strategies for accessible dropdown menus, yes, using a little javascript and CSS. It's worked well for me and my well indexed by SEs. If you look at the code of my site, you'll see that the dropdown menu is just a list that is easily read by any spider. If javascript is turned off, a list will show up where there drop down menu is. Not great, but still accessible.
My site: www.healthyschoolscampaign.org. Script I used for dropdown menu: http://www.udm4.com/
Other tutorials on making accessible CSS dropdown menu:
How to make s simple CSS dropdown menu Dropdowns at A List Apart
Mark Bishop
Written by Tim Mullen March 1, 2006 I have found the drop down menus look very nice and clients like them. However, knowing the SE problem, I always add navigational text links at the bottom of the page. This is vital for text only browsers also. The SE's are happy with the text links and the client has his preferred fancy drop downs.
Tim Mullen
Written by Donna Donohue March 1, 2006
There are ways to do a drop down menu and have it very search engine friendly. You would use CSS and an external javascript. The navigation is an unordered list, which search engines like a lot I'm told, and the CSS displays it in the drop down.
Project Seven has many of these, and tutorials on them. There is also the suckerfish menus. It is not hard if you can code, and your designer should be able to do this. The only part on the page is the UL and link, no javascript on it, yet it will drop down / fly out and looks nice on top of it.
You can see the project seven menu in action here: goldenexpression.com. Look at the source and you can see the text links plainly not embedded in javascript. The menu is neat and clean and search engine friendly.
There is an example of the suckerfish drop downs here: http://www.htmldog.com/articles/suckerfish/dropdowns/example/
Again, you can view the source and see the plain text unordered list links, and all the CSS and javascript can be moved off the page to external files. This is just the whole script and CSS to learn
by.
It can be done.
Donna Donohue
Written by Steven Rothberg March 2, 2006 I also vote against drop-downs. Our developer told me that they were not search engine friendly and recommended that we replace them with tabs, each of which would be linked to a page that listed and included short descriptions of the main interior sections of our entry level career site. As an added bonus, those descriptions would be keyword rich and therefore search engine friendly.
We re-launched a week ago. According to Alexa and our internal traffic analysis, our traffic is soaring. Even more importantly, so are our candidate registrations.
Steven Rothberg
CollegeRecruiter.com
Written by Rick Gortatowsky March 2, 2006 Been reading this drop down menu thread a little. Several folks have stated that search bots will not crawl drop down menus. I would assume some may but the issue with these is of course the interactive nature of spidering them. I would presume that a lot depends on the coding thereof. However, as a programmer myself there is a very simple work-around for this Miss Sandy!
Make your menus, all the menus you want! But instead of your Menu's transitioning direct to the landing pages use the Document object and transition the browser through static links also exisiting on the page, perhaps on the bottom of the page. This gives you not only the menu advantage but also allows someone who has scripting disabled to transition pages. Spiders will also be able to traverse those "static links".
Now these days depending on site traffic its always a good idea to support both folks who have scripting enabled or disabled. There are numerous examples in source code on the web to do this. Of course you want focus on what your web is built around. Some use Javascript (loath it myself), Java or JSP, there is VBScript, Perl on and on all the way to Active Server Pages. The nice thing about server pages be it JSP or ASP is that pages generate on the server so no party can see your actual code and of course there are just myriads of controls and then some you can use on your web or code your own in many a language from VB to Visual C++ on and on. With ASP its not all too difficult to make seperate pages supporting browsers where scripting is on or off.
All these forms of scripts use the Document Object Model. Basically speaking this object affords full browser control. For example tools such as automated form fill in softwares etc. all use the Document Object. This object has stored in it everything pertinent to a web page, links, properties, content on and on. Its all there. I would suggest something along the lines of testing if scripting is enabled on the users browser and using an iFrame setup. If scripting is enabled then your pages top iFrame uses menus, if not, static links. Then use another iFrame at the bottom with just static links. The menu's code will take the link data off the Links arrary within the Document Object. Thus your menus will transition pages but search bots will instead traverse the static links.
While I have never had the need to code up such a beastie I cannot imagine it'd be all too torturous.
Rick Gortatowsky
Written by Viggie Bala March 3, 2006 I would like to remind that we are still using Javascript for drop down menus solely because of Internet Explorer. Drop down menus can be created without Javascript. Except IE, all other latest browsers will show them. You can see the demo at meyerweb.com (The CSS / Edge link at top left will show a drop down on all browsers except IE).
Mark Bishop and Donna Donohue showed some really cool workable options. It might be a little daunting for the un-initiated, but can be quite simple really. We have used a simple custom built solution similar to them.
A Javascript drop-down menu is un-readable for SE robots only if the entire menu is created through Javascript. So if you create a normal HTML navigation bar with clickable links, and use javascript 'roll over' effects to display drop down menu, you can have both drop down menu & SE friendliness.
For example, if an 'About Us' link in HTML nav bar has drop down menu of 5 different pages, visitors can reach any of these 5 pages directly through the drop down menu.
The 'About Us' in HTML nav bar is also a clickable link, but users will not normally click it. Whereas the SE robot will ignore the javascript and visit the 'About Us' page. This page will have links to the 5 pages in the content area. So SE robot can visit all the 5 pages in drop-down menu through this way.
I was told that the upcoming IE Version 7 is only concerned about tabbed browsing, PNG transparency etc., but it still does not support CSS drop down menus. Not sure whether this is true. If that's the case, we are resigned to this Javascript / SE friendly jugglery for another 5 years.
Regards,
Viggie Bala
viggie.com
Written by Sean Carlos March 6, 2006 I have used CSS styled lists to create drop down menus for my site - both to reduce page bloat and to facilitate search engine crawling. Modern browsers (Firefox, Opera, Safari, Mozilla etc) do not require JavaScript to make this work.
There is a JavaScript solution which will help old IE versions emulate proper CSS support - the trick is to serve this file only if your site visitor is using an obsolete browser. While CSS support is still behind the competition in IE 7 (where's all that innovation?), CSS only drop down menus do work fairly well in IE
7.
A more extensive write-up is available on my site: antezeta.com/search-engine-friendly-menus-css.html
For those already stuck with JavaScript only navigation systems, you should definitely consider Google's Sitemaps program in the short term; Yahoo has a very primitive, one-time option: submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request
I'm not aware of MSN or ASK solutions, yet.
Sean Carlos
Antezeta.comComments (0)
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