JavaScript Drop Menu - bad for SEO?

Posted by Leo on June 29th, 2007 at 03:49pm

The answer is “Yes” and “No”.  It is heavily dependent on how you write the script.

The theory is that spiders can’t read links hidden in JavaScript.  There is no <a> tag, hence it won’t understand it is indeed a hyperlink.

So, how do we solve this problem?

The answer is “unobtrusive JavaScript”.  2 steps:

1. Write the menu items in simple <ul> <li> <a> tags.
2. Use JavaScript to manipulate it to become a drop menu.

In this case, the spiders would be able to read the <a> tag and identify the links, whilst users would be able to have better experience using drop menus.

Another thing to add is text links at the bottom of the page, linking to the main category pages which should contain links to the other pages.

Bookmark to

Under SEO+ Usability & Navigation