Should I Use An Animated Javascript Responsive Site

[denismilton]

Hi, hope someone might be able to help me with this. I am setting my son up with a website for his small painting and decorating company. However, I am a wordpress stalwart and he has seen a theme which is a javascript animated responsive theme from template monster. Its not my choice just he is adamant that he wants it. However, I am slightly concerned that Google cannot index as well with these kind of sites as they would with a standard HTML site.

I would be grateful if someone could confirm if they can be indexed etc. The content appears in what I can only describe as lightboxes.

Thanks

[crackingmedia]

Hi Denis

Google is much smarter these days at dealing with JavaScript but that doesn't mean to say that excessive Javascript on a page would be OK too. Essentially, the more hoops a search engine has to jump through to find the content it is trying to index the harder it is and the less likely you will achieve the results you want to achieve.

The other aspect to consider of course is user experience which is a ranking factor in Google's algorithm. Sites with lots of bells and whistles can look amazing but sometimes they can be a hindrance to being able to access content too. It's one thing to wow the visitor, but it's another thing to engage with them and prompt them to pick up the phone to call you.

My business do a lot of video production and people often get excited about funky transitions, but in many cases they are just fluff. Most broadcast programmes on TV use just two transitions: straight cut and dissolve.

My point I think is the same as yours, effects can be great, but they need to be used sparingly. You can have the funkiest website but if its not found when someone searches then it's the funkiest website that no-one has ever seen.

Sorry, I have gone around the houses a little, but to answer in summary, yes Javascript heavy templates can be indexed, but maybe not as well as you would want them to be + of course the user experience issue of being able to access content simply to pick up the phone.

I hope that helps,
Peter

[evolvingSEO]

Hey There

Peter really gave you a great answer, but just wanted to add a few things. If you want to see things how a search engine might see theme there's a few options;

• <a>browseo.net</a> is an SEO browser, just plug in the URL of the sample theme for an SEO view
• use the web developer plugin - shut off javascript and CSS and look at the sample site. whatever you can see Google is 100% able to see.
• you can view Google's text only cache of a page by typing cache:http://www.example.com/sample-theme/ and click "text only" - this is very similar to the web developer plugin.
• if you own the site you can use something like "fetch as googlebot" within webmaster tools and examine the code it returns back. look for the text etc you want to be visible to google.

Basically, of those methods fail to show you the content (text mainly) you'd want Google to see, the javascript is being used incorrectly or too heavily.

-Dan