Perfectly coded AJAX with fallbacks, and still no Google love?

You’ve probably seen it too… Great looking websites coded with all sorts of fancy AJAX functions, and it’s done absolutely right. If you disable javascript, all the links that were first used to show content or do an action on the current page, now take you to a new page on which the content you’re expecting is shown. Some people claim this is the perfect mix. It’s not. You know why?

Users don’t browse with javascript disabled
“So what?” You might think. Well, to rank, you need links. To rank well, and to get all your pages indexed, you need both links to your domain, and deeplinks to your content pages. The problem with a site as described, is that the user never ever sees the complete link. He’s got his javascript on, and will just see the domain in his location bar, and that’s it. Now say this user likes this site so much, that he blogs about it to tell his friends. What do you think he will link to? If you’re lucky, he links to the domain and you get at least some of the love. If you’re unlucky, he doesn’t link at all.

It’s all about Linkability
This is not just whether your great site, with perfect content or tools and your pretty layout will make people want to link to you. It’s also about making it easy for them to (deep)link to you, and to exactly the content they are interested in. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you made it easier for people to use your site when you let them stay on one page. People have been browsing the web for quite a while now, and they expect to go from one page to another when they click on a link. It’s not that they’ll leave if that doesn’t happen, but you’re denying them the possibility to deeplink. In that process, you’re denying yourself a whole lot of deeplinks. And thus a whole lot of Google love.