Hi y'all, The boss has gone SEO buggy, 'cause he's reading "SEO For Dummies" (sorry, I don't know the version). He's just reached the part where it says links in JS are bad juju. I tried to explain to him that that's why we have a sitemap, and that in order to have a rollover navigation bar (dhtml) one HAS to use JS. He's very concerned that this will effect our SERP's. So, question time: 1. Is there any other way (that will not hurt our SERP's) to do something like this? 2. And, how much will this hurt our SERP's? Thanks for any and ALL HeLp !!!
By rollover navigation do you mean when a user hovers their cursor over a link, it simply changes the image or color or something of that nature? Or do you mean when a user hovers over a link, a new box shows up on the side with more links?
If the links are being generated by JavaScript then he would be correct. However, if the links are contained in plain HTML and are using CSS and/or JavaScript to show/hide them when they're hovered over, the search engines will be fine. Just remember that the links have to be in the HTML, they cannot be contained in the JavaScript file. A good example of a CSS based dropdown menu is the Son of Suckerfish CSS dropdown menu. Also note that people who don't have JavaScript enabled will NOT be able to use a JavaScript based dropdown menu, so make sure it's accessible to these people as well.
Thanks Dan. I did a little research, read your comment, spidered the site, and then wrote a very convincing (I think) e-mail saying we were ok. Think the disaster has been averted.