Asp.net Ajax Client Templates and SEO Friendly

Question

I'm using Asp.NET 4 with Ajax Client Templates for my homepage.

The homepage generates a galley of pictures. Each picture has name ,description and additional details.

My problem is that client templates seems to be very bad for SEO.

This is because Google/yahoo bots see the page before templates load any data (images with descriptions in my case). They see the raw template code instead of actual content.

So from SEO point of view my page contains no relevant data.

This is the template i'm using.

<table id="products" border="1" class="sys-template">  
  <tr>      <img sys:src="{{ PhotoUrl }}" alt="" />
             <td>{{ Id }}</td>  
             <td>{{ Name }}</td>  
             <td>{{ Description }}</td>  
             <td>{{ AdditionalDetails }}</td>  
          </tr>  
  </table>  

Any tips on how to make Ajax Client Templates SEO friendly?

Answer 1

This limitation applies to not only to client templates but simply to all Ajax applications. For resources that need to be optimized for searching, the information must be available from a simple GET request. Currently there's no easy way to make Ajax Client Templates SEO friendly. So if SEO is an important constraint to you, probably you need to look at some other technology.

Answer 2

SEO is very important, and therefore, I suggest you to build a non-ajax version that search engine will able to index.

The challenge is to be able to balance your efforts and results you will get from that task.

As another answerer suggest, maybe you should use another technology, or use it wisely until some initiatives becomes reality.

Further reading:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-for-ajax/19138/

http://seoblog.intrapromote.com/2006/05/seo_considerati.html

http://www.stateofsearch.com/ajax-and-seo-will-they-ever-be-united/

http://www.google.be/search?sourceid=ie7&q=ajax+seo