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Designing Rich Internet ApplicationsFor Search Engine Accessibility
 
Designing Rich Internet Applications For Search Engine AccessibilityPage  o 8
Rich Internet Applications create new opportunities. Themost undamental o these is the ability to create Single PageInteraces (SPIs). A SPI is an interace that consists o a singleHTML page. Additional inormation that is required, whenthe user clicks on a ‘link’ or when some other event occurs,is not supplied by means o a traditional ull page reload,but is instead retrieved via an XML message. The originalpage remains intact, its contents or state is simply updatedby the contents o the XML message. JavaScript is used toacilitate this whole process. Although it is not mandatory tocreate a SPI, when using Backbase’s sotware, a SPI provides amore intuitive user interace and smoother user experience. There are a ew questions that need to be answered howeverwhen you make use o this new paradigm. One o the mainquestions is that o search engine accessibility and deeplinking. The web sites that have been created up until now, consistalmost entirely o Multi Page Interaces (MPIs). These websites and applications consist o multiple unique pages, whichmay or may not have been dynamically generated. Since eachpage, and or dynamic pages every page state, has a uniqueURI; it is very easy to link to any page or state within this site.Navigation between pages is done by the user clicking onlinks or submitting orms, both o which contain the locationand state inormation or the new page. It is these uniqueURIs that make deep linking possible. Deep linking does not just link to a particular web site, but links directly to a specicpage within the site. It is this MPI paradigm which inorms therobots which are used by search engines such as Google orYahoo to index the inormation in web sites. Search bots aresotware agents that ‘crawl’ through web sites; they start atthe index page and, ater categorizing all o the inormationon the page; they ollow the links on this page to other pageson the site. In this way they crawl through the entire web site,visiting any page that has been linked to using a link tag o the type:
<a href=”nextPage.html”>Next Page</a>
 
However in an SPI, the linked page structure that the searchbot is expecting, has been extended with BXML commands,which indicate the use o include les, load commands andorm submissions, which only partially update the page,instead o causing a ull reload as is the case with normalorms. Since search bots aren’t proper web browsers, theydon’t understand or execute any JavaScript. This means thata Backbase SPI needs to be specically designed to work with these search bots. This article puts orward a set o guidelines, which you canuse to design your SPI or maximal search engine accessibilityand shows you techniques to allow or deep linking into yourSPI.
Introduction
 
Designing Rich Internet Applications For Search Engine AccessibilityPage  o 8
Several approaches are available or making your web siteaccessible to search engines; these approaches dier inthe level o indexing, which is obtainable and how this isachieved. For certain sites, it is not necessarily a requirementthat every part o the site can be indexed by search engines.For example, a site, which provides a web-based e-mailservice, does not require every single piece o inormation onthe site to be indexed by a search bot. Other sites, however,do require that every piece o inormation can easily be oundand indexed by search engines. For example, a web site withinormation about the courses provided by a university issuch a case. Backbase has identied the ollowing strategiesor getting a SPI indexed by search engines:
Lightweight Indexing
: no structurally changes are madeto your site; existing tags such as
meta, title
and
h1
areleveraged.
Extra Link Strategy
: extra links are placed on the site,which search bots can ollow and thereby index the wholesite.
Secondary Site Strategy
: a secondary site is created,which is ully accessible to the search engine.For each o these strategies the ollowing questions will beanswered: To what extent is the content o the page indexed?Can links be ollowed on the page (e.g. link elements (<ahre=”xx”>) or
s:include
elements)?When a link is ollowed by the search bot, what is thestatus o the URL that is being indexed. Can this URL bedisplayed by browsers or will some type o redirection berequired?
Lightweight Indexing
 This strategy should be used i only certain key inormationneeds to be indexed by search engines. In this case it isrecommended that you take the ollowing steps whendesigning your SPI:Use a
title
element in the document head, preerablycontaining one or more keywords that specically relateto the contents o the site. For example:
<title>BXML WebMail – Sign In</title>
Use a
keywords
 
meta
element with a
content 
attributecontaining some appropriate keywords. For example:
<meta name=”keywords” content=”WebMail, e-mail, bxml, mail” />
Use a
description
 
meta
element with a
content 
attribute,which contains a relevant description o the web page. The value o this element is oten printed as part o asearch result by Google. For example:
<meta name=”description” content=”A FreeBXML WebMail application. This uniqueWebMail application offers the look and feelof a normal Windows application, with theease and portability of a web-based client.”/>
Place
key content
within the main HTML structure andnot in an include le, or some other dynamically loadedcontent. I possible, place this important content withina
h1, h2
or
h3
element, since search bots deem these tocontain more important inormation. Remember thatthese tags can be styled in anyway you want using CSS.It should be noted that these points can also be put to gooduse, in the design o your SPI, in conjunction with the extralink strategy or the secondary site strategy. In
summary
by using this lightweight-indexing strategyonly the content supplied by the
title
and
meta
elements andthose elements that are directly located on the index pageis indexed. No links o type
s:include
are ollowed; thereorethere is no requirement to deal with redirection. This is not avery ull indexing scheme, but it is extremely simple to applyto your site.
The Extra Link Strategy
 There are two main approaches to making a site ullyindexable by search engines: the extra link strategy and thesecondary site strategy. The extra link strategy is the easiesto these two to implement and it can make the site entirelyindexable by search engines, but does not create a secondarysite in normal HTML and is thereore not accessible to olderbrowser, which are incompatible with BXML. The essence o this strategy is to create an extra link on the main SPI indexpage or each include le, whose contents you wish to beindexed. Some experimentation has revealed that the extralinks must be o the type:
<a href=”include1.html”>include 1</a>
Making SPIs Search Engine Accessible
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