: Hiding links via AJAX on pages disallowed for indexation for SEO. Good or Bad & Why? I have pages that I've disallowed in robots.txt and if I don't want those pages to leak link juice to

@Murray432

BruceClay.com says: Ajax code included dynamically into a web page cannot be indexed in search engines, providing the perfect haven for content, menus and other widgets for user's eyes only. You can read that here www.bruceclay.com/eu/seo/silo.htm
That looks like a good reason why you should consider using AJAX to hide links. I'm looking for an implementation of that so if you found a good method please tell us where you found it.

It's an interesting point that load time might be increased but I guess if there is going to be some other code loaded anyway for other reasons then the additional routine won't have a big additional impact.

If users with Javascript turned off don't see your links then it's worth trying to guess what percentage will have it turned off. My guess is that they are insignificant.

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@Nickens628

Hiding links via AJAX on pages disallowed for indexation for SEO. Good or Bad & Why?


I can honestly see zero benefit in doing this, so therefore, my answer to your question is Bad.


I have pages that I've disallowed in robots.txt and if I don't want those pages to leak link juice to external and internal links that appear on those pages.


Any properly built search engine will have the decency to obey robots.txt and not process the pages that robots.txt specifically blocks.

This means that whatever anchor target URLs are applied to that page would not have any meaning in terms of link juice distribution unless the target URL is accessible from another URL that the robot is allowed to access.

For this reason, you're wasting time trying to invent something that doesn't need inventing unless you have a crawler that disrespects robots.txt that is a good robot that indexes everything on your site which I doubt.


Why should/shouldn't I use that method?


There are more problems with using AJAX in your case. Users with slow internet connections running web browsers with Javascript enabled will see the links for a brief amount of time before they disappear, and they will only disappear if there are no timeout or other errors while trying to load all resources including the URL called in the AJAX code.

You are definitely wasting time if you are presenting the page to users with javascript turned off.


If I "hide" these links via AJAX what SEO related pros and cons would this method give me?


I see all cons in this.

Think about the user when making your pages. Showing links only to have them vanish moments later will present a terrible experience unless you're making some game where users must guess something within a certain time limit, and even if you are, the users must be aware of it and be able to access an instruction manual so they can understand what is going on.

The second issue is that with AJAX, you're making an extra request to the server. This means it takes longer for the entire page to load, and if others access the same page, then the TTFB (Time to First Byte) will be on average higher which increases the chances of the page to be ranked lower in search results. Google page-speed insights complains about pages with a TTFB of over 200ms. This particular point may sound contradictory based on what you are doing but you asked the disadvantage of your idea in terms of SEO.

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