Forum Moderators: phranque
There are some serious drawbacks to encryption (like it requires javascript to be enabled), but there are some advantages (like encrypting javascript and CSS files.)
With the disadvantages aside how does encryption impact SEO? The program I am concerned about is HTML Guardian (Professional version). Has anyone had any experience using the program with any SEO results.
Anyone have experience with HTML encryption and search engine results?
The publisher claims that there is 'a chance' of increased traffic because corporate filters won't work on encrypted files, which suggest that spiders won't read them either. Clarification is needed on this point.
If my suspicions are correct encrypting HTML isn't a good idea, but what about javascript and CSS?
Encryption only works if the pages you want to encrypt do NOT need to be indexed by any of the engines.
Thanks for the info. Much as I suspected.
The only thing I'm interested in encrypting are the javascript files (which I understand spiders cannot read anyway) and CSS files (which spiders ignore).
This might seem somewhat naive, but assumptions are not always correct. When spiders see encrypted material do they just ignore that material or do some of them stop cold and refuse to read the rest of the page? Spiders can be quirky creatures.
That would keep your encrypted files separate from the files that the engines will be indexing and avoid any possible problems caused by encryption.
