Interesting post, and I do agree, it is important.
Your testimonials example is good, and is definitely a reason to promote the idea, but as with anything, I suppose there are several different angles on this. In the case that you use AJAX to drive a "linear" process (say a series of login screens), there's no advantage to having Step 5 indexed and accessible, without ever beginning at Step 1.
Worst case, we can always fall back to the flash band-aid, keep the same HTML content all on the same page, just place it -10000 off-screen where only the robots can locate it...but this, along with the "right way to do this for SEO" above are labor intensive...
Your testimonials example is good, and is definitely a reason to promote the idea, but as with anything, I suppose there are several different angles on this. In the case that you use AJAX to drive a "linear" process (say a series of login screens), there's no advantage to having Step 5 indexed and accessible, without ever beginning at Step 1.
Worst case, we can always fall back to the flash band-aid, keep the same HTML content all on the same page, just place it -10000 off-screen where only the robots can locate it...but this, along with the "right way to do this for SEO" above are labor intensive...