dynamic pages?

[johnm]

I am pitching a client who has a static index page with php product searches in that index page that take you to php product pages.

How can I help him with seo on any other than his static index.htm?

If I can't find a way to index the php pages I will make extra pages and optimize them or try to make product pages first and then links to the php pages.

If you can't tell me for free, what would it cost to get the anwswer? I normally build static pages first, but this guy did the typical dynamic pages first and doesn't want to have to alter the whole php thing.

Any tips, services?

[Advisor]

Many php dynamic pages get indexed these days, so you may not need to do anything. Check over at Google to see if the pages of the site are indexed. If they are, then you should be able to optimize them for high rankings.

Jill

[johnm]

Thanks Jill:

I did allinurl: at google and only 2 html pages and one pdf show up and none of the php ones.

I'm thinking i'll make a really cool and usefull new area of the site for reviews and tips and tricks, that will be great for the users and the engines.

That way I will add fresh new html content and hopefully the php will take care of itself as the engines get better at indexing that content.

Thanks again and talk to you soon,

John

[philophax]

Today there´s no Problem to get indexed pages like this

http://www.communicationconsultants.de/artikel.php3?uid=&item=32&aid=959&ref=

in this url are signs: ? & =

G takes it all

Nice to me :)

thought about mod_rewrite...

[philophax]

Sorry, guess i was something wrong...

The page i posted has a PR3, but is NOT indexed.

?????

Anybody knows, what that means?

Better shutting down googlebar....

[The SearchEngineer]

Agree with philophax, with one exception:

Not ALL the dynamic URLs are good for google.

Name/value pairs that have spaces don't do well and may result in all other values of that particular variable not getting spidered, i.e. section=my+section or section=my%20section are no-no's. The name should be a single word, the value you better keep numeric only, 5 digits, but no hex.

This is backed up by personal experience, but I also surfed a few SERPs aiming to find examples, and have not found any (please, prove me wrong).

A very strong suspicion I have is that there is a limit on name/value pairs to be no more than two. I may have even started to think that the name of the var is of importance.

Think about WHY google and SE in general don't index dynamic URLs with preference, really! It is that it could be ANYTHING that is getting passed through the URL like unique user id's, searches or so that could lead the spider into a loop. Also dynamic pages are more likely to produce duplicate or time-sensitive content for other reasons. That could also mean we'll be safe with variable names of ref= and id= but not likely to get indexed with search=.

If these rules are followed I believe to have seen that there is not even a dampening factor on dynamic URLs, but I would be happy to hear other opinions, too.

[JuniorHarris]

Here is a couple listings on Google (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=site%3Acatalog.us.dell.com+dell.com) which all have four variables. I know I have found listings which have %20 in the url/variables, but these may be the exception rather then the rule. General consensus is the simpler the URL the better the odds of having it indexed [and perform]. The most simplest being spider friendly URL's, and then those with variables. No doubt those with only one or two simple variables may stand a better chance then those with more...

[philophax]

hay there,

found in other forum here:++Optimizing Dynamic Content++ (http://www.highrankings.com/issue022.htm#guest) (thx Jill)

searching for iomega on google found listed www.bluemartini.com/customers/ customer_summary.jsp?CONTENT%3C%3Ecnt_id=107461&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=15507

will try sitemap :) but the site i´m thinking about is written in ancient php (2?)

means Latin to my programmer :(

[The SearchEngineer]

Hey , thanks for the effort. I kind of seemed confident that you would not find these URLs on google, but o.k., I have to recognise I am beaten :rolleyes: .

I am not quite sure what to make of this, though?

Firstly, we have two site examples here that manage to get (some) of their hard-core-dynamic URLs into the listings, the bluemartini URL (site PR 4) seems to stand alone a bit, dell has quite a lot indexed (site PR 7). Trying to think about dynamic URLs I have created myself in my past programmings it is clear that there should be A LOT MORE of those dell and bluemartini URLs around, if google were to treat them all completely equal to static URLs. Apparently it doesn't, only sometimes, but for what reasons?

Secondly, we have my own dynamic URLs, that if hard-core do not work at all. Once I went cautious with my dynamic URLs, there was not a problem at all. It happened on the same day that I changed them on half-a-dozen web sites, and google went mad at my "improved" dynamic URLs. Google did not even employ a dampening factor I suspect (o.k., I do not know how well I would have ranked with the same site in static).

Thirdly, most reports from other webmasters we come across, find it an arbitrary decision, too, which of their URL rank and which don't.

Although, I am not able to give a "scientific" answer through saying what does not work, the stuff we find on google "statistically" suggests that the cautious dynamic URL solution does not have draw-backs, e.g. you have the the whole querystring just "?ref=938579", and if in need you overstuff it with more digits. There should not be anything that you could not program in that format.

Sure, whoever has the chance to go static through making a site map or so, go ahead, that seems safest. I personally can not do that, since our content just gets added to too often. There are some CMS around that allow you to de-cache programmatically, but they are out of reach cash-wise.

It seems like a new subject, but the actual problem about dynamic content (not URLs) for me is the duplicate content issue :( ! I am now trying to overstuff my querystrings referencing several SE keywords to make titles and pages slightly different, but seem to run out of viable keywords. Sure, I can exclude these pages, but that would be a shame would not it :p ? Anyone else like that?

[Christian_SEO]

I would just make the SEO on the dynamic pages dynamic. Then you won't have to mess with the URLs.

The only other thing is to make sure any dynamic page returns valid content by default if the dynamic parameters are not used. This allows you to at least submit all one instance of all pages to systems that do not allow dynamic pages.

Thanks,
Christian
It's not my site, but it's good: http://www.SiteSalesTalk.com/

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by The SearchEngineer
[B]Agree with philophax, with one exception:

Not ALL the dynamic URLs are good for google.

Name/value pairs that have spaces don't do well and may result in all other values of that particular variable not getting spidered, i.e. section=my+section or section=my%20section are no-no's. The name should be a single word, the value you better keep numeric only, 5 digits, but no hex.

search "SEO United Kingdom" no quotes you'll see several examples. It looks to me that Google URL encodes strings (wisely so) it indexes. If you look in the string in the listing it is encoded. The link isn't ;)

I would say that also blows the numeric argument out of the water as well. I hope that 5 digits isn't based on the half baked SessionID thing being preached over at spamworld, the disciples of spam strike again;)

Hex, I'll give you that one:)

[The SearchEngineer]

Hi Webmaster T. The exceptions to my previous ideas in the top 100 in your SERPS are:

- file path United+Kingdom
- alphanumeric querystring value ?Country=United%20Kingdom
- alphanumeric querystring value ?Terms=united%2Bkingdom
- double querystring pairs ?si=1275&so=129

Not quite enough to be "statistically" relevant considering common programming practice on the mayority of high-content (and highly dynamic) web sites out there, as I find !?

I am not claiming to rank for such URLs is impossible, just less likely, and it might even have something to do with PR how far you can get yourself spidered with "exceptionell" URLs. I have also being given an example of a quadruple querystring pair for a domain that was "dell". Still, such examples do not make up for 30-90% of all URLS that are "exceptionell" as I would have found plausible to find within google on average. However, whatever subject I seem to surf, the ratio of such URLs always stays low for some reason, and that reason I can only see in google delibaretaly de-valueing such URLs in most circumstances.

The question of yours whether I deal with SessionIds, no, it is content ids. Also, the content is often relative stable over the dialy period, or so, but still actively changing enough to keep both deep/fresh bot going and not forgetting about my site.

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by The SearchEngineer

Name/value pairs that have spaces don't do well and may result in all other values of that particular variable not getting spidered, i.e. section=my+section or section=my%20section are no-no's. The name should be a single word, the value you better keep numeric only, 5 digits, but no hex.

Search Engineer, don't get me wrong, but, your choice of wording seemed to be saying these were hard and fast rules. The point I was trying to illustrate is I made a single query, which by the way, I knew would return those results. Why because I work with that phrase. If I were to be say looking for a workaround, I could have taken your post as the gospel. for instance:
"you better keep numeric only"

only "where I come from" means I shouldn't have found a single result. I was only attempting to show that another reader may want to keep their options open on this matter! It is obvious that a string of only 5 didgets also breaks Session.SessionID a built in part of the IIS server frequently used for maintaining state. I was also illustrating that "numeric values only" is a pretty hard rule to follow as the query illustrates.

This is backed up by personal experience, but I also surfed a few SERPs aiming to find examples, and have not found any (please, prove me wrong).]

"A few SERPs", I made 1 query and most of your statement was moot. If it is a content solution why even bother with qstring use pathinfo a more elegant solution. I mean, content is in a database or is all known static values. Of course unless you are pulling it out of thin air. Maintaining state is always totally dynamic based on cookie or an action by the user so a qstring is a reasonable choice.
A very strong suspicion I have is that there is a limit on name/value pairs to be no more than two. I may have even started to think that the name of the var is of importance.

Well, I guess if I had read this much closer I would have realized it was based on flimsy facts, but I wouldn't want to say that. I mean, come on, limits on name value pairs? Your possibly complicating things far too much. Obsessing over stuff like this is quite possibly a waste of time, or at least that's what my experience has shown me. But then, what do I know.................

[The SearchEngineer]

Search Engineer, don't get me wrong, but, your choice of wording seemed to be saying these were hard and fast rules.

Hi Webmaster T. O.k., let's just say I learned and revised my position after my first post. I then only quoted from my personal (log and ranking) experience, but I have since been given a few(!) examples of the contrary.

All I can say at the moment, is that there seems to be "save" types of querystrings that we can identify and others that are less likely to get you indexed.

Now, what I am curious to know is how do I differ from these few other sites that managed to get their "statistically" less likely querystrings into their rankings? My spontaneous reaction to this was that my PR of 4/5 wasn't good enough for google to legitimate my URLs to get indexed. Some (!) other querystrings even got spidered on my site, but not indexed, not even through a google site search.

I recognise PR is always a cheap excuse for things that can't be scientifically explained, so I am open for suggestions ... !?

Maintaining state is always totally dynamic based on cookie or an action by the user so a qstring is a reasonable choice.

Uhh, if it is about maintaining user state, ... that I have not had to use yet. If you need to do that personally, I would recommend the cookie solution, and then still offering (default) content for non-cookie browsers, which is exactly what a googlebot is.

If it is a content solution why even bother with qstring use pathinfo a more elegant solution.

Regarding that point, there sometimes are simply legacy issues here with bigger sites, where you can not easily go: "right we have a website with dynamic URLs here that has been live for so-and-so-many years, shall we just expire all URLs and start from scratch". Sometimes, that may not be necessary.

Still, I am interested about your solution for path_info. Please, understand, I dont want to hard-code: neither any content on my ASP pages nor inserting path_info's into my database. So, does that mean using one of these tools that you have to load as an ISAPI filter for ISS?

The tools I have found so far would convert multiple querystring values into multiple directory paths, and that is where I suspect google de-values deep directory paths the same as "deep" querystrings. What do yo think about that? Any specific tips what ASP querstrings rewriting tools to use?