well established site - switch from html to asp?

95% is google, problems maintaining site the solution suggested was asp

[watercrazed]

I have a niche site that is well ranked for a number of terms in google bring about 500 visitors a day. The site has evolved from a brochure site to a site selling a couple of hundred products. The issue is that products and buy now buttons are scattered throughout various informational pages. I need to simplify the price update process. I may have a product featured to 3 or 4 informational pages in addition to it's product page and catalog. When I update the price in the catalog, the buy now buttons provide the shopping cart with the new regardless what page the buy now button is on, but the price on the page seen by the buyer is the old price until they get to the shopping cart. Currently we are manually, changing the price in html, but it is error prone. The only suggestion from the consultant we have worked with is switching over to asp. ( A techie with little knowledge of SEO)

I have seen several posts that indicate significant risks to your rankings if you switch, killer if you don’t handle the shift in the right way.

So I have 3 questions
Is there a good way to update my prices in my html pages from a database without changing them to another file format like asp or php

Is asp less SE friendly than html or is it how asp is used, what are the issues in using it right.

If I do switch to an *.asp structure how do I minimize the SE transition time. A 50% drop in google listings for a month would put me out of business.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

[jetboy_70]

"Is there a good way to update my prices in my html pages from a database without changing them to another file format like asp or php"

You could always enable ASP or PHP parsing on your exisiting .html files, and just add little nuggets of server-side code in the price sections. It's not the best way to take advantage of the power of ASP/PHP by any means, but it's the path of least resistance as far as search engines are concerned.

"Is asp less SE friendly than html or is it how asp is used, what are the issues in using it right."

The browser, and therefore the search engine spider, should only see HTML. The ASP code is parsed on the server, and should be transparent to the client.

"If I do switch to an *.asp structure how do I minimize the SE transition time."

See above. However, are you running your own server. If not, can your host enable ASP without moving your site? I'm assuming your hosted on a Windows box if you're considering ASP? This is going to be the biggest issue. You don't want to have to move your site if you can help it.

[crosenblum]

For example in ColdFusion you can use it to create all the html pages, once a day, after database is updated.

That way you get both benefits, regular data updates, but html pages.

[watercrazed]

Thanks for the help, it look like I will be able to accomplish it eventually, now for some reading up on ASP parsing of existing html files