Forum Moderators: phranque
I feel as if i have read a lot about this topic, and asked a lot about it.....however, i never seem to have found an answer.
I guess part of the reason for this is the constant updates in technoloy and software etc. Something that may have been so last year, may now not be so this year for example. Meaning opinions will change.
Anyway, i have recently received 3 powerpoint presentations from a SEO conference. I am a little disapointed to say the least. They don't so much advise against dynamic pages.......they pretty much rip them to shreds in every way possible...........without offering much of a solution.
So what is the deal with Dynamic pages and SEO's? I here some people 'declaring' one thing, then others 'declaring' the exact opposite.
I am beggining to find it all a bit confusing, and wondered what other peoples opinions on the matter are?
What exactly is the definition of dynamic? I jushad thought it was anything from a database, or a current ASP script i.e. todays date etc. But from what i have read in these presentations, they seem to be saying it os only dynamic if your URL contains variables i.e mydomain.com/index.asp?variable1=something&variable2=somethingelse.
If this is the case, which i don't think it is, then surely i can pull the data from within a page rather than passing the variables in a query string, and all will be fine?
One of the presentations also claims that google does not pick up? in URL's. However, I had heard before that google tries to read ALL pages. Granted, it may miss some from time to time, but in general it does try to pick up most pages......dynamic or not.
If it absolutely 100% did not, then why are there always links to dynamic forums and dynamic news pages etc when i do a search? It does obviously pick them up somehow.
Also, i had heard a whil ago that SE's do infact read content pulled from a Database via ASP. I have also heard that it doesn't. Does it? I think it does, but this opinion is not based on facts, it is based on experience of searching for some of my own sites, and the descriptive paragraph on the search result IS from the database.
Do search engines read Database content pulled onto an ASP page?
I do apologise about going on a bit, but i am begining to find the whole thing a little confusing. So i thought i would open a can of worms and see what all you guys thought about the whole thing, whether factual or from experience.
All comments would be very much appreciated.
Regards
Webboy
Do search engines read Database content pulled onto an ASP page?
Absolutely.
That said, I think your success with a database driven website depends on how you set it up, and how you pull the content from the database.
If you keep your URLs as short as possible, with as few special characters (?,&,=, etc.) as possible, and you set up the pages to have custom variables as a well optimized site would have, you will do just fine.
It is when people do not think of the search engines when creating their dynamic website that their pages don't get picked up and ranked well.
If this is the case, which i don't think it is, then surely i can pull the data from within a page rather than passing the variables in a query string, and all will be fine?
That is one way of doing it. I can say with 100% confidence that search egines can read dynamic content. You can make their life easier or harder depending on what you do. For example if you have long complex urls with more than 1 url parameter (eg page.php?=a=1&b=2&c=3) you may well struggle.
You could of course rewrite your parameters to make them look static so the above would look like :
page/1/2/3.htm or similar.
For that you will need a rewrite fascility. Mod_rewrite on apache and IISRewrite on windows.
To find out what will and wont be indexed on a page (eg dynamic date) have a look at the source. Well to cut a long story short you are fine if the stuff you do is server side (processed as part of asp, php etc) as all the browser sees is the html output.
hth a little
I will have a look at IISrewrite.
More comments welcome from everyone!
Dave
I should also add that you need to be creative and direct those indexing spiders into the database so they can pull content. Sub-categories with index pages have helped considerably in getting the spider to index.
I used to think I did SEO, but then again I used to think me websites are dynamic, which by some popular definitions they aren't.
Tell those folks, please, to have a brief glance on http, cgi definitions, addressign schemes, and just the basics that make the net tick. Shouldn't tkae more then an hour to pick up grassroots knowledge.
I'm running a 80000 page site, and it doesn't have any real directorsy or files at all. Neither does it have any? or & or = anywhere, and why should it. is it dynamic? Damn right it is. Does google pick it up? Heck Google just loves that site. If they even consider using the QUERY_STRING (that's what it's called, if they ask) for anyhting but a query, then they're doing something wrong. Now I'm the first to admit that query needs a definition of itself too.
But if you call a search result a query, but a listing or product page not, then you're not far wrong. And if you use the tools for what they were designed (and many of these SEOs don't seem to bother looking up what they are designed for) then you won't be far wrong.
sorry about that rant, I'm touchy about pretty URLs.
No for more practical things, I recommend to replace all variable based URLs with virtual folder base URLs, and remove all extensions from file names.
so your site shouldn't be
domain.com/products.asp?id=12345&showdetail=1&sortdata=up
instead it should be
domain.com/product/12345/showdetail&sortdata=up
Hope you won't take those folks to seriously, and instead pull up some literature yourself, and perhaps point out their mistakes the next time you meet them ;)
SN
Google seems to have no problem at all with my sites.
