What's the best way to code and SEO a "today in history" type site?

[DavidJohnny]

I have a new today in history type site, and change home page content daily. Any ideas on what is the best way to do this? (Thinking of SEO.)

Currently I'm using SSI's to load a new table cell each day. I could use a database to pull content each day. Or is there another way to do this?

Also, my content changes every day, and the content does not include my keywords at all. Think of it as changing topics completely every day! What is the best way to optimize this?

Thanks!

[physics]

Personally I'd put a PHP tag in the page where you want the 'this day in history' stuff to show up. This would access a MySQL database which has information for this day in history for the whole year. The proper day would be displayed automatically based on the data (do this in the php snippet). For SEO you can tell your server to parse .html files as .php (search for addtype php html) and make sure to use your target keywords in the title of the page, etc. Actually I'm not quite sure what else you mean by 'with seo in mind' because if your this day in history stuff doesn't have your keywords in it then it won't help you much SEO wise except that it's fresh, changing content. If you wanted you could have other data that changes daily that does have your target keywords in it though...

[DavidJohnny]

Thanks for the reply. Using a database to store the entries makes sense. The way I understand it, the SE's won't see that database data on my home page, which is good, because of the dilution it causes to my keywords.

This statement lost me - "parse .html files as .php (search for addtype php html)". Is this anything you can explain dummied down to a beginner level?

Thanks for the input!

[sullen]

Using a database will not stop your keywords from being "diluted". It'll just make content easier to add and search.

I also don't really see the point in parsing html pages as php (which essentially allows you to add php code to page.html) - if you're using SSIs, presumably they are php (or cfm, asp etc) anyway?

Anyway my strategy would be this:

Home page would have a paragraph of blurb about the site, then a heading and 1 para for that day with a "read more" link beneath it, and then another few keyword rich paras.

<added>Oh yes, and also some changing keyword specific text like Physics suggests. Must read the other posts properly before replying</added>

[physics]

Using a database to store the entries makes sense. The way I understand it, the SE's won't see that database data on my home page, which is good, because of the dilution it causes to my keywords.

Well the SEs will see the database data for 'today' on your home page. I guess this would 'dilute' your keyphrases a bit but it might not have much effect ... If you really want to 'hide' it you can use javascript. You can probably find a free javascript 'this day in history' app that you can just plop on the page if you don't want the spiders to read it.

This statement lost me - "parse .html files as .php (search for addtype php html)". Is this anything you can explain dummied down to a beginner level?

Well, you don't 'have' to do that but you wanted to 'keep seo in mind' Personally I like having the .html file extension even for pages that are actually .php or whatver. On apache it's possible to set a configuration so that .html files are parsed for php code. You can do this by adding the line:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .html

to a file called .htaccess in your web directory. This will only work for apache, though I hear there are ways to do it for IIS. If it's still greek either do more research or skip it.

I also don't really see the point in parsing html pages as php (which essentially allows you to add php code to page.html) - if you're using SSIs, presumably they are php (or cfm, asp etc) anyway?

You can use SSI on .shtml pages or on .html pages if the server is set up to parse .html pages for SSI (with a similar AddType line like I showed above). The point of allowing the pages to be parsed for php code is so that he can put php code (to pull info from the database) in the pages and it'll be executed.

[DavidJohnny]

Thanks guys for the info. I didn't know what "parsed" meant, and that had me confused. But I do now.

The SSI's I'm using now are html pages. My main concern was that the phrase "today in history" and the words "today" and "history" are important keywords for me. And they virtually never appear in the actual content. So most days I have 4-500 words of content that don't have any of my keywords in them.

I'm going to expand my description to add the keywords more, and I'm going to strategically place them within my daily content a few times.

Thanks!

[physics]

If today and history are important make sure they're in the titles and also try to get them into tags like <h1>, <b>, etc. Basic on-page SEO stuff... You might also try to get some links to you with those words, or link back to the home page of your site from every other page with those words. Basically follow good on-page, off-page and site design SEO strategies regarding those words and your site in general.