PHP / SEO question

How do I want to approach this?

[sixdeep]

Hi,

I have done my site using HTTP_GET_VARS to pull the content from non-graphic pages onto index.php. For example index.php?c=hosting pulls from hosting.php for content and all hosting.php is is a table with text in it. Now as I am approaching page optimizations, something crossed my mind; do I want to do optimization on the external pages or do I want to tell the SE spiders to avoid these pages and just pay attention to the content that gets placed on index.php?

Thoughts?

[edited by: pageoneresults at 6:13 pm (utc) on Aug. 18, 2005]
[edit reason] Removed URI Reference - Please Refer to TOS [/edit]

[sitemaker]

You mean, your site only has one page as far as search engines are concerned?

Good luck with SEO! You will need it!

[j4mes]

mod_rewrite time :-)

[b]Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/?.html$ index.php?c=$1.php [L][/b]

Save as .htaccess (I assume you're using Apache?)

Then link to each page with [page name].html and the server will return index.php?c=[page name].php

This way, the SEs think there are lots of static pages (and index them) and you can carry on working in the way you are :-)

J.

P.S. My mod_rewrite isn't great, experienced members please point out if there are any mistakes!

[grandpa]

To help understand, are you basically replacing the content on your index page? That's what it sounds like... and that's ok...

But, the question (for clarification) is, does the page name ever change (for non-graphic pages)? In other words, if I'm on your index page, and I click the link for hosting, am I still on your index page with new content, or has the page name also changed?

Can your content files (hosting.php) be viewed independently? It doesn't sound as if they are meant to be viewed that way, but can they be viewed as standalone documents? If they can, then yes, SEO them and let the spiders find them. If they cannot, or if you do not want them indexed, then block them from the spiders (use robots.txt). I'm thinking that you do not want them spidered and indexed.

It sounds to me like your index page is really a template page for the non-graphic pages on your site. If that's the case, then your SEO for that one page just got simpler. Make sure that the markup is valid for each instance of the page. I would also change page title, page name and page description for each "new" page.

j4mes describes probably the best and easiest way to handle the page names. The title, description and so on can be handled with a data table, flat file, or other methods.

[sixdeep]

grandpa and j4mes thank you for the insight. Sitemaker, thanks for nothing lol

grandpa, your gut feelings are right on the mark. Those non graphic pages are not meant to be seen, as they are pretty empty and boring. And yup, if you click hosting then you remain on index.php and it just calls for the text from hosting.php to be shown on index.php?c=hosting. I do have a few pages that weren't set up on this index.php premise, and I will optimize them accordingly. Thanks grandpa, it was nice to get some insight on this.

j4mes, does this mod rewrite involve me changing any of my existing pages or is it just simply a rewrite, upload and go kinda thing? thanks!