Dynamic pages SEO

[smagdy]

Can someone lead me to a simple tutorial/guide for changing the URL of dynamic pages (PHP) so it can be indexed by google at least?

Thanks in advance

[jatar_k]

if you have Apache then mod rewrite would be the way to go

[webmasterworld.com...]

[smagdy]

Hi, again.. thanks a lot for the reply and the other sticky mail that I got..

I read and got it but just still one missing connection here, so i will write an example and correct me if i am wrong please..

lets say ive link that was originaly

<a href="bmw.php?cat=$cat&id=$id">BMW</a>

so after applying RewriteRules it would look like

RewriteRule ^/bmw/([0-9]*),([0-9]*)$ /bmw.php?cat=$1&id=$2

-------------------------------------------

I think that was right so far so now my confusion is in the php file how should the link look like and should i create and empty folder called for ex. bmw

and would the link look like this..

<a href="bmw">BMW</a>

thanks

[smagdy]

anybody?

[jdMorgan]

In a nutshell:

Link on the page: <a href="bmw-$cat-$id">BMW</a> (use php preg_replace to create this link if you can't change the underlying database)

Visitor clicks the link, browser requests http://www.example.com/bmw-32-12

Request arrives at your server.

Mod_rewrite (assuming it's in httpd.conf) applies the following rule:

RewriteRule ^/bmw-([0-9]+)-([0-9]+)$ /bmw.php?cat=$1&id=$2 [L]

Mod_rewrite modifies the local URL-path to /bmw.php?cat=32&id=12 and activates the bmw.php script.

/bmw.php, using the cat and id parameters, produces the correct page with more links like step 1.

Cycle repeats.

If you are interested in SEO aspects, use hyphens, not underscores, and certainly not commas (they are restricted characters and will have to be encoded as '%2C', which is ugly).

To prevent your 'unfriendly' URLs from being indexed, or to replace those previously indexed, add another rule:

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /bmw\.php\?cat=([0-9]+)&id=([0-9]+)$
RewriteRule ^/bmw\.php$ http://www.example.com/bmw-%1-%2 [R=301,L]

This will 301-redirect any direct requests for the 'unfriendly' dynamic URL to the new 'friendly' static URL.

It is not necessary to create any directory or file corresponding to /bmw-32-12 -- There is no required one-to-one relationship between URLs and files.

Jim

[smagdy]

Thanks a lot but this will show
[example.com...] in the URL

so how to let it show just
[example.com...]

[jdMorgan]

Yes, if you want to use mod_rewrite for this application, you need some way to reconstruct *all* of the information in the original (dynamic) URL when looking at only the information in the requested (static) URL.

For example, you can use the static URL-path /bmw to point to /bmw.php with no problem. But then, where will you get the values to populate the cat=32&id=12 query string? The static URL must contain all information needed to call the dynamic URL. It may be in a different form, but the information must be present.

If the above example doesn't do what you need to do, then you'll need to make a complete 'map' of all static URLs and their corresponding dynamic URLs, and make sure that the relationship betwen static and dynamic URLs is unique and unambiguous:

/bmw-sedan-blue -> /bmw.php?cat=32&id=12
/bmw-sedan-red --> /bmw.php?cat=32&id=14
/bmw-cycle-blue -> /bmw.php?cat=33&id=12
/bmw-cycle-red --> /bmw.php?cat=33&id=14

etc. You can then use RewriteMap to do the translation in httpd.conf or, worst-case, build a list of individual RewriteRules, one for each fixed static-dynamic realtionship, i.e. sedan=cat32, cycle=cat33, blue=id12, red=id14. Obviously, the more organized the relationship is, the fewer rules will be needed.

Another alternative is to do the parameter translation (e.g. red->id=14) at the php level, since you'll have database access to help you.

Jim