PHP pages vs .htm? which is best?

[mancunian]

Hi I have a very basic 6 page website which somebody wrote for me in PHP.

Can I individually submit each of the pages to the major engines and hoped to have them ranked even if they have a "?" in the url?

eg www.mysite.com/index?p=intro

or do some major engines (UK is my main market) simply not list pages with? in the url.

I am not that concerned about spidering as I am happy to optimise and submit each page individually, although I guess that if the spider cannot crawl the navigation links the page will not rank highly anyway.

I was going to just rewrite the site in html but would rather not unless it will really improve the seo.

Thank in advance - I am a newbie!

[Dreamquick]

As long as you keep the querystring simple and avoid using ID as a variable name for anything other than really simple data then you should be fine.

It might also be worth having a look at mod_rewrite as a quick & easy way to make your dynamic pages appear static.

- Tony

[mancunian]

Thank you for the reply. Where do I get Mod_Rewrite please?

[mancunian]

ps I am on windows 2000 servers not appache

[DoppyNL]

>> I have a very basic 6 page website
6 pages?
If you keep the part after the? short then there is no problem getting indexed.

this will do just fine:

index.php?p=intro

(may become problematic when you've got lots of pages though, wich you say you don't)

[mancunian]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I am tempted to just leave it in php as for reasons I will not trouble you with to convert to html is not as easy as it should be.

Just two questions:

1. Will html pages of competitors be ranked in preference to my php? pages in the major engines? I am trying to get right near the top and have usually succeeded with html (php is new to me!)

2. If I later do convert to html in a few months after submitting the php pages I guess the spiders may regard these html pages as identical to the earlier php pages and not index them?

Thank you for your help

[HelenDev]

If I later do convert to html in a few months after submitting the php pages I guess the spiders may regard these html pages as identical to the earlier php pages and not index them?

I started my site with .shtml pages and switched to php a few weeks afterward. Most spiders seemed to have no problems with this and overwrote the old pages with the new, as it were.

However, Ask.co.uk are still trying to send people to the old pages, so I kind of wish I'd used .php right from the outset and not had to change.