PHP and SEO

[bostonseo]

A client of mine has a website that sells magazines and is programmed in PHP. They want to concentrate on SEO efforts but honestly I know little about optimizing a website that uses PHP. Can any help with any advice or where to look for more resources?

I've read something about query strings, but honestly that means nothing to me.

Appreciate the help

[Salsa]

Optimizing in php is no different from optimizind in anything else. If there is concern about the .php extension, in httpd.conf or .htaccess, "addtype application/x-httpd-php .php .html [and/or] .htm" and no one but you will know that it is a php file.

[bloke in a box]

I suggest you do a google search for using mod_rewrite.

It basically allows you to use an url such as www.widgets.com/widget-midget to www.widgets.com/?productID=543 without the user realising it. This also of course allows the SE spiders to crawl the site quicker (as they don't think it's dynamic).

One other alternative is to use ErrorDocument handling in .htaccess. Something I've done for my own personal site. Anything that anyone uses as an address www.widgets.com/products/ that doesn't exist is parsed by the index.php file which takes the /products/ variable and passes it to the products page. If the variable isn't recognised, it's then passed to a proper 404 page.

There's pros and cons of doing it both ways, some others might have better suggestions.

HTH. :)