optimizing for php pages

[Makaveli2007]

I'm trying to help a friend with the SEO of his website (only basic stuff, for example he didn't use keywords in his title tags & the same title tag for each page & his site sounded too much like it was written for the search engines instead of people).

He has quite a few php pages on his website. To me those pages look just like html pages could look. It doesn't really seem as if there was much of a need for dynamic coding - to be honest however I dont know when dynamic coding really is of use...if I understand this correctly you'd only really need dynamic coding such as php for surveys, forums, etc. but not for a page that does nothing but list products.

Anyways all his product pages of his site are coded in php..and they dont rank or rank very badly for these products. Should he get his web developer to change these pages from php to html (if theres no real need for php)?

Why is php so bad for SEO purposes? Ive always heard this, but I have no idea why it's so bad. Obviously these pages are indexed. Is getting php indexed in the first place the only problem with it or will they usually also perform worse than html pages in the search results? Maybe there's no need to change them from php to html if they are indexed and their ranking badly has nothing whatsoever to do with the type of code they're written in?

THANKS!

[Habtom]

if I understand this correctly you'd only really need dynamic coding such as php for surveys, forums, etc. but not for a page that does nothing but list products.

Probably not.

With dynamic sites adding/modifying/removing products is simpler (assuming it has got an admin section). There are a number of other advantages but it will be a disgrace if I don't mention Sorting, easy pagination, easy layout modification, . . .

Dynamic pages are less favoured by search engines when it comes to being properly indexed.
Indexing Dynamic Content...
[webmasterworld.com]

[britnet]

I wouldn’t advise changing page names etc, I would simply work around them. Like you said he would need to sort out his Meta data tags (title, description, keywords etc), then check his headers, and content to fit into each page/section/theme and so on. Basically if the code looks large, get it cleaned up, make correct usage of links etc and everything will be cool.

Just look through the PHP code (if any) and clean up and work on the HTML output.

[abbeyvet]

Why is php so bad for SEO purposes? Ive always heard this, but I have no idea why it's so bad.

It isn't - what the extension of a page is makes no difference at all, or even whether there is an extension at all.

What you seem to have here is pages that do not make any use of PHP functionality using a .php extension. Which makes no practical difference from using a .html extension but doesn't do any harm either.

So, you are essentially dealing with the HTML so just treat the pages from an optimising POV just as you are all other pages.

Having said that, are you looking at the pages on the server or by viewing their source in a browser?

[Makaveli2007]

source in a browser

[abbeyvet]

source in a browser

Oops - be careful then!

There is probably a lot going on in those pages before you see them - the PHP is interpreted by the server, the HTML is assembled according to instructions and then shown to you, with all the product information coming in from a database. So they very likely do need to be PHP. You won't see the PHP in the source - but that does not mean it isn't creating the page.

I think you'd need to speak with the developer of this site and establish what parameters you are working within before going much further with optimisation suggestions.