Indexing Dynamic Content...

Troubleshooting the processes involved in SEO'ing scripted..

[Eric_Lander]

I am trying to incorporate Brett's diagram into our "standard" SEO projects. When time allows we optimize all of our clientele's sites, and unfortunately, many of the template-driven sites are all dynamically based. I have heard that if a bot sees a "?" in a URL, then it immediately bypasses that submission. Is there evidence of this or proof of "faking" them into indexing them as if they were static pages? ...Or will it be one of those scenarios when hallway and doorway pages will need to be created?

I know there's some random inquisitive questions there... But any assistance would be GREAT.

[rcjordan]

(I'll copy these links from the themes post/diagram [webmasterworld.com] for continuity.)

as for SEO and dynamic content, here are a few related threads on that:
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]

As you've probably determined from the above, I optimized dynamic content by putting it in a frameset and using the NOFRAMES section for SEO. It has worked well enough, but I'd rather have flat, static pages.

However, besides NOFRAMES, another solution has developed. To lighten the load on the cpu, my tech set up a cache for any page called by the script. After the page is served the first time, subsequents calls are redirected to the cached version. INK spidered and indexed the cache, but lists each page under the url of the frameset. (Meanwhile, Google and AV have indexed the NOFRAMES section.) Perfect!

[Brett_Tabke]

Google will index dynamic content if it has a link to it on the page. You can't just submit dynamic links to Google and get it to index it.

Other than that and rc's comments, your other option is to hide some of the content in server side include files (like this entire site).

[pete]

We spend alot of time converting dynamic sites and pages in order that they appear statically to the engines.

We convince the client that the top tier pages should be static.

As far as the extension goes, we have never had a problem with asp extensions, however one or two mentioned in a previous post that its not worth the risk so we have resorted to changing our extensions to htm and executing them as dynamic pages server side

90% of the sites pages are dynamically generated. We use URL replacers to exclude the allergic symbols that spiders dont like amd customize the backend databases to allow for basic SEO

[Robert Charlton]

>>We spend alot of time converting dynamic sites and pages in order that they appear statically to the engines<<

Pete - Can you point me to a reference on this or give a synopsis description of what you do. I'm talking to a client who has a shopping site built around Softcart... and right now you have to press an enter button on a splash page to pick up the shopping cart, and after that wherever you go on the site you're on dynamic pages. Looking at the site, though, a lot of the non-shopping pages could be static, but I don't know then how you'd keep the shopping cart with you.

Also, what kind of page management system do you need to keep track of static versions of dynamic pages?

Lots of issues to be addressed, but I thought I'd ask about the dynamic to static page conversion here, since you bring it up and that's one of the first things I thought needed to be done.

And to throw one more question into this... I hope of general interest... if you built static pages to serve as search targets/doorways, whatever, how do you point them toward the dynamic pages on the site?

[raveon]

"Other than that and rc's comments, your other option is to hide some of the content in server side include files (like this entire site)."

Brett, you don't mean that the server side include content is invisible to the spiders do you (header, footer etc)? The spider is unaware that a page is created with SSI's isn't it?

[Mikkel Svendsen]

Robert, it looks like you have a lot of work ahead of you.

First of all I would do anything possible to get rid of that start/splash page with the button. It is not just a problem for SE's but also a conversion rate killer.

Then I would recomend that you look into some of the URL mainipulation solutions there is. It depends a lot on what platform you are on what solutions are available to you. I am sure there are some post here in the forums describing them.