How to do SEO with a MySQL/PHP Backend

[exoticpublishing]

Hi there all,

I'm about to develop a site with a DB backend & I want to know how one goes about doing organic SEO if most of the site is DB driven.

There will be some text on the page, but certain things that are pulled from the DB, won't actually be in html/xhtml on the site.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks & have a great wknd.


Michelle

[flood6]

Well, if it is seen in a browser, it has to become HTML at some point. For example, this site is database-driven; right-click and look at the source. All the data is formatted into html by the scripting language (in this case php) and sent to the browser (SE spider). Browsers and spiders don't know the difference.

The SEO concepts will still be the same for a database site. When you're building the site, just keep these concepts in mind from the beginning to make your future optimization tasks easier.

[KeithO]

sites will still get spidered. this site is php driven and gets spidered quiet frequently. blogs are another example.

[hyperdog]

If you have content being displayed from the database that is not in html format, you can (create &) pull related html content and embed it in <noscript> tags for robots, screen readers, mobile devices, and older browsers to find.

Some debate continues on how well dynamic sites are indexed. I personally see a jump in traffic and indexing on sites once I implement modrewrite to divert .html requests to their .php equivalent (a request for the page site.com/Contact.html returns site.com/template.php?page=Contact).

Are these the sorts of tips you are looking for?

[eristoddle]

When I went from html pages to php/mysql is when my seo actually went into high gear. Using a db, you have the option of creating huge, category killer sites. My one tip is to learn mod rewrite. Despite the fact that Google says that they crawl dynamic pages, dynamic sites seem to be put on the back burner. I actually have a site where I left one part of it purely dynamic and used mod rewrite on the rest. The page that still has the dynamic url has no pagerank after the last pagerank update, while the rest of the pages on the site have pagerank assigned.

[incrediblehelp]

eristoddle,

How many parameters were in your URL string?

Can you post an example of the mod rewrite code you used?

[eristoddle]

Only one parameter. You can check it out here:
http://www.ware23.com/
Go to the "new" link on the menu at the top. PR0. The rest of the pages linked to by the menu are PR2.

[brian.mark]

Originally Posted by eristoddle

Only one parameter. You can check it out here:
http://www.ware23.com/
Go to the "new" link on the menu at the top. PR0. The rest of the pages linked to by the menu are PR2.

PR means nothing. The page is indexed.

my long url

Brian.

<flood6 edit: fixed long url>

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by brian.mark

PR means nothing. The page is indexed.

return of the long url

Brian.

I agree PR in a toolbar means not much, but I will always be more confidant in a static URL string rather than a dynamic one. Of course I have seen ranking success and PR values bult up from both so I think it is fair to say this issue is from something else.

eristoddle where are your text oriented links to:

http://www.ware23.com/showpads.php?sort=Date

I am I am not just talking about a sitemap link.

<flood6 edit: fixed long url>

[alienzhavelanded]

PHP/MySQL sites get indexed for sure and as long as you follow optimization techniques this shouldn't be a problem for the original poster.

The debate has moved on to whether they get indexed (well) or not, and some have offered examples of database driven sites using dynamic URLs and suggesting use of mod_rewrite. While this is good, in my experience I've seen dynamic URLs rank just as well as a PHP/MySQL site that doesn't use them.

[PHPfan]

Originally Posted by eristoddle

My one tip is to learn mod rewrite.

I see lots of people talk about using mod_rewrite to make URLs better, but is there a reason why no one seems to use a script that parses the URL chunks and determines what to do?

For example, for the URL www.somedomain.com/locations/wyoming/cheyenne/ why not have a script named "locations" that looks at the URL chunks and determines what to do? That seems a lot easier and flexible than having to setup a bunch of mod_rewrites.

Use forcetype in your Apache httpd.conf (or in an .htaccess file) to force it to use PHP (or whatever you're using) for that script:

<Location /locations>
        ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</Location>

[freehits]

The mod rewrite is the solution. whatever you worry a static site can give you that a DB driven design cant can be worked around with rewriting I would assume.

Since it can create any appearance. I have had 144,000 pages picked up in 7 days for a city by city based site. All are rewritten to statename/cityname/, so I feel thats a success in spidering at least.

[gRF]

Originally Posted by PHPfan

I see lots of people talk about using mod_rewrite to make URLs better, but is there a reason why no one seems to use a script that parses the URL chunks and determines what to do?

That's just one of the ways to go, and it seems if you let PHP script parse the URL, it's easier on the server. Apparently mod_rewrite requires more server ressources then PHP solution. Example: www.tutorio.com

But if you know how to use regex in your .htaccess, you don't really have to write bunch of mod_rewrites.

Also, try to avoid "id=" in URLs and scripts - replace it with "pw=" or whatever. It seems the Google sometimes omits that part assuming that's related to PHP session.

[Deep13]

I general use combination of mod_rewrite and database driven stuff...

I generally have meta tags coming from database and all the URLs are html ones..

you can check example on our company website here http://tajonline.tolshop.com

all PHP urls are turned to html..

take this for example..

original URL

http://tajonline.tolshop.com/v1/indian/index.php?cat=|0|59|&name=giftcertificates

HTML URL (after mod_rewrite)

http://tajonline.tolshop.com/gifts-t...tificates.html

infact you can use CMS like Textpattern also, you can create CSS based layout and content can be from database...

Search Engines should love it and it should improve your ranking...(not talking about PR)

Regards,
Deep

[sem-seo-pro]

Hi all

Googlebot will usually make it through 2 of the Sessions ID's (?) but will usually trip on a third (?)

This seems to be why some database driven sites do well and others don't.

Solution is a Mod Rewrite as was stated for Unix servers and on Windoze servers you would need an ISAPI ReWrite

Clint

[supernatural_247]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

I agree PR in a toolbar means not much, but I will always be more confidant in a static URL string rather than a dynamic one.

Oh, man yes!! Static html does wonders over dynamics. All the static pages in my client sites have gotten much better rankings than the dynamic ones. If you can, you might find a script that will convert the dynamic pages into static urls that will fool the search engines, or actually generate static pages from the dynamic content.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by supernatural_247

Oh, man yes!! Static html does wonders over dynamics. All the static pages in my client sites have gotten much better rankings than the dynamic ones. If you can, you might find a script that will convert the dynamic pages into static urls that will fool the search engines, or actually generate static pages from the dynamic content.

It really depends on the server enviroment and what the website is coded in.

http://www.adapturl.com/

[supernatural_247]

ya know... funny now that you mention it, all the sites on my server are doing really well compared to other client sites that are through hosts such as ipowerweb - and they're optimized pretty much the same...


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[jawn_tech]

I've seen plenty of dynamic pages do well with a high number of IBL's. Taking the PR with a grain of salt, it's very possible to see more green on a dynamic page that's become of great interest to a number of different sites (after the green has had time to propogate through a toolbar update). Though not a reliable gauge, it can be an indicator of the potential of dynamic pages. There used to be a day though where Google had trouble indexing php and dynamic pages, but that's just not the case anymore.

IBL's to a URL, especially with anchor text, is still a great way to boost rankings, applying to either dynamic or static, from what I've seen.