PHP and Search Engines

[leesw]

Hi,

I am an SEO who has strictly worked with static, HTML pages because of the success I've had with them in terms of search-engine ranking with our desired key words and phrases (familydynamics.net has many number one rankings with important phrases).

Now I'm launching a site with a friend who does databases. We need a database for this site as it is a community-based site. We are using PHP.

Will Google and Yahoo even index PHP pages? I've made sure that the meta is individualized to the page and that the title and body text of the pages are all different and relevent.

Any ideas, suggestions, bad news?

Lee

[jestep]

The search engines dont have too much of a problem with dynamic pages. The unique title and meta will definately help you out. Also if you can provide a link to the dynamically generated page in a site map or somewhere where the link itself is static it usually helps the page out quite a bit. Try to keep the query string to a minimum. One or 2 variables is usually best. Otherwise if it does get to be a long string you can use chmod to cut down the length or get rid of the ?, &'s etc.

[bhartzer]

The search engines don't have problems with php. In fact, because of many of the dynamic features of php I'm able to get very good rankings.

[leesw]

Ok. But why have I received such a cold shoulder with a message board of mine? It's at http://www.gracecentered.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi

It's active but has a 0 page rank and I can't get it to come up in Google or Yahoo. The main web site I can (gracecentered.com) but not the message board. None of those topics or anything.

Lots of sites link to it and I have meta tags in it but still a 0 page rank.

That's why I'm afraid of dynamic web sites. Any suggestions?

Lee

[flood6]

http://www.gracecentered.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi

Lots of sites link to it and I have meta tags in it but still a 0 page rank.

That's why I'm afraid of dynamic web sites. Any suggestions?

Google shows 0 inbound links (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-menuext&q=link:http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Egracecentered%2Ecom%2Fcg i%2Dbin%2Fikonboard%2Ecgi) for that url.

More inbound links will get you more PR (for what it's worth) and help with positioning.

That page is not in Google's index (http://64.233.167.104/search?sourceid=navclient-menuext&q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gracecentered.com%2Fcgi-bin%2Fikonboard.cgi).

Assuming there is nothing against google's TOS on that site, inbound links will get it indexed.

Dynamic URL's with a reasonable number of variables can be indexed and can rank just as highly as their static counterparts in the major SEs. URLs with (about) 5 or more characters like &, +, =, ?, etc. might have difficulty being indexed. Other than that, there is nothing to be afraid of.

[leesw]

What's strange about that is that there are many links to http://www.gracecentered.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi and have been for over a year. I've worked on them for a long time.

But Google hasn't indexed it.

Lee

[bhartzer]

It looks to me like that page you're talking about is banned in Google for some reason.

[jestep]

I think so too. I have found quite a few links into the site. Where does the main http://www.gracecentered.com page redirect to, and what kind of redirect are you using?

[leesw]

Ah...the redirect. I didn't think about it affecting the Message Board.

I'm redirecting because my site was part of the Ibelieve.com Network. Basically, the articles on my site appear on Ibelieve.com and I can put ads at the end. The also link to the site. Because Ibelieve receives a great deal of traffic, I've been doing this.

But I'm working on making a Gracecentered.com stand-alone and just supplying Ibelieve.com with content in exchange for the traffic and ads.

So this problem could be remedied soon. Looks like I have a few months to wait on Google to see that it's not redirected anymore. Right?

Lee

[jestep]

Once you remove the redirect and make the site, I would give it about 2 weeks. If you aren't indexed by then than I would say something is up. At that point start emailing google, to see if they will do anything to help.

[Martin Smith]

Dynamic URL's with a reasonable number of variables can be indexed and can rank just as highly as their static counterparts in the major SEs. URLs with (about) 5 or more characters like &, +, =, ?, etc. might have difficulty being indexed. Other than that, there is nothing to be afraid of.

Agreed, should you find that you're having trouble with long/parameter heavy URLs not getting indexed, it is worth creating a rewrite rule and rewrite to a sensible filename.

[amser]

Hi,

Just wandering if anyone knows of a good resource for information on getting rid of ? from the URL and replacing them with /

My site is www.british-breaks.com and although most of the pages are indexed in Google, I have some pages which have three variables.... and these dont seem to do so well.

Will this make a difference ja think?

Cheers

[achronister]

amser - for Apache just use MOD rewrite, and for IIS there is a software solution called ISAPI that can do the same.


leesw - our entire site is in ASP and we maintain very good rankings. In fact, I prefer it to HTML. You can use SS includes to create unique titles and content for each page, and managing it becomes very easy. Aim for 1 variable in the URL if possible, 2 is probably still acceptable.

Keep in mind it will take the search engines longer to first index your pages using variable, but they will be crawled eventually.

[grtboss]

Will Google and Yahoo even index PHP pages? I've made sure that the meta is individualized to the page and that the title and body text of the pages are all different and relevent.

Any ideas, suggestions, bad news?



The majority of my site is in PHP, but I have a few static pages. I have never had any trouble being indexed, and my google PR is 5. As far as dynamic pages are concerned, I don't think you have anything to worry about.

[sandis.viksna]

Well, dude, ask your admin to put .html extensions also parsed by php. and job well done. btw, if u're smart, you can set each page an nice html name, like

green-apples

and then you hit save button in your CMS (content managment system) and a file is generated - green-apples.html

and what's more.

you have 2 options:
option one that site actualy can be generated as static html, so it will be faster and so, or also you can use a simple reference to template, for example

<?
$id = "green-apples";
include("templategenerator.php");
?>

and you're done ; )) 2 line .html page that parses PHP and you're having a beautiful auto generated content page ;))) simply, isn't it ; ))


it's the way I do : )

Sandis Viksna

[seozest]

Hi Lee,

Dynamic pages dosent make much difference. But take care while linking pages. Use Href not Javascript for linking pages. Also dynamic sitemap will great help. This is also applicable to static pages.

[lutenegger]

I did a quick search on google and no url for gracecentered.com is indexed. If you put in
site:gracecentered.com you get no results, indicating no indexing and the reason you have a page rank of 0.

[flood6]

It has something to do with www.gcmagazine.net .

When you look at the cached version of gracecentered.com (http://64.233.167.104/search?sourceid=navclient-menuext&q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gracecentered.com%2F) it shows "This is G o o g l e's cache of http://www.gcmagazine.net/ " in the google header.

This redirect/mirror orwhatever it is might be the cause of the problems.

[sem-seo-pro]

Hi there

This might be your problem

<html>
<head>
<title>Grace-Centered Magazine -- Devotionals and News for Today's Christian</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>

There is no meta or robot info.. Contrary to what the experts say...google DOES crawl the metas.....

As for a database system and search engines MaxDev has a CMS that generates dynamic meta keywords based on page content.

Hope this helps

[ronniethedodger]

It has something to do with www.gcmagazine.net .

When you look at the cached version of gracecentered.com (http://64.233.167.104/search?sourceid=navclient-menuext&q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gracecentered.com%2F) it shows "This is G o o g l e's cache of http://www.gcmagazine.net/ " in the google header.

This redirect/mirror orwhatever it is might be the cause of the problems.

That is it exactly. I just noticed that myself.

Also, Yahoo does NOT have a problem with this setup for some reason. They are showing over 200 pages under the gracecentered.com domain. Most of those (if not all) are for the ikonboard.

I have seen a similar problem on a limo site.

Google is showing backlinks for the gcmagazine.net domain, as well as over 130 pages (none for the ikonboard though). Yahoo has over 200.

[rmerts]

Yes, they will index php pages with no problem. You do want to make sure and have good title, keyword and descriptions that relate directly to the page(s) you want indexed. We have several static PHP and dynamic PHP pages that are indexed regularly by Google, MSN, Yahoo, Inktomi, etc and haven't experienced any problems...yet anyway.

Ron Merts

[debtfree95]

There is no problems with php, in fact I am getting better ranks because I can reduce my work by using smarty or similar cms.

[HardCoded]

Contrary to what the experts say...google DOES crawl the metas.....

I'd be interested in any evidence for this.


Dynamic URL's with a reasonable number of variables can be indexed and can rank just as highly as their static counterparts in the major SEs. URLs with (about) 5 or more characters like &, +, =, ?, etc. might have difficulty being indexed. Other than that, there is nothing to be afraid of.

And this. In fact, you can show that the opposite is true with ? urls in this very forum. My experience has been that getting rid of even one GET parameter has an immediate, positive effect on both PR and rank.

[javajack]

Lee, I use php on all my pages and have little to no luck with Google, however hits from yahoo! are out shining all other engines. Currently sections of the page are set up to load dynimaicly but currently each time a page is loaded it is the same page. I will be adding some random sections soon and wonder if that will effect the SE's listings and review of the page.



Hi,

I am an SEO who has strictly worked with static, HTML pages because of the success I've had with them in terms of search-engine ranking with our desired key words and phrases (familydynamics.net has many number one rankings with important phrases).

Now I'm launching a site with a friend who does databases. We need a database for this site as it is a community-based site. We are using PHP.

Will Google and Yahoo even index PHP pages? I've made sure that the meta is individualized to the page and that the title and body text of the pages are all different and relevent.

Any ideas, suggestions, bad news?

Lee