html vs php

[muskie]

I have always thougt html pages ranked higher than php pages on Google and all of the search engines. I have recently witnessed a competitor rebuild their site. Every graphic link and link text on their home page is html. For the four most major keyword phrases in our business they have shot to the top of Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. and seem to be very solidly stuck there. Does anyone else out there think html pages rank higher than php pages?

[defensity]

Well... the short answer, is false - one is not better than the other.

However, it all depends how the site was built, organized - site architecture, URLs, etc. -

[AboutWeb]

You can mask files extensions by using .htaccess rewrite URL so your homepage.php could look like homepage.html or simple homepage.
I don't think that your competitor really made static pages in HTML and managed to get himself to top SERPs on Google. It would be a huge work and it will take a lot of time to build hundreds, thousands of static HTML pages. Because I don't think your competitor is ranking so good with only 5-10 pages.
The key would be to simplify your code, remove unnecessary lines, and make it WC3 valid. You can do that using PHP in combination with HTML (PHP outputs HTML)..this is the way how the major CMS's work now a days.

[Edit] One more thing, before I forget ) : Maybe he was referring to dynamic pages in PHP like this one: index.php?id=2. In this case it's not a surprise that you won't rank good. You need to make "pretty links" with .htaccess rewrite url engine.

[morestar]

I believe there was a time when most people believed .html files ranked higher than .html. I guess one of the reasons was speed - page loading speed they thought was helped with HTML files because there is only one connection to the server - the page. I remember using OS Commerce (and almost killing myself) quite a bit for clients and with OS Commerce's cousin CRE Loaded, you could add a module that would make all your PHP pages HTML - all for SEO.

I honestly never found an ounce of a benefit of HTML pages in the search results - anything quite measurable and to date, I believe the belief that HTML is better for SEO is completely off now - a good link from a good article published at a good website can boost a website much quicker and easier than changing a page into HTML PLUS Google (for instance) would rank a website against another in such a way.

That's my take although it's still debatable and a lot of people feel otherwise about the idea...

[defensity]

Well, i think it all started waaay back when Google admitted it had trouble indexing pages with variables in it, such as index.php?page=1&id=23&sid=4.
Google can handle these URLs fine now and the general consensus, is to keep the number of variable in a URL to 3 or less.
But obviously URLs like index/page1/id123/sid4 is better for optimization purposes.

[deepsand]

Hm-mm.

Considering that there is no contextual difference between files with HTML and PHP extensions, and that it is the content alone that is of interest to an indexing engine, what basis is there for believing that any SE favors one over the other?

[Sokolenko]

Caitlyn is absolutely right

[LD]

Caitlyn is absolutely right

What I find amusing is that someone in post #8 agrees with with post #7, who basically posted the same thing as what deepsand posted in post #6.

[morestar]

What I find amusing is that someone in post #8 agrees with with post #7, who basically posted the same thing as what deepsand posted in post #6.

I think it's possible that in this case, the OP needs a few "they're right" responses in order to believe. Although looking at Deepsand's reputation, if one is apt enough, should be able to make a decent determination as to whether he should be trusted...I'm assuming...

[morestar]

But I do get your point as I was going to delete those two posts as they weren't really adding anything productive to the thread other than a "I agree" which we don't stand for here at WPW. Active contributions fellas!