Look into using your web server's mod_rewrite functionality to alter the URL that the search engines see. For an example, look at Wordpress' permalinks or Joomla's SEF (search engine friendly) URLs. What this will do is make all your dynamic pages look more like static ones. If all your PHP pages had unique names like "about.php" and "ourmission.php", then the file name sort of lends itself to SEO already, but that would be a pretty boring website, and probably one that doesn't need PHP, if that was the case. The big issue are pages that take parameters: domain.com/catalog.php?catid=55&prodid=23 You could turn this into: domain.com/catalog/55/23 But that's still not very semantic and doesn't give search engines much to work with. So you can massage it even further with something like: domain.com/catalog/23_Footware/55_Happy_Bunny_Slippers Kind of ugly, but you can use mod_rewrite to turn that into: domain.com/catalog.php?catid=23_Footware&prodid=55_Happy_Bunny_Sliippers then use PHP to extract the 23 and 55 to display the proper data. Depending on the variables you're passing, you could exclude the numbers (which do nothing for SEO) and use PHP to figure out what to display. domain.com/catalog/Footware/Happy_Bunny_Slippers or... domain.com/Footware/Happy_Bunny_Slippers (shorter URLs are favored by SEO as not having "too much information" and some search engines only looking at the first XX characters of the URL means that the shorter the URL, the more info you can pack into it). With mod_rewrite, you can tell it to check to see if a file exists, and if it doesn't, process a more complicated rewrite. So if the catalog is your main source of dynamic data, then you could leave the "catalog" part out and use the domain.com/Footware/Happy_Bunny_Slippers format. If you had other dynamic data, you could leave the catalog in as a clue for the mod_rewrite as to what PHP script to use to process the rest of the parameters. Another thing you can do is use the canonical tag to indicate which pages are duplicates. You may not think you have duplicates, but a common example would be if you have a page, then you have the same page that's just sorted differently. Or if you had a "print friendly" version of a page without menus and such. The content is essentially the same (which search engines will see and think you're trying to stuff the ballot box and make your site look more relevant to that subject when really you're not). So if you have: domain.com/catalog.php?catid=55&prodid=23 and... domain.com/catalog.php?catid=55&prodid=23&sort=alpha or.. domain.com/catalog.php?catid=55&prodid=23&print=1 Then you'd want to set a canonical tag at the top of each of these listings that says: domain.com/catalog.php?catid=55&prodid=23 (meaning that all these pages are the same as "domain.com/catalog.php?catid=55&prodid=23") You may be saying that pages sorted differently are different output. True.. but it's all the same data in the end. Even with pagination. And the biggest thing you can do for SEO isn't really even PHP related. Have good semantic markup. Make sure it all validates and has a proper doctype assigned. And make your content as organic and human as possible. Don't write content for machines and search engines... don't try to "write to keywords" by making your content all awkward by stuffing as many keywords in as possible. The search engines are pretty smart. Write good content and write it for humans... make it relevant to the topic and your audience and the search engines will see that and deliver it to your audience higher in search rankings. There are other things, but these are some of the big ones. -TG ----- Original Message ----- From: Gautam Bhatia <mail2gautambhatia@xxxxxxxxx> To: php-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2009 12:15:45 -0500 Subject: PHP and SEO Workarounds > hey folks, > This is in regards to SEO and PHP, From what i have > read , most (Not all) the PHP Contents is dynamic , which makes it so > powerfull , but it also means that chances of it being indexed in search > engines are less , am i right in saying this ? . If so how do i optimize > my site for search engines which is being powered by PHP and content is > Dynamic. Please guide in this regard. Thank you. > > Regards, > Gautam Bhatia > mail2gautambhatia@xxxxxxxxx > > -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
