I've done some looking around on the net about this and the most recent article I could find was from 2009, which in internet time is an eternety. I was wondering if it is (still) true that dynamic links are spidered less easily by search engines, and thus always end up lower in the search results?
If yes, would it be an option to force clean url's through .htaccess? I only have one variable per page, so all I would need to do is replace the ".php?id=" by a "/" and I would be set. But if I do this, would htaccess also work the other way around? For example if people type in domain.com/content/one, would they get to the actual page, being domain.com/content.php?id=one or just get a 404?
I hope I explained that correctly.
Thanks in advance,
Ernie A few years ago, the practice was
1. rewrite your dynamic pages into static pages
2. redirect permanently (redirection 301) the dynamic URLs to related static ones. This is for both human visitors and SEO (not to lose the current backlinks to your dynamic pages)
Google said it can now crawl fully dynamic URLs:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html
However, this may be more google marketing than real world since "old" guidelines has been partly maintained:
Quote: If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
See also:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=76329 Thank you very much for the reply! I had the same question and am coming to the opinion that forced static URL's are best Quote: Originally Posted by Jimbob1208 http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/213125-dynamic-links-vs-static-links-ses.html#post1498927 - see 'Implementing a 301 redirect for dynamic pages' section. Thanks, that last link will be very useful I think. Ever try to redirect with php instead of .htaccess btw? Does that do the job equally well?
If yes, would it be an option to force clean url's through .htaccess? I only have one variable per page, so all I would need to do is replace the ".php?id=" by a "/" and I would be set. But if I do this, would htaccess also work the other way around? For example if people type in domain.com/content/one, would they get to the actual page, being domain.com/content.php?id=one or just get a 404?
I hope I explained that correctly.
Thanks in advance,
Ernie A few years ago, the practice was
1. rewrite your dynamic pages into static pages
2. redirect permanently (redirection 301) the dynamic URLs to related static ones. This is for both human visitors and SEO (not to lose the current backlinks to your dynamic pages)
Google said it can now crawl fully dynamic URLs:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html
However, this may be more google marketing than real world since "old" guidelines has been partly maintained:
Quote: If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
See also:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=76329 Thank you very much for the reply! I had the same question and am coming to the opinion that forced static URL's are best Quote: Originally Posted by Jimbob1208 http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/213125-dynamic-links-vs-static-links-ses.html#post1498927 - see 'Implementing a 301 redirect for dynamic pages' section. Thanks, that last link will be very useful I think. Ever try to redirect with php instead of .htaccess btw? Does that do the job equally well?