Stylish design

4 Comments Written by Robert on April 10, 2008 – 5:21 pm

Today I just want to update my Wordpress to the lastest version and transform a few dynamic pages into SEO frindly pages. I know that I can assemble a Web page more than one way. For example, the process can go like this:

• The Web browser requests a Web page.
• The Web server sends a message to a database program requesting the page.
• The database program reads the URL to see exactly what is requested,compiles the page, and sends it to the server.
• The server reads any instructions inside the page.
• The server compiles the page, adding information specified in server side includes (SSIs)or scripts.
• The server sends the file to the browser.

Pages pulled from databases are known as dynamic pages,as opposed to the normal static pages that don’t come from the database. They’re dynamic because they’re created on the fly,when requested. The page doesn’t exist until a browser requests it, at which point the data is grabbed from a data-base and put together with a CGI, an ASP, or a PHP program, for instance, are one of the many content-management systems (such as BroadVision, EktronCMS, or ATG Dynamo).

Unfortunately, dynamic pages can create problems. Even the best search engines sometimes don’t read them.

Of course, a Web page is a Web page,whether created on the fly or days beforehand. After the search bot receives the page, the page is already complete. So why don’t search engines always read dynamic pages? Because search engines don’t want to read them (other programmers don’t want them to, that is). Of course, they can read dynamic pages. Again, a page is a page.

The search engine programmers have discovered that dynamic pages are often problem pages. Here are a few of the problems search bots can run into reading dynamic pages:

Dynamic pages often have only minor changes in them. A search bot reading these pages may end up with hundreds of pages that are almost exactly the same, with nothing more than minor differences to distinguish one from the other.

The search engines are concerned that databased pages might change frequently, making search results inaccurate.

Search bots sometimes get stuck in the dynamic system, going from pageto page to page among tens of thousands of pages. On occasion, this happens when a Web programmer hasn’t properly written the link code,and the database continually feeds data to the search engine, even crashing your server.

Hitting a database for thousands of pages can slow down the server, so search bots often avoid getting into situations in which that is likely to happen.

Fixing your dynamic Web page problem

So, how do you get search engines to take a look at your state-of-the-art dynamic Web site? Here are a few ideas:

Find out if the database program has a built-in way to create static HTML. Some e-commerce systems, for instance, will spit out a static copy of their catalog pages, which is intended for search engines. When visitors click a Buy button, they’re taken back into the dynamic system.

Modify URLs so they don’t look like they’re pointing to dynamic pages. You can often help fix the problem by removing characters such as ?, #, !,*, %, and & and reducing the number of parameters to one. Talk with the programmer who is responsible for the database system for the specifics.

Use a URL rewrite trick — a technique for changing the way URLs look. Different servers have different tools available; mod_rewrite, for instance, is a tool used by the Apache Web server (a very popular system). Rewriting is a system whereby the server can convert fake URLs into real URLs. The server might see, for instance, a request for a page at

yourdomain.com/showprod/20121.html

The server knows that this page doesn’t exist and that it really refers tothe following URL:

yourdomain.com/showprod.cfm?&DID=7&User_ID=2382175
&st=6642&st2=45931500&st3=-43564544&topcat_id=20018
&catid=20071&objectgroup_id=20121.

In other words, this technique allows you to use what appear to be static URLs, yet still grab pages from a database. This is complicated stuff, so if your server administrator doesn’t understand it, it may take him or her a few days to figure it all out.

Find out if the programmer can create static pages from the database. Rather than creating a single Web page each time it’s requested, the database could “spit out” the entire site periodically — each night forinstance, or when the database is updated — creating static pages with normal URLs.

You can get your information into Yahoo! using an XML feed (often known as a trusted feed). However, note that if you use a trusted feed,you’ll be charged for every click to your site — and even then, it wouldn’t get you anywhere with Google, the world’s most popular search engine,because Google does not have this service, nor with MSN or Ask.com. Want to find out more about URL rewriting? Here are a couple of places to look:

Extending Your Page Names

Apache mode rewrite documentation

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