How to get your database driven dynamic pages into search engines?
Great! That's a cool website you have got! Nice design, layout and features,
I must say! Wow, that's a nice database feature you have incorporated
into your site! Lots of good products too. So you have your website all
ready and ready to go! But one small question, have you thought of the
Search Engines?
Well, what about it you may ask. You will most probably do the same thing
that you do with other non-database sites. You will just submit the site
to the search engines and expect that people start coming in looking for
your products. Well, keep looking! Good luck!
Surprised not having any significant people coming in through search
engines for specific products? Don't be! Don't say I had not warned you
before! Let me try and explain the problem here.
As you know, Search engines send out their spiders to index the pages
of a site. Most of these spiders index most of the content like static
HTML pages, images and other content. But when indexing deep inside, when
they encounter a question mark sign (?), which is the most obvious element
in a database driven page, they just stop indexing there and then. Oops,
too bad! So, is that end of the road for you? Is all the effort that you
put into the page and the database, all of no use for you to attract the
search engines?
Not really! There are some backdoors and tips to get your dynamic page
into the search engines too. Did I hear a sigh of relief from you?! Well,
let me explain to you the five most popular ways of getting dynamic database
driven pages into the search engines:
Exception Digital Enterprise Solutions offers a fix called XQASP
that will remove the "?" in the Query String and replace it
with a "/". But this is a bit costly option. It is priced
at around $250, but it is worth the last cent that you pay for it, as
it is used successfully by many leading websites like ………
to let search engines index their dynamic content.
If you are using Coldfusion
to develop your websites, you'll need to reconfigure ColdFusion on your
server so that the "?" in a query string is replaced with
a '/' and pass the value to the URL. So when the search engine spider
comes to index the page, it will not encounter the "?", and
go ahead and index the complete dynamic page.
Apache server has a rewrite
module that enables you to turn URL's containing query strings into
URL's that search engines can index. The module, which is known as "mod_rewrite",
isn't installed with Apache software by default, so you should check
with your web hosting company and see if it's available for your server.
If you are using CGI or Perl, there is a solution for you too: Path_Info
or Script_Name is a variable in a dynamic application that contains
the complete URL address (including the query string information). To
fix this, you'll need to write a script that pulls all the information
before the query string and set the rest of the information equal to
a variable. You can then use that variable in your URL address.
Put links to your Dynamic pages on your static pages and submit these
static pages to the search engines. The easiest way to do this is to
have a Table of Contents with links to dynamic pages. The search engine
spider of course cannot index the entire dynamic page, but will index
most of the content from it, because of this link on a static page.
Wait, wait, wait! Don't just jump onto your machine and start incorporating
these changes. A small word of caution before your try to implement these
methods. The first four methods make your dynamic page appear to have
its own sub-directory, so the browser will look for images and links there.
You can completely avoid broken links and pages by using all absolute
URL addresses on your page, but that will make maintenance more difficult
later. Alternatively, use URL addresses that are relative to the root
directory of your site, not the document. Use /homepage.htm instead of
../homepage.htm and you'll be just doing fine!
By the way, don't feel dejected about all search engines being the same.
Some Search Engines have the courage to stand up and say, "We Accept
Dynamic Pages into our directory!" Two of the most popular search
engines which accept Dynamic pages are Infoseek and Hotbot. But still
here, you cannot just submit your homepage and be happy. Here you have
to submit individually each dynamic page's URL with all the parameters
in it. But this is much better than not having your dynamic page indexed
in search engines.
So what are you waiting for?? Charge up your brain, get geared with these
tools and take off! Don't be a part of the almost worthless Invisible
Web by having Dynamic Database driven web pages. Get noticed through the
search engines before your competitor does! Act fast, the count down has
begun… 10, 9, 8,…………
