Dynamically Generated Pages and Query Strings
Q. I have a dynamically generated site
which places question marks and equal signs in the URL. My mother's
hairdresser told me that I need to create static HTML pages in order
to show up in the search engines. What do you think?
A. For the most part, the search engines no longer choke on query
strings (those question marks and equal signs) in URLs. Just try to
make sure that your content management system (CMS) doesn't put more
than 3 parameters in, and you should most likely be okay.
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Whenever
I'm asked this question, I check the person's site in Google and
Yahoo -- and 99% of the time just about all of their pages are
indexed already. In those cases, there are not any technical issues;
they simply have to do a better job of optimizing their pages for
their appropriate keyword phrases.
The most important thing to do with a dynamic site is to create
links to the important, optimized pages of the site. Sometimes the
only way to find certain information on one of these sites is to
fill out a form which then conducts a search of the site. A page
that has what you're looking for is then created for you and
displayed in your browser. Unfortunately, that type of page will not
be accessible by the search engines because it doesn't actually
exist on the server. If there are specific pages that are created
through specific search criteria that many people would be looking
for on your site, those are the ones you should create links to in
your site navigation and your site map.
You'll also want to make sure that your CMS is capable of
generating unique Title tags for every page of the site. If not,
you'll have to fix this in the system because this is actually one
of those things that will be critical to your search engine
success.
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