Q and A: Will I lose traffic if my site becomes database driven?
Dear Kalena...
Our site is partially database-driven, but each category has its own distinct html page, with all meta tags oriented to that particular product.
The question I wanted to ask you is: if we change to a fully database-driven site (i.e. one page called, say, “category.php” generates all the product listings), will this have a major effect on our traffic? Each product category will still have a unique URL due to variables displayed in the URL (ie viewcategory.php?id=123) and easily have metatags driven by the database according to our unique metatag policies.
Do search engines like this? Do they mind going to viewcategory.php?id=123 (and about 250-odd other locations based on viewcategory?id=xxx) as opposed to, say, red-shoes.htm, or to search engines is it all the same?
thanks
Pat
Kalena's Answer:
Dear Vic
If you move to a database driven site, the bad news is that, yes, you will almost certainly lose a lot of existing rankings and traffic. Search engines prefer static HTML links and static file names are better for ranking purposes because you can include keywords within the filenames (e.g. category/shoes/red-shoes.htm). Unfortunately, even though you plan to give each page a unique URL, some search engines will still see viewcategory.php?id=123 as viewcategory.php because of their inability to distinguish various parameters or session ids and therefore assume that your site consists mostly of a single page. The more parameters you include, the more problems search engines have and the less likely those pages will be indexed. Although, with Google's new SiteMaps tool, the dynamic page indexing issue may now be lessened.
The best solution if you're worried, is to remove the parameters in the URLs, keeping the web pages static rather than dynamic. If that’s not possible, you can integrate a parameter workaround on the site that removes the offending stop symbols from the URLs automatically and makes the pages spider-friendly.
More information is available from the Site Point article by Chris Beasley and the SEO Consultants article by Thomas A. Powell and Joe Lima, or even John Dyson's article.
There are a number of workarounds you can implement to ensure your dynamic page content is indexed by search engines. These workarounds generally involve removing the parameters from your dynamic page URLs and they vary depending on the server used to host your site and the technology used to build your site:
Remember to place use permanent redirects on those old page URLs or create a custom 404 error page so you don't lose traffic. Even if you convert your site to PHP, consider keeping at least 10-20 pages on your site static, to ensure a lot of content gets indexed and you create a lot of entry points to your site in the search results pages. Perhaps have a static page for each product category or brand?
Our site is partially database-driven, but each category has its own distinct html page, with all meta tags oriented to that particular product.
The question I wanted to ask you is: if we change to a fully database-driven site (i.e. one page called, say, “category.php” generates all the product listings), will this have a major effect on our traffic? Each product category will still have a unique URL due to variables displayed in the URL (ie viewcategory.php?id=123) and easily have metatags driven by the database according to our unique metatag policies.
Do search engines like this? Do they mind going to viewcategory.php?id=123 (and about 250-odd other locations based on viewcategory?id=xxx) as opposed to, say, red-shoes.htm, or to search engines is it all the same?
thanks
Pat
Kalena's Answer:
Dear Vic
If you move to a database driven site, the bad news is that, yes, you will almost certainly lose a lot of existing rankings and traffic. Search engines prefer static HTML links and static file names are better for ranking purposes because you can include keywords within the filenames (e.g. category/shoes/red-shoes.htm). Unfortunately, even though you plan to give each page a unique URL, some search engines will still see viewcategory.php?id=123 as viewcategory.php because of their inability to distinguish various parameters or session ids and therefore assume that your site consists mostly of a single page. The more parameters you include, the more problems search engines have and the less likely those pages will be indexed. Although, with Google's new SiteMaps tool, the dynamic page indexing issue may now be lessened.
The best solution if you're worried, is to remove the parameters in the URLs, keeping the web pages static rather than dynamic. If that’s not possible, you can integrate a parameter workaround on the site that removes the offending stop symbols from the URLs automatically and makes the pages spider-friendly.
More information is available from the Site Point article by Chris Beasley and the SEO Consultants article by Thomas A. Powell and Joe Lima, or even John Dyson's article.
There are a number of workarounds you can implement to ensure your dynamic page content is indexed by search engines. These workarounds generally involve removing the parameters from your dynamic page URLs and they vary depending on the server used to host your site and the technology used to build your site:
Remember to place use permanent redirects on those old page URLs or create a custom 404 error page so you don't lose traffic. Even if you convert your site to PHP, consider keeping at least 10-20 pages on your site static, to ensure a lot of content gets indexed and you create a lot of entry points to your site in the search results pages. Perhaps have a static page for each product category or brand?
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