Search Engine Optimization Design Tips

SEO Search Engine Optimization of Dynamic Content

If you don't understand some of this terminology, just make sure your web designer does!

Important search engine optimization concepts to increase dynamic page ranking

• All pages titles MUST include a unique, descriptive keyword phrase! Don't make the big mistake of putting the same title on every page. Every page must have a unique title that is very relevant to the content on that one specific page - this is critically important.
  
  
• DO NOT USE excessively long URLs. The chance of top ranking declines rapidly above 50 characters, and pages over 100 characters are often ignored altogether.
  
  
• Keep all your content in the root directory if possible, like this:
  domain.com/phone-numbers.asp

  Try to keep content in top level directories if you can't keep it in the root directory, such as:
  domain.com/support/phone-numbers.asp

  DO NOT put your pages deep in directories like this:
  domain.com/support/services/regional/california/areas/phone-numbers.asp
  

• Limit the number of Variables in page URLs.  Not long ago, a "?" in the URL was a complete roadblock to spiders. Today's better spiders are getting more sophisticated at crawling dynamic content, but the more variables you add, the lower your chance for search engine ranking.

  Your ranking will also suffer if you have several "&" characters in the URL, like in this example where each "Var" is a Variable; domain.com/page.asp?Var1=abc&Var2=x&Var3=yes&Var4=y.

  Pages that have over four variables in the URL have almost No Chance of getting ranked at all! Send only the minimum variables needed to generate a unique page.
  

• There are ways to Remove Url Variables by including query results on a dynamically generated page without any "?", or "&" characters in the string. How you do this depends on what you are using in terms of a web server & scripting language.

  Apache servers have a "mod_rewrite" function - this is the best solution. It allows you to rewrite domain.com/asp?foo&num=1234 at the server, so that it appears at the client (spider) as domain.com/keyword-phrase. Read the URL Rewriting Guide paper from Apache about mod_rewrite to learn more, and the tutorial entitled "Search Engine Friendly URLs with mod_rewrite" by Eric Rosebrock.

  On a Microsoft server, "ISAPI_Rewrite" is the best solution.  ISAPI_Rewrite is similar to Apache's mod_Rewrite, but it is designed especially for Microsoft Servers using IIS.

• AVOID SESSION ID's whenever possible! Search engine spiders will not crawl, or index pages with Session ID's in the URL like this: domain.com/store.asp?ID=1625XP126.

  Some spiders will not index pages with URLs that even vaguely resemble session ID's, so don't put any tracking data into the string unless absolutely necessary!
  
  

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