Dynamic URLs
The Why
Dynamic web pages have historically been an obstacle for webmasters to deal
with. The benefits of using dynamic URLs is obvious so a work-around is
necessary as the depth a spider crawls your site is crucial to maximizing your
organic search engine listings. Search engines have problems indexing
dynamic web pages due to the URL having multiply variables (i.e. ?, =, &,).
Some search engine crawlers do not follow these dynamic URLs. AltaVista
and Inktomi are two engines that are affected by this. Google on the
other hand is only recently able to index and list dynamic ULRs.
The Fix
1.
Apache server - The Apache server has a feature called (
mod-rewrite)
available on all Apache 1.2 versions and newer. It allows for quick
conversion of dynamic to static URLs. You can "rewrite" your dynamic URLs to
static URLs so the search engines can index them. This feature may not be
"turned on" by default so you may have to ask web hosting company to make it
available to you. A good hosting company will do this for no charge.
2.
Use of CGI/Perl scripts - Another popular way to get your
dynamic sites indexed by search engines is using CGI/Perl scripts. Some
common variables out there like "Path_Info" (or) "Script_Name" may be used in a
dynamic databases that contain URL addresses with query string information. These
scripts will pull the information before he query string and set the remainder
of the URL to a variable. For example the dynamic URL:
http://www.yoursite.com/main.php?category=cars&subject=chevy
can now be
written like this:
http://www.yoursite.com/cars-chevy.htm
