One thing I still don't fully understand is the function of backlinks placed in dynamic websites. For example, is a backlink from w³.othersite.com to my page of the form ...w³.othersite.com/index.php?option=com_weblinks&task=view&catid=15&id=13 equally effective in SEO-terms (i.e. for my ranking in search engines) as is a backlink placed in a good old static html-page, where my page address shows up permanently, e.g. like the link given in my signature below? I think that is an important consideration regarding the efficiency of link development, isn't it?
Surprise, surprise - one day over and NO reply whatsoever! Where are all the gurus who know the answer to that oh so simple question?-)
Assuming you mean pages generated dynamically, then IMO ....often (but not always) dynamic pages are used for temporary content, such as adverts or a current news story, with time these pages may get deleted. For SEs it is therefore likely that dynamic pages will not index as well as a static page.
Hi, gordano and noxcel, and thanks for your reply. Yes, I understand that dynamic pages may be of temporary value only, and in that case, clearly, any backlink contained will be deleted with the page. The question still remains whether a backlink on an existing dynamic page is of equal "SEO value" as a link with equal anchor text on a dynamic page. Will this link be less/equally/more often be spidered by search engines and will the effect on ranking be the same as it would be for a formally (anchor text, font etc.) equal link on a static page? And whatever the argument will be - is there experimental evidence for it?
Example: Think of a regular link on a static page as 100% SEO benefit to your site. The same link on dynamic page will equal 10%.
...mmmh - quality in terms of...? ...that's a very clear statement indeed, noxcel - and I'm quite inclined to believe it. However, is there any practical evidence for that? Are dynamic links spidered with less probability? Is access to dynamic links for search engines in some way less likely, more difficult or so? The more I think about that subject, the more I'm getting interested in it...
It's just that most of the URLs with dynamic variables in them (like the example you posted) don't get indexed by many search engines. They also will less likely have PageRank.
Sure there is evidence, static pages have higher pagerank than dynamic. Back in the day, Google was not able to spider dynamic pages and did not give them any pagerank. Now, they starting to spider them and their seo value increases. Maybe in the future both static and dynamic pages will have the same value.
Dynamic pages are spidered depending on PR and incoming links. If mod rewrite is implemented (therefore SEOed) bots shouldn't have many problems. Actually, if the page itself is frequently updated it may be even more frequently spidered than static ones (that are not so updated).
Is that a difference as compared to static pages? I should say no - pease correct me... Sorry, what does that mean?
I won'r correct you because that's what I meant! With mod rewrite you basicly rewrite the URL of dynamic pages so it becomes search engine friendly. Otherwise you would have those long urls with ?{]-+/\ and other chars not easy to digest for search engine bots.
My experience has been that some dynamic pages are not crwaled and thus the backlink is never found. I know of several links to my page that never show up in the link finding tools of Google and Yahoo.
So, for example, how would the dynamic link given in my very first posting at the head of this thread look using that regime?
that is a joomla/mambo link Whoever owns that site has it configured so that those urls are that way in order to get the hit stats. They could turn that off and you would have a normal static link.
Dynamic pages are treated exactly the same as static ones. Google treats URLs as 'opaque' identifiers and does not try to work out whether they are dynamically generated or not. There has been many cases where people have implemented friendlier URL rewriting for their forums and it had no effect, even after months.
Some dynamic links you can mass produce like: http://****.****.edu/cgi/searchresu...&fdatedef=1+January+1844&tdatedef=14+Apr+2006 will not get you anywhere, even this is a free unlimited source to .edu backlinks they are not indexed by google.
So after looking through this thread I'm getting a rather contradictory impression: from "dynamic links are never crawled at all" to "dynamic pages are treated exactly the same as static ones". What does that tell us?