Hi all, I'm in the process of designing a new website and planning on using alot of php includes for the header, footer and a few adsense things too. But before i start using it i want to make sure that google or any search engine dont mind it. Thanks sc0ttish
php code is handled on your server, so the search engines can't distinguish between html and php at all. The only sign of its use will potentially be the .php extension and I do not believe that that has any effect at all. Just be careful not to use a lot of url data i.e. index.php?v=1&this=that&anotherthing=somethingelse
It used to be that Google (and I assume other search engine spiders) had a hard time keeping track of url data while crawling. So if your site relied heavily on it, Google could not crawl/index your site properly. More recently they have improved but I think it is still wise to limit url data to a few variables at most. If you must use url data it is a good idea to use mod_rewrite to hide it. i.e. domain.com/?cat=garden&subcat=rakes to domain.com/garden/rakes In the second example not only are you hiding url data but you are making the url part of your seo effort.
Search engines may have problems reading the page query past the ? symbol etc, instead it is common practise to use mod re-write or better filenames such as /page-name etc
Yea, if instead of yoursite.com/index.php?page=main you would like to use yoursite.com/main , simply research how to use .htaccess on your server. google.com/search?q=using+htaccess
I learned PHP includes from this forum and boy it saves me a lot of time. And it's SE friendly too. can someone further explain how to use .htaccess to change domain.com/index.php?page=blahblah to domain.com/blahblah ? thnx
yes i never knew that the index.php?kdfhskfhskfh was bad for SEO. I am going to research how to fix this (and then post it in my blog ). Green left for all who helped me.
I've written up a short description of how to use mod_rewrite to make search engine friendly urls, http://www.mjohnston.com/2006/07/21/modrewrite-php-friendly-urls/
html does hurt when you have tons of pages. Your finally done, then all of a sudden you spot and error. GG. You gotta go back and fix everything all over again. Here you got one page, edit the info and your done.
I started using php on my media site, trust me, it's a wonderful idea. I update one page everyday and that's it! It's wonderful.
combined with CSS and you got yourself a two-page managment system. I have only used CSS once, and it is for a site I am still working on so we'll see how it works out. But so far so good.