Hello Webmasters. This is my first post so apologies in advance if my words come across as the ramblings of a complete newbie...that's because they are. I have spent the last couple of days reading posts on this forum and I have learnt a lot but at the same time probably have more questions now than before I started reading... Also my questions relate to php, urls and seo but all in the context of a directory I am having built - which is why I am posting here - sorry if this is the wrong place. OK - so I am having a directory built by developers using PHP. My directory has a 3 level taxonomy - category, subcategory and classification. I want my directory to be primarily human friendly whilst being as SE friendly as possible. For reasons I wont go into now I am using select menu (form items) which allow users to navigate through the categories and subcategories and classifications. I read yesterday how to make these javascript menus se friendly by using NOSCRIPT Markup. I will probably also have a text link to a page listing all my categories and classifications on my homepage SEs will be able to follow that. Q1 - would you agree that having the text link and a list of static links for categories, subcategories and classifications is a good idea? (when my main navigation is javascript) or will the NOSCRIPT markup make that unnecessary? When a user selects a category using the category select menu it submits using a javascript function and leads them to an url that is currently like: http://www.example.co.uk/index.php?mode=category it does not matter which option in the select menu that the user picks, the above url does not change (although the results obviously do) I thought it would be better if the category was reflected in the URL and my developer told me that I could have www.example.co.uk/index.php?categoryname or www.example.co.uk/?categoryname What I would really like is to be able to have www.example.co.uk/categoryname and my research on here so far suggests that you do this by using Mod Rewrite so Q2 - Is this correct? Is Mod rewrite the way to do it and can someone please point me to the best thread about how to go about doing this? and If I have a lot of categories/classifications does each one need to be rewritten individually or can it be done automatically? Also would I be rewriting to example.co.uk/categoryname.html or .php? or no ending at all Now the above example is what happens when a user chooses a category (Level 1), but I also need to know the best way to deal with drilling down further. so... Q3 - is it better to have: www.example.co.uk/categoryname/subcategoryname/classname or www.example.co.uk/classname what are the pros and cons I should be considering here? As all my directory pages are dynamically generated, I am also confused about how google and other search engines deal with this. The data on the page www.example.com/categoryname is dynamically generated and therefore the page is basically empty until the point that data is called so Q4 - Does googlebot etc call dynamic data in the same way that a user would and therefore will the data in the database be accessible to google? What factors should I be considering bearing in mind I want to be as SE friendly as possible and I would like my categories and classifications and directory listings listed in google etc Finally, I have some concerns about how I sync the values in my 3 select menus with their respective text links. so.. Q5 - if a user types in www.example.co.uk/categoryname how do I get this to have the same effect as choosing the categoryname from the select menu and when the page loads, can I get the select menu to display that category name in the menu automaticaly. Phew. Sorry for the rant and if you have read this far you already have my gratitude.
Q1 - Yes, static. Q2 - Yes, Mod Rewrite is the way to go. Q3 - That's optional. Either way is fine. Q4 - Yea, the bot will check anything that is link related. Just make sure urls keep consistent and use only alphanumeric data. Q5 - You will be using MOD Rewrite for it. Code depends on what you decide on. Rob
1. Static links would be better than javascript based links. Code and links in "noscript" would take care of the SEO factor but if you plan to keep javascript links, you should change the URL so that users can copy paste the URL and bookmark it when they want to. 2. Mod rewrite is your answer, if you are using apache, it's built-in. If you plan to use IIS, you can get an equivalent. Apart from rewriting URLs internally (e.g. domain.tld/categoryname -> domain.tld/index.php?mode=category&category=categoryname), you should be generating your URLs keeping this structure in mind. 3. Using categoryname.../classname can make your URLs very long sometimes, at the same time the other structure might result into clashes. It's your choice. 4. If google bot can find 'static links' to your category pages, it will index them. That's the reason people insist on having static navigation links. Regarding the select menu, you need to have different 'text' and 'value' for each select option, the value can have the category URL. 5. Ideally selecting the option should also take the user to www.example.co.uk/categoryname unless you are trying to use Ajax to fetch the data.