I have a client that is creating a site with over 50,000 pages of content. It is a online store of some kind. They tell me it will have dynamic content and that they will have an XML feed with all the product information. I want to make sure there site is crawable by the search engines. Any advice. I see sites like Best buy doing it EX: http://www.bestbuy.com/olspage.jsp?id=pcat17080&type=page&qp=crootcategoryid%23%23-1%23%23-1~~q70726f63657373696e6774696d653a3e313930302d30312d3031~~cabcat0400000%23%230%23%23dh~~cabcat0403000%23%230%23%231j~~nf398||466c6970&list=y&nrp=15&sc=abCameraCamcorderSP&sp=-bestsellingsort+skuid&usc=abcat0400000 http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9077054&type=product&id=1218016495147 I am assumming I can just create a sitemap with the XML feed and submit that to google webmaster tools. Any help would be great. thanks.
for indexing dynamic contents, you need to have following things: 1. try to use seo friendly urls 2. create dynamic sitemap which lists each and every page
Rewriting URLs was the standard answer. However, Google recently succeeds in indexing more and more dynamic pages. There was an interesting statement about these matters in Google webmaster central blog: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html
Dynamic content is just fine with Google if you don't let the URLs change between data feeds. However, duplicate content from an XML feed that many other web sites have access too will cause you trouble. You should make sure to create unique product names and product descriptions in the page content. Then also use the unique product names in your page titles. The page descriptions should be some sort of call to action about the product that is unique as well. If you simply convert a well worn XML file to web pages your customer's site will be seen as duplicate content will be filtered out of Google's results...so nothing else will matter.
Also be careful to use a consistent URL format so you don't duplicate you own content at multiple URLs by mistake. eg. bestbuy.com/buy.php&id=5566?sku=123 bestbuy.com/buy.php&sku=123?id=5566