i've noticed that the company i'm working with, has a large amount of their content in their h1 tags pre-filled with php script. for example: let's say that we have a page dedicated to a particular part number. in order to save time, we automatically insert the part number into an h1 tag via php. this, i assume, doesn't give the SE's any text to read within those tags. all they can see is the php script which means nothing to them, right?
End users are unable to see PHP code because it is a server-side language, unlike Javascript. It would appear as simply text to humans and spiders alike who visit the page.
is there a way to make a .php look like a .html to the spiders? i remember someone talking about this a while back, but i can't find it now.
php outputs html which is what spiders read. Nobody, including SE spiders, can read the programming language as it is interpreted and output by your server.
If you mean if you typed in a name.html and it loaded a .php page (But still looked like .html in the url to the browser) Then check out this: mod_rewrite its an apache module.... its really really useful and does exactly what you need.