hey guys I have always had HTML sites - easy for SEO. but i just converted one of my big sites into a PHP driven site with a DB. it has SEO freindly URLS - but what should i be weary of with SEO now. Do SEARCH ENGINE CRAWLERS SEE THE PAGE LIKE I SEE IT? Cause there is no real content in the index.php file - but when u see it online its full of my content pulled from the DB.
If you are familliar with Google Adwords etc, you can use their webmaster tools to see how a crawler would see your website. Also I think SEOMOZ have a similar tool that allows you to do the same. Basically however, in a manner, php generates a html output that creates the website you see. So yes, the search engines do see what you see.
All you have to do is right click in your browser and view source... The HTML you see when you view the source in the browser is what the crawler is going to see when they request your page. Your server-side PHP code should be streaming an HTML document to the user agent (browser or crawler) that requests it.
Every browser and crawler that ask for your website get the same html document in response so long as they are anonymous After a user logs in then your index.php file might server them up different html for a particular page and allow them to see content that is not available to crawlers and other anonymous users You have to think about what content should be indexed and make sure it is not mistakenly restricted as you build your website