SEOing a PHP site

[caugas]

I am doing some pro bono work on a friends site, and the site is a dynamically driven site.

The TLP is a static .com page
but all the other pages are php pages and end with .php

One thing that I noticed was that her apache tool creates very clean dynamic pages for example:
widgets.com/Art_Culture/Feature/Art_Culture_Current.php[/url]

It is my understanding that this is a very very SEO firendly url. However, I optimze to static pages within my site.

So my question is do I need to create a mod rewrite for the url listed above?
Does it need to become a .html page in order to be rewarded by the Search Engines?

Thanks in advance for your help

[SuperZu]

Hi Caugas

Hyphens always work better than underscores

It could be a good idea to not use extensions at all in your URLs, this way even if you change the index file from .php to .html, .asp or what not, you won't have any issues with the url changing if you decide to change from php to something else.

The fact that your pages are php does not influence your search engine ranking, as long as the (x)html browser output is nice and clean.

In other words, I would rewrite the url to:
widgets.com/art-culture/feature/art-culture-current/ (or even fewer trailing slashes)

[caugas]

Hi Caugas

Hyphens always work better than underscores

It could be a good idea to not use extensions at all in your URLs, this way even if you change the index file from .php to .html, .asp or what not, you won't have any issues with the url changing if you decide to change from php to something else.

The fact that your pages are php does not influence your search engine ranking, as long as the (x)html browser output is nice and clean.

In other words, I would rewrite the url to:
widgets.com/art-culture/feature/art-culture-current/ (or even fewer trailing slashes)


SuperZu,

Thank you for the prompt reply. So in other words your suggest just losing the extentions althougher. That works for me. I was not aware that you could submit urls within the google site map without extentions (that works for me).

I will pass this information along to my freind. I have already suggest changing the forward slashes to hypens, this is already on the radar.

Thanks for the help!

caugas

[cryptblade]

SuperZu's right, Caugus. The way to do it is actually by folders and index files in the folders. A friend of mine who builds sites for Lockheed - I have no idea how or why Lockheed Martin needs so many websites (*shrugs*) - told me that when he first started, the designers mandated sites to be built that way. And always better if you dont bury the pages too deeply with all the trailing slashes as SuperZu said.

mmm-hmmm...