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Dynamic pages vs SEO

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SEO Lady

SEO Lady

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    Aug 28, 2009
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    www.seolady.co.uk
    I have a question:

    A client's site populates registered user's profile pages by way of dynamic content.

    Would this be indexed differently / crawled differently by Google as opposed to a static HTML page?

    My thoughts are that it would not be crawled in full as potentially the info could change and be refreshed constantly?

    Thank you
    Nina
     
    Hi I have to agree with Nina

    asp is great as its easy to update, used in ecommerce and looks good

    the only thing is, with constant changes the se's may not have a chance to index it
     
    Upvote 0
    If you do it correctly there is no difference between 'static' and 'dynamic' HTML - in fact the 'client', be it a browser or a spider, may not be even be aware of 'how' the HTML was generated- all it sees is HTML.

    As OWG says problems are when dynamic content is used create multiple urls with the same content.

    The converse is also true - e.g if multiple profiles are being be viewed on the same url.

    Basically it all depends on the architecture!

    Regards

    Dotty
     
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    1weekSEO said:
    I have a question:

    A client's site populates registered user's profile pages by way of dynamic content.

    Would this be indexed differently / crawled differently by Google as opposed to a static HTML page?

    My thoughts are that it would not be crawled in full as potentially the info could change and be refreshed constantly?

    Thank you
    Nina
    Click to expand...

    How would google know it is different? Make sure there are not too many foot prints that could be duplicated as said but a large % of websites are dynamic now anyway and they do fine!

    The source code is no different if it is from a database or a static page!

    Wordpress is dynamic and that has no issues!

    Are they wanting to seo user profiles? Bit strange!
     
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    Smarter Webdesign said:
    How would google know it is different? Make sure there are not too many foot prints that could be duplicated as said but a large % of websites are dynamic now anyway and they do fine!

    The source code is no different if it is from a database or a static page!

    Wordpress is dynamic and that has no issues!

    Are they wanting to seo user profiles? Bit strange!
    Click to expand...

    Not if it is a directory it isn't, as that is the very page you would want spidered :)
     
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    think I have to disagree, they aren't perfect in any way shape or IT form, but they do a job that they have to without being over-damaging
     
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    loubycee said:
    think I have to disagree, they aren't perfect in any way shape or IT form, but they do a job that they have to without being over-damaging
    Click to expand...
    IMO Thats a meaningless reply.

    As I have said and others have implied its possible to architect a site so that you, or the search engine, would have no idea whether the pages where static or dynamic.

    Regards

    Dotty


    Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk
     
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    Smarter Webdesign said:
    Thats unrelated, you can make dynamic pages look exactly like static ones! Not many people use dynamic url structures now, they have seo friendly links!
    Click to expand...

    I guess you missed this bit.

    the decision to use database-driven websites does not imply a significant disadvantage in terms of indexing and ranking. Providing search engines with dynamic URLs should be favored over hiding parameters to make them look static.

    A dynamic page will very rarely do as well as a static page in the engines.

    Earl
     
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    sirearl said:
    I guess you missed this bit.

    the decision to use database-driven websites does not imply a significant disadvantage in terms of indexing and ranking. Providing search engines with dynamic URLs should be favored over hiding parameters to make them look static.

    A dynamic page will very rarely do as well as a static page in the engines.

    Earl
    Click to expand...

    How? You can make the source codes the same and load time might be slightly different.

    So Wordpress will never do as well as a static html site?

    I am honestly shocked if that is the case, my best performing sites are all dynamic!
     
    Upvote 0
    Smarter Webdesign said:
    How? You can make the source codes the same and load time might be slightly different.

    So Wordpress will never do as well as a static html site?

    I am honestly shocked if that is the case, my best performing sites are all dynamic!
    Click to expand...

    Thats right all things being equal wordpress loses.

    Whats your best performing sites are they in a high competition area?

    I would guess not.:)

    Earl
     
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    sirearl said:
    Thats right all things being equal wordpress loses.

    Whats your best performing sites are they in a high competition area?

    I would guess not.:)

    Earl
    Click to expand...

    A couple of them are :)

    How many sites are using static html without some sort of cms? How can google tell if the source code is the same?

    I dont believe that! I am no seo expert but I can make a dynamic site look like a static one and it does work!
     
    Upvote 0
    Hello,

    If you have 2 pages

    yoursite.com/michael-wall.html
    yoursite.com/user-profile.aspx?id=22

    Both may serve the same content and return HTML. Google is primarily interested in the content.

    The page with michael-wall in the URL might rank slightly better for the search term 'michael wall' than the page with the querystring but that's arguable, it'll certainly have a better click thru rate.

    The pages will be crawled and indexed the same.

    If you have page such as

    yoursite.com/user-profile.aspx?id=22&Sortby=1

    You may wish to block the additional parameters in the robots file to stop masses of duplicate content being indexed.

    Google is fine with querystring parameters and isn't bothered about file extensions. Many ASP & .ASPX sites still use querystrings.

    Also if a user decides to change their content (which he may be able to do for a user profile system) significantly every other day then it will affect his rankings in that they won't be stable for anything.
     
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    sirearl said:
    I guess you missed this bit.

    the decision to use database-driven websites does not imply a significant disadvantage in terms of indexing and ranking. Providing search engines with dynamic URLs should be favored over hiding parameters to make them look static.

    A dynamic page will very rarely do as well as a static page in the engines.

    Earl
    Click to expand...

    Earl that paragraph is talking about "Session IDs" etc. The problem with Session IDs is that they rely on client-side cookies and the Session IDs change each time for each visitor (an therefore present a different URL)

    That is very different from serving up dynamic pages with a REST / RESTful URL structure which to all intents and purposes will look exactly like static pages to the search engine.

    Regards

    Dotty
     
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    Codefixer said:
    yoursite.com/michael-wall.html
    Click to expand...

    Yes it's like this, with added keywords, for example
    yoursite.com/michael-wall-blue widget-specialist-uk.html
    Generated from the back end of the site.

    Also, as Smarter Webdesign says
    "Exactly, so easy to do and looks static!"
    ... the looks are unimportant, the question was aimed specifically at search engines in terms of crawling etc

    As Earl says:
    A dynamic page will very rarely do as well as a static page in the engines.

    Which is exactly the confirmation of my thoughts in the OP

    Thank you guys
     
    Upvote 0
    Why would they be crawled any different? As long as there is a good navigation structure I can't see any issue?

    By looking the same I meant that a dynamic site would be no way different to a static page if it was done properly and used SEO Friendly URL's which yours does.

    How many sites are 100% static nowadays? As long as the dynamic pages are done properly and as said dont have loads of duplicate content they are fine unless you have stupid amounts of mysql queries which slows the page load time down.

    I wouldn't really worry about it too much as long as the on page is good.
     
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    Damn I outstayed my edit time...

    The best thing to do is try it and find out for yourself as with anything in SEO. If you go off blog posts from years ago or rumours then you will never know for yourself or learn will you?
     
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    1weekSEO said:
    Thank you I agree - I have advised the client there are no negatives/penalties involved in terms of SEO, and not to get hung up on this as the rest of the site has had full SEO on the static pages.
    Click to expand...

    Make sure that the on page is decent too. Different meta descs, titles, h1's on each page :)

    If they all have company names in the title and h1 and some different meta desc they will do well for the longtails.
     
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    1weekSEO said:
    A client's site populates registered user's profile pages by way of dynamic content.

    Would this be indexed differently / crawled differently by Google as opposed to a static HTML page?

    My thoughts are that it would not be crawled in full as potentially the info could change and be refreshed constantly?
    Click to expand...
    I'm assuming this is not a simple question about 1 site dynamically creating pages from the sites's own database. At least I hope not! That answer is fairly simple, you've only got to look at google indexing this forum, e.g. forum threads updating regularly, for that answer. The answer is if the site is architected in a similar way to this forum, php sending out html on a fairly static (unchanging) url, then that's usually fine.

    Here is one other possible interpretation I'm reading from this question...

    User profile pages that pull in data from external websites, e.g. a profile page that pulls in and displays the user's latest tweets from twitter, their recent facebook updates, their recent blog entries, etc.

    The answer to this particular question depends upon how the external data is pulled in. If it is pulled in server-side in say PHP, then output as html, then it should be indexed. If it is pulled in browser-side from Javascript in the HTML page, then there is less likelihood that data would be indexed.

    And finally, if the profile pages are private, like they are in this forum, so that only logged in members can see them, then it is more likely that google wont be indexing them anyway.
     
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    I was under the impression search engines have trouble crawling and indexing them, unless they (google) have changed the way they index those pages now...
     
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    loubycee said:
    I was under the impression search engines have trouble crawling and indexing them, unless they (google) have changed the way they index those pages now...
    Click to expand...

    But what EXACTLY do you mean by that? Without expanding on it the statement in meaningless.

    There are lots of good technical comments in this thread explain which types of dynamic content may give problems to search engines and which types will make no difference whatsoever.

    Do you agree or disagree with these 'technical' posts?

    Regards

    Dotty
     
    Upvote 0
    okay.

    So teach me a lesson then, what I have learned about it may be limited.

    I believe that pages with symbols that are rapidly changed, page numbers are increased as well as being constantly updated are difficult, because se's cannot always pick them up, therefore have trouble indexing them.

    I believe that static pages whose content is updated but whose titles make sense, ie words, then they can be easily picked up by se's looking for relevant content, titles that make sense and relate to the content on the page.

    I do not, however, believe that dynamic pages are wrong, they may simply be troublesome for that reason. Massive companies that are known already use them, because people will click directly onto the site rather than through a search engine - they are likely to conduct an internal search to find what they are looking for

    Next use them. Vodafone don't. so no strict rule on it is there?

    Just saying.
     
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    loubycee said:
    ...I believe that pages with symbols that are rapidly changed, page numbers are increased as well as being constantly updated are difficult, because se's cannot always pick them up, therefore have trouble indexing them....
    Click to expand...

    There is some truth in all of that but that is really just one (or a few) example(s) of dynamic page.

    A dynamic web page is simply one that has been 'assembled' by an application using content that is liable to change. As has been mentioned several times in this thread that does not mean that it can't appear to all intents and purposes like a 'static' page.

    The OP was asking about a site that "populates registered user's profile pages by way of dynamic content"

    All you can read into that is that some of the content is automatically placed on the page.

    The success of these pages will depend on how this is achieved rather than the simply whether it's 'dynamic' or not.

    Regards

    Dotty
     
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    Vodafone do use them = https://freesim.vodafone.co.uk/orders/add?package_id=1&tracker=58f8dj&keyword=freesim

    I would think nearly all big companies would use dynamic pages, unless they want to create a html page for every single page (can you imagine amazon doing this?)

    Half the time, how would you be able to tell if they are just given .html extensions? I think you are confusing dynamic urls where they have ?id=pagename , which nowadays most change to pagename.html anyway.

    I agree with what you say about being updated constantly, but sometimes fresh content is a good thing for SEO.

    I have a site that was made from a database, banged a few variables out and made a fair few pages. It has over 30k pages indexed in Google, gets between 3-4k unique hits per day. Google crawls an average of 17,105 pages per day from this site.

    There is so much wrong information going on in this thread it is shocking, some from SEO people too.
     
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