Is this the right way to make my website google-friendly ?

Question

I have created several Q about correctly mapping a website with a database so that google can index it properly. However, need more info.

My website is a classifieds website (PHP). Users can search ads on my site. Searching for 'BMW' will bring up only the titles of all 'bmw' ads and display them as a search result. (like google kindof). When user clicks on an 'ad', no matter which ad, an ID of that ad is passed along to 'show_ad.php'. In 'show_ad.php' the ID is received and the proper ad is displayed from the mysql database. Also, when displaying the ad, meta-tags are also dynamically changed (fetched from db) to fit the ad (I need this so that google finds the ad easier hopefully).

Now, would this be enough for making my site 'friendly'?

Also, I can change the URL with .htaccess I think, so instead of:

   http://www.mypage.com/show_ad.php?ID=12345

it will show:

   http://www.mypage.com/12345.htm

Also, I think I must add a link like the one above inside a static html page for each ad created, just so that google knows its there... right?

But, still, will this be enough?

Please guide me...

Answer 1

If your pages are dynamic and share a layout, there is a good chance Google will throw many of them out as duplicates. If the content is significantly different from page to page,there is less of a chance of that happening. Google will likely not index all of your pages in either case.

If possible, you should make your urls have words not numbers as Google will look at the URL for keywords.

Answer 2

I would recommend this book. An answer on stack overflow won't give you sufficient information.

(The art of SEO "Theory in Practice")

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0596518862

Answer 3

Yes, it will help a lot, google will still spider pages with parameters on the end, but they still treat .htm pages differently.

As another suggestion, try putting the subject into the filename:

http://www.mypage.com/traeger-grill-for-sale.htm

Or something like that, and have a search parameter thrown in to show_ad.php. This will help even more.

Answer 4

To make it more friendly, I would suggest the following:

1. For each URL, instead of having (just) an id, try to add keywords to the URL as well. The earlier the better: /bmw/12345/show_ad.php
2. For each page, make sure you have a good <title>. I.e. 'My page - Ads - BMW'
3. Have a proper <h1>-tag containing the keywords you want to rank high in.

Answer 5

Don't use ids, use the tag in the URL, more Google and human friendly, so instead of

http://www.mypage.com/12345.htm

use URLs like this one

http://www.mypage.com/your_tag_name.htm

To do this type of things you would need another field in you DB for the URL friendly name for the tag (spaces, accents... removed) and use mod_rewrite to rewrite the URLs.