SEO Myth #4 Dynamic Sites Cannot Be Easily Optimized
May 28, 2008

Many Web sites, particularly online retail and publisher sites, face significant technical constraints when trying to optimize their dynamically generated pages for natural search. Dynamic pages are generated “on the fly” using technologies such as ASP, Perl, or Cold Fusion. Unlike static HTML pages, dynamic pages require a user to select particular variables (such as style, color, or size) before a Web page is served to them. The more variables that are fed into a URL string, the more difficult the URL becomes for search engines to index. According to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, “not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.” Here’s an example of a difficult-to-index URL from a fictitious retailer, Algorithmic Shoes. It contains multiple parameters, session IDs, and a query string initiated by a question mark:

http://www.algorithmic-shoes.com/clothes/Shoes-PrintPumps.aspx?
PfId=347190&StoreId=9811&ProductTypeId=2&PurchaseType=0