One of the major issues which have always raised questions among the search engine optimization fraternity is “Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Dynamic Websites”. In this article, we will show you how to optimize dynamic websites for top search engine rankings. But, first, we will start from the basics.

What are “Dynamic Websites”?
Dynamic websites are websites whose pages are generated on the fly. Unlike static pages (primarily .htm/.html pages), dynamic pages are generated when an user triggers an action through that particular page.

Here is a sample dynamic URL-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl ?q=%22dynamic+websites%22& tab=news&go=homepage

As per the above example of "www.bbc.co.uk", the dynamic part (i.e. the part) of the URL which changes as per surfer request is the part after the question mark (?)

What are the problems that search engines face in indexing Dynamic URLs?

1. Search engines often consider a dynamic URL as an infinite set of links.
2. Since dynamic URLs find maximum application in online shopping carts, there is a possibility of incorporating a session id to a particular page. As session ids of that particular page change, the search engine spider needs to index an infinite number of copies of the same page, which is a Herculean task for them.
3. Proceeding with the same logic presented in point # 2, indexing the same dynamic page might overload the servers of the search engines and therefore prevent the search engines to present with the most relevant information in the fastest possible time.

Here is what Google says about indexing of dynamic websites -

Reasons your site may not be included: Your pages are dynamically generated. We are able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because our web crawler can easily overwhelm and crash sites serving dynamic content, we limit the amount of dynamic pages we index.

(Source - http://www.google.com/webmasters/)

What are the options that you have in order to make a search engine spider index your Dynamic URLs?

• Use of softwares -
  Exception Digital Enterprise Solutions (http://www.xde.net) offers software which can change the dynamic URLs to static ones. Named XQASP, it will remove the "?" in the Query String and replace it with “/”, thereby allowing the search engine spiders to index the dynamic content.

• Example -
  http://www.my-online-store.com/books.asp?id=1190
  will change to
  http://www.my-online-store.com/books/1190
  The latter being a static URL, it can easily be indexed by the search engine spiders.

• Use of CGI/Perl scripts - One of the easiest ways to get your dynamic sites indexed by search engines is using CGI/Perl scripts. Path_Info or Script_Name is a variable in a dynamic application that contains the complete URL address (including the query string information). In order to fix this problem, you'll need to write a script that will pull all the information before the query string and set the rest of the information equal to a variable. You can then use this variable in your URL address.

• Example - "http://www.my-online-store.com/books.asp?id=1190"
  When you are using CGI/Perl scripts, the query part of the dynamic URL is assigned a variable. So, in the above example “?id=1190” is assigned a variable, say “A”
  The dynamuc URL "http://www.my-online-store.com/coolpage.asp?id=1190"
  will change to "http://www.my-online-store.com/books/A" through CGI/Perl scripts which can easily be indexed by the search engines.