Search Engine Optimization for Flash

Chapter 5. Optimizing Dynamic Content

In the early days of the Web, most websites were based on static web pages. Static web pages are pages that do not use data that comes from a data source such as a database. Changes to a page’s content required edits to the actual HTML code in that page.

Today, countless websites create pages dynamically. Blogs, social networking sites, online stores, and just about every type of website in between are typically powered by dynamic data. Because of the increasingly complex requirements for content delivery, visibility, and formatting, dynamically created content is necessary. But it can provide some SEO challenges. This chapter looks at the challenges that come with dynamic content, and the techniques you can use to overcome them.

Understanding Dynamic Content and Static Content

To understand dynamic content, it’s important to have an idea of its opposite, static content. The term static content refers to web content that is generated without using a data source such as a database. Essentially, the site viewer sees exactly what is coded in the web page’s HTML.

With dynamic pages, a site can display the same address for every visitor, and have totally unique content for each one to view. For example, when I visit the social networking site Facebook (facebook.com), I see http://www.facebook.com/home.php as the address in my web browser, but I see a unique page that’s different from what anyone else sees if they view that page at the same time. The ...