Optimizing for Web (Google) search engines

[Oliver Georgi]

first delete the index.html - and try again.

Oliver

[rk]

Any clarification would be appreciated....

LOCALHOST doesn't work for us

[jsw_nz]

Hi Oliver, I deleted/renamed the index.html and the emptied all URL parameters and did a refresh. It came to a page that essentially content-less. i thought it might be better to provide a screen shot, so that you might better understand the situation and point out where i am going wrong. Basically I have this structure in place. I do not quite understand what is, at the end of the day, the index.



I have not provided article content to all structures...not sure if this is an issue. Sorry for my stupidity.

cheers

[Oliver Georgi]

seems you have not build any template/pagelayout.

Put an index article in - use the [+] of website start

Regards
Oliver

[jsw_nz]

You are right.
Now I see what I did wrong. Thanks for the clarification.

I did as you said and now my address bar reads (with rewrite on):

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http://localhost/phpwcms2/websitestart.shtml

So I suppose my final question would be, how to make it read:

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http://localhost/phpwcms2/index.shtml

All best....

[Oliver Georgi]

why?

[jsw_nz]

It is because I am new to server-side apps. Since I am working off my localhost and on top of that I am working out of subdirectory called phpwcms2, maybe this situation is unrealistic, not reflecting online settings. The only issue that is still unclear is how both the browser and the search engines would see and treat the default/index page. I was under the empression that ways could be implemented so that Apache and Phpwcms would end up creating either an index.php or index.shtml which would be expected on a standard website. i.e.

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http://www.myDomain.com/index.shtml or myDomain.com/index.php 

With my rewrite on I get for my default index something like this:

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http://localhost/phpwcms2/websitestart.shtml

What still is not clear to me is whether this is acceptable as an index for search engines. The other question that I needed to ask was regards to the redirection of the server if the user types in index.htm or index.html since neither of these exist (404). Is this an Apache Setting in the httpd.conf file. Still not sure. Thanks for your patience with these questions stemming from my own inexperience.

[Oliver Georgi]

Ah - now I understand...

When you try to visit http://localhost/phpwcms2/ - you will see that it works - rewrite does not happen because your browser will try something like this (based on your setting in httpd.conf)
1) http://localhost/phpwcms2/index.html -> if not exists
2) http://localhost/phpwcms2/index.htm (maybe) -> if not exists
3) http://localhost/phpwcms2/index.php -> this is available -> you get back the default index webpage of phpwcms based on your configuration.

The search engine will see your link
http://localhost/phpwcms2/websitestart.shtml
as is - and can follow because it's a possible link.

Apache Rewrite does the following:
websitestart.shtml -> index.php?websitestart
and phpwcms is checking database against alias "websitestart"
and makes someting like this
index.php?websitestart -> index.php?id=1,0.....
while the id=1,... points to only one entry in the db.

I hope this could help understanding.

If you can see your pages via webbrowser without 404 or 403 error the search engine bot will do also.

Rewrite helps to hide that content is delivered by database.

Oliver

[jsw_nz]

Thanks Oliver for your explanation. Now I can be sure that the settings are compatible to search engines. With regards to the present 404 on index.htm, I can resolve.

Cheers and much thanks. and BTW, upon tinkering with the columns option in content/images, I found out you can make an image gallery, (albeit somewhat manually), but nonetheless effective for the needs of the project I am trying to tackle. And your support for multimedia, particularly Flash is great. You have done an amazing job with phpwcms.

all best,

jsw_nz
(John)

[pk2000]

In my experience google doesn't care if your url is:

?234234,2134.345233=wsaefsdf
or
the-nicest-url-in-the-world.html

my suggestion for google is that you use one article per structure level and have it aliased with main keyword(s) so that your url looks like:

my-great-site.com/?this-is-fun

this has two advantages:
1. usability: all urls will be human readable so you can remember them
2. Google gives some weigth to keywords in the url