Make Dynamic URLs Search Engine Friendly

The robots used by search engines have problems with dynamic pages. You may review Google’s comments on this subject at http://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html.

However, dynamic URLs can be converted into static URLs so that they can be indexed. For example, the dynamic URL

http://www.mysite.com/main.php?category=books&subject=biography,

can be rewritten as

http://www.mysite.com/pagebooks-biography.htm

This article will show you how to do this and in so doing make your dynamic, database-driven website search engine friendly.

The steps involved are:

1. make sure your web server supports “mod_rewrite”
2. create a “.htaccess” file
3. upload this file to the correct directory on your server
4. test the results by typing the modified URL into the address box of your browser
5. modify your original code to write your links in a search engine friendly form