SEO

crmamx · March 15, 2011

I have completely rewritten my site and as such have no html files. index.php is the only program that has a title and meta tags. Since I have lost those, how does that affect my SEO? The crawler no longer has a title, content or description to read.

.josh · March 15, 2011

you just burned yourself real bad in the SEO world.

crmamx · March 15, 2011

Real helpful! Is this how you get your post count?

The design is the result of recommendations from the "pros" on phpF.

Pikachu2000 · March 15, 2011

In all fairness, he did answer the question . . .

If you're looking to make it so those tags are used and generated dynamically, it shouldn't be too difficult if you'll post the code for index.php and a general description of how you're changing the content (if it isn't already obvious). I'll move the thread to PHP coding help once that's done.

crmamx · March 15, 2011

pikachu:

Sorry for the smart comment but it just aggravated me.

I just made the site live and as you know it is the result of much help from mostly 3 people here.

Then I ran across something about Google Webmaster tools, starting reading it and found I might be sorely lacking in SEO. But if my design is pretty much the way "ya'll" do it, then there must be something I am missing.

index.php

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en" >
<head>
<meta name="google-site-verification" content="y_kspZkCZOQM-WGNB_lQ8BhJS8p7-B66hkHI_UhzKbs" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-language" content="en" />
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="css/reset.css"  />
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="css/960.css"  />
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="css/custom.css"  />
        <title>Bay Area Remote Control Society</title>
</head>
    <body>
        <div id="wrapper" class="container_12">
            <div id="header" class="grid_12">
                <div id="left-header" class="grid_5 alpha"></div>
                <div id="newsflash" class="grid_7 omega"><?php include('content/newsflash.php'); ?></div>
            </div>
            <div id="leftmenu" class="grid_3"><?php include('content/menu2.php'); ?></div>
            <div id="maincontent" class="grid_9"><?php include('content/maincontent.php'); ?></div>
            <div id ="footer" class="grid_12"><?php include('content/footer.php'); ?></div>
        </div><!-- end wrapper -->
    </body>
</html>

This is the only program that declares a Doctype or has a meta tag.

The url is bayarearcsociety.com

Philip · March 15, 2011

I would transform your links into more human & seo friendly links, then generate dynamic meta tags.

For example, http://bayarearcsociety.com/index.php?page=weather would turn into http://bayarearcsociety.com/weather/

.josh · March 15, 2011

Real helpful! Is this how you get your post count?

The design is the result of recommendations from the "pros" on phpF.

pikachu:

Sorry for the smart comment but it just aggravated me.

You asked a vague question so I gave you a vague answer. And by some freak accident I didn't even make it personal. But apparently that's your style and I'm totally fine with that because I like it when people bite.

We aren't here to be someone's personal google service. Nor are we here to reinvent the wheel. It aggravates me when someone asks vague questions. It means they did little or no research on their own before posting. If you had done a search about SEO best practices before posting, you would have found a wealth of information about do's and don't's and if you still had questions, they would have been a lot more specific.

And don't hide behind the "experts" here. Point in fact, most coding "experts" give little to no regard to SEO. It's one of those things people usually start thinking about after they get their site up and running, instead of thinking about it from the get-go. Same with tracking/analytics. Most web developers don't really think about a project or situation beyond what sits in front of their face.

It's a shame, really, but that's the way it is. But for sure in this case... I have seen some but not all of your posts, and AFAIK you never mentioned SEO stuff before so I can hardly fault the "experts" around here for not coding towards that.

crmamx · March 15, 2011

I would transform your links into more human & seo friendly links, then generate dynamic meta tags.

For example, http://bayarearcsociety.com/index.php?page=weather would turn into http://bayarearcsociety.com/weather/

I will have to research dynamic tags.

As far as the "would turn into", if I understand you right, this would open the link in a new window which I don't want.

cv: It aggravates me when someone asks vague questions.

My question was specific that others were able to answer it.

cv: But for sure in this case... I have seen some but not all of your posts, and AFAIK you never mentioned SEO stuff before so I can hardly fault the "experts" around here for not coding towards that.

I believe I mentioned that I had not even heard of SEO until I ran across a post mentioning it after I had basically finished my coding.

And if you have read a lot of my posts you will find this is the ONLY instance where this is my style. And it is because I have read a lot of your posts and many of them are not helpful, simply biting.

Maq · March 15, 2011

And if you have read a lot of my posts you will find this is the ONLY instance where this is my style. And it is because I have read a lot of your posts and many of them are not helpful, simply biting.

Please, let's not take an ugly turn in this thread. CV has contributed a great deal to this community, not only posts (which the majority are helpful), but blogs, tutorials, policy write-ups, ideas, moderation, the list goes on.

I'm sure if you do a search on Google, or even here on PHPF, you will find some good SEO tips and tricks to help you get started. If you have specific questions we will be sure to answer them. Here are some novice tips:

http://sixrevisions.com/content-strategy/seo-tips-improve-web-design/

.josh · March 15, 2011

And if you have read a lot of my posts you will find this is the ONLY instance where this is my style. And it is because I have read a lot of your posts and many of them are not helpful, simply biting.

No, I said I have read some of your posts, and I was specifically commenting towards the lack of mention about SEO for the posts of yours that I did read. I will concede though that maybe saying that your bite was a "style" was a bit misleading; I meant more like "Okay, if you wanna go there, then we can go there."

Anyways, I fully admit that a lot of my posts are useless in the sense of actually solving the specific question at hand. And nobody once ever accused me of being tactful. But I assure you my "apparent uselessness" is because my overall perspective and goal is to teach a man to fish rather than do his fishing for him and IMO sugar coating something doesn't help at all.

Take for instance this thread. You asked a vague question. I could have written a novel in response, basically reposting a lot of existing info already out there. Instead, I opted to give a vague answer in response, and it wasn't even a personal attack. Usually I would have cut to the chase and told you what I said in my 2nd post in the first place. I guess I was having an off-day

I understand that you didn't know anything about SEO until just now. That wasn't the problem. The problem is that you came across it and then came straight here asking a vague question instead of doing some research first. Now you can be mad or upset or whatever you want to label it. You can call me an asshole or equivalent and for the most part I won't really argue that, but it doesn't change the fact that you asked a vague question and you really should have done some research and come up with more specific questions, instead of just throwing out a vague question and expecting people to personally walk you through a topic that has plenty of information out there already.

You asked a vague question: "How does this affect my SEO"?

I gave a vague answer: "You're fucked."

You gripe about etiquette instead of ask more detailed questions, so I tell you more plainly in the "style" you chose to respond with to go research and come back with more specific questions.

See the pattern here? I have no issues with helping you, and indeed, I want to help. But I'm not going to handhold you and I'm certainly not going to sugar coat things, especially when you're the one who started biting first.

Read some articles. Start with the one Maq posted. Google "SEO best practices" take notes. Ask more specific questions, and I and others will try to give more specific answers.

crmamx · March 15, 2011

Truce because I do not care for these discussions. And I apologize for my initial comment.

But if you will check Questions, Comments and Discussions you will find that I have been thankful more than once for the help I have been provided. And as a general rule my questions are not vague, tho a couple have needed additional info.

crmamx · March 15, 2011

Ok, I have done a little reading on Dynamic Tags.

But since my programs and data are pretty much static, is there any reason I can't put just the correct title and meta tags in each program, rather than all the php needed for a dynamic tag? And if so, then don't I also need the html and head tags? And if I do that it seems I have a html program yet it has a php extension.

Pretty confusing to me.

When the crawler crawls, does it look at the server side file or the output to the browser?

Philip · March 16, 2011

It looks at the output, there is no way (without exploits, or remoting in) for a normal user or another server to see the server side file's source.

I have no idea how you are getting your content to display, so what I meant by dynamic was for each one of those pages you should its own meta tag set. Since you're going through one file (index.php) I figured you probably were just including some files based on the get parameter. Sometimes people just include content from other php files, sometimes they include it from a db, etc.

crmamx · March 16, 2011

KingPhillip: I have no idea how you are getting your content to display

Neither do I!

That is it took me a good week to figure it out with some help.

index.php loads 4 frames: header, menu, footer and content (header is subdivided). maincontent.php controls the main content frame. When I click a program from menu2.php (or anywhere else) it sends the program name to maincontent.php which then loads it.

cssF: How did I do? I will be :-[ if this isn't right.

cssfreakie · March 16, 2011

your content doesn't use frames, and i know because i made it for you! You can add metatags titles and all the rest the same way you are fetching your info now.

Right now you are including you stuff directly into the body tag. What you could do is something like:

$metakeys = "apple, pie, monkeys, banana's";

$title = "cooking with monkeys";

Than in your Head you Include the file and place those variables between the tags for instance.

<head>
<?php include('yourfile.php'); ?>

<title><?php echo $title; ?></title>
</head>

Now this will probably will need you to alter the script a little, but if it's far from advanced or difficult, in fact i just showed how.

I recommend you just play around with: $variables echo and include, ones you know how to use those 3 you can easily adjust your code you have now.

crmamx · March 16, 2011

I recommend you just play around with: $variables echo and include, once you know how to use those 3 you can easily adjust your code you have now.

Believe it or not I wrote my add/delete/change db programs before I got to messing with this css stuff in depth. So, I can handle that.

I'm getting there.

cssfreakie · March 16, 2011

i know you can ::)

crmamx · March 16, 2011

csF: Right now you are including you stuff directly into the body tag. What you could do is something like:

$metakeys = "apple, pie, monkeys, banana's";

$title = "cooking with monkeys";

Than in your Head you Include the file and place those variables between the tags for instance.

I am still not clear on this.

Right now all my programs are .php programs. Except for index.php they all look like this:

<?php
// Just in case I want to put something here
?.

BODY - but there is no <body>, <head> or <html> tag....just stuff

When I do a view/page source on any page it shows the meta tags and title from index.php

If I use the head and body tags and include a meta tag and title in test.php, then it shows both the index.php meta tags and title and the title and meta tags I coded in test.php. So now it is showing 2 titles and 2 sets of meta tags for test.php.

So are you saying I should delete the title and meta tags from index.php and bring them in to each program using an include statement? If that is the case, what is the difference in that and just hard coding them in each program the same as "regular html?"

cssfreakie · March 16, 2011

this disappoints me a bit. But maybe i am wrong. Answer the following and you can convince me otherwise.

Could you give 1 reason why a website would use a template and use include() to insert content between the <body></body> instead of making hundreds of complete pages.

Besides that, pretty often a database is used for info that needs to be displayed for instance text for the body, a title a description keywords etc. Now I read a few times that you worked with a database. Than you know that when you fetch data from a database you retrieve them in the form of an array. But its also possible to make a hardcoded array in phpfile instead of a database, but the logic stays the same; where you use tables in a database you can very well use separate files for instnace one with keywords or titles in php in case you rather not use a database. By applying the same logic with the $_GET variable you are already using to include the body content you can very well retrieve an array value (i.e. title keywords etc).

KevinM1 · March 16, 2011

The best way to do it, IMO, is to use a handful of views/templates for each different kind of page. For example, I'm currently working on a couple of small media review sites (one for video games, one for TV shows and movies). It makes sense to create a review template, and then simply stick the info taken from the db into the appropriate places. This allows me to only have to worry about a handful of actual html files (in this case, ASP.NET MVC 2 view engine files), even though I can have an infinite amount of 'pages' online.

I wouldn't go as far as crmamx has and swap out the entire body region of one template page with a mix of new html and PHP, mostly because people generally lose all sense of visual structure when they do something like that, and it also runs the risk of mixing the concerns of information processing with information display.

To crmamx: you should probably take a closer look at your site design. Well-designed PHP apps have all information/form processing done at the top, with the code to display the results of that processing below. So, if you follow this general outline, you'd be able to dynamically change your meta tag info based on your incoming $_GET data, as you'd handle/process it all first, and then you could simply modify the tags in any way you wanted.

cssfreakie · March 16, 2011

The best way to do it, IMO, is to use a handful of views/templates for each different kind of page. For example, I'm currently working on a couple of small media review sites (one for video games, one for TV shows and movies). It makes sense to create a review template, and then simply stick the info taken from the db into the appropriate places. This allows me to only have to worry about a handful of actual html files (in this case, ASP.NET MVC 2 view engine files), even though I can have an infinite amount of 'pages' online.

I wouldn't go as far as crmamx has and swap out the entire body region of one template page with a mix of new html and PHP, mostly because people generally lose all sense of visual structure when they do something like that, and it also runs the risk of mixing the concerns of information processing with information display.

To crmamx: you should probably take a closer look at your site design. Well-designed PHP apps have all information/form processing done at the top, with the code to display the results of that processing below. So, if you follow this general outline, you'd be able to dynamically change your meta tag info based on your incoming $_GET data, as you'd handle/process it all first, and then you could simply modify the tags in any way you wanted.

Ah i mistyped the above, for what i meant between <body> tags, the content that now is show is placed within a div centered in the middle of the page. besides that the menu header footer etc all just stay the same. So we mean the same but I used the wrong words :

crmamx · March 16, 2011

To crmamx: you should probably take a closer look at your site design. Well-designed PHP apps have all information/form processing done at the top, with the code to display the results of that processing below. So, if you follow this general outline, you'd be able to dynamically change your meta tag info based on your incoming $_GET data, as you'd handle/process it all first, and then you could simply modify the tags in any way you wanted.

I wish I understood the lingo the way you guys do.

I think that is the design I have. Each program is set up exactly like this.

someprogram.php

<?php

?>

<big><span style="color: rgb(204, 102, 204); font-weight: bold;">Covering
with Heat Shrink Plastic Film</span></big><br>

<br>

I built my first kit, then read all the articles on covering, selected
Monokote and it turned out a total mess. For the second kit I switched
to Ultrakote and it turned out a 10% mess. It was much better
but I still could not get all the wrinkles out.<br>

<img style="width: 355px; height: 300px; float: right;" alt="" src="Pictures_Members/mikea.JPG"><br>

Don't get on me about the inline css. I have not got to cleaning up this page yet..

cssF uses the term body which confuses me because there are no head or body tags in any of the programs except index.php

I was not thinking of an array, but a db table with ID and meta content, the id being the program name. So it would retrieve each meta tag with a unique variable name.

But again I am asking, would I delete the meta tags for title, description and content from index.php and retrieve those from the db? If not, as I said before, they would be included in all other pages.

And if I do retrieve the <meta> tags, do I have to put <html>, <head> and <body> tags in the program?

cssfreakie · March 16, 2011

Like i corrected myself above i meant the the text on your page. to be more precise inside, <div id="content"> </div>

And yes you could remove the keywords, but keep the meta tag. that way you can include the keywords dynamically. also shown above

like:

<?php include('keywordscript-title-that-fetches-stuff-from-a-database.php'); ?>

<meta name="keywords" content="<?php echo $keywords; ?>" />

<title><?php echo $title; ?></title>

crmamx · March 17, 2011

Well, I guess I will give it a try when I finish all the other stuff on my list. I'm not too concerned about SEO because the site is for club members. Don't care much whether potential visitors can find it or not. There are 3 or 4 sites that list our clubs via zip code, so if someone is searching for a RC Club in this area they would have no trouble finding us.

Mark solved.

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