SEO Friendly URLs without .htaccess

[ryan.od]

I want to display search engine friendly URLs, but I don't have access to a .htaccess file (Yahoo!, what the heck?!?!?).

 

Is there another way? If so, can anyone point me in the right direction?

 

Thanks,

RyanOD

[freakstyle]

Hey there,

 

w/o access to the .htaccess file you are really missing out on a solid hosting solution.

apart from the obvious to change to a better hosting solution,

you could do a few of the following:

 

1. every page you have on your site could be an index page, so every page the user requests would just be the folder name

2. if its seo friendly you need, just have a descriptive file name with dashes

ex: /homes/display.php?id=2

could be:

/san-diego-homes/new-homes.php/Some-New-Home-Name-in-Db?id=2

 

and make sure in the content of your page, you have copy 'san diego homes', 'new homes', 'Some New Home Name in Db'

 

relevancy of content is what is most important in obtaining a better rank in search engines.

 

good luck

 

[ryan.od]

Yes, yes, I completely agree.

 

FOR ANYONE READING THIS. . .AVOID YAHOO! WEB HOSTING AT ALL COSTS!! Being denied access to the .htaccess file is a real problem. Unfortunately, I was not with this company when they chose this host. Grrrrrrr. . .

 

Is there really any problem with using. . .

 

http://www.whatever.com/products.php?manu=sony&model=ca-1118-wht

 

. . .rather than. . .

 

http://www.whatever.com/products/sony/ca-1118-wht

 

Should I even worry about it? If I had access to the .htaccess file, no problem! But, I don't want to kill myself for an incremental gain.

 

RyanOD

[freakstyle]

yes the second url will look for those folders

and the first one will return the products.php page.

 

you have to pass some sort of query string to your products page.

or set it up so that every brand / product has its own folder/page for output

 

for your query string you could do something like this:

http://www.whatever.com/products.php?manu=sony&model=ca-1118-wht
http://www.whatever.com/products.php/sony/ca-118-wht
<?php 

// to see whats returned:
echo '<pre>';
print_r($_SERVER);
// you'll see how that data can be accessed and then you can manipulate it how you need to in order to pull in the dynamic portion

 

if you are using two vars to pass data to that page, and you want it tracked by a search engine you'll be fine leaving it. search engines will give up after it reaches an unknown length ( they won't share that with us of course ).

 

don't for get to create a google sitemap. it'll give the site crawler a better road to travel on.

 

good luck

[ryan.od]

Woah, woah, woah. I don't want to create separate folders for every product (?). I want to rewrite the URL (the one with the parameters) so it LOOKS like folders, but I want to do it without access to the .htaccess file.

 

Anyone else have any thoughts?

 

RyanOD