SEO and PHP

[Milky Joe]

Tweet

Hi there,

I have a merchant site Someplace Else and it uses php scripts. Basically there are three components to each page, header.html, footer.html and the middle 'shopping' section. Every page on the site loads in header.html which contains all the meta tags.

I feel I'm limiting my chances of good SEO with this does anyone out there have any ideas of a better way to do this? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks

Rob

[Brendon]

SEO is about far more than meta tags. Link data is vastly more important

[Tom]

you could use your header and footer include files, but send in variables to substitute in for the meta data. If you have a static header.html page then I presume you also only have one page title across the site also, which isn't great.

You could alternatively not include the very top of the HTML file in the header file. Then for each page on your site enter a different title and meta tags, then include your standard header file.

Hope that makes sense. I'd definately try and change the title tags for each page if not the meta data, which isn't as important.

[Milky Joe]

Thanks Tom, that's great. I'll try and use an include to place different title tags for each page. It's difficult having a merchant site because my pages aren't full of written text but I thought if I could optimise my informational pages then I might get these pages to rank higher. Thanks for you help!

[Lentil-Warrior]

RANDOM QUICK THOUGHTS

If you think what someone looking for your site/pages would type in a search form.
eg
Optimise for your menu... tshirts trousers jackets brandnames etc.

Someplace Else - Quality affordable mens fashion, leading and original brands direct to you.

Out of that title you've only got 'mens fashion'.(has a quick look at search results for mens fashion...laughs)

Also put the site name to the right.Its not important.

Using an include for the header realy should only be used for things that stay unchanged. Unless your going to make that header connect to a database/file for the variables(keywords etc).

Top Tip
Have a look at your website in a text browser. Thats what a spider has to work with.
or
open ie [CTRL A] [CTRL C] open note pad [CTRL V]. Thats what a spider has to work with.

ps

Your banners dont inspire me at all...sorry.

Don't mean to offend, just helping ~

pps
just read your last post.. put some text at the bottom if you need. The you can feed both the spiders and those who want a bit more info.

[Milky Joe]

Thanks for the thoughts. much appreciated. I am thinking about linking the header to a file with the variables. I'll make some changes to my title tags and see how I get on. I personally don't like banners full stop, they're not the best at obtaining good conversions, maybe the design is a reflection of this!