Especially if you run a highly dynamic, database-dependant website, you want to be sure that the major search engines out there will be able to index your web pages properly. To achieve this, you will need to identify and focus on the several things known to have the biggest detrimental impact on the way your website is indexed. In this article, we will have a look at each of these factors and learn how to minimize their undesirable effects on your website.

Non-HTML Pages
Considering non-HTML pages used to spell trouble in terms of search engine website indexing not so long ago, many webmasters are still unsure whether or not this is still an issue with today’s major search engine spiders. Well, in short the answer is no, as nowadays’ search engines are perfectly capable of indexing web pages of virtually all extensions, be they .htm, .html, .asp, .aspx, .php or other. Moreover, there is no sensible difference between the times needed to index one extension as opposed to another, so you shouldn’t really worry about that. Your main concern should be to ensure proper balance between the quantity and quality of the links leading to your pages, as this undoubtedly reflects in the way your website is spotted by search engines, and also influences its indexing speed.

Dynamic, Database-Oriented Pages
In case your website is database-oriented and its pages generate results from search queries, there is a strong possibility that search engines, due to their dynamic content, will have trouble indexing them correctly.

The reason why this happens lies in the very way search engines are programmed to work: page indexing is handled by spiders based on the website’s URL; once this is acquired, it is sent over to the search engine for assessment. However, the problem with dynamic, variable pages is that search engine spiders aren’t able to get access to them, due to the changing nature of the information they contain.

The good news is that you can fix this issue by means of programming. Although there are many ways to tackle the code writing process, one of the simpler solutions would be to use the “mod-rewrite” module and change the name for your website’s dynamic pages into something shorter and simpler. However, this alternative only applies to websites hosted on an Apache Linux server, so if your site doesn’t fall into this category, consider looking into other programming solutions.