The Importance of Code Choice When Designing a Website

There are several types of programming languages to consider when building a website. The simplest form and the easiest for search engines to read is HTML. Many websites, especially e commerce websites or websites with functions like member logins, search, newsletters etc will be built using ASP or PHP, which connect to a database. These sites are called dynamic sites; that is, they are continually changing.

These more advanced codes, allow designers to build and make changes faster; they increase the security of the website; they give you, the store owner, a back office system to manage your own store; and they also improve site loading time and allow us to do much more in terms of features, however these codes can cause problems for search engines.

Sometimes it is feasible to change a dynamic site to a HTML based one, retaining the design and features but usually it’s not possible so we need to overcome the obstacles presented by these types of sites, to aid the SEO process.

You can improve the SEO ability of dynamic sites by doing several things such as incorporating an Apache Mod Rewrite Rule. Dynamic sites that are pulling their information from a database will use strings such as: www.yourdomain.com/index.php?option=Prod_detail&product_id=293714&image_id=149771 - the problem here is that the search engine stumble when they come a cross question mark and this may cause the page not to be ranked by the search engine.

The Apache Mod Rewrite Rule changes the URL to something like www.yourdomain.com/manchester_florists/wedding_flowers.html. Not only is this massively better for the engines but it also makes it easier for users to read. You can also identify any pages that will not change often, such as the "about us" page and convert it to html. For situations like this it differs greatly from site to because of the different factors involved.

I found an excellent ecommerce development company that I found to be very helpful they can even help you with a web redesign

Other methods of web design include flash, which is basically a video. The search engines are unable to understand any of the content of flash (apart from some alt tags) so it’s extremely difficult to optimise websites built fully of Flash. The thing to remember about Flash is that it should be used sparingly and when needed; don't just uses it because you can.