I received an e-mail from a reader that asked me whether search engines index PHP pages. Well, I am glad he asked, seeing that this site is one of the best sources on the internet for PHP, I should address the issue.

Search engines only index static pages. I am sure that algorithms could be written for indexing dynamically generated pages, but I think the search engines feel that because the content of those pages can change easily, they
would rather not index them at all.

With this in mind, the best strategy to is to create "doorway pages" that focus traffic on specific pages in the site. "Doorways" need to be built around specific keywords that are important to the site. Let's say that the site is a commercial company that sells t-shirts, hats, sweatshirts, etc., and does silk screening to order. I'd want to create at least 4 different doorways, one for each of the main products. The pages would be in the same basic design as the rest of the site and focus the visitor back to the home page where they can find exactly what they are looking for. I'd create body text for the page that describes the products in general, meta tags (title, description, keywords, headers, alts and text links) for the search engines, and direct text links to specific non PHP pages.

The idea of a doorway page is to focus attention on a specific word, phrase, or product. Because this page is not a destination page, in and of itself, but rather an intermediary page, it needs to be as advertised, informational; and, just as important, fast to download. Remember, people hate useless clicks, therefore, you have to give them real content if you want them to go further into the site.

The search engine people look at doorways with mixed emotions. They realize the limitations of their spiders, and feel that as long as the content of the doorways appropriately matches the content of the site, they are offering their customers relevant information. However, make sure that that is the case, otherwise, they will ban the site.