I just got a promotion project for a site that is done in coldfusion, and this site has been online for over 2 years, the company has been using ppc since the site was set up. I first noticed that the site only has the index page on any search engine. So I automatically thought of having the programming team remove the ? and changing it to a / since they have almost the entire page coded dynamically (I mean even the pages that are static are being called by dynamic code, which there is no reason for)

So anyway I posted my notes asking if their programming team could look into this since I don't know cold fusion, and don't know how hard it would be to change. The responce I got was flooring! He also cc. my client in on this email, I have not yet thought of an ethical way to respond. I'll quote the points -

1) - Unethical; the main search engines are beginning to penalize websites who use "fool the search engine" tactics.

2) Waste of SEO effort; the big SE's are getting better at dynamic page
handling and cataloging. (This one I know is bogus, because the site has been online for 2 years and they havent gotten even a second look by the spiders, the entire linking structure is dynamically coded)

3) Impractical; since the "/" character is also used as a sub folder marker,
this would cause confusion. Also, this kind of setting modification would
affect all websites we have that use the Cold Fusion server.

I am looking to see if the reason stated by this programmer are correct or if he simply did not want to be bothered with it?

Thanks in advance. Any information would be very helpful!

Lisa Frisvold
CybrConsult.com

Sounds to me like the programmer has read just enough information to think he knows what's going on. Of course rewriting the urls helps - why do you think that we do it on this forum?

If he really doesn't want to go with /'s, they could always use an alternative symbol (- comes to mind), but when you put them side by side, the / does look a heck of a lot better.

You were suggesting the right course of action - their developer might just be on crack.

Oh yeah, his point about spidering dynamic urls is true - but if they hadn't been indexed in 2 years, wouldn't you want to do anything you could do to improve?

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The hosting company/and programmer think they can do SEO. I do know in the past that they have had him do SEO for some of their web clients. This one happened to go around them and hire me instead. The hosting company has been blocking every suggestion I have come up with to get around the dynamically coded linking structure. And any other methods to improve the site, they would attach a high price to (like adding a form to sign up for a newsletter, the hosting company quoted them $400 ) And they are still waiting for a price quote to add a search feature into the site that would search in the descriprion (I can't wait to see what this will be)

Thanks for your views, and if you have any links to info, or facts could you please post them?

Lisa

Well if it will help you can PM me the website and I will write a confirming recommendation as to why this should be done, the benefits etc, or of course if it isnt a secret then post it in open thread.

I am definitly not a master of the .cfm (AND NEVER WANT TO BE) but even I a non coldfusion programmer could easily implement a URL rewrite using the code samples provided in a previous post here (I dont need to refernce as you posted there as well)

I would really let this client know that this sort of (We dont want to do it, so we says it's bad) attitude is NOT to be tolerated.

That would be like a designer telling one of my clients that I cant place text on a page because it doesnt look as pretty as pictures lol

Anyways I sympothize with you and hopefully we can help
Cheers

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Thanks I am trying to reply to the comments, but I don't like bashing someone else in front of a client, I would have never sent that to the client. I have more business ethics than that.