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by Paul Christ, KnowThis.com
May 2004
 A few weeks ago a click of the mouse button signaled a major change to KnowThis.com. While the change went unnoticed by about 99% of the Internet population, and certainly the media didn’t take notice like they did when Google altered its look a few weeks ago, the change was dramatic in a way that should be of interest to anyone using a website for marketing their goods and services. Namely, KnowThis.com evolved (grew up?) from being a relatively simplistic static site to one that is more complex and certainly dynamic. Is this a big deal? Well for marketers I think so.
Static versus Dynamic
Static html sites have not changed much since their development by Tim Berners-Lee and the advent of the Web. Essentially websites are presented using a wide array of tags that offer means for visually laying out a site. Marketers should understand that search engines have become very good at recognizing static websites. In general, search engines can navigate through a static website very easily and thus locate information. However, there is one significant disadvantage of static sites; you may need a separate page (file) for every page on your site. For example, if you want to make a design change that affects the entire site you may need to adjust ALL pages. For small sites this is not a problem, but for large content or e-commerce sites creating new pages or updating existing pages can be time consuming and expensive. Certainly there is web development software that makes this a little easier, but in the end static sites take time to manage.
Dynamic sites on the other hand are created as the user views the site. In most cases this requires the use of a database, which contains the site’s information, and some kind of scripting setup that is programmed to retrieve the information from the database. How the script functions depends on many factors that I will not get into here, but the essential thing to understand is that each webpage is not a separate file but is created when a user performs some activity. For the marketer, the creation of new pages or updates to existing pages is done by either making adjustments to information in the database or, when it comes to the site’s visual presentation, may mean adjustments to one or a few template pages. For those involved in online marketing and who do a lot of site updating there is little question that the flexibility and time savings offered by dynamic sites is the way to go.
The Problem
So what is the problem with changing from a static site to a dynamic one? One of the biggest problems with the change is with how search engines see the site or, in some cases, can’t see it. In general, a static site presents fairly easy to read URLs such as:
http://www.knowthis.com/file.html
Dynamic sites present a URL that is based on the scripting program that is being run and thus may look more like:
http://www.knowthis.com/index.php?option1=something&option2=something&variable=something
While in reality the same information will be displayed using either method, from a search engine’s perspective these may not be viewed as the same thing. In fact, some search engines may not even be able to locate the dynamic page very easily. This then presents a big problem for marketers who have done very well with their rankings in search engines using static pages but who wish to switch to a dynamic site. It may also present big problems for sites around the Internet that may link to a page in the dynamic site since the URL that exists on the link is no longer valid, having been replaced by the dynamic URL.
So what can you do? You want the benefits of the dynamic site but you also do not want to lose out on good search engine rankings?
How KnowThis.com Did It
KnowThis has been around a long time and has built a strong following of external links which have resulted in good search engine rankings for many marketing-related terms. As the site continues to grow I, like many others, saw the dynamic route as the best way to go. For instance, one of the things I could not do with a static site is track how many people click on links that I have in the Links Collection area of the site. That is, how much traffic I’m sending to another site. A dynamic setup can keep track of this and many other things.
To run my site I chose an open-source content management system called Mambo, which offers most of the features I need. Included with Mambo is the option to present search engine friendly (SEF) URLs so that the URL appears to be closer to looking like a static URL. Unfortunately, this built-in feature did not present an exact match for the old URLs so while helpful for search engines when creating new pages it did not solve the problem with duplicating the URLs of existing pages. So the question was whether to bite the bullet and gain the benefits of a dynamic site but accept the potential loss in search engine traffic for the existing pages, or remain with a static site arrangement.
Fortunately, the Mambo development community came through. A Mambo third-party add-on (for a fee) called SEF Advance offers the ability to duplicate the static URLs. Using SEF Advance and also employing some creative hacking of the open-source code, I have been able to retain 95% of the previous static URLs. For the other 5% I have employed the recommended 301 redirect for sending requests to the new page.
Now I must admit there is a lot more going on here than can be placed in this article. For instance, for SEF URLs to work your site needs to have the ability to make adjustments to how the server handles request for your pages (e.g., mod_rewrite). Also, my experience is with Linux servers so I’m not sure what would be necessary in the Windows environment.
How Search Engines Are Responding
It is too early to tell what the long term effects may be for moving to a dynamic site. However, after a few weeks there does not seem to be any negative effects from the major search engines as rankings seem unaffected. One thing I do see is that the Google robot is visiting the site MORE frequently than in the past. This is primarily because the dynamic nature of the site makes it much, much easier to update. Thus, Google now sees KnowThis as a site that is more current and thus requires more frequent visits from their Googlebot.
I am not ready to crown this a success but for any marketer looking to move in this direction I would advise a well-thought out approach. Make sure by moving forward you do not end up falling behind.
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