Search Engine Optimization and Error Catching
Posted April 19, 2006 at 8:43 AM by Ben Nadel
I have been trying to build this site with good search engine optimization (SEO). The top item on the SEO list is the link hrefs. My site is built on a DAX string (Divide and Qonquer mentality - "daq's") in the form of:
"index.cfm?dax=blog:4.view
However, in order to make the site more SEO, I have retooled the links to be in the form of:
./blog/4-this-is-the-entry-title/view
which essentially gets parsed into the DAX string metioned above. The concern I have here is that this is actually throwing a 404 file not found error. However, I catch this in a custom error handler page and manually set the page status to 202:
<cfheader statuscode="200" statustext="OK" />
When I do a CFHttp to test the status of my pages, it does indeed come back as 200; however, I am seeing in my logs that spiders will hit the home page of my site, but then not hit anything else. I don't know if that is because it can somehow figure out that it's actually hitting a 404 page or what? But then again, even if they had to do a page grab to get the status code, my logs would have that as well.
So, why are search engines not moving past my homepage? More to come....
Reader Comments
Any problem on Google Site Map verification. I am not able to verify some of my site using customized 404 page for not found pages.
Thanks
What kind of server-side scripting are you using? You should be able to override the 404 by passing custom headers.
I have the same issue with 2 custom PHP application, and one Joomla site.
Thanks
Technologies: mod_perl php apache xml mysql mssql nt linux java ajax ant solr
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Initiated process to standardize AJAX development on Yahoo UI toolkit (involved leading a team to review existing systems, define requirements, identify integration points and impact of adoption, and propose adoption guidelines)
Worked with operations team to maintain and extend functionality of ticket tracking and CRM tools.
Reduced code execution through refactoring, code analysis and database optimization
Kept development blog to increase communication between coasts department structure.
Introduced testing procedures and tools for non-Java projects.
Introduced standard build process for PHP and Perl code using Ant/Java - reduced push time and associated push problems.
Identified stakeholders and managed communication between multiple developers and external stakeholders for multiple projects.
