limitations of static html export

[groovedigger]

Hi there. I'm doing some research into options for a web hook up for my wife's jewellery business. She is Mac based and uses FM Pro for stock control. I am a web designer and a Search Engine Optimiser and I am look for a search engine friendly route to the web.

As you are probably aware search engines have very limited incursions into the masses of content in dynamic sites (here's a FM Pro site with only one page indexed in Google http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=site%3Awww.londonautosales.net+auto )

Currentlty I am using a cheap out of the box solution called Zilron Store Creator with which I have to do a lot of formatting of an export from FM Pro to make it work, but it outputs one flat html page for each product - approximately 2000 pages - which has a great effect on search engine listings and functions as a basic secure shopping cart.

The time has come to take a step up the ladder now, but from an SEO standpoint I see very few options for me. I have done a lot of reading up on exporting flat html pages from FM Pro, but need to know how I can interface with an online shopping cart solution? I assume that I could include a link from the individual static html product page to a dynamic page which would present all the various pricing options for different metals/finishes etc? How would I go about creating these 2 versions and linking them? The content of the database doesn't change very often.

Any suggestions for ideas or resources would be greatly appreciated.

[Fitch]

Find out what the links look like in your shopping cart -- I assume its pages are dynamic. Then setup FileMaker to include the corresponding links for each static page that you export. This will be a fairly easy calculation if your FileMaker product IDs correspond to the cart's. If not, it will be tedious. The tricky part is linking the cart back to the catalog, which may not be feasible. One option would be to link to the cart in a blank window, so the catalog would still be there behind it, or use frames, so at least the main navigation of the catalog would remain visible. But frames have their own drawback for SEO.

[groovedigger]

Cheers Tom.

The shopping cart solution is proprietary to Zilron so I will be moving away from that. Any suggestions? I was going to cross that bridge when I come to it...

I have a workaround for frames re SEO, and was considering this as an option:

Say I have the following structure: the topframe is the shopping cart that updates with the total etc and the 2 frames that appear in the bottom frame are the static html page output and the dynamic one which contains all the dynamic fields/options and purchase buttons etc Regardless of the niggly nature of the coding can you ever see this working? If not I'm going to mix the 2 solutions and get Zilron to output it's pages including the ASP code I will need to talk to the database...

This will still allow full spiderability of the main product content which is what I want.

[Anatoli]

You are concern about search engines and you want to use frames?

Until you use one of 2 things, that is Dead End Street.

1. You must use single page design, where everything works without the frameset. Then there is question -- why frameset?

2. You will use JavaScript to display indexed page *inside* the frameset. Each page must test if it is displayed inside of frameset and if not, frameset is called and that page is inserted into proper frame.