What’s the difference anyway? Well, once you know the difference between static and dynamic, you can use each to your advantage.

Good Old HTML

The plain HTML page is an example of a static page. Neither you nor anyone else will get different content when requesting an HTML page unless it has been updated. You can still find plain HTML pages though you will probably find more dynamic pages instead. Unlike dynamic pages which are created bit by bit upon request, a static page is WYSIWYG.

The Dynamic Difference

A script program such as CMF, PHP or ASP creates the instructions for generating a dynamic page upon the request from a search engine. A dynamic page is pieced together as the viewer is watching it load.

Searching for Dynamic Content

The Google and Yahoo search engines are now able to search dynamic pages although indexing dynamic content is not as fast as it is for static pages. Google only assigns PR (Google position rank) to static pages. Most search engines for two main reasons cannot index dynamic pages: the content is not HTML based and it is changed before it gets to the viewer’s browser.

Database with Dynamic Results

You can find databases that offer their search results on dynamic pages. An example is the page of search results you get after asking for an item from an online store catalogue. While it is okay to create dynamic database or catalogue pages with static pages, you should not use dynamic pages for the main content of your site.

Recognize the URL Style

You can identify dynamic page URLs for a database because of the insertion of characters and Session IDs in their URL. Examples of the characters you can see in a dynamic URL are ampersands, question marks and equal signs. The characters tell the database what to put on the page. An incorrectly written URL for a dynamic page can inflate page count.

Check Page Rank before Submitting to a Dynamic Page

To find out whether the Session ID is written properly in a page URL, check the page rank. If it does not have a page rank, the URL may be written incorrectly. An incorrectly written URL can stop the page from getting a page rank and a search engine from following its links.

If you want to submit your site to a dynamic page, you should check its page rank. If it has a page rank then it is okay to submit your site to it because if it does not then the search engines may not be indexing it.

Handling the Problems

You can bypass the problems with the search engines and dynamic pages with software and effort and you can change a dynamic page to HTML. It can be expensive. You would have to offer a static version which may bring you duplicate content penalties. When you set up a static page that is similar to a dynamic page, to avoid penalties, put a noindex meta tag on one of the pages. You can also stop the search engine from the database content through the robots.txt.file.