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Hi,

I would like to know how 'include' helps in SEO.

By using html we can include javascript and images. But if we are including files using php or asp is it SEO friendly, especially quick contact forms which are same throughout the site.

With
Jay.

I am not a programmer but from what I know PHP and ASP includes help make the code cleaner and make the search engines spider through less amounts of text. (not to mention making updates easier.

One person that may definitely know the answer is Paul Sveda! We should ask him.

This also goes well with the question I asked in the forum above this talking about what makes programming SEO friendly? Id love someone to learn more!

This is the answer I just got from Paul...

Here is the answer. Includes behave as shared code that would typicaly be in the HTML page but instead of having to edit in every page the coder edites the one instance of it on the server and all pages are updated

As far as the browser is concerned it asks for the page at the server and the server sees these include calls. Seeing all these includes it assembles the code in the include into the HTML page before delivering it to the browser. Thus an includ is call an SSI or SERVER SIDE INCLUDE. As far as a spider crawling the same function is performed before the spider see the page and the spider has no clue what is an include. The only thing the spider can see is the repition of code across a number of pages which would be the case even if it was just put in the HTML page without an include. Includes are not a good idea for repition of content but for navigation or interface items its fine.

Now I am always asked why wouldn't the spider be able to see the page with the "include asp code" in it. Easy, for the spider to see that it would need FTP level access to the page and not HTTP level which causes the server to execute the all includes and ASP/PHP functions.