I have started developing my websites using the method below but my question is, what sort of an impact does this cause on my SEO side of the website?

<?php

include("pages/header.php");

?>

<div id="content">

<?php

$page = $_GET['page'];

echo $page;

switch($page){

case 'home':

include("pages/home.php");

break;

case 'about':

include("pages/about.php");

break;

case 'team':

include("pages/team.php");

break;

case 'clients':

include("pages/clients.php");

break;

case 'contact':

include("pages/contact.php");

break;

default:

include("pages/home.php");

break;

}

?>

</div>

<?php

include("pages/footer.php");

?>

None. Search engines don't care what method you use to construct HTML documents

Absolutly right, There is no such impact on SEO of coding. But in some cases you can find in the source code of a website that can impact your SEO efforts. And these little gremlins can cause big SEO problems, Like:
1. Canonical URL Tag Issues
2. Server-Side Code Showing Up Client-Side
3. CSS Manipulation & Hidden Content
4. Meta Robots Problems
5. Multiple Head Elements, Title Tags & More
6. Excessive Script Code
7. Analytics Tagging Problems
8. Malformed Anchors and Canonicals

So before implementing the code, take some extra steps for performing SEO audits. And find yourself neck deep in the code at some point. When you do, it comes down to your knowledge of what’s right, what’s wrong, and what’s really, really wrong. Good luck.

Thankyou for your input guys, I find this method so fast for when it comes to hand coding my websites. I did this method for a client who wanted a simple 5 page site and 3-4 hours down the line it was completed so im glad it has no form of an effect.

If www.yourdomain.com/?page=home and www.yourdomain.com/?page=contact can both be accessible then sure it's ok but would look into pretty urls (e.g. www.yourdomain.com/contact/). Also make sure you have a 404 in place so www.yourdomain.com/?page=cheese will not generate a page with a 200 (OK) header.

It doen't matter which metod you use if the code can successfully pass W3School validation

Yes google didn't care which code you use in your site. but they care if your coding is note working or some error in come with its output.

I agree with HarshMehra - make sure that your website coding works. The other key thing is to keep the site updated with fresh, original and relevant content. If you can, try and make content interesting enough to be shared. Use longer-tail key phrases in the your content as well.

 

Hope this helps.

Edited September 22, 201411 yr by upperhanddig

It's not just about whether or not the code works, semantics play a role here too so use the correct html5 tags where appropitate. correct use of headings, especially within new contexts like within section or article tags. But all of this is worthless if the site doesn't convert.

Absolutly right, There is no such impact on SEO of coding.

 

I beg to differ, microdata has impact and relies on nested elements with semantic meaning, just like html5.

One thing I'll add to the debate is that class names don't have any sementic meaning in real world terms.

 

I'll quote Harry Robert's here: "Using the correct element for the correct job is as far as semantics goes. Standards concerning naming of those elements is all aboutsensibility."

From this blog post: http://csswizardry.com/2010/08/semantics-and-sensibility/

 

I totally agree with Harry on this point so called 'semantic' classes that are tied to the content severely reduce their re-useability and on a large project make for much larger than necessary css files that are harder to maintain. Your classnames won't have any bearing on your position in search results.

Class names I agree don't matter although the shorter the better IMO. As for semantics, a little microdata goes a long way for 'seo coding' and although Google claims only a handful of ones they use for 'Rich Snippets' it does not discount they don't 'listen' to others, they just won't use them to make cool looking bits under your title in the serps. They can also reduce the need for location name stuffing too.

I agree short classnames are good but not at the expense of them being descriptive of their architecture. I use the BEM naming system and it works very nicely alongside the oocss principles. The Mircodata thing is interesting, something I have to have a deeper read into when I get the chance, but I'm under the impression that the time it takes adding these snippets for very little gain which could be better used perfecting other areas. I could be wrong as I've not read into them too much, but that is the impression I am getting.

Edited September 23, 201411 yr by rbrtsmith

Ah well I been digging with Microdata for a few years now with interesting results. The biggest is defining the page structure and content structure, what's in context of the page to the page you are reading and what is unrelated i.e. adspace, selector pages etc.

Your coding has no effect if you think SEO wise. A few things you need to maintain is... the Title tag, meta tag, descriptions you give. They must be appropriate, maintain the length, include keywords.

Your coding has no effect if you think SEO wise. A few things you need to maintain is... the Title tag, meta tag, descriptions you give. They must be appropriate, maintain the length, include keywords.

 

This is not correct, the coding does have an effect, using correct header tags, appropiate use of html 5 elements, the order of content. Ensuring ajaxed content is still accessible to Google's crawlers. A properly architected document will rank considerably higher than if it wasn't.

Edited September 29, 201411 yr by rbrtsmith

 

A properly architected document will rank considerably higher than if it wasn't.

 

Now this is real SEO IMO ... I got some clients rolling high serps with a tiny count of natural links.

It's really not difficult to get that part right either, i mean the ajaxing and providing non-js fallbacks for google could prove to be a little tricky, but other than that it's just following the basics and not being lazy writing divs to wrap articles, navs and sections etc. or being stuck in 1999.

 

The one thing that does cause confusion though is headings and document contexts. Before HTML5 you should only really have one h1 in a page, but with the advent of section, article and aside tags each one brings about it's own context and each can have a h1, priority of these is dictated by how they are nested (you can have articles inside of sections for example).

There's debate around whether or not Google has fully implimented this or not, but I am of the belief it has based on articles I've read.

This article http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/the-truth-about-multiple-h1-tags-in-the-html5-era--webdesign-16824 covers it in far greater detail than I have here.