Converting static site to dynamic.

[Webdumb]

Hi,

I currently have a static site that ranks fairly well with a number of key phrases. Especially specific phrases indigenous to my secondary and tertiary static pages. Though I have quite a number of products on the site now, there is potential to add hundreds more but this would obviously be horribly labor intensive. It seems clear that I need to create a dynamic site (some kind of user interface for adding new products would be great) because my supplier is always adding brands to their offering, and also since I need to make changes somewhat often.

However...it's my understanding that search engines like static sites better than dynamic ones. One thing I don't want to do is sacrifice my current rankings. Is there a way to make the transition without losing my ranking? Is losing ranking the price you pay to have an easier site to manage? Is it worth it? Can you have the best of both worlds? Can existing static URLs be kept if the site is converted to dynamic?

Thanks!

[ryanbutler]

I don't know where your information about losing site rankings from dynamic sites is coming from but it isn't true. If that were the case, sites like Amazon, Wal-Mart, etc, wouldn't pull up in Google search pages. It's a myth that's absurd. You can convert existing pages to dynamic ones without harm being done.

[WebJoel]

Search engines, spiders & 'bots love content, and especially NEW content. If you are changing content (that is, adding, or inproving upon), this 'invites' 'bots to re-index your page more often. This is always a good thing.

By 'dynamic pages', -you're not referring to "all javascript" or "FLASH" or "JAVA"-rich pages, are you? There are indexing problems with these supportive technologies and these should be used only to improve your customer experience, but not to the detriment of the page if they do not support javascript, FLASH or JAVA. (Some user-agents don't have these, and anyone has the option to 'turn them off' if they wish and thus, view only the HTML)..
Search engines don't read *js, FLASH or JAVA.

[Webdumb]

Thanks for the replies.

By "dynamic" I mean a database driven site as opposed to what I'm doing now which is to manually add items (which includes a picture, SKU number, description, size/weight and price) into a table in page view and then switch to HTML view and again put all those values into the "Add to Cart" form.

I don't know much (read "anything") about this, but no, I'm not talking about JAVA or FLASH.

So, it IS possible to convert to a database driven site and still keep existing well-ranking URLs? For an example of what I mean, Google "roller spinner" and note the URL for the number 2 ranking (that's me). Will that URL still exist if I go with a database site, or will there be a string of odd characters instead?

In the future I would like to add content such as articles, etc., but for now new content consists of adding products.

Basically I need an easier way to enter new products (a lot of them) and then manage them afterward. If visitors can Google key phrases and still reach my site like they can now, then I'm thinking database is the way to go.

Thanks again for your input!

[ryanbutler]

That shouldn't be an issue.