Using mod_rewrite in Apache

I created a Real Estate solution for a client a while back in php and it has worked well for them but once the site launched we noticed that it wasn’t getting crawled by the search engines as well as we would have liked for it to so I did a little research.  I knew that typically data called in from a database dynamically presented a problem when it came to getting the best SEO performance. 

I asked a few developers this past year at HostingCon about this and they suggested I look into Mod Rewrite in apache and see if that wouldn’t help out.  I checked it out and so far the results have been phenomenal for the client.  Here’s what I did in case any of you run into a smilar situation.  I first created an .htaccess file to redirect to a “home page”, in this case it’s called index2.php.  Next I did a rewrite for the dynamically generated pages.  The .htaccess file looks like this:

Options +FollowSymLinksRewriteEngine OnRewriteRule ^index2.php  prime-listings/index_view.php?editid1=1RewriteRule ^prime-listings/lakefront_homes.php  prime-listings/prime_listings_list.php?a=search&value=1&SearchFor=Lakefront+Homes&SearchOption=Equals&SearchField=typeRewriteRule ^prime-listings/lakefront_lots.php  prime-listings/prime_listings_list.php?a=search&value=1&SearchFor=Lakefront+Lots&SearchOption=Equals&SearchField=typeRewriteRule ^prime-listings/lakeview_homes.php  prime-listings/prime_listings_list.php?a=search&value=1&SearchFor=Lakeview+Homes&SearchOption=Equals&SearchField=typeRewriteRule ^prime-listings/lakeview_lots.php  prime-listings/prime_listings_list.php?a=search&value=1&SearchFor=Lakeview+Lots&SearchOption=Equals&SearchField=typeRewriteRule ^prime-listings/river_properties.php  prime-listings/prime_listings_list.php?a=search&value=1&SearchFor=River&SearchOption=Equals&SearchField=typeRewriteRule ^prime-listings/residential_properties.php  prime-listings/prime_listings_list.php?a=search&value=1&SearchFor=Residential&SearchOption=Equals&SearchField=typeRewriteRule ^prime-listings/residential_lots.php  prime-listings/prime_listings_list.php?a=search&value=1&SearchFor=Residential+Lots&SearchOption=Equals&SearchField=RewriteRule ^prime-listings/commercial_properties.php  prime-listings/prime_listings_list.php?a=search&value=1&SearchFor=Commercial&SearchOption=Equals&SearchField=typeRewriteRule ^prime-listings/farm_land.php  prime-listings/prime_listings_list.php?a=search&value=1&SearchFor=acreage&SearchOption=Contains&SearchField=  


So now for example, instead of using http://www.greersferryrealestatecenter.com/prime-listings/prime_listings_list.php?a=search&value=1&SearchFor=Residential&SearchOption=Equals&SearchField=type as a link, I just use this: http://www.greersferryrealestatecenter.com/prime-listings/residential_properties.php. This is apparently more favorable to the search engines.