Increasing the volume and quality of traffic that comes to a web site by a search engine is known as Search Engine Optimization. This is not to be confused with Search Engine Marketing or SEM, which involves paid services with search engines. Typically, SEO looks at how search engines work and how people search. Once these factors have been identified, you can optimize a website to include those specific keywords and to get rid of any existing barriers that would prevent indexing conducted by search engines.

A popular misconception among website owners is that server side scripting language will affect Search Engine Optimization. This is a myth. The misconception is because of the notion that static HTML pages are more effective when it comes to being found and indexed by search engines. Although server side scripts can create somewhat “messy” HTML code, it is HTML code nevertheless. Meaning, the created web page is the same as a static HTML page and is seen in the same way by any browser.

While there are many popular server side scripting languages, PHP and ASP seem to be the clear winners ahead of Pearl, Python and Cold Fusion. Combined with a database such as MySQL, server side scripting languages create web pages instantly using information found in the database. Just as these pages are visible to website visitors, so are they to search engine crawlers. An example of this would be popular systems like Wordpress and Joomla.

In conclusion, using server side scripts like PHP and ASP do not affect Search Engine Optimization in any adverse way; instead, they give you many benefits and boost your websites performance.