Major Apartment Website Needs SEO Review

Found at: xxxwww.udrt.com
History: Always Dynamically generated but switched hosting company and also did a new site redesign launch effective May 1, 2004. New site using Cold Fusion which now produces lenghty URL strings. Prior to May 1, the homepage URL would be xxxhttp://www.udrt.com. Now it's xxxhttp://www.udrt.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=

Before May 1, site was producing over 25,000 month SE Visitors. After May 1, it's dropped to about 10,000 Visitors in August. Meta Tags are the same prior to and after May 1. Added new Content Post May 1. Google PR was 6 prior to May 1. Now it's "0"

What I See:
We also have xxxhttp://www.udrt-communities.com
that prior to May 1 had its own simple URL. Now it's xxxhttp://www.udrt-communities.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=home
and now shares the same content and meta tags. This could be possible duplicate content viewed by the Spiders?

The Cold Fusion string is too complex for the homepage.

The web design company doesn't want to use a htaccess file to make the String a simple one because they say it will have no affect on the search engines.

The web company recently suggested adding a bunch of text anchor links directly linking to the various apartment community subpages thinking the Spider will be able to index these pages. I think it won't do any good due to the CF long URL string.

Your professional opinion(s) will be appreciated.

Thank you.

Steve

Hi Steve

The new site with the cold fusion index page has been indexed so that actual string is not the problem. I know it is long but it is only 1 URL. The problem is backlinks. You have 982 backlinks (using yahoos link:http://etc.etc) for the domain xxxhttp://www.udrt.com but none for xxxhttp://www.udrt.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=home. This will have amajro effect on SERPs. Especialy as xxxhttp://www.udrt.com just goes straight to the cold fusion version witht he parameter on the ned of the URL.

I would strongly recomend using .htaccess (especialy as it is so easy) to change the index page to xxxhttp://www.udrt.com and all the other pages with parameters to relevant names link - xxxhttp://www.udrt.com/apartments This will actualy help the SERPs if used corectly.

There is no problem with meta tags being the same and duplciate content. Make sure that the text in the meta tags is all actually in the content though. Also Google doesn't pay any attention to meta tags (some bots still do but not googlebot).

Hope this helps

Trevor Stobler

Why anyone bothers to answer these one posters I'm amazed.
What the hell happened to these forums?
Where is my bestest mate relax?