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Dax_Trajero
Inspiring
November 23, 2010
Answered

SEO with Coldfusion, dynamically insert 'title' and 'meta' tags ?

  • November 23, 2010
  • 4 replies
  • 9665 views

with regards to a database driven site that relies on a single page, 'show_merchandise.cfm' to display products, is it ok for Coldfusion to fill in the title and meta tags ?

eg.

<title>#title_info#</title>

<meta name="keywords" content="#keyword_info#">

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer oliver_8376
     

    You can use ColdFusion to dynamically insert 'title' and 'meta' tags by pulling data from your database and embedding it in your page headers. I’ve done this before while working at an SEO agency (https://pearllemonseo.ca/), and it’s a great way to optimize content for search engines!

    4 replies

    O
    oliver_8376Correct answer
    Participant
    October 5, 2024
     

    You can use ColdFusion to dynamically insert 'title' and 'meta' tags by pulling data from your database and embedding it in your page headers. I’ve done this before while working at an SEO agency (https://pearllemonseo.ca/), and it’s a great way to optimize content for search engines!

    A
    Anonymous
    December 1, 2010

    I myself find this topic rather humorous. Just in this post alone you find two different view points, as I have found through a couple months of research, forum posts, and my own testing and google searches. Its rather like the arguement over which came first, the chicken or the egg.

    I have articles on my desk right this minute, both of which supposedly quote sources from google, saying complete opposites about dynamic URL structures. One says "the default of dynamic url structures contain parameters which google is not capable of indexing". Then I have another article that says google CAN index dynamic URL's as long as they arent passing more than 2 and dont contain certain characters like slashes and periods.

    As far as I have read and found out personally, google search engines index already parsed webpages. I have a totally dynamic website I have been building the last few months, and as I have read, as long as you are not passing more than 2 parameters in the URL, then the site gets indexed fine. I think it's more important to have a unique page title and relevent page content with images and alt & title tages.

    For me I just did what I thought would work, and so far it has. I have dynamic URL's that pass a brand name and a product number. Within the next couple of months, I will definately be able to see for sure.

    Z
    Zachari_5
    Participant
    October 11, 2018

    Having no knowledge regarding Meta tags and titles for indexed marketing. Targeted customers and inbound link building are performed by seo services Los Angeles in a presentable way. Their top priority is customer satisfaction. Boosting traffic through optimization is undoubtedly common but long term results are availed only with quality publishing.

    D
    Dax_TrajeroAuthor
    Inspiring
    November 23, 2010

    As usual, some great info.

    Thanks again guys.

    A
    Adam Cameron.
    Inspiring
    November 23, 2010

    Sure.  Just because a site is constructed via a single CFM template, doesn't mean web users see that.  They still see individual (ie: discrete) web pages.

    It's important to get clear in your mind the difference between CFM files (templates) and web pages (as served by a URL).  They are not the same thing at all, and bear only a superficial corelation to each other.

    A single web page can comprise the processing of dozens or hundreds of separate CFM files.  Or a single CFM file.  Web users (be they human or automated) just fetch the end result (the HTML).  They neither know nor care how the end result was constructed.

    So in your case they see a <title> tag and some <meta> tags.  It's irrelevant what mechanism you used to populate them.

    --

    Adam

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    Dax_TrajeroAuthor
    Inspiring
    November 23, 2010

    Thanks Adam

    So just to get things straight in my mind, it's perfectly acceptable to put coldfusion specific code before any html tags ?

    eg. can I place my cf query BEFORE the <doctype> tag ? Or do I need to put it AFTER the <html> tag ?

    A
    Adam Cameron.
    Inspiring
    November 23, 2010

    Yep.  You are still putting a "causal" connection between the two that does not exist.  CFML doesn't know what HTML is; HTML doesn't know what CFML is.

    All CF / CFML does is generate character data.  You can use it to generate character data that a browser can interpret as HTML, sure.  But CF doesn't know or care about that.

    Within a CFML template (ie: a .cfm file), any text data that is not CFML is completely ignored by the CF server.  It just reads it, and spits it back out again.  All the CF server cares about is CFML (which it processes, and spits out the output of).

    The web server collects all the spit (!), and sends it back to the browser.

    So your doctypes and all that sort of stuff is completely meaningless to CF: it's just some text that it knows it can ignore and just pass straight back to the web server.

    --
    Adam

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