In my previous article I discussed creating a script that called a remote procedure to display content from one site on another. The idea is to use the results for promotional purposes, such as affiliate marketing and cross-site pollenation, and it needs access to the pre-formatted information on the source site (so you can't just rip random information from the site).

This system works perfectly for displaying information such as top-seller lists and latest news, but, because of the dynamic JavaScript call, the page and target website doesn't gain any search engine benefit from listing on other sites.

The next step is to overcome this limitation using XML. Websites using server-side scripting technologies such as PHP and ASP will [effectively] build the page in its entirety before displaying the content, which is what we need if we want to gain any search engine optimisation benefit. Using client-side (JavaScript) scripting, the page is built post-download, rendering it invisible to search engine crawlers.

The blockquote at the bottom of the page (not from the homepage, sorry) shows a list of digital cameras reformatted from an RSS feed on a digital camera retailer's website. Whilst it appears no different from the previous JavaScript example (other than formatting, of course), the search engine crawlers will see these as valid links to the destination website.

Using the same tag in the links for affiliate tracking will reduce the search engine capital gained from using the XML, but there is a valid workaround. The main disadvantage of the JavaScript remote list method, remember, was that the search engine crawlers couldn't pick up on code generated client-side, such as with JavaScript, so why not turn that to our advantage and use JavaScript to add the affiliate tags? That's the subject of my next article.

References:

• RSS2HTML.ASP for ASP/ASP.NET by ByteScout.com
• Replace relative links to absolute base links in HTML - VBScript, ASP from www.motobit.com