Hy guys,

We're running a large online store (100,000+ products). Unfortunately (due to a very complex software that works in the background) we can't create SE friendly URLs or any static pages within this domain.

I've decided to manually create some static content pages that link into the categories and several products of our online store in order to improve the overall ranking of our page. However, I'm now facing the following questions:

• is it better to store those pages on a subdomain on the same server (e.g.content.shop.com) or on a seperate domain (e.g. shopscontent.com)
  
• I'm thinking of using some articles of some of the many 'free web content directories' that can be found online these days. I will link keywords in these articles with categories/products of our store. Is that Ok? Or will Google recognise that this article is just a free copy?
  
• I want to display the latest entries of some content related XML feeds on the right or left hand side so that the content of the page changes everyday. Is that a good idea?
  
• Does anyone know if there is a software/script out there that can help in building such content pages (CMS that focuses on creating SE friendly pages with page-index and SE friendly URLs etc.

Your answers are much appreciated! :-)

Thanks,

Kai

Originally Posted by brakai295

• is it better to store those pages on a subdomain on the same server (e.g.content.shop.com) or on a seperate domain (e.g. shopscontent.com)

On the same domain.

Originally Posted by brakai295

• I'm thinking of using some articles of some of the many 'free web content directories' that can be found online these days. I will link keywords in these articles with categories/products of our store. Is that Ok? Or will Google recognise that this article is just a free copy?

Nope. Google will recognise it to be a free copy and will not help you much. Get some quality articles.

Originally Posted by brakai295

• I want to display the latest entries of some content related XML feeds on the right or left hand side so that the content of the page changes everyday. Is that a good idea?

Yup. Regularly updated content is always good.

Originally Posted by brakai295

• Does anyone know if there is a software/script out there that can help in building such content pages (CMS that focuses on creating SE friendly pages with page-index and SE friendly URLs etc.

WIKI is one of the good SE friendly CMS I can think of.

What about using mod_rewrite?

Mod rewrite is mainly useful for coverting non-seo-friendly urls into seo friendly ones and vice versa, but you will have to change the internal link code.

Instead of the internal code having links to (say) www.domain.com/page?param1=aaa&....&param26-zzz, you change the links to all be www.domain.com/param1/param/.../param26.html. This means that the spiders think you have a huge, spiderable site. Mod rewite then 'translates' the href into what you really want to do and effectively calls www.domain.com/page?param1=aaa&....&param26-zzz instead.

To use mod rewrite in this way, you will need to be able to change the internal coding of the site so that it uses the seo friendly href format in its links. If you can do this, fine. If not, I think you can't use mod rewrite.