What is aspx?

ASP.NET is a web application framework developed and marketed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic web sites, web applications and web services.

What is php?

PHP is a programming language used for populating dynamic web pages. It is mainly used in web development and can be embedded into HTML by using PHP code as its input and HTML as the output. PHP is also a part of the popular LAMP environment, but has many other useful applications as well.

We can already see where a lot of the problem stems from. In the aspx definition, the mother of all swear words when it comes toweb development, “Microsoft” is responsible for the aspx language. Many web developers are not firm favourites of anything Microsoft due to the expensive licencing costs as well as the business methodology of keeping all their cards close to their chest rather than following an opensource route like php.

But this really doesn’t get to the heart of the problem as there are many aspx developers out there who DO swear by the platform; so what is it about the platform that causes so many headaches for SEO professionals?

So what’s the answer?

Truth be told; it comes down to personal preference… Yip, that’s the answer. There is no definitive answer which points in either direction. In the old days of search, when SEO was but a babe, search engines wouldn’t (read couldn’t) crawl dynamic pages – the heart and soul of aspx. Today though, the major three (Google, Yahoo and Bing) all crawl and index dynamic pages without too much hassle.

The real lesson here is that basic SEO best practices still mean the most :

1. Ensure relevancy between your content, heading, tile and URL

2. ensure that your URL’s are clean – use a rewrite mod to change your URL

3. Ensure that you keep the 3 spheres on SEO in mind : on site; off site and server side.

To sum up in short; if you are an aspx developer; then stick with aspx. If you are a php developer, then stick with php. If you have beef with Microsoft, then so be it – truth be told though, aspx is a very powerful and beautiful language once you get to know it and understand it………. Much like Flemish!