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Maybe I am missing something, but wouldn't a rewrite that removes all the .php instances solve this problem site-wide? Or are you doing it file by file and leaving some pages as-is? Something like this in your .htaccess should do it: to remove php: RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php or to change to htm site-wide: RewriteEngine on RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^([^.]+).htm$ $1.php [L] Another way is to name the files with .htm and use this in htaccess to send htm through your PHP handler: AddType application/x-httpd-php htm html php AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .htm .html If you use rewrites like those, you won't be able to also use 301s for the affected URIs as it would probably create a redirect loop. In a perfect world, you should 301 redirect any page that changes if you stop using the php to htm rewrites. If there are simply too many for this to be practical, you could just redirect the most important pages and leave out any that may not have very many inbound links pointing to it. What I will often do in cases like this is set up the redirects for the important pages, then keep an eye on Google Webmaster Tools. Webmaster Tools will show you the 404 errors and where they found the links. Then you can pick the ones that have a lot of links and 301 those a few at a time. Tedious, but if you do that in your spare time, eventually you will get them all fixed. If you can implement a "set it and forget it" rewrite so you don't have to add a new rewrite for each file, you won't have to worry about 301 redirecting all those old pages. Otherwise, there really shouldn't be any major loss of rank from dropping the file types. All that said, there isn't much of a reason to remove the file type extensions, other than to shorten addresses by a few characters and just look a little cleaner.

Whichever link occurs first in the coding, so if the first occurrence is in the menu, yes - that's the generally held belief - though some have demonstrated ways to get around it (I don't have links, sorry). In general links within body content are given higher value than links elsewhere, so that's why some SEOs have tried to get around this 'first anchor text link rule'. Google (and other search engines, probably) can recognise the difference between menu's, sidebars, footers etc. and main body content - it's something they're getting better at all the time so I wouldn't be surprised if this changed. But then again it could be easier for people to game so perhaps it won't.

Remember that a Warning is just that, a "Warning". This doesn't  necessarily mean that you are doing something wrong. It just means that you should be aware of a "possible' issue. If your navigation is intended to help visitors navigate your site and facilitates finding products, then I wouldn't worry about the warnings. If you have such a large navigation just for the purpose of stuffing keywords, then I would reconsider the strategy.

Well yeah that wouldn't be too many at all, but then going back to what Marcus and EGOL said you're much better off using bold tags for readability reasons than simply using it on keywords really. It has little to no impact in terms of rankings (probably a tiny bit) but can have a much greater impact on keeping your visitors moving forward and converting if used to break the content up into more digestible chunks with a good scent of what's important to them and where their eyes should go next. I'd probably use bold a few more times in a 500 word piece but use it as what it is, an emphasis tag Not emphasising keywords for Google but whatever it is in the content that will encourage the user to feel they're in the right place... if that happens to combine with some keywords or keyword phrases then great, but don't see it as a game-changer for rankings

While I cannot speak for a whole platform (this will soon be happening), I just tested it with a single page of which I changed the URL structure as well as optimizing on-page - the whole website is one mess of spam. I can only second the advices the posters before have given you: Wait until the crucial time for you business is over. I experienced the following: I prepared an optimized text for the adjusted site, figured out the best keyword to rank for (quite competitive)  and decided which URL would serve my needs the best. So the structure before was like www.domain.com/brand_page/_22-key-word2-translatedkeyword.php (ranked 20). This was changed to www.domain.com/key-word.html. We used 301 Permanent Redirect. The outcome: After 2 days, the old URL was kicked out of the index. Then it took Google 6 days to index the site with the new URL structure but with disastrous ranking (28 first entry). Then it took around 5 days until we reclaimed rank 20. Three days after, we ranked 10 - and we're still there. So for the targeted short-tail keyword, it payed off. BUT: Nearly none of the  long-tail keywords that generated traffic for the old page are ranking keywords for the page right now. Only little by little we start to rank again for them, but it is 3,5 weeks now. To cut a long story short: I'd do it another time in the year, it is better for the client's business.

Hi Marc, Great answer from Ross! What you need to do is be very strategic and learn to pick your battles so you have a better chance of winning I believe the best way to do this is to stick with SEOmoz and soak up all the knowledge you can from the Blog, Webinars, Whiteboard Friday videos and of course, make use of Q&A. Also, use the SERPs Analysis Tool to generate advanced reports for your "money" keyword terms and see if there are easy wins in on-page and/or social media that you may not have thought of. Rand gave a detailed explanation of the tool and how you can use it to compare metrics for the top 10 sites returned for your chosen keyword term. There is also a link to the tool at the beginning of the post. Hope that helps, Sha

I agree with Sha that your 404 page has a nice appearance. My main concern is it lacks functionality. If I click on a link to your site and end up on that page, what is my next action? Likely I would hit the <back>button on my browser and leave your site. It is either that or typing a URL.</back> I recommend you offer users the option to stay on your site. Your site navigation, a search box, some links, anything would be helpful.

they might have several hundred of these domains. What is the best use of these domains? I would let them expire and buy beer with the savings... Then focus all of my energy on a single domain.

So sorry you are seeing this. It is a known bug that is being worked on, and a lot of it should be taken care of by the October 18th update. Like Ryan suggested, emailing help is a good step. For more information, see the response from a Linkscape engineer in this thread: http://www.seomoz.org/q/weird-behaviour

If webmaster tools likes the old one then I wouldn't rock the boat. I don't think you are going to have any problems with having 2 site maps. But I've never toyed with this one.

I love these questions because they defy the laws of Google gravity!  There are many "indicators" outside of the commonly discussed you find most often in these forums.  You are on the right track in suspecting that Google takes the format of a site's content into consideration.  If a site has relevant textual content along with a variety of downloadable .doc or .pdf files with relevant titles, preference may be swayed toward the site that seems to offer the most relevant information.  Variety does matter, whether you're offering content that's supported by images, videos, outbound links, .doc documents, or .pdf documents, etc. I also suspect that .net extension carries more weight than .ro, but there's no conclusive evidence that I can find.

Ryan - I think you have sincerely tried to relate the world as you know it and I appreciate your time. I will leave this final thought on the subject of popular assumptions - In html 4 the W3C denigrated target="_blank". If you used it on a page, your page wouldn't validate W3C. Reason given - their opinion that it took away visitor choice in how many windows were open. In the designer's view, NOT using it for external links simply took away visitors. As Google and just about everyone else continued opening new winows and the W3C could not give a solid, technical reason to not use it - they relented and re-included it in html 5 specs. "Web 2.0" - commonly believed to be an official standard is nothing more than a phrase coined in a 1999 article by a consultant on electronic information architecture envisioning the user involvement we see today in places like Facebook, etc. People building Wordpress sites, etc now claim they are operating in "Web 2.0". There is no real Web 2.0 construct. So far no one in a position of power has stated anything concrete that they are sure that (tastefully) hyphenating a domain name is going to have a negative effect on SEO. Again, I am referring only to conventional websites - not blogs. And, why should Google worry about me with URL's like this out there - http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/casino-legislation-would-create-three-new-gambling-venues-in-south-florida/1195490

I know that Google will index longer titles, so I suppose you could use extra characters to increase instances of keyword use. If there is little keyword use elsewhere on the page I can see this affecting rankings due to reaching a certain level of keyword use for the page overall. However, I've never heard of there being an advantage to placing your keywords anywhere other than the beginning. Ranking algorithms are well-kept secrets and subject to change, but the commercial interests of the search engines lie with striving to present the best responses to search queries. I think it likely that search engines will strive to present results based on what is visible to site visitors as this is the information which will fulfil visitor needs, and they will strive to avoid presenting pages which appear to use deceptive techniques. If the page text has adequate and appropriate keyword use you wouldn't need to play with extra long titles and descriptions. If the page text doesn't have adequate and appropriate keyword use then excessive length and keyword use in meta titles and descriptions could be interpreted as deceptive.

Thanks for the good tips. Think I done em all except the trailing slash. Will look at that. If you look at this page http://www.meresverige.dk/rejser/malmoe, it should do a 301 redirect to the new one. Does the redirect look ok to you? F

Thank you Ryan! Sounds like I should be using the cleaner format.

Nice improvements. My next suggestions are: Remove your left sidebar from Arai Auto Helmets to Arai Pinlock. Your Arai New Products and Arai Popular Departments from the lower right sidebar can be placed in the area of the left sidebar where the removed blocks used to be. Your "New 2010 helmets" probably should be updated or removed For your "Best Selling Helmets" you currently show 9 helmets. It seems like too much content for your home page. If you wish to keep that block, I would suggest removing 2 rows and keep the third. For meta tags, you can remove your meta keywords tag as it offers no value at all. You can also remove your meta robots tag. Index, follow is the default setting for all web pages so it is just another line of unnecessary code. With respect to your title and header tag, you need to perform keyword research to determine the best terms for your site. For example I noticed "arai helmets" shows 74k searches per month, but "arai racing helmets" shows only 480. You want to focus all the relevant variations with your site's inner pages, not the home page.

Hi Mike. OSE is based upon the Linkscape crawl of the web. The crawl process takes 2-3 weeks, then another 1-2 weeks to crunch the data. OSE is updated approximately once per month with the next update happening on October 18th. Hopefully your links will be visible at that time BUT it may take another cycle depending on when those links were added. You should also know Linkscape only crawls about 25% of the web based on page authority. This is actually effective because if a page is not crawled by Linkscape, it likely has little or no value as a link anyway. One last note, you definitely want to request your writer to adjust their links to the correct URL format. You are correct you only lose a small amount of link juice, but that can be the difference of ranking higher on any given search. Additionally the greater risk is when you redirect a page on your site meaning the link has been double re-directed in which case the loss of link juice is amplified.