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Hey, I don't think there is any SEO benefits and the video your are referring to is somehow outdated and ironic as Matt Cutts doesn't display any file extension on his blog neither. On a usability stand point, it is better for users if the URL doesn't have any extension so they doesn't have to remember if the URL was ending with either .htm, .html, .php, .aspx, .asp, .jsp, etc. The shorter, the better. A shorter URL will be easier to share (ex: on twitter), tell on the phone, quicker to type, look better in SERPs, etc. Best regards, Guillaume Voyer.

To add another perspective to it: I have used buidlmyrank.com. I would say that one of the only saving graces about it is that you can create your own content, submit it to them, and they will post it on a PR 1 - 4 website with a backlink to your site. So like Marcus said its great for brand new PR 0, PA 1 sites. They allow 1 backlink per 150 words. They also promote that if you want them to create content for you they can do it at $2.50 per 150 words / backlink. Needless to say the article is definitely worth just that. If you have great content post it on your own site and maybe consider hiring a copywriter to write an article about you then submit to buildmyrank. By all means please don't use this as your sole link building service as it won't get you very far in the long run. Consider high level directories like Yahoo, Best of the Web, DMOZ (good luck) and Business.com, and of course great content to get natural and earned links / citations. Enjoy

Gah! The dreaded vestigial noindex! Our surgeons have rectified the situation. That was buried in a long-defunct component. That there's a head smacker.

Ok thanks for the answer.  What about hosting on same server?  Should we host them on separate servers for each site?

I'd go for the 301 since you truly are targeting American customers. Be prepared for a couple month period of bad results while the 301 takes effect.

Hi Keri, I decided not to pursue these links - I don't really want my client to be associated with junk like this, even if it would help them in the short run. So I can't tell you what the effect of those links would have been... Annemieke

Oh cool. I heard about that, before my time though.  Thanks again!

In a lot of cases I optimize the same page for several related keywords - like in your case. The only thing I follow is to place a tier one keyword and tier two, three related keywords and know/ be sure which one is which so the plan is crisp and clear. I usually optimize more for the main keyword and I use most of the on-page optimization for this particular keyword. I optimize tier two and three on the same page without cutting any modules from the main one (using some h2,h3 maybe and to be sure the page has a good % of the main keyword first and then the second and third tier ones.) The anchor text for links that will point to this page will vary and I think that is a good thing - a natural thing and it will help overall including your link diversity. It's better to have more anchor text with the links for your page and not only "student health insurance" as anchor text. Overall is a natural thing to rank for more then one keyword especially for long tail variations. However, that's just my opinion. I do that a lot in my optimization sessions and the results so far based on this strategy are good. Hope it helps.

Wow, that was quick. Thanks David! Reckon we'll go with blog/postname as it makes it easier to restructure categories later too.

Thanks, David. I thought I had read that meta keywords were still used by Yahoo or Bing (definitely not Google). Is that not true? Does it harm anything to have the meta keywords if I just leave them as-is (since I already have them), or should I pro-actively go remove them?

Do not waste your time using the meta title, we've run experiments and found no boost whatsoever using meta title, just focus on regular title tag, links, and fresh high-quality content. It does NOT matter where in the tag your title tag is, but personally we put it right after the opening head tag for a good practice and to have a cleaner code layout. But, it matters NOTHING. Good luck!

Greg, Were you able to figure this out?  I just ran into the same issue and was hoping for a little more insight