Thanks Cary, I'll see what I can find. I was coming back here because I just realized that my main question didn't really get answered lol.

How does the SSI setup (changing pages to .shtml if needed) affect search engine ranking? Not that I have much of one mind you, but they are finding my site for the most part and I hate to go backwards instead of forwards in getting my site noticed. Will this cause me to have to do redirects? Or will the .shtml be read the same as .html for the search engines?

You need to think about this differently. First, SSI does not effect your SEO, its not operating like a frame would. Instead, think of it just as you would for the assembly of your web page. Your server assembles your web page by calling your html, images, css, etc. All SSI does is add another call for your server to make (to another html file), thus assembling one web page, just as it normally would, but with one extra call. It would be no different if you added another css file.
Conversely, the idea of frames is more like having three different web pages that display on one page (assuming a frameset of 3). the webpage acts more like a window to display these three different web pages, thus not allowing google bot to spider properly through the site.
Finally, I am not sure what Carey is referencing. I have never seen SSI work without renaming your html pages to .shtml. The "S" tells the server that there is another file to find.

I think what Jo Ann is asking is:

she presently has pages name .html, if she adds SSI they will then be renamed shtml

will that then mean the search engines see them as new pages and when they look for the previous html pages already in the ranking system will it throw an error?

Thank you Tassie, that's exactly what I mean. Changing the names to .shtml is what I'm worried about, not how it works. Will this make the search engines see them as new pages and that my old .html pages are now missing and send them all to 404 errors?

This I am not sure on. My guess, is that no, they will not see them as new pages. The reason being that adding the "S" indicates something readable by the server. I do not think the bot will recognize the difference. I think it might be more like: you know in CSS some codes are recognized by one browser and not another. I think it is more like that. But I have only my guess no hard facts (but, then again no one has hard facts.)

Hope this helps.

Thanks Eric, I'll wait a bit and see if anyone else answers that knows for sure before I give it a shot and make things worse than they are already for SEO on my site lol. Have I said I hate SEO yet? Only a few times huh? LOL

If you ever need any help or have questions with seo just let me know through the forum or contact me through my website.

Well before you offer that, do realize that I haven't a clue and am pretty green with it still even after a couple months of trying to figure it all out, so be aware that you could be biting off more than you want to chew there Eric lol.

If you go the route of changing the names of your files from .html to .shtml, you will need to use 301 redirects to avoid loosing your page ranks.

This is one page I found where someone was doing this.
http://forums.devshed.com/search-engine … 86786.html

Apparently, having both the old .html and new .shtml versions of pages will hurt page rank.

Thanks Carey for the forum reference. I read the forum and do take issue with some of what is being said there. In particular, it makes no sense to me whatsoever that when you completely delete an .html file that somehow the file is still there and will trigger a double entry with GoogleBot. If you completely replace your .html with .shtml there should be NO double trigger with GoogleBot, because there is no .html - it's been replaced/deleted. Most of the entry's were provided by novices (such as myself) who all have theories as to how this stuff works, but no one that I could find provided any evidence to back up their claim.
What you/they say could be true, but I would need a cogent explanation - primarily because I am thick-headed. If you find any other good references please let me know - I eat this stuff up.

Jo,
Many say I have a big mouth, so chewing won't be a problem.