Re: GREAT STUFF!!.... which brings up questions.... please come back.... hellooooooo.....

> Which makes sense if they're trying to weed out those awful
> mechanically-generated sites that say nothing.

Smack on the nose with that one. The trouble is that Google doesn't always manage to hit just the baddies.

> I had a hard time deciding if my blog was better on-site or off-site

My personal view is that it's better to have a stand alone blog if you want to use it to feed links to multiple sites. If you're only using it for one site, integrate it with that site. It keeps the site fresh.

> QUESTION:  On one of the SEO forums, two people said that simply
> changing the name of my page -- EVEN WITH THE 301 REDIRECT -- would cause
> that page to get bumped from Google, and it may or may not come back over
> time.

> IS THAT RIGHT?

Google has had problems handling 301's but the latest test data centre looks promising in that respect. Matt Cutts stated recently that he would be asking for feedback on this data centre in the very near future, so things may well be looking up.

The problem was that Google didn't always recognise the 301 and triggered a duplicate content penalty. Which SEO forum did you get this info from?

>2) Because I read that you should have your keyword in the file name, and it's >best as close to the domain name as possible.

The rule of thumb used to be that to make life easy for the bots (and your visitors) each page should be available within two or three clicks from the home page.

> Over time, if I change 500 creature pages to a new location using 301
> redirects, and I check to make sure the 301s are working correctly --
> would it do me any harm (SE-wise) have 500 of these 301 redirects living
> on my site?

It's better to have 500 redirections rather than 500 Page Not Founds. The one thing you DO NOT want to do is delete the old pages so that they 404 and reload the new pages. That will cause you an absolute nightmare and probably end up getting your pages listed as Supplemental - and there appears to be no way back from that listing. (Supplemental basically means that they know your pages are there but they ain't gonna list them.)

> Every link OUT OF YOUR PAGE --

> I thought they were talking about no more than 100 links to OTHER SITES...

> Are you saying links out of your page to OTHER PAGES ON YOUR *OWN* SITE
> can also dilute that page's rank??

You need to strike a happy medium. You don't want one all singing all dancing high PR page but you don't want to over dilute that PR either. The best idea is to "share" the high PR by linking to a few (10 seems to be a good number) of other pages on your site, but don't forget that all links from that page will gain some of the PR, therefore keep external links to an absolute minimum.

> The internet is so frustrating --

It sure is. I feel that that is why so many genuine people have trouble getting started with an online business. They end up overwhelmed by BS,

> Same with articles:  "Hey, this is great stuff!"  Ten minutes later you find out it's pure crapola.

I think articles may well be the next thing the search engines crack down on. There are so many article directories full of keyword stuffed rubbish that's of no actual value, something is bound to happen. - And then there will be an awful lot of "marketers" whining like hell.

READ THIS PAGE http://www.searchengineworld.com/misc/guide.htm It contains possibly the best advice around on how to build a commercially viable content site. Brett Tabke, the author, is the owner of Webmaster World and very respected in the SE community.

Cheers