The only effect having lots of outbound links on your site would be that when the search engine see's your website it is going to count all those extra words.

And all those extra words can and will have a effect on your keyword density and promience of your keywords that you want your website to be found under.

I have been doing a entensive study of Googles new ranking system over the last 2 weeks and have found that over 75% of what is important to other search engines are not to Google anymore.

Even the page rank is not as important to Google as it used to be when ranking websites and I have been saying this for a while in my newsletters.

A example would be the search term website marketing I have found websites in the top 20 positions who do not even have the word in their site that you can read.

BUT it is in the website only in the ALT Text and because of the 200.000 links going to their website with only a page rank of 5 that's telling me that their links are not related to the website.

But its the fact that their are so many links leading to their website is what got them that high ranking.

i have a few test sites out there I use to confirm my findings and on 1 I added over 200 links to it on the MAIN PAGE to find out what would happen.

NOTHING HAPPENED but I did make sure my keywords were still located in the same place on the site I added all these links to the bottom of the website.

James Mackinlay
JRM Website Marketing

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Thanks for the answer, James.

Next question...

We're using poor-man's DHTML (Dynamic HTML transclusion) on our website (using a hidden iFrame as a buffer to bring external content in, then cloning the Nodes from the Iframe to a DIV in our page). This technique allows us to keep our header, footer, and menu loaded, while dynamically changing the Content DIV's content. (Don't worry, I've set up all the links so they can be followed by SE Bots and screen readers).

But, the iFrame is deprecated, so I did some looking around, and figured out that doing Dynamic XML transclusion is pretty easy. So, I'm learning XML right now, and plan to change our site over to XML as soon as I'm able, using the same type setup as we have now (basically, the site will look exactly like it does now, but the underlying infrastructure will be radically modified... somewhat akin to swapping out a mouse on an exercise wheel for a 454ci Chevy big-block V8 engine). XML transclusion will allow me to do some things that are impossible with HTML transclusion, and will be cross-browser compatible on all DOM2 compatible browsers (our site right now only works in IE 5.5 and up).

Now, to the question...
How well do the search engines handle XML pages?

Shouldn't your question be how do se's handle pages that pull in XML data? I have never (never say never) seen an XML page show up in the search results.

I don't know...interesting question.

I guess one would have to go out and find some pages out there that use XML data to dynamicly create pages with...then start doing a little research on how well they place in the SERPS.

I am following in your footsteps on this approach, so I guess I will be following this part of your thread too.

Another approach (for certain parts, not all) is javascripting in large portions of your page that does not change...such as the header. There are certain advantages to this if crafted correctly. It is not "loaded" but it is cached on the user side.

Prior to the scripted header, you would put in your <NOSCRIPT> stuff, such as navigation links and a tiny logo graphic. This will satisfy the spiders need to crawl and your pages will be lighter weight to boot.

Since, 98% of the hits in my logs show that javascript is enabled....I am throwing more and more of the non-essential overhead into a main.js file. This standard file is cached on the user side, and once loaded....well you know the rest of that story.

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I don’t know much about this stuff yet, but from my observation small local sites are gone. Here in Gulfport Florida, a City of less than 12,000 and with maybe 100 businesses, no one local can get recognized with an entry of Gulfport Florida. It has nothing to do with content heck, the Chamber of Commerce isn’t even listed, nor is Stetson U. I get the Official City site Weatherunderground, (big google advertiser) and large national or regional sites with deep pockets. Our site has content, community involvement, as well as being an award winning service and it doesn’t show up on Google any more. Our links are sound reputable organizations and the links don’t seem to matter.

I put the full name of the company in and nothing is generated, but you can be sure that some High dollar real estate company will pop up without any relation to the topic.

I may be missing some nuances here but I didn’t just fall of the spam wagon, they’re focus is on capital, which is OK if that’s what they’re doing, but knowing their intent will help us focus our energy and capital in another direction.

tomark -- you made some very good observances in your post. Actually it is one the best observances I have seen and how everything fits together in a larger scope.

You covered just about every type of site from the small underfunded to the larger corporate sites. City Government to Universities....and how just one keyterm applies to all of these.

In the case of the University though...does that site have a .edu extension to it?

And I love your quote "I didn't just fall off the spam wagon" !!! ;0)

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Hil,
with the xml firepower I appreciate that someone like James takes the time to do a study and provide his opinions as a post.

Now that he has expressed his opinions with his study.
(I am sure he wasn't paid for his time)

Maybe you know something I don't know .

What post studies have you done since Florida dance?


I am sure I can advance you many questions but then , shoo start scrathing head and decide to accept James study and seek others.

Instead of asking for next question why not elaborate on anwser?

Throw me some # Hil.

I have to confess, touristips, that I'm having trouble understanding your point in this post, other than that several of the comments seem to be rather sarcastic.

For example - If there are things in jimmack's post that you didn't understand, why don't you ask for elaboration?

Please, let's all try to remember Rule #1 here at WebProWorld: Do your best to keep your posts courteous and respectful of other members.

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