SSI, and Search Engines?

is it good?

[flamesrock]

I'm making a site about 'famous quotes' with the purpose of learning the basic elements of webdesign, SSI and CSS and managing dynamic content. I'll be adding to the quotes very often (and I've crossed out the idea of using php with a mysql database of quotes.)

The design will be simple. A small, title header using SSI, a left hand menu, using ssi, and the content in the center of the page which I was thinking of using ssi for. It'll be tied together with css

So what I'm wondering is- how does using ssi & css in this combination affect page rankings and robot friendliness? Because obviously, I'd like good pagerankings, but the dynamic nature of my content means that ssi could really help me.

Are there any other things I should know about this kind of thing?

(sorry if I sound like I don't know a darn thing - I dont ;))

[deejay]

ssi will have no effect on your search engine spidering/placement.

'server side' means that the insert is done before the page is served to either spider or surfer - they see it as if the ssi was hard coded in.

css + ssi - no problem.

[flamesrock]

Thankyou for the reply.

I'm also wondering - the main body, the quotes will be an individual .html page right? How do I make sure that the search engines don't deliver that instead of the shtml page I want them to see?

[Jon_King]

Is there anything negative about using a .shtml file extension?

There is a great deal of ssi's being done and I rarely see these file types highly ranked. Is there a connection?

[Jon_King]

Missed your question there flamesrock, I should think the main body is the body in your shtml. The menus and quotes would be ssi's of html in that shtml body, if I understand your question.

[AmericanBulldog]

Jon,

I have many #1 pages in google with .shtml They were set up on hosts that didn't allow SSI with html extensions.

I also have many pages that are .html with SSI's in them

Those that are html use the htaccess to allow html extensions and ssi

[Jon_King]

Thanks for that info AmericanBulldog.