Managing content from a search engine point of view

[ccDan]

From a search engine's point of view, which is the best way to manage content?

In other words, will an URL such as "www.domain.dom/widget-uses.html" carry more weight than "www.domain.dom/article.html?id=widget-uses" or even "www.domain.dom/article.html?id=89208"?

I would guess maybe "id=widget-uses" might be better than "id=89208" since the former is more descriptive.

I'm just curious since a recommendation elsewhere on the board was to post an article daily to improve search engine rankings. Doing so would yield a heck of a lot of pages to be managed.

The content would be better managed in a database rather than separate pages, but is that a strike against you in the search engine's "mind"?

Alternatively, I suppose you could have a scheme such as "www.domain.dom/articles/2003/08/widget-uses.html" and still manage it in a database by keeping the URL in the database rather than the article. But, then the question would be, how will the search engines rank something several directories deep? In this case, is "www.domain.dom/article.html?id=widget-uses" considered of higher importance than "www.domain.dom/articles/2003/08/widget-uses.html" since the former is at the root level and the latter is several directories deep?

Thanks,
Dan