.html or .shtml

[web_t]

I am in the process of creating unique pages that will be hosted on different domains. Now my concern is what shall I use .html or .shtml extentsion.

I know I can keep track with the search engine spider visit with .shtml extension, but I personally prefer .html over .shtml.

What do you think will be the best - also the only reason for creating all these pages is to increase link popularity for my web site.

[WebGuerrilla]

The .shtml extension is the default extension used by Unix servers with SSI enabled. Are you using server side includes? If you're not then you would be better off using .htm

Using .shtml will cause the server to parse each page before delivering it to the browser. If there isn't any includes included in the pages, you would be causing additional (and unnecessary)load on the server.

[web_t]

My logging program requires .shtml if I want all the detailed information about visitors to my web site [including se spiders], as I cannot catch spider hit using image tag.

Also, what do you recommand, if I am creating about 500 pages [that will be hosted on multiple sub-domains], shall I point all of them using one single key phrase or shall I use all major keywords for my web site. In addition, shall I point them all to index page or seperate pages?

[WebGuerrilla]

Regarding the file extensions, more than likely you can get your stats program to work using.html by simply modifying your .htaccess file inyour root directory. (I'm assuming you are on a Unix box)

You can add "AddType text/x-server-parsed-html .html" (without the quotes) to your .htaccess file and that will instruct the server to parse .html files in the same way it would .shtml (You can use this for a variety of extensions, not just .html)

>shall I point all of them using one single key phrase or shall I use all major keywords for my web site.

I'm not quite sure I understand the question. If you mean should you build 500 pages that all target the same keyword phrase, then I would say absolutely not. That amount of similar/duplicate content would cause some serious spam penalties.

>In addition, shall I point them all to index page or seperate pages?

IMHO, you should always avoid delivering traffic from multiple doorway pages to the same target page. If for example, your target site is all about fruit and you build a doorway page on another domain that targets the word "mango" you want to make sure the visitor lands on a page about mangos. Dumping them on the home page will cause them to have to search or drill down to find your mango info. Most people won't take the time. They've already searched once.

Sending everyone to the same page also increases your chances of having your site reviewed by someone from the search engine.