Server Side Iincludes - downsides? search issues?

ssi seo

[dweiss]

I'm building a site in a way that almost all of the pages users see are assembled from server side includes (SSIs) for the header, sidebars, footer, and main content. So, each page is really just a set of SSI links ....

include ... header.inc.htm
include ... leftsidebar.inc.htm
include ... rightsidebar.inc.htm
include ... maincontent.inc.htm
include ... footer.inc.htm

The main content (maincontent.inc.htm) changes on each page, the rightsidebar.inc.htm changes sometimes, the the rest usually only change when I'm making changes to the overall site. Is there any reason not to do this? Does it pose any problems from a search perspetive or any other issues?

Thanks,

-Danny.

[txbakers]

ses don't care about includes. they read a finished HTML page.

[encyclo]

The only issue you might have is if the quantity of repeated content is too high. You need to ensure that there is a sufficient difference between each page, or that your main content is unique enough so that each page is considered as a separate entity and not a near-duplicate of others.

There are several threads about the "duplicate content penalty" here on the forums.