Hey everyone, Well I am an intermediate as far as html and website design. I was wondering if there is a difference or if it helps to use a certain file extension. By this I mean .html, .htm, .shtml, .php, .asp Is one better than the other, do they affect search engine optimization? and another question does it make any difrence if i replace the spaces in the files with (-) or with (_)? for example this-site-page.html or this_site_page.html Sorry is my questions sound silly But thanks to all for the help!
well, matt Cuts said that keyword-keyword works better in google than keyword_keyword (obviously don't make these too long: people won't like it). htm and html are precisely the same, so just pick the one your editor picks. shtml is for secure pages. These three don't make a difference for search engines. The others are for specific types of pages. PHP for instance is for PHP pages. Has to do with programming your website, instead of just adding one more HTML page. - I never use anything other than HTML and HTM, though I've helped code one PHP site. So I can't tell you if there is any difference in how these pages are indexed - I would guess there isn't as long as the URL's are reasonable (without characters like $%& etc. )
One thing to consider is that no file extension actually has any real meaning at all until it's associated with something. You can run a Windows server and have all your ASP pages parsed through the PHP engine, or have PHP run through the ASP.NET DLL. Similarly, you can use all HTM files and then run them through the PHP engine. This is very common and a lot of spammy sites do this.
@kh7: shtml usually denotes a server parsed page, eg. server side includes. Secure socket layers is a protocol thing, https:// cheers, gary