This is an update to "Taking out code that may be alienating Google", which finally got completed, or so it's thought. Using a few simple time saving helpers like CuteHTML (no longer updated), updating pages can be a little less painful.

Page visits are up from an average of 915 uniques per day to 1585 and time on page have shown an increase of 25 seconds for "Direct Traffic" with search engine traffic right behind. Slightly higher positions for one keyphrase and wider distribution. These numbers come from Google Analytics, but there is only a slight effect on Google the search engine. Yahoo, which has the site listed well, has nearly doubled the traffic and time on site has gone up slightly.

First, always remember to make backups before making changes, on a regular basis also if possible, even if your host or server does it at the data center. Backups on raid systems might be as close to 5 minutes or less apart and what are you going to do with a backup that's 5 minutes old after 6 minutes? You're stuck with the changes. Keep them in your pocket if you can, a thumb drive is cheap and if your site(s) isn't a terabyte monster, all your files travel with you.

Most text editors and web authoring programs have a "Find" and "Find and Replace" feature, maybe named something different, but valuable, especially if it can be used on multiple pages or an entire website at once. A good example of needing this was when the only copy of a site was on the Web Archive (THANK YOU!). The source is modified to preserve certain aspects of the pages and needs to have bits of thier code removed. The repetitive parts added to links can be removed in one swift blow, usually page by page, but quicker than locating each instance per edit and just using the "Find" feature is enough to locate the parts you need to remove that the program or YOU missed.

Don't mess around while using FTP in Windows instead of a client, if your online and offline folders look identical and you're being a wise-apple to the guy in the next room, you could be overwriting updates instead of improving your SEO. And not understanding why a file isn't updating in the browser. even after being "Uploaded" several times is what the real pros do, all the time.

The site targeted in this update uses the .shtml extension, only for the purpose of including other files in web pages in the simplest way possible for the time it was built. Updating the pages served to the include locations also updates the pages including the files, but does so without having the "Last Modified" date and time change on the server. Another trick is using a rotating banner script with several messages on a regular basis just to keep pages fresher to search spiders and robots. Read the rest...