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With our e-commerce store, we can customize the URL for the product categories, so we could have:

http://www.storename.com/product-category-keywords/

or

http://www.storename.com/product-category-keywords.html

From an SEO standpoint (or even from a "trying to get links" standpoint), which would be better to have? I feel like having a *.html category page would be easier for link building, but that's just my personal feelings.

Side Note: Our product pages are:

http://www.storename.com/product-name.html

Thanks in advance

If you're redesigning your site, why not switch to using DIVs? As far as I've read, there's no direct "penalty" for using tables, but tables to generally involve much more code to accomplish what DIV tags and CSS could do in much less code, which means your pages will load faster, which is something google takes into consideration when ranking. Not to mention that CSS layouts are much easier to customize, and can give your site a much cleaner and newer look.

Chances are if you're seeing other ecommerce sites using tables they are simply using outdated shopping carts, but if you're going to take the time to redesign your site, why not do it the future-proof way using CSS?

Honestly, I think a lot of people probably read, but just don't take the time to hit the thumbs up button because they don't know what the point is, or don't care.

I think a note or "warning" would suffice. There is still good info on there, it's just not as relevant as it was a year ago.

I'm not sure how I feel about the +1 thing that they are trying to do to help influence search results. Kind of a ripoff of Facebook's "like" button. Seems like its not widespread enough, so they are probably just up to their usual testing.

The worst that could happen is that the link is given little to no value, so you really have nothing to lose. Whenever I get an opportunity to grab a link, I'll usually get it, assuming the site isn't pure spam or related to gambling/porn/etc.

I read an anecdotal account on a less than savory SEO-related site in the last week or so about someone who blasted a competitor's site with spammy links, and they said they noticed a drop in the competitors SERP rankings...but that within a week the competitor was actually back on the first page, and ranking higher than they were before.

Obviously there are a million variables that could affected that outcome, but I enjoyed reading it knowing that the person trying to sabotage their competitor actually ended up further "behind," when they could have spent their time doing something constructive for their own site.

Having your own domain gives you so many more benefits than being reliant on a 3rd party platform like Blogger or Wordpress. And with super cheap domain registration and hosting, you really can't go wrong with having your own domain. Plus, it looks so much more professional to have your own domain that a domain @ blogspot.

Chances are the DMOZ link hasn't been indexed. Also, OSE updates every month or so, so if it's a recent addition to DMOZ, it's possible that even if it wasn't in the last update of OSE, it will be in the next one.