mmm, all I can say is I have #1 for a couple of spots that I didn’t have before, and they were pages with less of my blab on them than usual.
So I started putting some of my sales pitch on graphics, and they actually don’t load all that much slower, each one adds about 1 sec – according to my frontpage – to more mimic the pages I am having success with for getting free traffic.
so far I’m pleased with my results but keep in mind I’m not a SEO person either so any kind of plus is a good one for me.
I’m not arguing anything you said; just stating what seems to be working better for me.
…. It occurs to me that part of the reason this is working for me is that I often have more text on a page selling a casino, or my site, or both, than I do text that is actually targeting a keyword or phrase.
so it was maybe diluting things towards a negative in the eyes of the SEs with all that irrelavent text …. that’s my best guess.