SEO techniques fly around all over the internet, but generally speaking they are always the same. Never do you find something that is even slightly different. I think that in some cases even an idea on a particular topic can spark an enquiry by other SEO’s and I find this intriguing.
Anyway, back to the point at hand, here are some ideas to improve your rankings in the long run that you may not have considered before:
UGC, the king of fresh content!
It is a common misconception that you must create content for your site to keep it up to date and populated. This really isn’t the case on so many levels. Obviously if you are running a blog you would like to create as much content of your own as possible, but enlisting the help of guest bloggers will help.
However User Generated Content can come in the form of reviews and testimonials as well. This is a perfect way for retail sites to keep product pages regularly updated and kept fresh. You can find various forms of bringing in reviews from other sites, but I would recommend setting up your own interface.
If you can encourage your buyers to leave a review for a product that they purchase, then you can guarantee yourself some fresh unique content. If you can keep this updated without doing any work, then all the better for your rankings on this page.
Improve Site Performance!
Really people, there are still those that do not believe that site performance is really a great ranking matter. However, look at it this way; it could mean the difference between a number 1 position and a number 2 place. The traffic differences are quite vast between these two positions, which mean you could be losing out on some powerful conversions!
The two key reasons why site performance slows so badly is due to the size of the page and the items contributing to it, and the amount of HTTP requests that are being made.
Every time that a user or a Bot comes across a style sheet or an image, and extra HTTP request needs to be made to retrieve information. Each time a HTTP request is made it takes time to deliver the information from the server, increasing loading time. The best way to combat this will actually benefit both parts of this dilemma. One of the best ways to do this is consolidate multiple style sheets into one, and decrease image size by reducing the quality a little. Change PNG files or PSD files into JPG or GIF where possible!
Crawl Your Own Site!
Ok, so this one is a little more obvious, but it is extremely important to make sure that there are no errors on your site! Make sure that you set some time aside to run reports through what ever systems you use. I recommend using a piece of free software called XENU. This baby has helped me identify a whole bunch of errors, including 301 errors that I through I had expelled from my site years ago! Give it a whirl and see how tidy you can make your website!
Image Credit: Maxwintek
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