Diverse SEO On & Off page questions!

[JesusD]

Hey everybody. I have been reading several resources on SEO, and wanted to know your opinion on these topics. I know they are diverse and should be on a different set of questions, but i wanted to give it a try.

I run a Heavily Specialized Steel B2B eCommerce Site. So my question would be what is the importance of the following topics, taking into mind the nature of my site.

• The importance on how often the page is updated ? Recommendations on updating relatively static pages ?
• How important is to meet HTML and W3C Standards, also its validation.
• The NoFollow and Follow ratio of incoming links.
• Your opinion onthe inclusion of outbound links to other relevant pages. Is there a best practice?

Any comment is welcome, and would be deeply appreciated.

Regards,

[JesusD]

Could you comment on what kind of updates did you made?

Did you updated the Home Page, Categories, Products Page? Do you think it makes a difference? I have a B2B Commerce site so i find somewhat difficult to update and change content.

Best Regards,

Thanks!

[HeatherBakerTopLine]

I have to disagree with Glenn on the update frequency. I update at least one page a day on my website. When I went on holiday for a few weeks, my colleagues took over all search marketing activity, except page updates. In the two weeks I was away, we slid down the search marketing rankings. In every other instance we have climbed the search marketing rankings.

Nofollow links have no value as far as Google is concerned, so focus on followed links. That said, I get a lot of traffic from Nofollow links on popular web pages - so if the site only offers nofollow links, but is authoritative, it's good for your site, if not your SRO strategy.

Re outbound links, make sure they open in a new window so they don't take visitors off your website. I include outbound links where they add value to the post.

I hope this helps!

[GlennFerrell]

For small industrial B2Bs, I haven't seen update frequency make a difference. Pages may hold their ranks for a long time, affected only by competitive actions or Google updates. Not sure this is true for B2C tho.

I don't think Google incorporates validation into it's ranking signals yet. Other opinions ?

I never pay attention to nofollow / dofollow ratios, only to the number of dofollow links. However, I do think a natural looking profile should include both. Also, generally, I think most industrial B2Bs are comfortable with providing links to vendors, etc. where it is helpful to the customer, so again, having no outbound links (especially for a relatively large site) may make the profile look unnatural.