Ideas needed for onsite SEO

[activitysuper]

Hi,

What sort of activity 'onsite' should I be doing to increase SEO?

I was thinking of a FAQ's section with 1 anchor text link in the body of the answer going back to my target page.

Will the increase in content along with the anchor text inside of it help increase SERP's?

I was also thinking maybe use the keyword tool to find search queries which revolve around questions with high search so for example 'How to change a tyre' answering this question in my FAQ's section and running PPC to it, then wrapping lots of sharing tools around it in the hope it generates some social signals.

Anyone got any hidden onsite gems they think might help?

Cheers

[RyanKent]

In my opinion the first and most impactful change a site owner can make to improve SEO is to fully examine their website architecture. There are a lot of poorly developed sites out there. Try to incorporate all HTML and SEO best practices in your website. A few examples:

• Do users log in to your site for any reason such as make a purchase or leave comments? Embrace social logins. A service such as Janrain is fantastic! It allows users to register and log in with a simple click of their mouse rather then the clumsy process of choosing a user name, password, entering e-mail, etc.

• Automate internal linking in a similar manner to Wikipedia

• Review the code of your site. Use http://validator.w3.org/. A site does not necessarily have to be perfect, but if you do have errors in your code, there should be very few and an experienced developer should be thoroughly aware of each one and be able to state with confidence the error will not impact web crawlers, nor your site's presentation in various browsers or devices

• make sure all your images use ALT tags and are named appropriately

There are literally dozens if not hundreds of other suggestions along these lines, but the above should get you started.

[activitysuper]

Thanks Ryan, always a good response.

All the things you mentioned I do as the basics, alt tags, canonical domain, w3 validate, css sprites, trying to keep load time to a minimum etc.

What im looking for is ideas really on thing I can do after the basics which can help, like the idea I had.

I was also thinking of capturing user feedback and adding this also to the website where relevant, but does this kind of activity help SERP's, I know it helps CRO so it's a good idea anyway but from a purely ranking factor does it have positive effects?

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One thing you did mention which interests me is site architecture, a lot of positive stuff on silo structures and the impact on SERP's but I have never done it so I just don't know.

Any feedback on your experiences with Silos? Doesn't look to user friendly in my opinion.

Cheers

[RyanKent]

What im looking for is ideas really on thing I can do after the basics which can help, like the idea I had.

There are an infinite number of ideas which can work. It's not only the idea but in the way it is implemented and supported that make the difference. That is why something which does not work at all on Site A may work amazingly well on site B.

As an example, someone reads "adding a blog to your site will help you rank better and receive more traffic". Accordingly, they add a blog to their site and a month later they see no benefits. The site owner then believes it was bad advice. Next, the site owner asks why he is not receiving the benefits from his blog and then he is informed he needs to add content to the blog. So he adds content in the form of 500 word blurbs about various topics and still does not receive a benefit. At this point he gives up.

Going back to your question "I was also thinking of capturing user feedback and adding this also to the website where relevant, but does this kind of activity help SERP's?" If you write high quality content on current topics which are relevant to users, then yes accepting any form of user feedback such as comments is exceptionally helpful.

I know it helps CRO so it's a good idea anyway but from a purely ranking factor does it have positive effects?

Absolutely! Go to Google.com and search for the following keyword without the quotes: "Ryan's response about removing spammy links for a client". If you notice the first result is a link to a blog article I wrote. The keyword text is not found anywhere in the article. It comes from the first comment Keri made. This example is just a fast one I grabbed but hopefully you get the idea. Your users may offer helpful comments which can generate new traffic that you otherwise would not rank for. Additionally, the comments can further support your article. Both have ranking and traffic benefits.

[activitysuper]

Very useful and yeah I can see that.

One thing you got me looking at indirectly is your Author exposure in the SERP for google+.

I've asked a question here, which you might be able to answer - http://www.seomoz.org/q/smashing-magazine-seo-article-today-question-about-a-few-things-in-it

Either way thanks for the insight, makes things a little clearer.

[RyanKent]

To keep things on topic I will respond in the other Q&A to that question.

[activitysuper]

cheers