[SEO Guy]

I needed to send one of my clients some info this morning, I thought there may be some value in sharing it with the good people of A1, although I hope it doesnt get too much of the red pen treatment....lol

This article will discuss the development of a website in terms of future growth, it is generic in principle and can be incorporated into any website
In my opinion a website will always be an unfinished, unperfected platform, that is always in a state of flux requiring continual improvement. People wrongly believe that once their website is completed that is the end of the process, the professional operators are well aware this is simply the start. Search engines evolve constantly as do new design techniques to that end it is imperative to keep ahead of the game especially if you own an ecommerce website that is required to perform well in the medium and long terms.
Obviously it is impossible to predict the future, although by studying search engine patents it is possible to get a handle on their future plans, so what can be done today?
The main problem with ecommerce websites is they are generally static platforms, they are not built for growth, a crucial aspect in the development of any successful site. Many methods can be used, be it splintering on a forum, having customer reviews and feedback sections (Amazon/Ebay), blogs, news, articles and directories to name a few. These systems do work, however if something is added and not populated it can give a site a dead feeling thus becoming a negative, I see this many times with blogs and forums as they really do require a lot of hard work.
In terms of the xxxxxxxxx site I would like to see a news section where industry related articles can be populated. If set up correctly this will work well. If you take a look at my article section you will see how article urls are populated automatically from the article title, a much needed aspect in terms of optimisation http://www.businessservicesuk.com/ezine-articles.php
I like one mechanism to have multiple benefits, in terms of an article section this occurs by distributing the articles to major sites, ezine, netscape etc after they have been indexed. There is no benefit in terms of SEO, but well written, interesting articles will always provide a steady flow of traffic to a website. It is commonly known that Google loves the addition of unique content to a website on a regular basis. The reason is simply they view the internet as an online community, the more you give to the community, the more it will be rewarded.
I would also like to see a links page that can easily be populated from the backend, although the strength of reciprocal links has diminished over the years in my opinion there is still value in exchanging links with other on-theme websites. The main point to consider here is not to have too many links on one page, I would limit it to 20 per page.