Top 8 ways to optimize for the upcoming holiday shopping season!

• The holiday shopping season is almost here and I want to get a jump on optimizing and positioning my site online more effectively in front of the shopping rush. Can you give me some tips to better optimize my site and campaigns for the coming holidays?

Answer: According to the National Retail Federation this year's 2009 holiday shopping season is going to be a rough one with total sales declining at least 1% to $437.6 billion.

Most however believe this is an overly optimistic assessment and that mounting job losses and low consumer confidence are going to conspire to keep larger than ever numbers of consumers out of the malls this holiday season.

Instead, these consumers will spend their modest budgets online in search of bargains and free shipping offers from retailers savvy enough to cater to their pocket books and bargain mentality.

To that end, preparing your site's pages for the holiday rush could make all the difference this miserly holiday season. Here are eight simple but often overlooked tips that may dramatically improve your bottom line this shopping season:

Tip #1 - 301 Redirect your 2008 Product Pages - Do you have old 2008 product pages that you aren't using this holiday season? How about 2008 holiday promotion pages? More likely than not those pages have incoming links or link juice just sitting there. Make those pages work for you by 301 redirecting them to related or similar products or promotions you are pushing this holiday season.

Tip #2 - Update your Policy Pages - Have you updated your return policy, contact us, and about us information pages? Review that information now and ...