Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Black Friday, and of course, New year's. Holiday season is right around the corner and everyone's excited, probably except some business owners. Every business owner, even the amateur ones, know that the holiday season is the busiest part of the year, when everyone is shopping for a variety of items, whether expensive or not. Which is why it is important that you have figured the holiday seo strategy.
So, naturally, it's a time of high competition among businesses, not only small scale but even the large ones, as evident by how a number of stores, even the ones like H&M, put on a sale.
This time of year can have a huge impact for your business. It can either make it or break it. This is the time to put on your A game. One of the most important things is marketing, expanding your outreach, gaining more customers and if you have a website or blog, improving your search engine optimization should be your first step.
Here are a few things that you can do to improve your SEO to boost business during the holiday season.
1. Holiday Related Keywords for Holiday SEO
Keyword research is one of the most important and easy ways of improving your SEO. Incorporating relevant keywords in your website or blog instantly improves your ranking on search engines. You need to research and find popular keywords in your category. You might have done this before for SEO, this is no different, you are simply just putting a holiday spin on it. Here are a few examples:
- Thanksgiving gift baskets
- New year's champagne flutes
- Black Friday promotions
- Cyber Monday flash sales
- Christmas gifts shopping
- Christmas/Thanksgiving/New year's deals
- Free shipping
- Free deals
- Sale
2. Holiday Related Content
As you must know, content is the prime factor which is weighed in while talking about SEO. It is very important to keep your content perfect and up to date. You need to publish relevant holiday content to improve your rankings. You shouldn't wait for the holidays to come near to publish your content.
Ideally, September is the right time to start, but you can do well by starting in November. Create a blog if you haven't already, publish relevant content, like tips for giving gifts in the holidays, fashion trends, et cetera. You can also create another category page and contribute your content to some other website.
3. Specific Pages for Black Friday and Cyber Monday
This tactic is often underestimated. A dedicated black friday landing page can help you intercept more traffic in the holiday season. This, obviously, should be made before the holidays, but not too long before that people forget about you on the main days.
The whole purpose of this page is to entice customers towards your business. Through it, you not only get your old customers hooked, but also attract new ones. Think of it as a first impression, of sorts. So it is essential for you to make a good first impression.
This page can get you loyal customers and potentially interested customers. You get them to sign up for your email list.
Create your Black Friday landing pages as soon as possible. It should include all the deals you're offering, discounted products, holiday related categories.
4. Ensure the Website is Mobile Friendly
Since it's holiday season, everyone has a of work to do, shopping being just one of them. So people like to save time and shop online or research online with their mobile phones.
Last year, 28% of holiday retail sales were influenced by shopping-related mobile searches. The data suggests the growing influence of mobile search over other type of search. Be it researching for products or making a purchase, consumers now do it though their phone because of easy access.
When customers search for something, local SEO will determine the ranking of your business page.
Make sure that your website is mobile friendly before the holiday season. Customers should be able to buy and research products on your website with their mobile phones.
5. Have a Solid Backlink Strategy
Both internal links and backlink acquisitions influence your SEO and ranking. Internal links help Google better understand your website and its contents and external backlinks ensure the credibility of your website and improves its chances of being discovered by more people, thus increasing customer traffic in your website.
The advantages of a link building campaign are not just limited to SEO and ranking, but also in delivering a better customer experience. When you provide internal links on a page, you provide quick and easy references to customers looking for more information. When you link the right pages together, it helps the customer easily navigate through your website and do the right research before they buy a product or service.
6. Have Presence in Most Relevant Social Media Platforms
There's no surprise here that this was included in the list. Social media has a tremendous influence on people, which is why many business owners and brands have accounts to promote and market their business.
Post your website's Black Friday page or Holiday page on the account. Post pictures of your holiday-related products, if they haven't been released yet, give a preview. Post your pictures with relevant holidays hashtags that are trending or hashtags will people will tend to click on.
7. List on Other Shopping Platforms
During the holiday season, websites like Amazon, Flipkart, and eBay get a crazy amount of customer traffic. Selling your products here can increase your sales big time as these shopping platforms are easier to use than individual platforms, and they also have sales and discounted prices during the season.
Besides increasing your sales, this also helps improve your SEO as it gives you increased visibility and proves your credibility.
Boost Sales With the Right SEO Strategy This Holiday Season
These are some of the steps that you can take to improve your sales and boost your business during this crucial time. As said earlier, September is the ideal time to start, but don't get disheartened. Even if you start now, in November, you can get good results.