Now that Black Friday and Cyber Monday have passed, it’s time to focus your attention on December. This is the last month of the year to generate sales, so flash sales and BOGO (buy one, get one) offers increase during this time. Shipping also becomes a prime concern as buyers need to know that the items they order will arrive on time.
To stand out from your competitors and see positive sales numbers, make it easy for people to find you. Luckily, you can use “seasonal SEO” techniques to optimize your website. We’ll show you how.
Easy Ways to Optimize Holiday SEO
Update Your Keywords
Before you go about changing keywords, take a look at your current rankings and analytics. Pages that are doing well can be left alone, unless you want to make a few updates. Otherwise, look for opportunities to improve rankings with holiday-related terms. We recommend using Google Trends to learn about what trends are most popular around the holidays.
Create Holiday Themed Content
Once you know what holiday keywords are trending, you can use them to craft helpful content for your audience. Always write content that aligns with your brand and supports your customers’ needs.
Here are some ideas for holiday content.
- Digital gift guides
- Landing pages that align with your offers
- Infographics with top gifts
- Educational blog posts
- Festive photos and videos
- End-of-year updates
- Giving back/community involvement updates
Prioritize Mobile Shoppers
More people are expected to shop on their mobile devices this year. If you haven’t created Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) yet, now is the time to do so. AMPs load up to four times faster. Also, make sure that your site is mobile-friendly and responsive. Include large, readable font, compressed images and clickable buttons that make shopping on a smartphone or tablet a breeze.
Add Content to Social Media
Social media is an excellent platform for sharing your holiday content. It provides fresh, new content for your social media content calendar while also getting things like gift guides into the right hands. Top 10 lists, how-to videos, festive photos and interactive gift guides all do well on social media. Adding this content to your social channels lets you highlight holiday products, share promotions and send traffic to your website.
Set Up a PPC Campaign
Pay-per-click marketing is a great option for businesses that want to get last-minute offers and gift ideas out to shoppers. Many companies bid on holiday-related keywords at this time of the year, so expect prices to go up. You can be more aggressive with your campaigns, and also look to target longer tail keywords that are easier to rank for.
Start Planning Early for Next Year
Next year, start planning for your holiday campaigns even earlier. Take notes about the things that worked well and didn’t work well so that you can be one step ahead for the 2019 holiday season. As always, give Magna Technology a call if you need help setting up a campaign for the holidays – or anytime after. We love maximizing results!
