SEO Tips to Boost Holiday Traffic and Sales

SEO-Tips-Holiday

Having a solid SEO strategy for the Christmas period could be the difference between making it or breaking it over the festive holiday. Seasonality sees an increase in online activity and purchasing, granted that you leverage your online business to its full potential. The last thing you want to do during a busy period is lose visibility, customers or get a bad reputation. To help you out we’ve put together some need-to-know Christmas SEO tips.

Thoroughly Plan Out Your Seasonal Content Strategy

Not only is season content more inclined to attract natural backlinks and organic social shares but it also can bring in more sales. However to ensure it attracts sales it needs to match the following criteria:

  • Cater to Seasonal Needs
  • Gift ideas
  • Holiday planning
  • Festive dinner cooking
  • Compliment Your products
  • Your Content Should Rank

Your content can combine an array of formats, from articles and blogs to whitepapers, infographics and collaborative content. It would also be extremely beneficial to do a lot of promo support for contests and giveaways.

Create Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

For optimal gains from social media marketing, forge a robust campaign. This entails cross-team cooperation, comprehensive keyword and hashtag research, and a well-stocked asset library. Align your social, sales, content, and customer support teams. Collaborative insights highlight prime products and customer queries, enhancing promotional precision and engagement. Unified efforts ensure a cohesive strategy that resonates with your audience, yielding amplified results across your entire organization.

Target Christmas searches

We’ve all got ‘difficult’ people to buy for – those we don’t see very often, those who ‘have everything’ or people who’d ‘like a surprise’ and that’s when we resort to doing panic searches, such as ‘great technology present ideas for tricky teenagers’, and the like.

There’s a huge variety of these types of search terms, so it’s definitely worth doing some keyword research and finding out what search volumes are out there and who is already ranking for them. You might be able to find a niche phrase which has not yet been exploited and if you can rank for it, you can reach an audience who are already in buying mode.

Paid Search

If you haven’t tried PPC advertising before, Christmas is the obvious time to give it a whirl. Whilst it might be competitive at this time of year, the additional volume of shoppers often compensates.

Don’t spread your resources too thinly here. Select a few key products or product types  – these could be products you really need to shift (think sell-by dates, or very on-trend items), or products with the biggest profit margins, unique products, or those with the broadest appeal.

Unless you’re operating in a truly unique market, PPC can be expensive so it’s important to target appropriate keywords. Longer tail keywords can be less competitive and therefore less costly but that goes hand-in-hand with smaller volumes.

Optimise images

We know that page speed is a direct ranking factor, so first and foremost you need to ensure that your site’s images aren’t slowing things down and so this means making sure your images are compressed without reducing the quality.

But it also means making sure that your images are correctly tagged in order to be visible in Google image searches. Unless you’re giving vouchers this Christmas, present shopping is a very visual experience, so it’s important to make sure that your product images are optimised too. Google is getting better at recognising what’s in an image but you can help it along by adding alt text, title text and using a descriptive file name.

Google Analytics review

Use analytics to review your website’s performance last year. How did people reach your site, what did they do once they got there, and what products/areas of your site did particularly well? You might have some great blog posts that drove lots of traffic, or some product comparisons that you could quickly update and reshare on social media. Or if you got a lot of referral traffic from a third-party link (perhaps a Christmas gift guide), you could contact the site owner or journalist to ask if you can be included again this year.

Ensure Your Site is Performing Consistently and Reliably

Site issues can result in angry shoppers which over a season can result in millions lost in revenue. Therefore you need to make sure you have an emergency plan for any site issues, avoid adding new functionalities and load test web pages to handle the rise in traffic. Additionally, you should have your site fully optimised and all minor technical fixes complete.

What Happens When The Season is Over?

What should you be doing with your seasonal content and landing pages once it’s over? In most cases you do nothing. Although the search terms and keywords are no longer relevant, they are still ranking and benefiting your site.

You need to change your homepage as the offers, products and bundles may no longer be relevant.

Keep an eye out on sold-out product pages and any essential outdated pages as these could negatively impact your potential conversions. Once seasonal services expire and the landing pages have no more use you should clearly state on them that the product/service will be available next year. Or else show a clear list of the products that are still available. Don’t delete these landing pages if you plan to use them again the following year as you’re then able to retain rankings.

Festive SEO: Conclusion

Although seasonal marketing can be very time consuming and overwhelming, it’s something that gets easier year on year. This is because seasonal campaigns and offers are reusable and processes are recyclable. Additionally, you can learn from what went well and what didn’t to make an even stronger strategy going forward.

Optimise your site for Christmas and you’ll find visibility and conversions skyrocket.

Need help with your festive SEO?

Strong SEO doesn’t only mean more rankings on Google. It means more targeted website traffic, more brand awareness, more enquiries, more sales and most importantly MORE revenue! Contact our team today to enquire.

 

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