E-commerce businesses tend to observe high incoming traffic on their website during the holiday season. This is also the time when they see a boost in revenue and sales.
However, considerable SEO efforts need to be made to reach the optimal level of business. This is where holiday SEO comes in. Businesses invest a sizable amount of their resources in this million-dollar opportunity by optimizing their website for holiday SEO.
Here are 6 handy tips for implementing holiday SEO and ranking your website on Google.
Make use of internal links on your holiday pages
One of the important ranking factors on Google is PageRank. Internal linking enhances the flow of PageRank around your website. But the main question is, how can you use internal links and PageRank for holiday SEO?
You can start by adding internal links from related pages on your website to your holiday pages. This will boost traffic coming into the website and increase your Google rankings. You will also need to create a list of seasonal topics.
Next, make a list of all important holiday pages that concern your business. Sign up for a relevant SEO tool like Ahrefs Webmaster Tool to run a crawl on your site. Once the crawl is complete, you get a Site Audit. Click on the “Link Opportunities” report in the Site Audit to see the relevant link opportunities.
Set the filter to your target page and search your holiday pages. Check out the listed opportunities and add the internal links wherever relevant. Follow this exercise at least two months in advance of the holiday season. This gives Google crawlers ample time to discover those pages and rank them.
Look for holiday pages’ seasonal topics
When the holiday season is near, people start searching for holiday-related keywords in their queries. For instance, when the Christmas season is near, people search for the best Christmas gifts.
Keyword research tools or Site Explorers like Google Trends, Ahrefs, etc., can be useful tools for searching for seasonal topics and keywords. This will allow you to review the latest changes in the trends. You can see the real-time search volume and the subsequent changes in search trends to determine the seasonality of the topics.
To optimize your website for holiday SEO, here’s what you can do:
- Go to a Site Explorer. Let’s take Ahrefs in this case.
- Type one or more relevant keywords for your business. For example, if your business concerns cosmetics, you can search for keywords like ‘beauty products,’ ‘skincare,’ etc.
- Check the “Matching Terms” report.
- Click on the “Include” option and filter your search results for the particular holiday or time of the year; in this case, Christmas.
The keywords need not include the exact name of the holiday or the word “holiday” itself. It can relate to the occasion or the person for whom you are looking for gifts. It takes time for the pages to rank, so gather a list of good topics from the search results and create pages before the holiday season.
Update seasonal content
Festivals and holidays arrive each year. People also shop for gifts and related items during these shopping seasons, like Christmas, Mother’s Day, and Valentine’s Day. Hence, though they are seasonal topics, they are evergreen shopping seasons.
So, it is best to look at the holiday pages’ seasonal topic from a long-term perspective. The search intent during these specific shopping seasons remains the same every year. You don’t need to discard the old pages and create new ones every year. A better strategy for holiday SEO is to create a library of evergreen pages related to each season and update them one or two months in advance.
This ensures that your website retains the link equity and continues to gain authority for that page. This can help you rank on Google’s first page for your target query every year.
Optimize for your Google Business Profile
Your prospective customers find you through your Google Business Profile (GBP) when they search for the relevant search query or keyword. Therefore, optimizing and updating your GBP is paramount for your business to appear on Google Map Pack and Google Merchant Center whenever a search query occurs.
To optimize your GBP profile for your business category and type, add business hours and holiday hours, contact details, photos, and products and services. Additionally, try to get more reviews on your GBP profile, answer questions, and post frequent updates.
You can also share upcoming offers and events for the holiday season related to your business in GBP to optimize for holiday SEO. Viewers can view these offers in a carousel at the bottom of the Google Business panel.
Make use of free product listings on Google Shopping
In 2020, Google Shopping opened its doors to organic listings. It has witnessed 1.2 billion monthly searches during the holiday season.
If you want to be ranked on Google Shopping, start by creating a Google Merchant Center (GMC) account. You can use Google’s Guide for instructions on how to showcase your products for free on Google Shopping.
Boost click-through rates (CTRs) on major holiday pages
There is a greater chance of business conversion into sales from your website when the traffic is high and organic. During the holiday season, this can be done while following the best holiday SEO practices.
One way to do this would be to optimize the meta descriptions and meta titles on your holiday pages.
You can also test the efficacy of holiday SEO efforts through search ads. Google Ads only picks up click data on the best title and meta description combinations for a particular page. But since the holiday season is for a limited duration, there is a short time to capture enough data on different combinations.
You can look at your competitors’ paid ads and analyze their performance for inspiration. To do so, note the following steps:
- Open Ahref’s Site Explorer or a similar tool and enter the competitor’s ad page URL.
- Click on the Ads report to see:
- Their ad copy
- The landing pages the ad copy is sending traffic to
- The exact keywords they are targeting
- The amount of traffic generated by each ad.
This information can be valuable to design your ad copy and paid advertising strategy for your Holiday campaign.
Conclusion
Millions of customers rush to shop online and get gifts for their loved ones during the holiday season. An e-commerce business or marketer needs a winning holiday SEO strategy to gain visibility and convert incoming traffic into sales. The best strategy is to invest early in holiday SEO so your page starts ranking on SERPs when the holiday season arrives.
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