5 Holiday SEO Tips to Prepare for the Season

For many businesses, the holiday season is a crucial time for sales—millions of customers shop on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the weeks up until Christmas. Whether your business has a physical location or relies on e-commerce, you’ll need a winning holiday SEO strategy to stand out. So get ready for the holidays with some seasonal SEO tips.

Optimize for Holiday Website Traffic

1. Audit your website

Look for the following indicators of problems:

1. Slow loading time
2. Non-responsive on mobile device
3. Images or videos that don’t load properly
4. Broken links
5. Indexing issues
6. Outdated design
7. Duplicate content
8. Absence of SSL certificate
9. Forms that don’t function properly
10. Non-intuitive navigation

Take the time to ensure that these items are fixed and that you are providing a great user experience.

1. Assess last year’s performance

Use Google Analytics and Search Console to see what pages generated the most traffic and what queries searchers used to discover your business and products. Then, make sure you’re optimized for those pages and queries.

1. Perform holiday keyword research

As you’re looking at Search Console data from last year, do you notice any particular keywords that shoppers used in their queries?

Find new keywords by starting with a high-volume, broad keyword, like “Christmas gift ideas.” Next, look deeper to include purchase intentions, such as “for women.” Then think of relevant gift types that are among your offerings. The resulting long-tail keywords will add significant SEO benefits.

Plug your keywords into Google Trends to discover related topics and queries.

1. Create holiday landing pages

Use your keyword research on landing pages specifically for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Include keyword combinations with the words “deals,” “discounts,” and “promos,” which are often favored in holiday searches. Work on this well before Thanksgiving, so you’re ready to launch them for Black Friday.

Don’t forget to add the landing pages to your XML sitemap and navigation!

1. Combine SEO with your holiday marketing plans

Coordinate your holiday SEO and marketing efforts. Use social media to promote your brand and showcase your products as holiday solutions. You may decide to utilize paid search, but be aware that Black Friday and Cyber Monday ad bidding will be expensive. Instead, run promo campaigns before the big days for increased awareness and lower prices.

A Few More Tips & Tricks

Here are just a few mini-tricks to help you out.

• Update your site content, especially product descriptions, to be more persuasive.
• If you have landing pages from last year, repurpose them. It will make less work for you, and the page will bring its page authority along for the ride.
• Are you looking for in-store shoppers? Make sure your Google Business Profile is complete and has all your holiday information, like delivery options, available.

As always, if you need help with your SEO or digital marketing strategy, contact KP Kreative. We’re happy to help!

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