7 Ways To Optimize your Holiday SEO!

The Holidays Are Here!!

Thanksgiving Day is here. Turkey Day is the beginning of the holiday season. This is the time to gear up for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Time to unlock your best and latest content in order to engage your audience.

This is the time of the year when customers get numb from all the incredibly heavy sales pitch coming from every retailer, near and far. No matter what digital medium they may use, customers will be inundated with marketing and promotional content.

It will run the gamut from flash sales and coupon codes, to exclusive deals to the always favored, BOGO. (Buy One Get One Free).

People will be Searching! Products will be Trending!

People are using search engines to track down that perfect gift. They are searching for everything from holiday parties and menus, to holiday decorations and venues. The queries during this time of the year is endless.

Therefore; no matter what service or product that you’re selling, it would get more attention from your current and potential customers, with paying more attention to your SEO. This will result in an uptick in our sales.

In order to maximize your presence during this time of year, use “seasonal SEO.” Seasonal SEO is a way to optimize your website for holiday themed, seasonal-specific and end of the year keywords.

Don’t waste another minute of your time waiting for the holidays to sneak up on you. With digital content being timely matters and lead time is also crucial. This is what is unique about SEO.

Follow these seven tips for making a serious dent in your rankings. Thereby increasing your revenue. Thus, knocking your competition out of the way this holiday season.

1. Sooner Rather Than Later

This is not the time to kick back on your heels and wait for the holidays to creep up on you. You must begin the process NOW, rather than later. This includes developing your content strategy.

Research reveals that publishing your content just a week before the holidays can help your results are included in 50% of holiday web traffic. Whereas starting up to 45 days in advance can get your results within 90% of that same holiday traffic.

2. Update Your Keywords

Look at your current rankings and analytics at your site’s traffic. There may be some pages doing extremely well that you simply don’t want to touch. But, you may find a few strong opportunities to make updates to what you have there.

Review your keywords. Pay attention to integrating holiday related terms that fit in with your content. A good way to review what’s trending seasonally is with Google Trends. This is an awesome keyword research hack. Be sure to check it out.

Using Google Trends will allow you to tap into detailed trending topics around the holiday. It will also provide product-specific information on what’s trending in everything from apparel to beauty products. Or any other items that customers are furiously searching for and buying. How’s that for an early holiday gift!!!! Information is knowledge. And knowledge is power!

3. Create Holiday Quality Content That Fits You

Authenticity Matters!

After you have revamped your keywords for the holidays, now you can begin a content strategy that integrates them. Make sure you develop content that works with who you are. Don’t try to squeeze out holiday messaging that doesn’t fit your brand. Authenticity matters!

With ecommerce companies or any business that sells services that may be given as a gift, there will be obvious content. Create content around marketing these products.

You want to create digital gift guides for different audiences that puts a spotlight on your best offers. Be sure to develop content that accompanies your holiday sales and hot deals.

You new content will need holiday specific landing pages as well. A holiday subsection will help bring in visitors looking for specific gif-giving guidance. This can be accomplished without distracting them from your other relevant content and offerings on the site.

Be sure to develop holiday themed blog posts that integrate with your gift guides. These should be targeted to your specific customer profiles. For example, busy Moms.

These tips will provide excellent fodder for your social media channels and as embedded links in your email marketing.

Make sure to incorporate your efforts into your email and social media as well.

Be sure to use your keyword and trending topic research to pluck out your absolute best email subject lines for emails. And lastly, pick the best seasonal images and messaging for social.

4. Use Suspense For Coming Attractions!

Coming Attractions!!

A great way to capture people’s attention is with suspense. Once your keywords are ready and you have crafted your holiday and seasonally themed content strategy, you can offer previews. Use sneak peeks to get your audiences attention.

Social media and email marketing are great places to release these teasers. However; you can also add them on your site in relevant spots.

You can public landing pages or a holiday subsection on your site with teaser content on them. This is a good way to build up suspense. It will also do very well for your SEO. Search engines favor regularly updated pages.

Make sure that you keep mentioning your gift guides, blog posts and other holiday content that are coming soon in your email and social media campaigns. Then give a tad bit of details.

If you will be sharing the top gifts for teens, who are usually tech-savvy, try giving a sneak peek of one of those products. Keep them interested by teasing that an entire list will be coming out soon.

Never miss an opportunity to remind audiences to sign up for your newsletter. And always make sure you encourage them to follow you on social media. This way you will ensure they will not miss your holiday update.

5. Link Building: It’s Important!

Good SEO important. This is nothing new. But we must remember link building. This is especially true during the holiday: link building is crucial. Work harder than ever to gain links back to your top pages via your partners and sites that you have work with before. This is a way to cross-promote.

You will also need to make sure your content is very shareable. This means creating social friendly tidbits on your channels that drive people there. This encourages them to share too.
Focusing on emotional resonance is another way to make your content shareable.

An example is images of families, babies and puppies usually win the day! All of them evoke real emotions that are sure to tug the heartstrings of almost everyone.

6. Integrate a Mobile Plan

Mobile Matters!

For the first time this year, more people are expected to do their holiday shopping on their phones and tablets rather than on their computers. Though most purchases will likely be completed on desktop, the searching and browsing that leads up to the decision phase is happening on mobile.

For holiday SEO optimization is that we can’t leave out the mobile search. This is an ideal time to ensure your site is both responsive and loads quickly.