The holiday season inspires a rise in the number of searches for gifts, events, recipes, and many other things. Savvy marketers will capitalize on this increase in traffic with targeted SEO practices.
Here are just a few tips to get your website ready to capitalize on the holiday season-the time of year when online activity tends to spike.
Exploit Seasonal Topics
Also, for trending holiday-related keywords, consider using other tools such as Google Trends and Semrush to help identify those. Take that information and create new content with compelling topics that interest your audience. While gift guides really tend to be some of the most consistent types of content, there are a lot of other opportunities even outside of product-based websites.
Here’s just a few examples:
- A local business might do a round-up of events in their area.
- An ADHD coach might write a post on surviving the holidays and post their strategies for coping.
- A bank or financial advisor may discuss budgeting for gifts and embed a savings calculator on their website.
- A personal trainer might create recipes for healthier holiday treats or give tips for staying active over the holiday season.
No matter what kind of business you have, there’s always a way to relate to holidays at the end of the year, and to come up with content based on relevant topics.
Optimize for Mobile Users
The holiday season sees a record number of mobile searches because people are either on the go or catching this year’s Christmas movie from their couch.
Make sure your website and content are absolutely optimized for mobile-especially if you added extra holiday content. Optimization includes fast load times, responsive design, and smooth navigation to ensure the best user experience.
This will make it quick and easy for them to find what they’re looking for, and to take action immediately since many will be impulsive at this time of year. Since being overwhelmed and stressed may be felt much more during this time of the year, ensuring a great mobile experience is even more important than it usually would be.
Update and Refresh Existing Content
Repurpose your best-performing content from earlier years by refreshing data, adding new keywords, and linking to other relevant content. This will not only save your time but further enhance the continuing SEO value of your content.
You might want to retrofit existing pages of e-commerce websites with a Christmas theme. It would also be a good idea to set up categories for Christmas, which will make it easy for the user to locate seasonal products. Rewrite the product descriptions, titles, and images in order to give this particular product a greater chance of coming out at the top of keyword customers’ searches.
Guide visitors from holiday-themed blog posts or content pages directly to pertinent product pages, streamlining navigation and reinforcing the significance of these products through strategic internal linking.
Use Schema for Rich Snippets
Adding schema data will help enhance how your content appears in search results. Holiday-themed rich snippets can include event date details, product reviews, or special offers.
Although these scraps won’t necessarily impact rankings, Google will often fold many of this bonus material right into the SERPs themselves. Not only will this give good information to the searchers, but it’s also a good way to beautify and make more appealing your listings, which will drive more clicks through to your site.
Optimize for Local Search
Also, be sure to update your holiday business hours on Google Business Profile and additional local listings. You can add any special events or promotions you may have during this time of year, too.
With strategic local search optimization, you’ll be able to drive online and in-store traffic to your physical business locations this holiday season.
Conversions are going to be a piece of cake, as you will be found, dominating the search engine result pages through your website, business listing, and ad placements. Repeated appearances of your business in search results not only enhance visibility but also build trust and encourage clicks.
Do Seasonal Link Building
Reach out to other websites for some reciprocal holiday-themed guest blogging. For instance, if your business is a product-based business, see if your products could be featured on other websites in gift guides.
Embracing seasonal link building extends your reach and gives your site much-needed juice. Of course, quality is more important than quantity, so build these links in such a way that they actually help your SEO efforts. Consider creating blog posts and articles yourself for a more customized result.
This may also be a good period for digital PR support. Find online magazines or newspapers that could be interested in publishing your stories and focus on telling, not selling.
With pitching, focus on the added value your story will bring to their audience. There’s always at least one great story to be told about every business. PR is one surefire method to get backlinks from holiday-themed articles, but know this: many of those links won’t be permanent.
Improve Website Performance
More importantly, with SEO, speed and performance play huge roles, and this is where your traffic will spike during the holiday season. You want to be sure that your website will handle sudden surges in traffic with ease and that speed is not lost.
Where seasonal peaks happen—for instance, a holiday traffic increase-it’s important that your website remains fast and efficient during the times of higher load.
Sometimes the lines get blurred as to what is an SEO task and what falls under development. This is certainly true when considering site performance. Invite collaboration among teams, doing rigorous testing across scenarios in advance of Christmas.
Equally important in e-commerce is the assurance that the Website will be able to handle increased volumes of transactions. This includes the development of contingency plans for offline processes pending unforeseen problems.
Keep tabs on the Flow of Website Traffic
Monitor your analytics diligently throughout the holiday season to identify effective strategies and areas for enhancement. Using real-time data enables prompt adjustments, allowing you to capitalize on what resonates most with your audience.
Given the potentially hectic nature of the holiday season for some businesses, it’s easy to overlook website activities. Implementing these minor improvements can lead to immediate boosts in conversions before the opportunity window closes, at least for another year.
Plan for post-holiday SEO
Maintain your SEO efforts beyond the holiday season by devising a post-holiday strategy to sustain momentum. Take advantage of this period for businesses to regroup and extend performance into the upcoming year.
Consider integrating content that aligns with New Year’s resolutions or offers guidance on using holiday gifts, recycling, and preparing for the common January challenges. Once again, ensure that the content is closely tied to the business’s services or products.
Additionally, establish procedures to eliminate holiday elements from product descriptions, categories, and non-specific content. Remove any special banners or graphics from the website and update listings accordingly.
Think of this process as akin to putting away Christmas decorations, and preparing to showcase them again next year.
Effective Holiday Season SEO Strategies
The festive season ushers in a wave of seasonal search queries and increased online shopping activity. To capitalize on this pivotal period, consider:
- Optimizing your website for pertinent seasonal keywords.
- Improving overall site performance.
- Using structured data effectively.
- Vigilantly monitoring analytics.
It’s crucial not to let your efforts wane after the holidays. Sustain momentum by introducing post-holiday content and making necessary site updates. With careful planning and execution, you can present your website with the gift of substantial visibility and conversions this Christmas.
