It’s that’s time of year again when the high streets are mayhem, the turkey’s getting fat and the internet is awash with Christmas shoppers. But as millions of people rush to Google for that last-minute inspiration, Black Friday bargain and Cyber Monday steal, is your website there? This week, we’re sharing our top Christmas SEO tips to make sure you’re as popular as Santa.
Christmas chaos
Nearly half of Christmas shoppers now buy their gifts online, and those that don’t are still using the internet to research products and check prices. This is a massive opportunity for your eCommerce website to be seen, clicked on and purchased from.
To make the most of this opportunity, you need an SEO strategy that gets your website in front of the right people – and to that, you need to follow these Christmas SEO tips.
1. Review your site’s current performance
A well-performing site is the crucial starting point for any SEO work. Slow page speeds, broken links and confusing navigation are not only bad for Google but can lead to website abandonment and competitor delight.
Check your website’s current performance, paying particular attention to:
? Page loading times – using Google’s PageSpeed Insights to help;
? Broken links;
? Duplicated content;
? Confusing navigation;
? Unsecure pages; and
? Mobile phone optimization.
Ultimately, you want to ensure that your website is quick and accessible to everyone, including Google. And, importantly, that it remains so when everyone and their mate lands on your webstore.
2. Review your current SEO performance
It’s also useful to know how well you’re currently ranking for specific keywords and how well you ranked last Christmas. Useful tools for this include:
Google Analytics
If you’re not already familiar with Google Analytics, it’s time to get familiar. Google Analytics provides historical and real-time information about your site’s performance, including:
? How many people have visited;
? Where these visitors are from (physically and internet-ly);
? What pages your visitors land on, follow and leave on; and
? Much, much more.
Use this information to learn more about your current visitors, see what’s working and make improvements to what’s not working.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console helps you to understand and improve your site’s ranking in the Google search results. It’s full of useful features and can be used to compare clicks, check individual page performance, and identify errors on your website that may be affecting your SEO.
SEMrush
SEMrush is an all-in-one SEO tool with the sole aim of getting your website seen. There are too many features to mention here, but if you’re looking for more than Google’s insights, it’s definitely worth a visit.
What to do with this information? If you’re already ranking really well for certain keywords, then you know to keep doing what you’re already doing. If you’re not, then now’s the perfect time to change things.
3. Pick relevant Christmas keywords
Once you’re confident with your webstore’s overall performance and SEO ranking, it’s time to implement your Christmas SEO strategy. The first stop? Christmas words.
At this time of year, it’s useful to target Black Friday-, Cyber Monday- and Christmas-related keywords that your customers will likely be using. Think “Black Friday watch deals”, “Cyber Monday necklaces” or even “Christmas gifts for pets”.
Great tools for brainstorming keywords and analysing the results are:
? Google Trends
? Google Keyword Planner
? Ahrefs Keyword Explorer
? SEMrush
? Moz Keyword Explorer
What you’re ideally looking for are niche keywords that have low to moderate search volume and competition. You probably won’t win the SEO war for “artificial Christmas tree”, but you might win the war for “gold artificial Christmas tree in pot”.
4. Target your Christmas keywords
Once you’ve picked the keywords you want to target, you need to target them using:
Landing pages
Create some landing pages relevant to your keywords, for example, Black Friday pages or holiday product pages. While this might sound like a lot of work, you can keep these pages hidden until the relevant time of the year. And, you get to decorate them with new keywords and Christmas-style images.
Marketing
Your Christmas marketing campaign should reflect your SEO campaign with relevant social media posts, blogs and backlinks to your Christmas landing pages and products.
Advertising
Similarly, your paid-for advertising should target the same Christmas keywords, and link back to your new Christmas landing pages. It’s all about reinforcing those keywords and getting clicks through to your landing pages.
5. Monitor your success
Your use of Google Analytics and Search Console doesn’t stop at keyword research. It’s important to continually monitor the performance of your website to understand what’s working and what needs tweaking.
6. Handle your success
And finally, when these Christmas SEO tips pay off, you want to ensure that you can handle the surge of queries, orders, and shipments. Look into order management tools with inventory and shipping integrations to make your order processing and slick as your SEO.
Happy holidays!
About Expandly
Expandly multi-channel management software helps eCommerce businesses to handle the Christmas rush by making selling online easier. List to multiple channels, manage orders from a central screen, bulk print shipping labels, send orders to Xero and report on it all.
Simple.