Fine-Tune Your Holiday Season SEO Strategy to Maximize Your Growth
Although it is hard to believe, the holidays, and the associated massive uptick in online shopping, are just around the corner. Is your startup, e-commerce site or SMB well poised to capitalize on this period of surging consumer interest and spending? If not, one of the most effective ways to posture your business to take advantage of these unique growth opportunities is through targeted enhancements to help boost your SEO. With a balanced and thorough SEO campaign incorporating some of the strategies below, your business may be able to generate additional traffic and conversions this holiday season.
Devote Time to Keyword Research
What phrases, or keywords, do potential clients use when searching for products or services in your industry? Do these terms fluctuate with the holidays or have they radically evolved since you last conducted a comprehensive keyword research campaign? If unsure, it pays to use tools like Google Trends to get an idea of the relative popularity of a given keyword compared to the total volume of searches conducted over a given time frame. While this service will not provide the precise volume of traffic per phrase, it is beneficial to ensure your marketing strategies effectively capture the terms potential customers may use when searching for your product or services, especially during the holiday shopping season.
Plan Your Holiday Content Strategy to Take Advantage of Popular Keywords
After using the keyword research and development strategy discussed above, you can take the next logical step and develop high-quality content such as blogs, articles, e-books, press releases and more which incorporate these terms wisely. Embedding popular keyword phrasing offers a boost to SEO if you use the terms naturally, and the content remains of a high caliber. While planning a new content strategy for the holidays, it also helps to examine the current content on your site to ensure it:
- Is well written and concise
- Provides value to your users
- Is easy to read and broken into several shorter sections with engaging headings
- Includes bullet points, links to authoritative sources and more
Beyond articles and blog posts, you may also want to consider alternative content such as videos, infographics and other engaging formats which appeal to consumers and generate interest.
Consider Your Social Media Presence and Reputation
Social media continues to serve as a lucrative source to generate new leads and revenue for small to mid-sized businesses. Keep in mind that consumers may spend additional time and energy looking for gift ideas, conducting research on new products and comparing deals over the holidays. Optimizing your social media presence to highlight your products or sales events during the holidays can generate buzz and boost conversions. Some social media sites, like Facebook, even offer holiday-themed overlays for advertisements.
Related to social media, another factor which you need to consider is your SMB’s online reputation. What are customers saying about your products and services on local business review sites? These reviews can play a crucial role in customers’ decisions concerning how much they trust your SMB’s products or services. With an effective reputation management strategy, your business can highlight the positive reviews and incorporate them into your social media content to build your authority.
Take Advantage of Mobile-First Indexing
Last, but certainly not least on this list of ways to hone your SEO strategy for the holidays, is to capitalize on mobile-first indexing. As consumers increasingly rely on access to information via phones, tablets and other mobile devices, it is more vital than ever to concentrate website design and development to ensure your content is optimized for mobile access and ranks well on mobile search engines.