As the holiday season slowly approaches, you may wonder what is the best way to prepare your website for more sales. Occasions like Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s are must-win times for many brands.
SEO takes time so what can you do to prepare your site, NOW? As with anything else in SEO, it all starts with the right content to help your customer purchase intent.
Holiday Keyword Trends 🎄
The keywords you focus on will depend on the business you operate. If you own a Pet Shop, for example, you may want to target “Christmas gifts for dogs,” while “Halloween dog costumes” may not be an item you carry.
Google Trends is an excellent tool for researching what shoppers are looking for in Google. Enter the keyword you’re interested in, and you’ll get a graph that shows the interest over time. In the image below, we looked up “Halloween costumes” for 2021.
As you can see, people start searching for Halloween costume ideas in August, although interest peaks in October. Once Halloween is over, searches fall flat back to earth again.
Find 2-5 keywords or consumer trends that work for your brand for Holiday 2022.
- Check Google Shopping Trends for ideas
- Confirm they are working for your Region/Geography
- Note and Rising or Related search queries to capture breakout searches. IE Stranger Things
5 SEO ideas for this Holiday Season
Once you’ve got the list of consumer searches you want to target, there are many different ways to integrate them into your website strategy. Here are a five ideas for you to boost traffic and sales for this holiday season:
1. Refresh your old content 📚
- Update product or service pictures
- Refresh the date with Updated for 2022
- Add emojis and graphic visuals that help you emotionally connect
- Refresh links and confirm they all work
- Add new resources: 2022 Buying guide for Dad/Mom/Grandparents/Etc
2. Create Dedicated Landing Pages 🎯
With Dedicated landing pages you will want to specifically address your customers’ wishes and needs around a specific holiday. A few Holiday page ideas:
- Black Friday Deals
- Cyber Monday Savings
- Holiday Gift Guide for Dogs
- Most loved Kids’ Holiday Gifts under $50
- Holiday Wish List for Nanna/Significant Other/Etc.
So, if you’re creating a landing page for your “Christmas gifts for dogs” keyword, you can present customers with a good selection of gift ideas, as well as some content that you think would be helpful for them. You could also, for example, divide gifts by price as many consumers shop for others with a price point in mind.
You will want to optimize your SEO Title and meta description to help potential customers find you on Google and as in the example above have some romance copy that goes after those focus keywords. Adding holiday images and short videos is also a good idea, although you want to ensure they are not too large (to avoid slowing down page load speed!).Â
Pro tip: Avoid using the year in the URL as you may want to update and reuse the page in 2023. There is no need to delete or redirect the page once the holiday is over we recommend keeping it up and refreshing the content for next year.
3. Holiday value added Blog Posts
As Halloween, Thanksgiving, or Christmas approach, you may want to start ramping up holiday-specific content creation. Informational content is always an excellent way to reach potential customers, even if you won’t be selling them something right away.
As you prepare for Halloween, you could write about “Best Family Halloween Costume Ideas” or “Halloween Treats Your Dog, Will Love.”
Apart from optimizing for a specific holiday occasion, make sure you include information that will be relevant and valued by your readers. With blog posts, it’s not so much about conversions but more about building and adding value to your customers.
4. Add Occasion-focused Banners To Your Site 📢
You can implement banners across your site as the holiday approaches. You can have these banners link directly from your homepage (or other important entry pages) to your holiday-specific landing pages. The goal is to ensure your visitors can easily find their way there. Particularly on Mobile!
- When should I add a Holiday banner? Earlier than you think. We can see in Google Trends exactly when search volume starts to build. For Halloween queries as an example, they start at the end of August! Our rule is a minimum of two weeks out but this will depend on your promo calendar and what is appropriate for your brand.
- What should be in the Banner? Connect emotionally using color, images, copy, and emojis. Don’t oversell in the banner. Set a hook that drives the buyer to click. Keep it short so it works on mobile and
After Christmas, you can take these banners down and keep the landing page online for a refresh the following year.
5. Use Emotion
- Loving Images of how you help your customers have a nostalgic holiday
- An animated gif to inspire them to use your product in a new way for the holidays
- Video showing friends and family connecting with them by using your product or service
- The holidays are a stressful time how does your brand help?
Building a Holiday Content Asset
One of the things we like about this strategy is how sustainable and scalable it is. The content you’ve invested in this year can be revamped and reutilized for next year so that nothing is lost – just transformed and improved.
Keep your typical customer in mind as you create landing pages or blogs. Make the content relevant and relatable to THEM, not only your specific business goals for Halloween or Christmas.
Ramp Up Your Holiday Sales This Season!
Using SEO to ramp up your sales is not only possible, but it’s the most intelligent way to build a sustainable strategy. If you need help determining which keyword to target or what content to create, reach out to us.
ScaledOn is a full-service digital marketing agency that helps businesses grow their traffic, leads, and sales online by providing SEO, PPC, and Amazon solutions.