The holiday season sees a spike in searches for gifts, events, recipes, and more. A smart marketer can capture this traffic surge using his targeted SEO strategies.
Here are nine ways to optimize your website for the holidays and make the most of this high-traffic period.
1. Make use of seasonal topics
Use tools like Google Trends and Semrush to find trending keywords related to the holiday season. You can use this data to create new content to reach this audience.
Things like gift guides are always popular, but if you're working on a website that isn't product-based, there are still plenty of opportunities.
Here are some examples:
- If you're a local business, you can create a guide to events in your area.
- An ADHD coach might write a blog post about how to get through the holidays or provide coping mechanisms.
- Banks and financial advisors can discuss gift budgets and create savings calculators on their websites.
- A personal trainer can write recipes for healthier versions of holiday treats or talk about ways to stay active during the holidays.
No matter what type of business you run, there's always a way to weave in the relevance of the holidays and create content around that topic.
2. Update and update existing content
Revisit your top-performing content from the past few years and update or rewrite it with updated information, new keywords, and relevant links. This approach saves you time and leverages your content's existing SEO value.
You can also add a Christmas twist to existing pages. This is especially useful for e-commerce websites. Create a Christmas-specific category to help users easily navigate to seasonal items.
Update the product description and title, and images if possible. This allows individual products to rank for all-important searches from potential customers.
Send users directly from your holiday-based blog posts or content pages to relevant product pages to help navigate them to the right place and reinforce the importance of those products with internal links.
Learn more: A guide to seasonal content marketing
3. Optimize for mobile users
Mobile searches increase significantly during the holidays as people watch this year's Christmas movies on the go or on the couch.
Make sure your website and content is fully optimized for mobile, especially if you add holiday-related content. This includes faster loading times, responsive design, and easy navigation for a better user experience.
We want users to be able to quickly and easily find and take action on what they need. During this period, people often make impulsive decisions.
Many of us feel overwhelmed and pressured by having so much to do. That's why it's even more important than usual to make sure you improve your users' mobile experience.
4. Use structured data for rich snippets
Implement structured data to enhance the appearance of your content in search results. Rich snippets can feature holiday-specific details such as event dates, product reviews, and special offers.
Although these don't necessarily help with rankings, Google often pulls some of this additional information into the SERPs. This provides searchers with more useful information, makes your listings stand out, makes them look more appealing, and increases your website's click-through rate.
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5. Optimize for local search
Be sure to update your Google Business Profile and other local listings with your business hours during the holiday period. You can also add promotions related to ongoing special events or holiday periods.
Optimizing local search queries can increase both online and in-person traffic to your physical business location during the holidays. This will help you dominate his SERPs with your website, business listing, and advertising. When your business appears multiple times in search results, it increases visibility, credibility, and clicks.
Learn more: 5 tips to boost your local SEO efforts
6. Improve website performance
Website speed and performance are very important for SEO, and as your website receives a large amount of traffic, you need to be able to handle the sudden influx.
For seasonal businesses, this means a significant increase in holiday traffic, so it's important to make sure your site can handle the traffic without sacrificing speed.
When it comes to site performance, the line between SEO and developer can sometimes blur. Therefore, make sure your team works together to test as many scenarios as possible before the Christmas period.
When it comes to e-commerce, it's also important to ensure that your website can manage the growing number of transactions. You should have an offline process in case something goes wrong.
7. Engage in seasonal link building
Contact other websites for holiday-themed guest posts or collaborations. For example, if you're a product-based business, look for websites that feature your products in gift guides you're creating.
Building links seasonally will expand your reach and improve your site's authority. Make sure these links benefit his SEO efforts by focusing on quality over quantity and offering to write blog posts and articles yourself.
This is also a good opportunity to take advantage of digital public relations. Are there any online magazines or newspapers that would be interested in featuring this business? Look for an inspiring story to share, not a sales pitch.
Before you pitch, think about the benefits to your audience. Every business has at least one good story to tell. PR is a great way to get backlinks from holiday-related articles. Please note that these links are often not permanent.
8. Monitor traffic patterns
Keep an eye on your analytics during the holiday season. Consider which strategies are working well and where there is room for improvement. By understanding real-time data, you can capitalize on what resonates best with your audience and make adjustments quickly.
The holiday season can be a hectic time for some businesses, so it can be easy to neglect to keep an eye on what's happening on your website. By making these small improvements, you can improve your conversions right before the window of opportunity runs out (at least for another year).
9. Plan ahead for post-holiday SEO.
Don’t let your SEO efforts slip away even after the holidays are over. Plan a post-holiday strategy to maintain momentum. Many companies may take the time to reorganize and take advantage of this space to ensure their performance continues into the next year.
This could include adding content to help with New Year's resolutions and advice on using holiday gifts, recycling waste, and preparing for the inevitable January blues. Again, plan content that is very closely related to your business' services or products.
You should also take steps to remove holiday elements from product descriptions, categories, and non-specific content, remove special banners and graphics from your website, and update your listings.
Think of it as putting away your Christmas decorations and preparing to put them up again next year.
Improve visibility and traffic for the holiday season
The holiday season sees a spike in seasonal search queries and online shopping traffic. Here are some ways to make the most of this important time.
- Optimize your website for relevant seasonal keywords.
- Improve your site's performance.
- Leverage structured data.
- Monitoring analysis.
Keep up the momentum with post-holiday content and site updates so your efforts don't slow down when the holidays are over.
With strategic planning and execution, you can significantly increase your website's visibility and conversions this Christmas.
Dig Deeper: How to Create a Successful Holiday Season SEO Strategy
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily those of Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.