Online retailers get busier during the holiday season as they gear up for more traffic and higher conversion rates. Many retailers prepare their search engine optimization strategies well ahead of the holiday season rush, and so should you.
(Pixabay / Gellinger)
While there is an understandably large number of retailers that focus on direct sales channels, which include email marketing, display and Adwords, too many neglect pursing organic traffic in the process. They may underestimate how long SEO takes to kick in, or the importance of holiday-focused keywords. As a result, they miss out on an organic strategy that will allow them to introduce new brands during the season and enhance their profitability. Learn from their mistakes.
Seasonal keyword strategies must begin long before the days leading up to the holiday season. You need time to build up your content, assets, etc. before the holidays to give search engines adequate time to index seasonal-related keywords.
Once you narrow down your keyword targets after reviewing data from keyword tools like Google’s Keyword Planner, maximize the visibility of those holiday keywords with a few of these strategies.
- Design holiday-specific landing pages – Landing pages are pages on a websites designed to drive a specific call-to-action. As a retailer, you must identify the specific message that you want to drive home, or the products that you want visitors to convert on.
- Embrace outreach – Now that your high converting landing pages are ready, new content must be promoted through email and social media to let the target audience know about its existence.
- Create blog posts – Take a long-term strategy and post blogs related to your products or services that are being promoted. When the blogs are optimized for the seasonal keywords, over time, they will build the ability to drive substantial traffic to your website.