While we may be looking forward to some relaxation and quality time with loved ones during the holiday season, it’s anything but laid back for businesses under pressure to drive sales and keep everything running like a well-oiled machine.
Holiday sales often account for a significant part of annual retail revenue — around 19% on average — and even more for certain sectors.
e-commerce businesses, in particular, can benefit from this uptick in volume, as it often comes without significantly increasing fixed costs. However, the rush of the holiday season can also mean that essential tasks like SEO may fall by the wayside.
Also read: Importance of SEO To Help Your Business Stand Out
It’s crucial to stay vigilant and address any common issues with your SEO during the holidays to avoid missing out on valuable organic search traffic.
As we analyze our holiday sales data, it’s important to track key performance indicators (KPIs) related to our online marketing efforts, such as website traffic and conversion rates.
By regularly reviewing these data analytics KPIs, we can identify areas for improvement and make informed decisions to drive more traffic and sales during the holiday season.
In this guide, we’ll explore six essential SEO fixes to implement to ensure that your business is well-positioned to capitalize on the holiday shopping frenzy.
By implementing these strategies, you’ll be able to drive traffic, boost sales, and set yourself up for success during the most critical time of the year.
Also read: Best SEO Courses To Become A Master SEO
Are you ready to learn more?
Let’s dive in.
1. Review and update your website’s metadata
Your website is the most important thing when building your online presence.
However, the tactic of if you build it, they’ll come no longer applies. Every page on your website needs to be both search engine and user-friendly.
Optimizing your website’s metadata is a crucial SEO fix, as it helps search engines understand what your website is about and determines how it’ll rank in the search results.
To optimize your metadata, ensure that your title tags and meta descriptions are relevant and unique, and include your target keywords.
Also read: How Google Reviews Help With Local SEO
New York Magazine ranks number one on Google for the keyword “gift guides” by following a few basic principles.
The meta title, the main text that appears in the search results, is a concise and accurate description of the page’s content. The URL is simple and contains the target keyword. And the meta description gives a brief synopsis of the content.
But just because you rank on the first page of Google doesn’t mean people will automatically click on your site. Focus on writing compelling headlines that spark users to click on your results over your competition (but avoid clickbait).
Notice how this title stands out from the others on the SERP for the keyword “Link Whisper review.” Readers immediately want to know why the SEO tool is only suitable for some, and it encourages them to click and learn more.
Your meta description is another place where you can entice users to click through to your website. Google tends to rewrite meta descriptions, but don’t leave it up to Google because you can write better copy nine out of ten times.
It’s a good idea to keep your title tags under 60 characters and your meta descriptions under 160 characters for the best results in SERPs.
If you don’t prioritize product page optimization in your list of SEO fixes, your business may quickly fall short of your sales goals.
2. Optimize product pages for target keywords
Product pages are especially important during the holiday season because customers hunt for the perfect gifts for their loved ones.
And this is a common area where businesses fall short, as they are racing against the clock to get new holiday inventory up on their site.
Once all of your content is up and running, it’s wise to reevaluate and spend some time with on-page SEO is on-point. Pun intended.
Why? Optimizing product pages for targeted keywords can help drive more traffic to your page and, ultimately, increase sales.
Start by using Ahrefs or Semrush to find popular terms your customers are searching for and incorporate them into the page title, description, and headings.
Then add these target keywords throughout your product page to send a signal to search engines and tell them what your page is about.
It’s also a good idea to use variations of your target keywords to help your website rank for a wider range of related terms.
Also read: 6 SEO Keyword Research Tips For Beginners
Here’s an example of the keyword “Christmas sweaters” with data from Ahrefs:
However, avoid keyword stuffing, which can harm your SEO and make your website seem spammy to users.
Don’t stop there. Add high-quality images and videos that showcase your product to help your customers make informed decisions during the buying process. Include contextual pictures, like a model wearing a luxury watch on their wrist, rather than just an image of the watch itself.
And finally, remember to include customer reviews. Social proof is the perfect way to help reassure customers that your product is high-quality and worth their money. Positive customer reviews are worth their weight and gold, so use them to your advantage.
The best thing about SEO is that if you spend time getting it right, it’ll drive results long after the holiday season.
E-commerce businesses are one of the most commonly sold online businesses. And if you eventually decide to sell your online store, having a solid SEO strategy in place will boost the valuation of your business.
It’s a no-brainer to focus your energy on these common SEO fixes.
3. Improve your website page speed
Real Estate Webmasters, a company specializing in real estate SEO, suggests that the most important thing during the holiday season is to optimize your website for increased traffic.
Why? Poor website speed can hurt your SEO and user experience, leading to lower search rankings, higher bounce rates, and lower conversion rates.
As a shopper, nothing is worse than trying to check off your holiday shopping list and landing on a website that takes forever to load. You don’t have time to wait around, so you quickly jump to the next result on Google.
Also read: Building an SEO Friendly Website From Scratch – 13 Essentials to Follow
Google recommends that your pages load within three seconds or less. It’s important to optimize your images, reduce redirects, and minimize using heavy scripts and plugins to fall within this desired range.
You can use several tools to test your website’s loading speed and identify areas for improvement, such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
This free Google tool will provide you with a report on your website’s performance and suggest specific actions that you can take to improve it.
4. Enhance the user experience with internal linking
Often overlooked, internal links can be incredibly beneficial for SEO purposes and help pass link juice from highly authoritative web pages to less authoritative ones.
In very simple terms, internal linking refers to linking to other pages on your website. It helps search engines understand the structure and content of your website, as well as how different pages are related to each other.
But this SEO fix isn’t just for search engines. Having internal links on your website means users can easily navigate and find new content. Making things easier for users leads to more engagement and longer time spent on your site. And the longer a visitor spends on your site, the more likely they’ll convert.
Use descriptive anchor text that accurately reflects the content of the linked page and links to relevant pages that provide additional value to users.
Also read: 5 Essential SEO Tips to Increase Conversions on your Joomla Website
It’s also a good idea to use a mix of internal links like:
- Contextual links: These are internal links to specific pages found within the context of your content.
- Suggested content links: These links usually appear at the bottom of the paragraph or page. This way, visitors can find related content on your site.
Follow the lead of this blog post about the best teen debit cards. It does an excellent job sprinkling in internal links that are helpful to the reader (like more information about opening investment accounts for kids) that add value while also passing link authority to the page.
Notice how these links are used sparingly (but in the right places) and flow naturally throughout the content. It’s easy to overdo it with internal and external links.
Find a happy medium that improves the flow of your web pages but doesn’t come off as spammy to the reader.
5. Track and address technical SEO issues
Technical SEO is what it sounds like: it’s challenging and technical. And, unfortunately, essential to your SEO strategy.
This SEO fix includes tasks like reducing crawl errors, making sure that your website is mobile-friendly, and optimizing your website’s structure and navigation.
To track and address technical SEO issues, Google Search Console is your new best friend. This free Google tool provides information about your website’s performance in search results and alerts you to any technical issues, like issues with structured data.
You can also run an SEO site audit using Ahrefs or Semrush to identify and fix crawl errors and broken links on your website.
During the holiday season, broken links are frequent for e-commerce stores.
Imagine trying to purchase something from a store only to discover that it is out of stock, and you’re left with a broken link. This situation happens because of viral TikTok videos as well as wildly successful sales.
To ensure that your e-commerce site is free from broken links, keep any outdated information up-to-date and remove it as soon as possible.
Depending on the situation, you can also opt to use redirects or a 404 page. For example, if you plan to get new stock for a product that’s currently sold out, you could use a 302 redirect.
When updating an inventory, consider using a 302 temporary redirect to maintain the original URL’s search engine rankings while you work. Using a 302 will also direct users to another relevant page to prevent them from bouncing.
Also read: Stop Negative SEO Before It Ruins Your Website’s Reputation
Once you replenish the inventory, make sure to turn off the redirect. If the item is no longer available, use a 301 permanent redirect to point to another product you think your customers might like.
Also, create a page for users who find a broken link or who type in an incorrect URL. Your 404 page should include other helpful internal links and a short message to tell the user that the page doesn’t exist.
You can find a great example of this 404 page from Kohl’s.
The landing page includes a humorous message and guides the user on what to do next: continue shopping via a CTA (call-to-action) button.
6. Create and promote high-quality content
Keyword research goes with SEO, as caviar goes with creme fraiche.
Why? Keyword research helps you understand your target audience’s search needs and how to improve your website’s ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs).
And it feels like Christmas morning when you find keywords with high search volume and low difficulty. These are the exact words your potential customers are searching for on Google and where you should spend your efforts to help you bring in more organic traffic.
But most marketers make the mistake of trying to rank for overly broad terms. An example of this is “Christmas stockings.” When you search for this term, you’ll find that the top results are from major companies like Amazon, Walmart, and Target. You don’t stand a chance.
Also read: Best SEO Content Optimization Tools
Concentrate on dividing your keyword into different funnel stages and create material around the less competitive keywords that still have high search intent.
- Top-of-the-funnel keywords focus on exact-match phrases and long-tail keywords that your niche is searching for during the holiday season.
- Keyword example: how to hang Christmas stockings
- Middle-of-the-funnel keywords emphasize specific advantages of your product, like product comparisons or reviews.
- Keyword example: best Christmas stockings
- Bottom-of-the-funnel keywords are branded searches, indicating that the customer is close to making a purchase.
- Keyword example: L.L. Bean Christmas stocking
During the holiday season, there’s a high demand for holiday shopping guides and other content relevant to the middle and bottom of the sales funnel.
Consumers want information before they buy, so offer them useful resources to help them make informed decisions (like this guide on the best Christmas stockings for 2022).
Providing this type of content also helps you attract and keep visitors and establish your website as a reliable source of information crucial during the holiday shopping frenzy.
Remember, you can always repurpose past content to speed up the process if you are short on resources. Then, once you have a stellar library of content ready to rock and roll, don’t let it go to waste.
Also read: How to Write the Best SEO Content That Will Rank
The goal is to get it in front of your target audience. Promote your content across your social media channels to drive brand awareness and leverage the tried and true method of email marketing campaigns.
Also providing personalized user experience content is a surefire way to build loyal customers. It enables you to target unique needs and appeal to specific buyers in a way that most resonates with their needs. Take Honeycomb Insurance, for example. They provide visitors with an educational video to learn more about landlord insurance quotes and how to get the best deal.
Some people underestimate the power of email when thinking about boosting their SEO strategy. Implementing the right email campaigns is a surefire way to generate leads during the holiday season. Still, you need to ensure that you generate urgency with your emails and offer great holiday deals.
This email from Tailor Brands is an example of using time-sensitive words to encourage customers to take action by using the word “ending” in the eye-catching email graphic.
Also read: Plagiarism Free Content: Importance In SEO
Email marketing generates a whopping $36 in revenue for every $1 spent sending emails. After you put all of this time and effort into these SEO fixes, you might as well show off your shiny new website full of the best content on the internet.
Can you hear the champagne bottle popping in celebration of higher traffic to your website? We can.
Wrapping up
By implementing these six essential holiday SEO tips, you can ensure that your business is well-positioned to drive traffic and boost sales during the holiday season.
While the festive season is a busy and stressful time for retailers, you can set yourself up for success and make the most of this critical period by focusing on fixing your SEO.
For additional tips and resources on optimizing your e-commerce business for the holiday season, you can check out our other SEO guides or consult a professional SEO agency.
With the right strategies and tactics in place, you can make the holiday season a profitable one for your business.
