Oh, yes! We’re one of those businesses that puts out the Christmas decorations well before the temperature gets below 70°, let alone before the first pumpkins are carved. The reason we dredge out the cardboard box from the attic early has everything to do with the huge surge in business activity around the Holiday period.
eCommerce, retail, apparel, and even bars, restaurants or event venues all get bucketloads of extra business during what Andy Williams claims is the most wonderful time of the year. Since holiday shopping and booking has transformed from a month-long affair to a four-month marathon, your business will want to target customers early and often during the long lead up to the holidays.
Here are some of the most important factors to think about as you gear up for the long sleigh slog through the snow looming at the end of the calendar.
See If Your Current SEO’s Been Naughty or Nice
There’s no point in splurging on SEO campaigns near the holidays if your current efforts show little effect on your bottom line. Therefore, you will want to remedy any SEO ails and test out campaign strategies in advance of your big year-end push. The more prepared you are, the more Santa will bring you come Christmas!
So, now is the perfect time for a thorough SEO exam. Slide on the finger glove, and take a poke around to see what keywords you rank in, what content gets the most inbound traffic, your ROI on paid social or SEM, your targeting data and other key performance indicator metrics.
Then, make optimization tweaks to see if you can improve those metrics in a measurable way:
Publish content emphasizing a certain keyword
Change markup or metadata to improve indexing
Go multi-channel with a social campaign that coincides with a content or display campaign
Spend extra money on paid ads
Change up the schedule you publish content
Modify targeting to see if you can improve audience value
Evaluate which promotions, offers or campaigns boost engagement
These small tweaks can help you feel out where your SEO needs improvement and where your current strengths lie.
Optimize Your Page Content
As people search for your services, you will want the page content they find to be as helpful as possible. For example, if you offer services like event space rentals or catering, specify services offered, policies, booking room available and any other specifics people would otherwise want to email about. If you have an online retail component, ensure that product listings are specific and that each product page is optimized with SEO best practices.
Test site pages as you go to see if user experience is improved, and also fetch as Google to view SERPs listings as a searcher would see them.
Start Creating Blog and Social Content
The more engagement you are able to drum up now, the more headway you have towards audience reach come November.
Just as important, many people start booking spaces and cobbling together Holiday gift lists months in advance. Content published now can enjoy a smaller playing field while providing value to early shoppers and planners.
Great content can include “Holiday Gift Guide” or “Holiday Event Planning Guide” blog entries and visual content on social and display that catches the eye of early shoppers. Other businesses not directly benefited by gift sales can also jump on the bandwagon, such as a law office talking about premises liability for holiday visitors and guests.
Weigh a Holiday Landing Page Strategy
If you have the resources, dedicated landing pages for Holiday traffic can streamline their user experience. Landing pages also improve funneling tactics and enable clearer campaign attribution.
FAQs on holiday services or promotions can often be enough to capture traffic from competitors and provide instant value to searchers.
Hire an SEO Company Now
Know that the sooner you start collaborating with a digital marketing company like EverSpark, the more the efforts can pay off in time for the holidays. Review our SEO and digital marketing services and then contact us today to make the most impact on your Holiday endeavors.
The post Xmas in September: Optimizing SEO for the Holidays in Advance appeared first on Atlanta SEO Company.