If I ask “Are you ready for Christmas?” most of you will say “It’s only August and you are talking about Christmas! Is it not too early?”
No it is not. If you are reading this, chances are you are an online business owner. If your business reaches its peak during Christmas, now is the time you should start planning your Christmas marketing strategy.
Pay Per Click costs go really high during the festive season, so planning for getting good amounts of organic traffic makes sense.
TOP tips for a successful Christmas SEO
1. Last year mobile traffic surpassed desktop traffic during Christmas and now it is official that Google favours the mobile friendly or responsive sites. (Launch of Mobilegeddon in April 2015). So make sure that your site is mobile friendly to make the most of that hiked Christmas traffic.
2. Try keeping Christmas pages constant year on year. Don’t delete and start from scratch every year, and use the same target pages. The pages might be linked from some sites/blogs, and so have some age associated with them, so deleting them starting from scratch every year with a new set of pages will lose this, and I’ve personally seen more than one retailer suffer as a result of such a policy. Once Christmas is over, demote the pages so they aren’t as visible to users, but keep them linked from somewhere like an HTML sitemap.
3. Take a deep dive into your statistical/analytics data and check the trends over last couple of years. Ask yourself questions like:
• When do you start seeing increased activity on the site?
• When do you get the Christmas orders coming in?
• Did any set of products perform better than others and then check how the site performs for those products. You will need to plan a strategy to optimise those. Check the keywords that you are using, use Google AdWords keyword planner and Google Trends etc for getting all the right variations and combinations of your keywords in the copy.
4. Plan your Christmas social media and SEO strategy so that they complement each other. Social has become more important, so a cohesive social media and Search Engine Optimisation policy will help the site through the peak search activity season.
5. Be alert and closely monitor your competitor’s activities. They are one of the best ways to inform your own strategy and campaigns.
6. Make sure your home page, key Christmas category and product pages are optimised for the relevant keywords. They should be live well before your peak season starts. This is because the Search Engines will need that much time to index and hopefully rank your pages in the right time.
7. If you are going to have deals or offers on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Boxing Day and New Year sales, think about related keywords and optimise your web copy accordingly.
Some interesting stats from 2014 and trends predicted for the 2015 holiday/Christmas season
Online Shopping
E-commerce is the fastest growing retail market in Europe. Sales in the UK, Germany, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland and Spain are expected to grow from £132.05bn (€156.28bn) in 2014 to £156.67bn (€185.39bn)in 2015 (+18.4%), reaching £185.44bn (€219.44bn) in 2016. In 2015, overall online sales are expected to grow by 18.4% (same as 2014). (Source: http://www.retailresearch.org/onlineretailing.php)
Mobile Commerce
Many retailers already report that up to one-half of website browsing occurs through customers using mobile devices, both smartphones and tablets. However a much smaller proportion actually use their mobile device to make the final purchase. In 2014, total e-commerce via mobiles in Europe was £20.09bn (€23.77bn), which is expected to grow by 88.7% to £37.91bn (€44.87bn) in 2015. The UK figures are £8.41bn in 2014 rising to £14.95bn in 2015. (Source: http://www.retailresearch.org/onlineretailing.php)
So it is still not too late; follow the tips and make the most of the season this year. We at teclan have years of experience in holiday/Christmas digital marketing, so if you need help, talk to us right away!
teclan have years of experience in holiday/Christmas digital marketing managing a vast array of digital marketing channels for our clients. Contact us today on 01463 898 043 to discover how we can grow your business!
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