With Black Friday and Christmas just around the corner, we sat down with Incubeta’s SEO team lead, Bridger Hoepner to hear her 12 top tips for SEO success this holiday season.
Now is not the time to embark on a massive CWV project, but there are quick wins like resizing and compressing large images, removing redirects from high-traffic pages, preloading LCP (loading performance) images on your most important pages, and removing unnecessary tracking codes. Make sure that pages with content changes do not negatively impact page speed. Promotional banners, in particular, can unintentionally have a negative impact on LCP and CLS (visual stability) scores. Do pre and post tests or use a performance budget calculator to benchmark performance against competitors. Read more, in our recent blog Optimizing Your Website for Increased Holiday Conversions.
Make sure your promotional and seasonal landing pages are up to date. Common mistakes include legacy pages that compete with new ones. If any exist, remove, redirect, and update internal links. Also, ensure that there are no signals to Google that content is outdated (avoid “/black-friday-2022” URLs). Finally, make sure there are no unintentional “noindex” tags on legacy promotional pages you want indexed.
When will it arrive? Will it arrive before Christmas? Returns, warranties, and shipping costs – these types of questions will be top of mind for customers during the peak holiday season. Make sure you know what questions your customers are asking and provide them with the right answers. Mark frequently asked questions (FAQs) with structured data for visibility directly in the SERPs. Don’t assume to know what your customers are asking, uncover real insights using keyword research, live chat data, internal search data, or by talking to your customer support team.
Are you an omnichannel retailer? Don’t leave your customers guessing about your holiday hours. Update your store opening times and ensure that your NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) details are correct. Be responsive to questions and reviews, especially those with negative sentiment, posted via Google Business Profile.
Google has specific guidelines for publishing high quality reviews, whether for products, services or destinations. This is to ensure that authentic, unbiased and genuinely helpful reviews win in the SERPs. You can read the full guidelines here but in short make sure that reviews are written by experts, provide evidence that the reviewed item was actually experienced (videos, images) and provide quantitative comparisons. If you are utilizing expert writers and reviewers, make sure that you explicitly demonstrate their experience using EEAT.
Gift guides, product comparisons, product reviews, how-tos – if you have editorial content that is driving significant traffic (or historically drove significant traffic over peak), make sure that this content is up to date. Of particular importance is to update any mention of products, pricing, and internal links. Use historical data to predict top trends and themes and monitor demand for less predictable spikes. Free tools include Google Search Console, Google Trends, internal search data, and ChatGPT.
Now is the time to get your brand visible in the press – journalists can’t get enough of gifting lists, seasonal sales and silly season content. Also double check whether old press hits are linking to discontinued products or 404 pages and if so, implement redirects to similar products, updated product models or relevant categories.
If you know what your best-selling products will be, make sure that product information is up to date and unique where possible. Improve authority with internal links from home, category, and editorial pages. Use new or repurposed editorial content to support product visibility, such as curated gift guides and product reviews.
Align with the paid search team to find out what their top products or product categories will be in terms of spend. Identify pages with low-quality scores, 301 redirects, 404s, poor page speed, and message mismatch and get to work with a prioritized list of fixes.
Check if messaging needs to be updated to address customer needs over season, like fast delivery, returns and sales promotions. This way you can address questions and highlight promotions directly in the SERPs.
It’s not only important where you rank, but how you rank. Rich results provide consumers with relevant info directly in the SERPs and can improve the ‘clickability’ of a search result. Product rich results are absolutely essential for ecommerce retailers so make sure you have Product Schema basics in place, including aggregateRating if your product pages have reviews.
Make sure that you’re maximizing visibility across Google Surfaces. Google Shopping, initially for paid advertisers only, has included organic results since 2020. To be eligible, your product information must be correctly marked up with structured data (there are different requirements for standard and enhanced listings) or you need to set up a Google Merchant Centre account and product feed. Certain CMS platforms make this a breeze with plugins and apps, so no need for development resources.
Optimizing your website for the holidays is essential for a successful digital presence during seasonal events. The 12 SEO tactics discussed here are key to ensuring your website attracts and engages visitors effectively.
From addressing Core Web Vitals and local SEO, to providing valuable answers to customer queries and maintaining high-quality content, each tactic plays a crucial role in enhancing your website’s performance.
Additionally, adhering to Google’s review guidelines, updating editorial content, and utilizing digital PR and backlinks contribute significantly to your site’s credibility, authority and visibility, and as ‘always on’ tactics, contribute to sustainable growth in the long term.
By focusing on your top products, collaborating with your paid search team, optimizing metadata, implementing product schema, and leveraging Google Shopping, you’ll set the stage for a prosperous holiday season.
Remember, SEO is an ongoing effort that requires adaptability to changing trends and algorithms. Implement these tactics, monitor your progress, and stay flexible – you’ll be well-prepared to celebrate not only the holiday season but also sustained online success. Merry optimizing!
For more details, get in touch with our SEO team.
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