For your business to maximize sales during this shopping season, you must meet consumers where they’re searching.
The internet is massive, but customers will find you if you upgrade your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies and techniques. Adjusting your website’s content can help your business get found online. Here’s how to improve your site’s search engine ranking this holiday season.
1. Organize your content through article and category pages
Research shows that category pages have the highest click-through rate, as much as 70% of the time. Meanwhile, product articles get more clicks than product pages. These findings illustrate the importance of helpful and value-adding content.
Users are more likely to click on a post that looks informative rather than one that’s merely trying to sell them a product. They appreciate features that allow them to seamlessly navigate pages to find what they’re looking for without hassle.
On the technical side, properly categorized pages make it easier for search engines to index your site. Organized websites rank higher because it’s easier for search engines to understand.
2. Create season-specific landing pages
Producing holiday-specific landing pages can optimize your site to capture the yuletide search demand. Use these sections to feature content with season-relevant keywords and links to other landing pages and product pages.
It can also help organize your special Christmas deals and offerings, making it easy for consumers to navigate your site.
Your goal is a pleasant customer journey, so enable users to know where and how to find what they’re looking for. They’ll likely stay on your site longer and engage with your content more.
3. Pepper holiday copy and keywords throughout your website
Not all businesses have the resources to make Christmas-centric landing pages. Fortunately, there are other ways to show up in relevant searches.
One is to incorporate holiday-related keywords into different pages and sections of your website.
Focus on key value propositions such as discounts, special rates, and fast shipping. They must also be placed prominently across the site, such as on the home page, main landing pages, and product and category pages.
Add relevant terms to titles and meta descriptions. These are the snippets of text that show up in search results, so if you can communicate what users will find on your page before they even click, you’re more likely to reel them in.
4. Create helpful, comprehensive, and value-adding content
One of the most effective SEO strategies is providing a better content experience for potential customers. Generate posts and articles that are not only keyword-rich but also informative and valuable.
If you can, go beyond plain product descriptions and provide first-hand reviews, how-to’s, step-by-step guides, tutorials, and the like. Go further and enhance your posts with images and videos that illustrate your points. This material will fare well with Google’s new Helpful Content update, designed to value people-first content over those written solely for SEO. They can also help differentiate your brand from your competitors.
Some technical SEO adjustments can help, too. Optimizing title tags and meta descriptions and fixing keyword placements make your content more visible to search engines. These small measures help enhance how visitors consume content on your site, allowing search engines to properly index and rank your pages.
5. Find out what other industry players are up to
Keep an eye on your competitors, including all forms and types of organizations offering the same products and serving the same consumers.
Search Engine Land research suggests that direct-to-consumer (DTC) businesses and publishers offering product summaries and reviews have significantly affected Google’s search results. DTCs now own 23%, while publishers own 4% of top e-commerce keywords (from 18% and 4% in 2020, respectively). Meanwhile, retailers’ shares have decreased to 57% (from 70% in 2020).
For retailers, this means more competition for visibility. They must now contend with retailers and all other organizations who might be producing the same content or promoting the exact items.
To get ahead of the SEO game, conduct a site audit and determine how your site ranks against others in your industry. Find out what these businesses are doing and decide how you can do it better or differently.
6. Draw inspiration from trends of Christmases past
Besides your competition, look into historical trends. What’s been done in the holidays past? What did consumers search for last Christmas? What types of content performed well in those seasons?
Looking into these and other similar questions can point to themes and keywords you can use for your SEO strategy this year. You can further classify your content and keywords based on product categories or consumer needs and match them to pages relevant to those specific factors. Doing so helps organize your holiday content and zero in on SEO tactics to target your intended audience effectively.
7. Use schema
Schema is a tagging system that gives search engines more information about your site’s content. It’s a way of labeling your data to make it easier for Google to index.
Leveraging schema helps search engines better understand your content, which can result in higher rankings. It can also assist search engines in returning more detailed results for users. Schema lets your page appear with rich results, like unique, expanded meta descriptions. Such reports include images, reviews, and other information to help users find what they’re looking for.
Schema is a vastly underrated SEO feature, but various businesses now realize its benefits.
8. Value those blue links
A local SEO 3-pack is a rundown of the first three businesses that come up in search results when looking for terms with keywords like “near me” or “near [Location].”
Google’s local 3-packs might place you at the top of the SERP, but the organic blue links might be more worth your while in the long run.
The same research from Search Engine Land shows that 70% of all clicks from e-commerce searches go to Google’s organic blue links. Meanwhile, the influence of page-topping 3-packs has dropped from 25% to 19% since 2020.
To rank in Google’s 3-packs, create and optimize a Google My Business listing, then improve your local SEO ranking by building citations and generating positive reviews on your Google profile.
While this strategy has merit, to rank higher in the organic search results, spend your time and resources building content and refining your site’s technical SEO instead.
‘Tis the season to update your site’s content and SEO strategy
SEO marketing is essential for businesses during the holidays, the busiest shopping time of the year. These tips can help you beat the rush and get ahead of your competition by improving your visibility throughout your customers’ journey.
For more information and expert advice on SEO services, check out Search Leads, your full-service boutique marketing agency. Discuss your site’s SEO strategy with a specialist. Contact Search Leads today.
