If you’re one of the large e-commerce players employing a combination of off-line and on-line multi-channel marketing strategy you will likely use the web to support your Christmas strategy this year. However, many true e-commerce players reading this post will likely have a web only offering meaning this Christmas like others you’re left with two choices. Either keep a statuesque which will then see the bigger players eating into your profits or up your efforts by improving your SEO in time for Christmas. Here are couple of suggestions to better SEO your site this year…
Last Year’s Missed Opportunities:
The idea behind ‘missed opportunities’ is to understand whether you are able to use any of last year’s learning’s for better results.
1. Look at Your Competitors – Competitive analysis is very legitimate, especially just before Christmas where it seems everyone tries to recall what their competitors did last year and determine has it worked for them. If you’ve done your homework you should have on record the precise Christmas offer your competitors used last year and your analysis has it worked or not. Otherwise and if you’re lucky, using the free utility Wayback Machine you could at least get a sense of their web offer.
2. Look at Your Product Pages – Like many online sellers you might have had Christmas specific products which you’ve made unavailable after Christmas. Some of those pages might already have backlinks so instead of creating new product pages, look to reactivate old Christmas product pages. If you’ve redirected last year’s product pages (using 301) then you won’t see any SEO value in reactivating them.
Fine-Tune Your Keywords:
Knowing precisely which keywords to target and which to leave out for Christmas is essential both for SEO and for paid search.
3. Google Trends – Using this free tool from Google, you can easily determine where to place your time and money both in terms of SEO and paid search. Keywords which spark to life around Christmas are likely to convert well due to demand and should therefore get your attention.
4. Google Analytics – If you’ve red any of my Google Analytics related posts on you’d noticed how I always recommend keeping your original Google Analytics profile when setting profile filters. The main reason is to have one untouched profile with all your valuable historical information, just for cases such as Christmas (and others). Not wasting too much time head to your GA account to look and compare normal keyword usage Vs. Christmas. Once you have a list check how well you’re ranking for those terms.
Google Image Search A Christmas Gem:
During Christmas many online shoppers start their purchase by researching their intended product. Some unfamiliar with the product will use Google image search to get a feel which is where your image optimisation will come handy.
5. Optimise Your Images for Search – There are many resources and information available on optimising images for search. For quick wins though, look at naming the image using a descriptive name closer to or even using the product title, look at adding alt text and save the image as .jpeg. Also ensure you haven’t blocked googlebot image from accessing and indexing your images.
What are your Christmas optimisation tips?