It seems like yesterday that we were just buying roses and necklaces for Mother’s Day — even though we were more than likely thinking about the ties and cologne we’re picking up for Father’s Day. The Fourth of July is around the corner, as is the first day of summer (unless you live in Ohio, where we’re currently experiencing 50-degree days. In June.) The last thing you want to think about, amid all of the festivities, is a new approach to your marketing. But there’s a lot that an affordable SEO company can do to help make your holiday sales even more appealing to shoppers.
Don’t get me wrong. Almost every affordable SEO company out there will tell you that increasing your Google rank is not something that happens overnight –especially not the night before the holiday or special occasion. However, taking action today can give you an edge Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s and beyond.
5 Things an Affordable SEO Company Would do to Boost Your Holiday SEO
Research
As you look at your products or services, do you see anything that stands out as a great gift idea? What about something that might not be an obvious choice for consumers, but would be something that others might appreciate receiving as a gift? For example, a company that makes or sells ties has a clear-cut option that will more than likely interest shoppers looking to pick something up for their dads. But what about a company that offers, say, copywriting services? How can that tie in?
Start looking at your company from the eyes of consumers. What about a three-month subscription for copywriting services? That may not only provide the gift recipient with needed content, but would also free up time to work on other areas of the business or to spend time with family while the children are on summer vacation.
Any product or service you provide can be giftable — to the right person. Start by looking at two different areas:
- Your products or services
- Your audience
When you want to get your website ready for Father’s Day, or any gift-giving holiday, take a look at what you’re offering in your online store. Is there a best-seller you can highlight by creating copy or infographics that show why the item or service would make a great gift?
Last week, my husband purchased a new air pump. While I kind of look at it as a don’t-give-mom-a-vacuum-for-Mother’s-Day gift, he hasn’t stopped raving about great this air pump is, how efficiently it operates, and how he wishes he’d purchased it sooner. This would have been a great gift (and if you remember, I love to find the perfect gift). I knew he wanted one, too. If that company had done a bit more SEO work and really shown me why I should consider buying an air pump for Father’s Day, there’s a good chance I may have purchased this for him sooner.
At the same time you’re analyzing your products, you need to look at your audience. I’m not the most likely person to purchase an air pump. Yes, I can use it when I need to, but I definitely don’t spend time researching air pumps or looking up the top uses, or anything else about air pumps. If it had come up on a less-specific search topic, though, I would have been more inclined to see, and the check out, the air pump.
That’s the reason user experience is so important for Google, Bing, and other search engines, especially those that deal with a user’s personal life. Google calls them YMYL: Your Money or Your Life pages, that could “potentially impact the future happiness, health, or financial stability of users.” The company’s Search Quality Evaluator Guide has “very high Page Quality rating standards for YMYL pages because low quality YWYL pages could potentially negatively impact users’ happiness, health, or financial stability.”
Your product or service falls into that category, as does a page that shows me why I should buy my husband an air pump for Father’s Day.
Customize Your Keywords
This is probably not a surprise, but well before the holiday, start to optimize your website and online activities for the holiday using new and holiday-specific keywords. Not only will it give you a boost online, but it will also provide fodder for articles like this, from Elle Decor, which ranked the most popular Father’s Day gifts of 2016 based on Google search results. While some had to do with sports teams and technology, 24 states were ranked with the word “gift” in their trending searches.
Once you’ve done your longtail keyword research, rank your landing pages, categories, and other Web pages for these days. Consider both sides of the shopping process, as well. Optimizing for keywords like sales, flash sales, or last-minute sales can be just as effective as ranking for keywords like last-minute Father’s Day gifts, DIY Father’s Day gifts, or trendy Father’s Day gifts (with and without the apostrophe).
Once you’ve done that, you might try using keyword drafting — writing outstanding content that meets your customers’ needs, while optimizing it with keywords.These aren’t just any keywords, though. Look for high-value keywords that actually fit with your subject and content. You might write an article on how to use the products and services your company offers to make or give as gifts for Father’s Day, in which the keyword would make sense. Writing an article about refurbishing a chair for Father’s Day, though, if you’re a company that makes air pumps, doesn’t.
You might consider creating a gift-giving guide, putting up sneak peak, preview, or coming soon pages that include your keyword, descriptive or suspenseful content and links to your top items, or making a gifts category or section on your website to house all of these ideas.
Take the time to really promote this content, too. If you’re writing guides or how-tos, you want people to see what you’ve written, share it with your family and friends, and refer back to the article. You want others to link to your content. You want to be seen as an authority. To do all of that with your piece, you need to make sure people are seeing your piece.
This really isn’t any different than what you do on a daily basis in your normal SEO work. All you’re doing now is adding a layer of holiday cheer and festivities to your work. It doesn’t matter what the holiday is that’s coming quickly, look at the next one that’s approaching on the calendar and start working toward higher rankings.
Take a Look at Your Landing Pages, Website and Other Channels
If you haven’t reviewed your landing pages in a while, the holiday is a great time. Pull up your Google Analytics account now and take a look at the custom landing page report. The holidays are a great time to make some tweaks that include your company’s holiday keywords and information. Do you have special sales? Want to feature a product or service that would make a fantastic gift? That’s the place to go.
While you’re updating your landing pages, use Google’s tools to enhance your entire website. Remember, SEO is made up of on-page tactics, like content creation and keywords, off-page tactics, like link-building, and technical, which includes your entire website’s structure. It’s a good time to check the page speed, the page load time, any errors, and broken links. Take a bit of time now to do an audit of your website. Look at each page, check each link, and make notes of what you’ve improved or changed. Getting all of that done early means you won’t waste any time on other SEO activity that fails because of technical problems. Ensure you meet the needs for desktop and mobile users, review the traffic data, and pay attention to Google’s Webmaster Tools.
It’s also a good time to look at other online spots that show off your products and services. What about Amazon, Ebay, Etsy, and other Web marketplaces? Even if you don’t want to maintain sales on those sites year-round, they tend to get higher traffic, especially when it comes to bigger holidays and sales days. Keeping your name out there and in more spots can give you higher visibility.
Don’t Delay
If you want to rank for a holiday tomorrow, don’t start doing the necessary SEO work today. Give yourself a few months to start building up your SEO. Every affordable SEO company will tell you that it’s important to start sooner rather than later if you want to increase your rankings. Many will suggest starting in September for December holidays. If that seems like too much of a stretch, at least start in early November; with some deliberate, strategic actions, you can find yourself propelled to a higher ranking by the time your audience is ready to start shopping.
That means creating a plan now that gives your SEO time to build. If you haven’t already, put together a marketing plan. There’s still time to create one for the second half of the year, and the work you do planning now will make every upcoming holiday’s SEO work much easier.
The plan is important, because it forces you to look at every area of your marketing — including the things that SEO bots crawl and index. They’ll have an easier time tracking and recording content that is easy to find, useful, and relevant, and you’ll end up ranking higher when the bots can get what they need more efficiently; all of this comes from a well thought-out plan.
Work With an Affordable SEO Company
Even if you only choose to work with an affordable SEO company on a project-by-project or short-term basis, there’s a great reason to do so: you’ll be communicating with experts who monitor SEO trends every day. While it may be too late for Father’s Day SEO this year, taking the time to reach out and develop a relationship with these professionals now can put in you a better place for the rest of the 2017 holidays.
Think about missing Father’s Day SEO success as a gift — the air pump I didn’t give my husband. Yes, it’s a bummer that I let something so obvious and, apparently, successful at getting a positive reaction slip away, but now I’ve got a better idea of what to look for in his gifts moving forward. It’s the same when it comes to your SEO. Maybe you didn’t do any additional SEO, or maybe you invested a few hours or some small resources to see what might happen. It’s a learning experience that, if you take hold of and really embrace, will set your brand up for long-term success, not just for next Father’s Day, but for every day users are looking for you or your products and services on the Internet.
Even if you just hire a company to complete an SEO audit, you’ll have a comprehensive list of the tasks that need to be completed to make sure all of your other SEO work isn’t done in vain. Hiring them to do keyword research can give you a solid basis for creating your own content. If writing isn’t your thing, you may even want to work with a copywriting company to see how they create SEO and Web copy that gets results.
If you’re ready to accept the gift of experience, let us give you one more present: a free SEO consultation and audit. We’ll take a look at the work you’ve done and help you get it wrapping-paper ready for the second-half holidays.
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