The holiday season brings an increase in searches around gifts, events, recipes and more. Marketers can capture this spike in traffic with targeted SEO strategies.
Here are nine ways to optimize your website for the holidays and make the most of this high-traffic period.
1. Capitalize on seasonal themes
Using tools like Google Trends and Semrush, search for trending keywords related to the holidays. You can use this data to write new content to capture this target audience.
Things like gift guides are always popular, but if you’re working on a non-product based website, there are still plenty of opportunities.
Here are a few examples:
For a local business, you can create a guide to events in the area. An ADHD coach could write a blog post about how to get through the holidays and provide coping mechanisms. A bank or financial advisor could discuss budgeting for gifts and create a savings calculator on the website. A personal trainer might write some recipes for healthier versions of holiday treats or talk about staying active during the holiday season.
No matter the type of business, there is always a way to connect with the holidays and create content around them.
2. Update and refresh existing content
Review your best performing content from previous years and update or rewrite it with current information, new keywords and relevant links. This approach saves you time and leverages the existing SEO value of your content.
You can also add a Christmas touch to existing pages. This is especially useful for an e-commerce website. Create dedicated categories for Christmas to make it easier for users to navigate seasonal items.
Update product descriptions and titles and, if possible, images. This will help these individual products rank for the all-important searches of potential customers.
Drive people from a blog post or holiday content page directly to relevant product pages to help users navigate to the right place and reinforce the importance of those products with internal links.
Dig Deeper: Your Guide to Seasonal Content Marketing
3. Optimize for mobile users
During the holidays, there is a significant increase in mobile searches as people are on the go or sitting on the couch watching this year’s Christmas movie.
Make sure your website and content are fully optimized for mobile, especially if you’ve added additional holiday-related content. This includes faster load times, responsive design and easy navigation to improve the user experience.
You want it to be quick and easy for people to find what they need and then take action. People often make more impulsive decisions during this time of year.
Many of us feel overwhelmed and pressured by what we have to do, so ensuring a good mobile experience for users is even more important than usual.
4. Use structured data for rich snippets
Implement structured data to improve the appearance of your content in search results. Rich snippets can include holiday-specific details such as event dates, product reviews, and special offers.
They are not necessarily useful for rankings, but Google will often provide some of this additional information in the SERPs. This gives searchers more useful information and helps make your listings stand out and look more attractive, leading to improved click-through rates on your website.
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5. Optimize for local search
Be sure to update your Google Business Profile and other local listings with business hours during the holiday period. You can also add any special events you’re holding or any promotions related to the holiday period.
Optimizing for local search queries can drive online and in-person traffic to physical business locations during the holidays. This can help you dominate the SERPs with your website, business listings, and ads. Seeing your business more than once in search results increases visibility, trust and clicks.
Dig deeper: 5 top tips to boost your local SEO efforts
6. Improve website performance
Website speed and performance are crucial for SEO, and with all that lovely traffic coming to your website, you need to make sure it can handle a sudden influx.
For seasonal businesses, this can mean a huge increase in holiday traffic, so it’s important to make sure your site can handle it without compromising speed.
The line between SEO and developer can sometimes get a little blurry when it comes to site performance, so make sure the team is working together and testing as many scenarios as you can, as much as possible, ahead of time of Christmas
When it comes to e-commerce, it is also important to make sure that the website can handle more transactions. You need to have offline processes in place in case something goes wrong.
7. Get involved with seasonal link building
Contact other websites for holiday-themed guest posts or collaborations. For example, if you’re a product-based business, look for websites that feature your products in a gift guide they’re putting together.
Seasonal link building can expand your reach and improve your site’s authority. Focus on quality over quantity to ensure those links benefit your SEO efforts by offering to write articles and blog posts yourself.
It’s also a good time to try to leverage digital PR. Are there any online magazines or newspapers interested in featuring the company? Look for inspiring stories to share rather than sales pitches.
Think about the benefits to your audience before you launch. There is always at least one good story in every business. PR is a great way to get backlinks for holiday related articles. Just be aware that these links are usually not permanent.
8. Monitor traffic patterns
Keep a close eye on your analytics during the holiday season. Find out which strategies are working and where there is room for improvement. Understanding real-time data allows you to adjust quickly, leveraging what resonates best with your audience.
The holiday season can be a hectic time for some businesses, and it can be easy to neglect what’s happening on the website. Making these small improvements can help improve conversions immediately before the window of opportunity ends (at least for another year).
9. Plan ahead for post-holiday SEO
Don’t let your SEO efforts drop as soon as the holidays are over. Plan a strategy after the holidays to keep the momentum going. Many companies may take a moment to regroup and take advantage of this space so that performance continues into the following year.
This could include adding content that helps with New Year’s resolutions or tips on how to use holiday gifts, recycle waste, and prepare for the inevitable January blues. Again, plan content that is closely related to the company’s services or products.
Steps should also be taken to remove holiday elements from your product descriptions and categories, non-specific content, and remove special website banners or graphics and update listings.
Think of it as putting away your Christmas decorations, ready to go out again next year.
It unlocks greater visibility and traffic for the holidays
The holiday season brings an increase in seasonal search queries and online shopping traffic. You can make the most of this critical period:
Optimizing your website for relevant seasonal keywords. Site performance improvement. Utilization of structured data. Tracking analytics.
Don’t let your efforts diminish once the holidays are over—keep the momentum going with post-holiday content and site updates.
With strategic planning and execution, you can give your website the gift of significant visibility and conversions this Christmas.
Dig deeper: How to create a successful SEO strategy for the holidays
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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