25 Nov How to Make the most of Digital Christmas trends – Part 1
Don’t shoot the messenger: the festive season is almost upon us. We’ll just let you have a moment to let that sink in.
It’s not all bad news, particularly if you are an online retailer. Due to the current COVID climate, experts are predicting that up to 30% of the global retail trade this holiday season, will be made through digital transactions.
With Black Friday (27 November) and Cyber Monday (30 November) expected to be the highest traffic days as bargain-hungry shoppers look to get cheaper Christmas presents. Obviously, you won’t want to miss out on this action so, now is the time to ensure your e-commerce store is ready for the influx of shoppers. But how do you do that? And, how do you set your e-commerce store apart from your competitors?
Planning and research
The first step towards getting a successful web presence during the festive season is by creating a detailed and well-researched strategy to guide you.
To create your strategy, start at Google Trends. Google Trends analyse the top search queries across various regions and languages. This information allows you to understand what has been popular over the previous years in the regions that you want to target.
Next, look at your past performance. If your business has been up and running for more than a year, you should be able to see what customers searched for last time, which keywords performed well, and which ones did not.
If you are a new business or do not have a past performance to go on, analyse your competitors’ past performance. See what keywords they targeted last year, what strategies they had in place and how they performed. This will give you a good indication of what your potential customers are looking for.
This research is vital for the next step: keyword planning.
Seasonal SEO
Search engine optimisation (SEO) refers to the tactics you have in place to improve your search performance and ranking. Seasonal SEO is not much different, but it applies to tactics you can put in place to maximise your traffic.
This is where keyword research you did earlier comes into play. By identifying the keywords that are relevant to your field and which your customers are searching for, you create quality, regular content around those keywords, ready for customers to find.
For example, if you sell perfume, you may consider adding keywords such as “gifts for mothers” or “Christmas gifts for her”. You can then write quality content, such as ‘A Guide to Buying for that Special Lady in your Life’.
Don’t forget to incorporate the Christmas season SEO or keywords. It may be helpful to create a holiday section on your site dedicated to these gift ideas. You could then add new categories such as “Christmas Gifts for Her” or create a subsection on your website that contains Christmas items.
Also, consider updating any existing holiday content from previous years: especially if it proved successful then!
Creating gift guides
You can create gift guides to show off your products and to use as landing pages while you are promoting them across social media platforms. You may include a list of ‘Top-10 gadgets dad might want this Christmas’, linking to the products on your site.
Creating secondary holiday-themed content such as blogs
Blogs are a great way to generate traffic on your site all year round. But with more shoppers coming online now, if you haven’t already got a blog, why not add one? Blog posts can literally be written about anything, but to get you started here are a few post ideas:
- Products reviews;
- Christmas themed gift ideas;
- How to find the right gift;
- Your favourite gifts and why.
The key to a successful blog is to add value to the reader. So, be authentic and give the reader a bit of insight so they can walk away feeling like they have learned something of value. Blogs are also a great way to show your expertise and passion for your products. This may be a good differentiator from your competitors.
Focus on link building
Link building is a vital part of every SEO strategy, regardless of your business type or size. Link building is the process where you get quality websites to refer to your website by getting good reviews or getting someone to talk about your site in their blog. Spend some time analysing where you can improve your link building. This will not only help you increase your visitors, but you will have a positive impact on your overall search ranking as well.
This is part one of our Christmas Trends series, click here to read the second part.