Optimization Tips That Will Give Your SEO Rankings a Boost for the Holidays

With the Christmas holiday peaking around the corner, it still isn’t too late to tweak and optimize a dedicated holiday search marketing campaign. A few weeks ago I wrote about holiday retail PPC strategies as well as holiday ecommerce pay per click strategies. Today I wanted to focus on link building and local search optimization.

Link Building & Organic SEO - Ideally, you should well on your way to building links for the holiday season. While low level link building such as blog commenting and directory submissions provide good passive SEO, more active efforts such include:

• Paid links - Directly bought, or through sponsorships and partners.


• Widgets & Quizzes- Incorporate pop culture and symbols of the holiday season in to build links.
• Good Ol’ Link bait - Get viral, and spread the season’s cheer over social networks such as facebook and twitter.

Local Search Optimization - Don’t ignore local search for online shopping queries and conversions. Some tips to follow include:

• Change titles to reflect holiday shopping keywords such as New York Toy Store Christmas Gifts.
• Ask for reviews in all holiday email campaigns with links to appropriate local business citation sources, in both the US and Canada.
• Ask staff, family, and friends to leave reviews on Google Local and on other sources with context to Christmas and Christmas gifts.
• Use Google Coupons to stand out from the rest of the listings. Especially in today's tough economic times, coupons can go a long way!
• Complete all fields in the local business centre that many businesses leave blank: store hours, methods of payment, links, contact details etc.
• Buy P.O Box addresses in cities or areas represented by your business, but where you do not have a physical location.
• Insert keywords in your business name for core products and/or services. This can boost conversions
• Also very important, be sure to select the correct local category listing
• Last but not least, don't forget to optimize for zip codes - a trend I've noticed lately has been an increase in 'search term' + 'zipcode'

Have any additional tips? Feel free to add them in the comment section!

DOs & DONTs For Holiday Ecommerce & PPC

The holiday season is almost upon us. It’s time to start looking over the inventory, keywords, and offers to make sure you’re ready for Cyber Monday. If you aren't familiar with terms like 'Cyber Monday' you should catch up on my previous post Holiday Retail Paid Search Strategies.

So, search engine land put together some great tips on what NOT to do as well as a few things to concentrate on when putting together Holiday strategies for pay per click marketing as well as website useability. A few of the highlights are below:

Don’t…

Forget to add a recommended gift buying section

We’re all short on time. I never know what to buy my Mom or Dad much less for the office Christmas party gift exchange. Offer a recommended buying section. While you should examine your products in determining how to section them out, here are some common categories:

Under $50
Niece
Under $100
Nephew (or young boy
$100
Mother
Father
Grandfather
Wife
Husband

And the chart could easily keep going. Hint* Check out your competitors!

Always use the negative keyword ‘free’ in your pay per click campaign

‘Free’ is one of the most commonly used negative keywords. However, if you use it, you will not show up for highly desirable searches like ‘last minute Christmas gifts with free shipping’ or ‘free delivery Sony plasma TV’.

Make shoppers register before buying

This is a personal pet peeve and one of the first recommendations I typically make for improving the ecommerce conversion funnel. Forcing someone to register before checking out adds a barrier to conversion. Do not require shoppers to register, confirm an email address, or do any action other than inputting their credit card and shipping address.

Give up too early

Last year, as the days grew closer to Christmas, the online spending grew as well. According to comScore, last year there was $430 million spent on black Friday, $610 million on Cyber Monday, and an amazing $660 million spent on Green Monday.

Do…

Show delivery dates and shipping options

One of the fastest ways to lose a repeat customer is for your shipment to reach someone on December 26th. Reinforce delivery date options throughout your site. “If you order by today, we guarantee your package will arrive by December 21st”. In your shopping cart, make sure you call out the delivery options and the arrival date for the product.

Offer gift wrapping AND gift receipts

This is a quick way to add a few dollars to each checkout. You should also allow the buyer to choose not to have the receipt included in the package in case it’s being delivered to another address. Don’t forget, some people will want the receipt included so that the item can easily be exchanged (especially in the case of clothes).

Offer gift cards

This vertical has continued to grow each year as gift cards become more and more popular. Offering gift cards is a great way to have the undecided audience buy from your store. You should also allow someone who buys a gift card to receive either an email certificate (for those who are shopping on the 24th) or a physical card which they can put inside a nice envelope.

So, what DOs and DONTs do you abide by for the holidays? Please share in the comment section!