SEO During the Holiday Season (Part 2)
In the U.S., the Christmas shopping starts early. Basing from the data from Statista, people start to shop on Black Friday until the next succeeding months. Over $123 billion are spent on retail goods. That’s just for 2018 alone!
After taking that into serious consideration, are you certain that your website is bringing in web traffic and sales? Previously, I discussed the importance of planning. For this post, I will elaborate on the promotional aspect and technical side of things.
Stage 2: The Press and Publicity
- After you are done planning, your social media team should be ready. Publishing new content is not enough. There should be a group of people equipped to promote whatever you wrote.
- The assigned team should be able to boost your content, and it should be seen by your target audience. Try to explore the sponsored posts feature on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to reach more people.
- Add links to your every post. Whether you will post on social media or email your followers, always include a relevant link to your latest products, upcoming flash sale, and other related events.
- Never forget to rehash the old content. Did you post a buying guide last year? It’s time to update the list and add newer suggestions. Add new products to introduce them to your interested customers.
- Email your subscribers. For sure, you have a list of customers who bought your products last year. Use this information to reach out to them and inform them about your holiday schedule. Keep them in the loop about your newest deals and products.
Stage 3: The Technical Aspect
- This is the part where it gets tricky. Websites often fail to revamp for the Christmas season. To be specific, I’m pertaining to the common problem that most websites are not 100% prepared for the increase of web traffic during holidays.
- Be sure that the proper server is ready to accommodate the sudden increase in traffic. Even known websites have this issue because they failed to anticipate the heavy flow of traffic throughout the Thanksgiving and Black Friday season.
- It would be very sad to lose all the thousands of web visitors just because there’s no fast server to take in all the eager customers.
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Load Time
- Whatever you want to highlight on your website during the holidays, make sure that the landing page loads quickly. It is important to ensure that your web pages would only take a second load. Try to aim to make the loading time less than 2 seconds.
- Delayed page load time would mean mediocre user experience. It would totally affect your website’s sales during important holidays.
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Deleted Pages
- A website is a series of interconnected web pages. So, once you delete one, it would affect the entire website. Make sure when you delete pages, the interconnection is not affected. Provide the necessary prompts to guide the customers into the right direction.
- As much as possible, avoid deleting pages and changing URLs. Keep the URLs of the important web pages. If you have to, please create the needed 301 redirects.