Semalt: Online Store SEO To Do Before The Christmas. Is It Worth It?
Holidays in e-commerce, what will you manage to do in SEO before The Christmas? The fourth quarter of each year is the period of the so-called "Harvest". During this period we have a lot of the shopping opportunities, the special dates that are impossible to pass by. It is the moment that every online store owner is waiting for to seize more opportunities and to increase turnover. Are you one of them? Then check how to prepare your online store for the December customers' siege in the field of SEO and the positioning.
It's only October - why think about The Christmas?
The website positioning is not a Christmas gift - you won't buy it at the last minute. SEO is a process, many months of hard and patient work. What's more, Google's algorithms are constantly evolving and its expectations towards the e-commerce are constantly changing. The fact that the online store has been optimized once, does not mean that the corrections will no longer be needed in the following months.
As an e-entrepreneur, you should observe the changes implemented by Google and react to it by polishing your brand's SEO strategy. When all this is done, you will finally see the concrete yields in the form of more traffic on the website and more transactions.
There are many changes in Google, and work on SEO takes many months. The last minute option will not work here. The organic traffic and the customers with full e-carts will not come out of nowhere if you do the last-minute SEO. The first few months of the website positioning increase its visibility in the Google search engine. After the quarter is over, you will start to see more organic traffic. Only after six months (at the earliest!) A potential increase in sales will take place.
Remember that your competition is awake. Many online stores tempt with its unique and individual customer service. The large e-commerce harvesters, such as Allegro or Empik.com, efficiently fight for the high positions in Google and "beat" the prices. In addition, the largest and the smallest in e-commerce invest their time in better product descriptions and beautiful product photos.
The stagnation and the inaction will not help you grow your store and outperform your competitors. If you stand with your online business and still doing nothing in terms of SEO, you will start to backtrack. And literally - to the next pages in Google search results, and almost no one will find you there. How to prevent it? How to stand out from tens of thousands of online business stores?
I want to sell more during The Christmas - what should I do?
First of all, do not "sleep" in the preparations especially in the field of the online store positioning. In addition, the pre-Christmas SEO strategy will bring the tangible long-term effects, also in the near future. Finally, the moments after The Christmas, the New Year's sales begin, then Valentine's Day and Women's Day. So increase the traffic in your online store does not have to be expensive.
What will I be able to do before The Christmas in SEO?
1) Perform an SEO audit of your online store
Before starting with any treatment, a diagnosis is needed. You can heal yourself and personally perform a simple SEO audit or put yourself in the hands of a specialist and order an SEO audit at Semalt. The result of the audit will be a specific recipe: a set of the most important tips and the recommendations that should be discussed with an SEO expert - sometimes at the first glance the data presented by, for example, a Siteliner is not so easy to interpret and implement the suggestions indicated there without a strong experience in the SEO field.
Free SEO audit support tools
Two most popular tools that support the performance of an SEO audit include:
Google Search Console - is a free tool, which is also one of the key analytical tools that allows you to monitor the operation of a given website. This tool provides information on the actual number of the crossings from Google search to your website. Thanks to it, you can also check how many phrases your website has displayed in the search results and how many times in a given period it has appeared to the users in that place.
To be able to use the Google Search Console features, you should perform a simple and time-saving configuration - it's worth doing it as early as possible. There are several ways to "link" a page to the GSC. The most popular one is to place a short Meta tag in the <head> section of the home page. For the person that is performing the SEO audit, the value of the information provided by Google Search Console is invaluable. Through these and with an appropriate analysis, you can draw many conclusions that will allow you to define the further strategy of the SEO activities.
PageSpeed Insights: is a free Google tool that allows you to test the speed of a loading website and its adaptation to display on the mobile devices. This tool is very useful when you are performing an SEO audit of a website. People using it, after pasting the website address and pressing the "analyze" button, you will receive the tips and suggestions on what to do and improve to speed up the loading speed of the website. Google PageSpeed Insights uses a point scale ranging from 0 to 100 - higher this index is, better the situation will be. Thanks to this Google's product, you will learn what actions you need to take to serve the users and the search engines with even a better prepared website, at anytime you are performing an SEO audit yourself.
2) Define the keywords for your online store
Analyze the current traffic on the site; check what in your offer is the best suited for The Christmas gifts. Find out which keywords the users type in the tab with these products and use the appropriate tools (check out: 11 tools that support the keyword research) on which keywords you want to position your online store.
Remember the phrases short-tail and long-tail: you may find that the word "jacket" will generate less traffic to your site (that means one that buys less) than the phrase "red jacket for fall". This second phrase "with long tail" in Google will be entered by fewer people, but they will be strictly interested in the product that you want to sell the most and which is on your website.
3) Optimize the most important subpages in your e-shop
Where can you win the most? Where do you have the highest margin? Choose the top of the top from your offer and "boost" the key products for your company, with the appropriate keywords. Once you have established which products and tabs you care about the most in the previous point, work on its optimization:
- Add the relevant keywords in the page content,
- Supplement the content with the SEO-friendly phrases and headers,
- Correct or add the Meta descriptions and ALT descriptions of the product's photos,
- Take care of the internal and external linking,
- Check that everything is in the website interface and any linking works.
4) Write the blog posts with the tips for The Christmas holidays
What's more, produce the content that will strengthen your position in Google on the terms you exactly chose earlier.
Examples of the blog post topics that can be well "clicked" on the blog of a clothing industry company include:
- What gift to choose for mom?
- The best Christmas sweaters
- Christmas promotions - when is the best time to buy The Christmas gifts?
Examples of the clickbait topics for a blog from the gadgets and electronics / household appliances industry include:
The 5 best PS4 games for the gaming fans
Christmas gift idea for iPhone fans: smartwatches, smartphones, accessories and gadgets from Apple
The keyword "book" in Google Trends
5) Take care of the internal and external linking
Good linking is Redbull for SEO - it will definitely give your online store the wings. October is still a good time to acquire the new external links to your website, as well as to improve the internal linking. More humanly, what to do to take care of the internal and external linking? Here are some examples.
Internal linking:
- Create the inspiring blog posts that show your products in a whole new light with the links to its product cards, such as "Top 10 Christmas gifts for the preschoolers.
- On the product card, offer the customers the sets of products or the similar products to the one they are currently browsing and planning to buy.
External linking:
- Look for the opportunities to publish the guest posts with a dofollow link on the other websites that are read by your target audience and whose domains have a high rating (sometimes you will be able to publish such an article for free, and often this will require to order a sponsored post).
- Collaborate with the bloggers and the influencers who recommend a link to your website on your blog as part of the affiliate or affiliate program.
The most popular places where we can do good linking:
Your Own Backend - one of the best ways to get the high-quality links is to create your own backend. It can be a blog or a website where we will publish the publications or the articles of value for the readers. We wrote about the backend in our earlier article: SEO Backend - What is it and How to Use It.
Website directories - these are specially created websites that collect a large number of links, divided into various thematic categories. These sites have a high Page Rank, and are positively received by the search engines, including Google. Until a few years ago, the website's cataloging was very popular. There were a lot of catalogs, but due to its poor quality, a great number was filtered out. So you should choose the proven ones that will help and not harm.
Comments on blogs and forums - these are the places where the users ask a lot of questions, to which we can provide a professional answer, while encouraging them to take advantage of our offer.
Industry publications and sponsored articles - posted on trusted and popular portals constitute a very effective form of promotion that brings numerous benefits, increase the scope of our content, as well as reaching a greater number of the potential customers.
Entries in social media - the publications with the links in social media are not a direct ranking factor, but it can increase the search engine's trust in our website.
Announcements - short content posted on the websites where we can present our company's offer to many different recipients.
Naps - Name, Address, Phone Number, are the places on the Internet where the basic information about a given company is placed: its name / entrepreneur's name and surname, address, telephone number that identify the business and allow you to attract the customers to the local market.
Online store SEO in the fourth quarter - is it worth doing it?
Google Trends - the phrase "Christmas presents".
In 2019, the movement around the phrase "Christmas presents" according to Google Trends began in early October. The peak was at the turn of November and December. Will it be similar this year?
Definitely yes. The implementation of the SEO strategy in September or October will allow you to see the first effects as early as next holidays, and finally it will increase and work on your online store throughout the year.
If we can somehow help you prepare your e-commerce for Q4, we are at your disposal - write to us and let us talk about how we can break the bank together in December!
FAQ
1. When do the first effects of SEO appear?
You should look at the SEO activities at least annually. The first 3-4 months of diligent work of an SEO specialist clearly will increase the visibility of the store in the Google search results. The next 2-3 months are building trust among the Google's users and increase the organic traffic on the website - "I have already known this store, I have seen it somewhere, so I will go in and check what's on offer". It is only after six months of SEO that you can see the effects in the form of more conversions and higher turnover - "I see, know, trust and buy".
2. How long does a website positioning take?
Positioning a website, e.g. an online store, is a continuous process that never ends. There is no perfect online store that has been created once and for all and there is nothing to optimize there. Allegro, eBay, Amazon and other giants, despite the huge turnover and strong online and offline position, still polish the SEO and take care of the store positioning.
3. When to start working in terms of SEO?
As soon as possible - there is nothing to wait for. The competitors have start doing this or will be doing it in a moment. The large and small online stores are fighting for the highest possible position in Google. If you sleep through the moment, you'll be left behind in the peloton with low revenue and little organic traffic. In addition, the continuous, uninterrupted and reliably conducted SEO activities work on your portfolio on an ongoing basis; will rank high your store "positioning for the holidays" campaign and throughout the year.