tick
Black Friday and Christmas are huge days in the ecommerce calendar, and it’s really important to make sure these pages are set up for SEO success from the start – which means planning ahead and putting in the extra work. Getting your strategy wrong here can really impact the results – a small issue can cost a website a huge amount in sales or lost opportunities.
Creating checklists for optimal setup, advising on best practices and recommendations for on-page setup, internal linking structures and keyword targeting; plus coordinating with other teams (like product and marketing) to ensure everyone’s needs are being met across the business – extra communication is really key to a successful Q4.
You also need to account for actions after the event is over, as these are often temporary pages and making the most of the authority these pages gather during this period will set you up for next year – so making sure you plan for this is important too.
Sophie Gibson
SEO Strategist at Rise at Seven
Sophie’s key takeaways: plan ahead and communicate more effectively with the wider team.
@sophiegibson
Natalie, when is the best time to start working on seasonal events?
tick
The holiday season requires planning, a lot of it. Your SEO, content, design germany telephone number data and website teams need to come together to create a cohesive, integrated plan to get the most value out of everything you do. But before you do any of that, you’ll want to spend some time making sure your website ticks all the speed, UX, and other SEO best practice checkboxes as much as possible.
Ideally, you’ll want to add your store categories by mid-August and start updating old content or adding new content related to the season in September. Keep in mind that it takes SEO crawlers anywhere from one day to three months to crawl your site, so it can help to have your Christmas store page ready, partially populated, and optimized (even if it’s not on the menu) in August.
Natalie Welch
Director at The Typeface Group
Natalie's top tip: Start working in the summer to be more competitive at Christmas.
@NatalieJayW_
tick
In the 4th quarter of each year, we take the time to sit down with each of our clients and determine their SEO strategy for the upcoming year. We explore changes in their industry, priorities, and goals to understand their needs moving forward.
Listening to our clients allows us to adjust our ongoing strategies and adapt to developments in the SEO industry. As clients plan their budgets and strategic shifts for the new year, it’s refreshing to step back from the details and focus on the bigger picture.
Andrew Miller
Co-Founder at Workshop Digital
Andrew’s key takeaway: Don’t neglect the rest of the year; spend time preparing for Q1 before the new year.
@AndrewCMiller
More about clusters
Before we go, we’ll share with you one last piece of information from our data analysis: the type of eCommerce stores that make up each cluster.
distribution - eCommerce stores that made up each cluster
You will notice that the biggest winners and losers during this period are from a smaller category group, while the middle clusters are much more mixed, despite having a larger population.
However, it is not impossible to make money if your own branded web store is in one of the middle clusters; this is just an example of what happened to a domain name in 2019.
The caveat is that if you don’t continue to optimize and improve your website, you may be more likely to fall into the lower performing bracket as your competitors gain ground. So follow our contributors’ tips and get on the path to better performance.
