The shopping season is already upon us!
You might be wondering how you can turn this holiday spirit into more business for your online store, are you?
There is already a good 23% of holiday shoppers who will default directly to Temu, with a whopping 30% among Gen Z (who will also buy from Shein).
That means you have to focus hard on getting all those potential customers who will be looking elsewhere for their purchases.
We have some tips so you can make the holidays work in your favor and boost your SEO.
Read on to see how you can quickly optimize your page and get that Holiday traffic working for you.
Mobile SEO
Mobile is a fundamental aspect of SEO by now, especially since Google announced in June 2024 that websites that are not accessible on mobile will not be indexed. Ugh!
Neglecting mobile optimization is also not a good idea from a sales perspective: according to Google, 82% of “Near me” local searches come from mobile and smartphone searches result in a purchase 28% of the time!
The bad news? 62% of unsatisfied mobile users may not buy from your site in the future!
Given how critical mobile SEO is, let’s see how you can turn the game to your advantage!
What you can do today:
- Check your site’s overall mobile readiness with our Free Website Audit – the sooner you can fix mobile-unfriendly pages, the better chances that Google will index more pages of your site and you will improve reachability, even in terms of Local SEO!
- Pay special attention to avoiding pop-ups (unless you do it well) and intrusive interstitials on your site.
- Also, pay attention to the speed results your site gets. If a visitor has to wait longer than 4 seconds for your site to load, they are going to get frustrated and likely take their business elsewhere. Common culprits for slow loading sites are heavy images, use of Flash, and external media embedded on your site (such as videos, slideshows, etc.). Remember, the best conversion rates happen at a loading speed that’s equal or faster than 2.4 seconds (Cloudflare).
- Remember that your site should be responsive for an optimal UX and accessible to ensure that all types of users (even visually impaired or with other disabilities) can enjoy its contents – and buy! Follow best practices for font size, colors and screen reader friendliness.
- Ensure that you have at least a 98% uptime. A Content Delivery Network (CDN) (e.g. Cloudflare) will come to your rescue.
- Make sure your eCommerce name and phone number are visible and accurate on your site. If you have a physical location and serve customers locally, make sure that it is easily visible on your page. This information should stay consistent across all listings you have online, most importantly, your Google Business Profile.
- Local SEO friendly! Not only with your Google Business Profile but also keywords, a presence on online review sites (e.g. Trustpilot) and location-target landing pages that link back to your e-shop.
Are you already a marketgoo PRO customer? Take advantage of the Site Audit section in your panel!
AI (LLMs)
Adding an AI-powered chatbot – like the free ChatInsight.AI or the free trial Jasper Chat – will not directly impact your SEO scores but it can greatly improve UX.
Ideas to apply today:
- Holiday shopping guidance: your chatbot will give ideas on which gifts to buy!
- Holiday shelves virtual tour: the chatbot will ask which category users what to shop from and it will send them to a virtual tour of the actual in-store shelves or e-shelves.
- Holiday FAQs: the chatbot will answer buyers’ questions.
Mistakes not to make:
- Pop-up chatbot during user navigation! A nice icon at the bottom of the page with “Click me for (insert idea here)!” will be enough
- Content produced by LLMs with no human fact-checking! Google has been clear about it: automation is good as long as content conveys E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) and you can only guarantee that if you fact-check and review any content generated by AI/LLMs
Also read this great guide at Master of Code on usage of chatbots for eCommerce.
Shopping Guide
Gift guides are great for you, your customers and your SEO.
They include your main keywords, give you an opportunity to link to your other site content, and are a great way to get more traffic because of the interest they generate.
Online sales exceeded $1 trillion in 2022 and the trend is here to stay, so get a chunk of that pie by making a great holiday shopping guide that includes your most popular products or product categories.
What you can do today:
- Choose the products you’ll include based on what sold well last holiday season and what is currently popular across various categories.
- Appeal to the different types of customers you have, segmenting your guide by prices, gender, interests, etc. according to your marketing data. For some inspiration, you can check out The Grommet which has various ‘collections’ clearly segmented for different types of shoppers.
- Create your guide as a page on your site, make sure you link to it from other pages on your site, and don’t make it too text heavy (or too image heavy). You can make the URL and Titles somewhat generic and even reuse your page next holidays!
- For some detailed insight and instructions on a gift guide that supercharges your SEO, check out Stellar’s guide to SEO buyer guides.
Leverage Social Media
You’re not much until you’re on Social Media, which provides endless opportunities to get traffic to your site and increase business by promoting your holiday discounts, promotions and your gift guide!
It’s important to get started as soon as possible on Social Media, where users spend 143 minutes a day (Statista).
What you can do today:
- Instagram Hashtags: Plan out your hashtags for the entirety of the season. We all know hashtags are king, especially on Instagram, as many people use them to search. You can get some inspiration with a tool like ritetag to see what hashtags are popular.
- Instagram Sponsorships: many creators on Instagram will gladly post branded content, which is an opportunity for you to promote your holiday offers and seasonal products! Also, if you also massively sponsor your products on your own Instagram channel, take advantage of the possibility to turn your posts into ads.
- TikTok Promotions: plan to target your loyal customers first, especially if they follow you on TikTok, and don’t just pick a discount % that you see other shops running. It has to make sense for you to run a promotion, especially if you target young people (age 18-35), who make the majority (70%) of TikTok users! If it does, try out different approaches with different groups such as gift bundles, free shipping, etc.
- Pinterest Boards: create a collection of boards with different holiday gift ideas. “Gifts for Her”, “Gifts for Travellers”, etc. focusing on your customers’ interests and needs, and linking back to your site (and gift guide). Create descriptive captions and don’t focus too much on hashtags as they don’t really rule Pinterest the way they do Instagram. There are some demographics which use Pinterest more actively than others so make sure to see the platform fits your at least one of your target groups.
Remember your ultimate objective with social is to drive traffic back to your site!
Enjoy your holiday SEO and remember you can get even more tips with our Free Website Report.
