How can I Boost my SEO Strategy for the Holiday Season?

How can I boost my SEO strategy for the Holiday Season? That is a common question that people ask this time of year as we move into the Christmas countdown. While there are a number of perspectives out there, as a top website development company, we wanted to share our outlook developed over the last decade plus working with clients of all shapes and sizes across the country.

To be perfectly frank, at this time of year the playbook shrinks down quite a bit. While there are numerous, effective SEO tactics available such as link-building, realistically only a handful of them can provide results in such a short window of time. So, for those procrastinators out there, we have some quick-hitting tips to helps boost your SEO rankings in the time available.

Santa is already making that list and checking it twice so let’s get to some ways to boost your SEO strategy before all the holiday shopping is done!

Last Minute SEO Strategy Boosting Tips

• Review Titles and Descriptions – This is one of the easiest and most effective tips we regularly provide. Titles and descriptions are key to better Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) results. During the holidays’ people are often searching not for themselves, but for others. That can mean a lack of familiarity with products, services, and the like. Therefore, it is important that your titles and descriptions are geared towards the uninformed buyer versus the knowledgeable one. A title such as, “Expert-Rated Top 10 Skateboards for Christmas 2018” with a description of, “Lounge Lizard has enlisted the expert advice of Tony Hawk and Bucky Lasek to rate and rank this year’s top skateboards to make your Christmas gift buying easier,” is going to showcase the knowledge of your content quickly to a buyer. Review your pages via the Search Console and look at the pages you are ranking for, ensuring clarity and focus for your titles and descriptions.
• Low-hanging Keyword Focus – With limited time it would be next-to-impossible to outrank other sites for top-tier phrases and keywords so instead efforts should be focused on the low-hanging fruit. When you perform keyword research start with the bottom of the list with keywords that will still be used but also will have less competition when it comes to SERP results and work up. This is admittedly a dink-and-dunk approach however sometimes you have to take what you can get to boost your SEO strategy when you are short on time.
• Update and Optimize Content – At this time of year, you need to re-focus based on the concept of the Holiday Shopper persona who is someone purchasing for another. It is important to recognize the difference between this buyer persona compared to your standard customer. This means thinking about who shops for a specific demographic, such as parents buying video games for kids. From there you need to think about the questions or problems they might have and target those aspects with your content. For example, most parents are rather clueless about specific video games, therefore, Staff Picks and Top 10 Lists are useful for them. If you provide Guides, Staff Picks, Reviews and Ratings, or Top X Lists on a regular basis make sure they are updated and include the current year, so people know the content is current. If you have any unoptimized content, obviously take the time to update it, possibly including some of those low-hanging keywords.
• Optimize Google My Business – Any business with a physical location needs to create, verify, and optimize your Google My Business Simply put, you are missing out if you don’t. The most important reason to do this is so that Google recognizes that your business is verified at a specific location which helps reinforce your legitimacy as a business. Second, when people search for your business it will include information from your Google My Business listing which can include reviews, location, and your phone number. Last but not least, this really helps with local SEO rankings and customer confidence.

The bottom line

The bottom line is that the Holiday Season can make or break a business. We often get asked about how can you boost your SEO strategy for the Holiday Season, and this list of tips is the blueprint to follow to maximize your success at this late stage of the game. Time is short, and by focusing on these quick-hit areas you will have a chance to compete and rank in areas that will provide a boost to your end-of-year results.

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