The 2021 holiday shopping season is here! Over the last two years, we have witnessed many changes in various industries. The retail industry is one of the sectors that has been rife with changes and we will start to see the results of those changes soon. When the pandemic hit the world, it forced consumers to shift from making offline purchases to making online purchases. This resulted in a huge, unprecenteded growth of eCommerce. According to Statista, in the coming years, the eCommerce market will see additional growth as consumers continue to avoid making offline or in-store purchases. It is estimated that eCommerce will grow by 11% between 2019 and 2024. As of now, more consumers are turning to eCommerce and competition on the business side is also getting stiff. To get your online store under the spotlight and boost its visibility among a wide audience, you need to capture your visitors’ attention as soon as they come to your website. The best way to do this is by outsourcing SEO services to an experienced company that can help you implement the right strategies to capture and convert your target audience this holiday season.
Holiday Shopping and SEO
With Black Friday, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year hardly a month away, e-commerce stores are starting to prepare for the shopping season.
A report from Deloitte’s annual holiday retail forecast notes that holiday retail sales are likely to increase between 7% and 9% in 2021, and top $1.3 trillion between November and January, 2021. The report predicts that holiday sales will grow 11% to 15%, compared to 2020 season.
A robust online presence is a must to witness sales success this holiday season, for both real-world and online retailers. This calls for specific SEO strategies to get your online store under the spotlight. SEO is backbone of a good marketing strategy during the holiday season. It includes a variety of aspects such as user experience, informative content, images, intent-focused copy, website speed and various other aspects that would help in driving relevant traffic and turning website visitors into satisfied customers. If you ignore SEO this festive season, you may end up losing a major part of your possible annual revenue. You need to consider SEO when developing holiday deals, stocking up on inventory, assembling email campaigns and tackling the numerous of other tasks necessary for seasonal success.
Though there isn’t much time left before the holiday sales season begins, following these retail SEO tips can help you make the most of the holiday shopping frenzy.
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- Prepare For Increased Traffic: The festive season always sees a rush of web traffic and you need to be well prepared for this. Over the years, many high-profile eCommerce sites have crashed during this season, costing businesses billions of dollars due to the site’s inability to handle the increased volume of visitors.To avoid this, make sure that your servers are fast enough to handle more traffic, speed up your website and and optimize it for mobile. Make sure that your site can accommodate the increased traffic load and maintain healthy speeds during the holiday shopping sales by:
- Using a fast and reliable e-commerce and hosting platform
- Using a content delivery network (CDN) to speed up page loading and distribute web content through the server closest where users are.
- Leveraging browser caching.
- Prepare For Increased Traffic: The festive season always sees a rush of web traffic and you need to be well prepared for this. Over the years, many high-profile eCommerce sites have crashed during this season, costing businesses billions of dollars due to the site’s inability to handle the increased volume of visitors.To avoid this, make sure that your servers are fast enough to handle more traffic, speed up your website and and optimize it for mobile. Make sure that your site can accommodate the increased traffic load and maintain healthy speeds during the holiday shopping sales by:
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- Do Your Research And Get Ahead Of Emerging Trends: The pandemic has created several behavioral and lifestyle changes. This year, it’s very important that you do your research well and don’t rely too much on what worked the previous year. The pandemic has proven the need for real-time customer insights as businesses in various niches are being challenged to meet their customers with optimization and personalization that meet their current needs rather than those of the past.To find emerging trends, check for insights from partners and suppliers. Analyze search demand for different product categories and subcategories to identify keywords and products that are trending.
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- Prioritize And Optimize Content: According to Google, nearly 7 in 10 people are totally undecided on what they will be buying for the holidays or are considering multiple gift options. To plan their holiday shopping, they are checking out gift idea guides, videos and other forms of content. Though content around specific events or holidays can boost traffic, this year it’s recommended that online stores prioritize informational top-of-funnel content which provides advice for consumers doing their initial online research. With people staying home during the pandemic, informational queries are a significant driver of online search activity.
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- Optimize Product Descriptions And Photos: Incorporating very crisp and clear product descriptions and professional product photos is important for holiday SEO success:
- Include relevant long-tail keywords in product names and descriptions.
- Avoid marketing fluff and technical jargon on your product descriptions and focus on the value and benefits of your products.
- Make sure that your product photos are clicked by a professional photographer and are accurately portrayed. Also, be transparent and specific about pertinent product information, such as dimensions, size, weight, and so on.
- Optimize product photos by including different angles of your product. Make sure that the file size is optimized for web viewing so that page speed is not affected.
- Optimize Product Descriptions And Photos: Incorporating very crisp and clear product descriptions and professional product photos is important for holiday SEO success:
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- Check Up on Your Competitor’s Holiday Plan: In this business of online retailing, competition is very high, therefore, track and analyze what’s your competitor is planning for their holiday SEO success. Know who your competitors are, figure out their marketing strategy and plan your marketing campaign for the present and future so that you can make your unique identity in the crowd of retailers and try to stand out. Make use of the several competitor analysis tools to spy on your competitors on social media platforms. The data or information such tools provide can help you plan your future goals strategically.
- Leverage Social Media: According to a survey by searchengineisland, 50% of companies that are ignoring social media marketing are struggling to succeed in SEO ranking. Social media has a significant influence on SEO and make use of it as early as possible as you prepare for the holiday season. A well-planned social media marketing campaign for this holiday season can help:
- Generate leads
- Increase brand exposure
- Engage your audience, and much more
As the online shopping is expected to witness a boom this holiday season, you need to make the most of the opportunities to gain new customers. Ensure that you’re highlighting the right messages at the right time in the right places. A robust SEO strategy is a vital component in building a successful holiday marketing campaign for your eCommerce store. Reach out to our search engine optimization company in New York. We can help you devise an effective holiday SEO strategy that will help your business stay ahead of the competition and gain more traffic this festive season.
