With Christmas just around the corner, now is the perfect time for every eCommerce business to focus its efforts on its website. With an expected increased spend of 14% by consumers this Q4, making sure your website is up-to-scratch and able to service your customers as efficiently as possible could be what makes all the difference. Join us in this blog as we run through 5 of the best SEO tweaks you can make to your eCommerce website to increase your festive period revenue.
Update Old Christmas Gift Guides
Old content, especially content that is older than 2 years, is likely to be littered with broken links to products you no longer stock or pages that no longer exist. These guides are especially important to update if your content is ranking well. The reason is that if you have a good amount of traffic being driven to these guides, you have a great opportunity to funnel them toward your products and then ultimately through to checkout.
If they are clicking on the old links and are being either redirected or getting a 404 message, they are highly likely to bounce from your website. And while Google doesn’t consider bounce rate a ranking factor, having people visit your website and then immediately leave is wasted potential revenue. To speed up this process, check out our SEO Services so you can focus on other aspects of your business.
Introduce Dedicated Gift Landing Pages
If you haven’t already, creating dedicated gift landing pages to showcase your products is a great way to secure search traffic for holiday-related searches. To get the most value out of them, planning and crafting these landing pages should be done well in advance of the holiday in question. Furnish these pages with evergreen content that doesn’t date the page, whilst regularly linking to the page with your blogs.
Using Google Trends’ historical data, it’s possible to find out which products have been the most popular in each category in recent years. Use this to your advantage and then dig deeper to find long tail keywords that relate to your target keyword. If you need help getting your category pages up to scratch, enlist the help of an SEO Consultant.
Implement ‘Recommended’ Sections
Adding ‘recommended’ or ‘people also bought’ sections to product pages is a fairly common practice among the bigger eCommerce firms. It’s something I would recommend every eCommerce website does in order to increase the average order value. Suggesting a product to the consumer that would pair well with their current basket is a great way to upsell more of your range. This section doesn’t need to just feature on the product page, it equally wouldn’t look out of place on the checkout page.
Consider a PR/Outreach Strategy for Christmas
A lot of journalists will be looking to put together their own guides, and why not? They get a lot of clicks and a feature in those guides can have a big impact on a small business’ Q4 performance. In the period running up to Christmas, dedicate that little extra bit of time trying to gain links in reputable guides.
You can do this through outreach and pitching, but be careful not to fall into the common PR outreach pitfalls. Another method that may return more joy is by keeping an eye on media requests. A lot of journalists will put out requests for ideas to feature in their pieces, so this is a great time to push your best products.
Promote your Offers and Discounts
Time and time again, I see small eCommerce businesses promoting their Black Friday/Christmas sales on social media and then when it comes to visiting their website, there is no sign of a discount. If you have an offer running, make sure it is visible across your website. This could be in places such as your meta descriptions, which when done properly, could result in an increased click-through rate (CTR).
Equally, running a banner across the top of your website showing off your promotion would have just as big of an impact. Especially when you consider that according to Statista, 70% of the survey respondents agreed that a promotion did encourage them to try something they wouldn’t normally buy.
Make the Most of Black Friday & Christmas
If you’re a small eCommerce business that wants to make the most out of the festive period, why not get in touch? As an SEO Consultant based in Cornwall, I know how important organic visibility is to small businesses. Offering one-off support as well as rolling monthly support, you will find something that suits your business goals.