The holiday season has arrived. It’s far too late to make big changes to your website or even focus on things that will improve your search engine results at this time of year. After all, you don’t want to do anything that could harm the traffic or rankings of your website.

It’s best to undertake an SEO assessment of your website, update content, work on your site structure, and add a lot of fresh content during the “off-season.” There are, however, things you can do right now that won’t take much time and will increase traffic and sales while still protecting your website and domain name.

Let’s look into it and see how long it will take, as well as why it is “safe” to do so. The priority here, as with all of these chores or little initiatives, is to ensure that none of them result in traffic loss. They won’t cause you to lose your search engine ranks or visibility, and they’ll provide some protection.

Inquire about the holiday schedules of employees and contractors.

You’ll need to know when your team will be accessible to assist you before you can build a holiday-specific SEO strategy. Whether you’re working with an in-house SEO team or an eCommerce digital marketing firm, make sure everyone is on the same page about timetables and projects well before the fall, or your improvements may never see the light of day.

Make contact with your website’s development staff as well. You’ll need their help if you want to deploy or test certain site changes before the holiday season. Over the next few months, your developer may be swamped with holiday tasks; get on their “to-do” list as soon as possible to ensure your site updates are completed before the first frost.

Site migrations and other major modifications should be planned properly.

On the same point, if you’ve been planning to migrate your site or make other significant changes, now is the time to do so – but only if you can finish it before the holidays. You will have less “fix it” time and fewer opportunities to test your site on shoppers if you introduce your improvements later in the fall. The last thing you want to do before the busiest shopping season of the year makes modifications that hurt conversion rates.

Identify any current holiday website content and update it.

Start with the path of least resistance when it comes to holiday SEO material. Is there any existing holiday content on your site that you could freshen up for this season? While it may not have been relevant during last year’s epidemic, 2021 could be the year to update it for this year’s clients.

Rewrite your seasonal language with your brand’s social media team, and seek new photographs to add to your site. Don’t forget about keyword research and optimization, as well as a backlinks audit.

New holiday promotional pages should be created.

Gather your development team and set to work right away to ensure that your optimized pages rank before the holiday shopping season begins.

There are a variety of ways to generate holiday sales with SEO content, including:

• Online catalogs and gift guides for the holidays.
• Products that are “best of” or “sale” lists.
• Contests and giveaways for the holidays (also great for email list growth).
• Comparisons and reviews of products.
• Landing pages for holiday gifts.

While your long-term content marketing plan should always assist buyers in finding and learning more about your items, it is especially crucial during the holiday season. Remember that many people shop for gifts based on the desires of others, not on their interest in the product.

Create fresh sales and discount content.

Similarly, you can develop temporary material for any upcoming special deals your company has planned. The primary goal of this method is to generate holiday money; SEO may be secondary, especially if the bargains will be removed from the site afterward.

Consider building an evergreen “Discounts and Sales” page on your website as a compromise between the two techniques. That way, you can keep it up to date with your current specials throughout the year, incorporate it into your link-building plan, and optimize it for clients who are expressly looking for site discount codes.

Image Optimization

The audience is more engaged in the text when visuals are used, and they retain information for longer periods. The right images (and other visuals) can truly make a significant difference. Marketers who rely more on images now have more followers, a larger audience, more sales, and a higher return on investment.

The process of developing and providing high-quality images in the optimal format, size, and resolution to maximize user engagement is known as image optimization. It also consists of identifying images correctly so that search engine bots can read them and comprehend the context of the page.

You should know the importance of images and how you edit them to provide your brand with the best chance of success with SEO. Professional image editors equipped with the technology can transform your photos and videos to an optimized one without compromising quality, page load times increase, and visitors’ experiences improve as well. Improved user experience and interactions with your site enhance search engine results, resulting in increased customer engagement, conversions, and retention.

Need help with image optimization or your website in general?

Test add-ons before your site goes live.

You should create and test any plugins, pop-ups, slide-ins, and other inclusions ahead of time if you plan on advertising Holiday discounts and sales on your website. Make sure they’re ready to go ahead of time and don’t forget to launch them at the correct time, or you’ll miss out on a lot of money.

To avoid any negative consequences on your organic traffic, consider SEO elements such as page speed, Core Web Vitals, and other ranking factors. Working with your website developer to establish a method that minimizes the impact on your SEO strategy while maximizing visitor purchases is recommended.

Make sure to update your local business listings.

Local SEO is crucial for both offline and online businesses. Make sure you’ve claimed your Google My Business listing so you can customize the contact information that appears in the SERPs. Google reviews are also possible through your GMB profile, which can help raise brand recognition.

Also, make sure you let people know if your location will be open at different times throughout the holidays. Otherwise, you risk upsetting clients who arrive to find a locked door without warning.

Make a FAQ or Q&A page.

As the number of visitors to your website grows, so will the number of people who contact your customer support department. If you don’t already have one, create a FAQ or Q&A page that’s easily accessible from your homepage to answer some of the most common inquiries.

Use this page to address some of your clients’ most pressing (and frequently searched) brand concerns.

Make a strategy for dealing with out-of-stock items.

Unfortunate events may result in a long-term supply chain disruption for many online businesses. While you can hope that these problems will be rectified before the holidays, you should prepare for the worst-case scenario.

To gain a sense of the situation, talk to your suppliers and manufacturers right now. Then identify what efforts your team will take to prevent customers from going to your competitors if the product they desire isn’t available.

Meanwhile, you can begin receiving pre-orders or set up email alerts for when things return to stock. If the searching product is out of stock, add internal links to related products.

Ensure that your site can handle increased traffic

Finally, be sure your eCommerce site can handle the extra traffic during the busiest season of the year.

While many projections have been made about how this year’s internet shopping season will proceed, no one knows how much money customers will spend over these winter holidays. Prepare for the worst-case situation, which is that your website will be flooded with visitors, and make sure your eCommerce platform can manage it.

Consult your website developers or platform reps to see what preventative measures you may take to avoid a site crash.

It will take time to implement and start working on your SEO strategy. So, if you want to attract and keep holiday customers on your site, now is the time to assess your SEO strategy and begin making improvements.