7 SEO Tips to Prepare Your E-Commerce Store for the Holiday Season

With Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the Christmas shopping season only a month away, e-commerce stores are starting to prepare for the holidays.

It may be easy to overlook SEO when you’re busy assembling new marketing campaigns, stocking up inventory, and creating holiday deals, but as we embrace the new normal, digital shopping takes the limelight this year and possibly in the years beyond.

This means SEO is all the more important now. And a question stands: how do you prepare your e-commerce store for the holiday season?

Here are 7 SEO tips!

1. Optimize your website for increased traffic

The holiday season is expected to bring an onslaught of web traffic, and more so now as consumers mainly take their shopping online.

Make sure that your servers are fast enough to accommodate the increased traffic. It’s also crucial to optimize for speed and mobile SEO. Some steps that you can make:

• Use fast and reliable e-commerce and hosting platforms: If it seems your current providers are lacking, start the migration as early as now.
• Use a content delivery network: A CDN distributes the content delivery load of your website through the server closest to the web visitor’s location, thus speeding up page loading.
• Leverage browser caching: Caches store page elements locally so that web pages open faster the next time a user visits your site.

2. Ensure a seamless user experience

When it comes right down to it, SEO is all about making the user experience pleasant. For e-commerce websites, this means ensuring that the shopping experience is seamless from the moment a user “window shops” right down to the checkout process. A few things you can do:

• Rethink your shopping carts: Make revising the quantities and the variants in shopping carts easier.
• Streamline the checkout process: Allow both guest and registered user checkouts, minimize form fields, and make the form user-friendly (i.e., form fields are easy to fill out and CTA buttons are easy to find and click).
• Support secure payments: Security is crucial for online payments, so make sure that your chosen e-commerce platform supports SSL encryption.
• Provide versatile payment and shipment options: Provide as many payment and shipment options as possible, including cash-on-delivery options, because online shoppers like to have the freedom to choose how they pay and which couriers they prefer.

3. Create special holiday categories and product pages

Make it easier for shoppers to spot special holiday deals by creating dedicated holiday categories and product pages on your website.

Most e-commerce platforms provide you with the option to “decorate” your online shop, so be sure to deck it with design elements that are apt for the season, as well as putting your holiday deals front and center on the homepage.

4. Optimize product descriptions and photos

Product descriptions and crisp, professional product photos are important for SEO:

• Use relevant keywords: Be sure to include relevant long-tail keywords in your product names and descriptions. For example, instead of just “coffee beans,” be more specific by using “holiday special arabica coffee beans” instead.
• Focus on the value and benefits of your products: In your product descriptions, cut the marketing fluff and technical jargon. Be descriptive about what value your product can offer to customers.
• Be specific: It’s also best to be transparent about pertinent product information, such as dimensions, size, weight, etc. Product photos should also be accurately portrayed.
• Optimize product photos: Have your products photographed by a professional. Include different angles of your product, and be sure that the file size is optimized for web viewing so that page speed is not affected.

5. Add structured data to your products

Adding more to the point above, optimize your products even further by adding structured data. A product schema can help search engine bots rank your product pages higher on search results.

There are many parameters you can specify in your product schemas, such as the price, ratings/reviews, shipping details, and more.

For instructions on how to add structured data to your products, check out these guides:

• Google: Adding structured data markup to your product pages
• WordPress: How to add a schema markup for a product page
• Yoast: Rich results for product listings

6. Repurpose and refresh existing content

If you have a business blog for your e-commerce website, existing or evergreen content can be repurposed to make it more relevant for the holiday season. Examples of what you can do:

• Reshare content: If you have a Christmas gift guide from previous years, you can reshare it on your social media to drive more traffic to your site.
• Repurpose to other content types: Evergreen blog content can be made into a video or an infographic.
• Update existing content: Refresh past content by replacing irrelevant info with what’s relevant today. For example, gift guides can be updated with the latest trending products.

7. Leverage social media

It has been found time and again that social media has a significant influence on SEO. As you prepare for the holiday season, promote as early as now, especially on social media:

• Add a sense of thrill: Create a teaser post that something exciting is coming soon. For example, if you’re launching a new special product or bundle deals for the holidays, post a sneak peek photo or a “coming soon” post.
• Run holiday marketing campaigns: Be it a raffle, a series of posts about holiday shopping tips, or fun and heartfelt videos about how your products can make the holidays more special, the aim is to run campaigns that promote social engagement. The more engagement, the higher the chances of driving traffic to your e-commerce site and converting visitors to paying customers.

Need help with your e-commerce website or digital marketing?

Whether you need advice on revamping your e-commerce site, crafting effective digital marketing campaigns, creating eye-catching graphics and videos, or having your products professionally photographed, Ilfusion is here to help.

Call us at 888-420-5115, or send us an email at [email protected] to get started!

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