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For many retailers and brands, success pivots on holiday sales. A single day during November and December might bring in double or even triple the amount of average same day sales in other months, particularly on traditional retail discount days.
But consumers begin window shopping online well ahead of Thanksgiving, planning gift purchases and often waiting for the right sale on a major household purchase, yet many e-commerce sites don't publish holiday content until November, which is too late for the early birds and for search engines, which can take weeks to add new pages to their index.
The remedy to this problem? Start early and plan smart.
Plan Site Content Around Holiday Calendar and Peak E-commerce Sales Days
Top searches from the last quarter of 2012 show that consumers are shopping for deals and gifts around holiday terms as well as known retail discount days – Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and more recently Free Shipping Day and Green Monday. In order to best capture these potential customers during their research phase, e-commerce sites should plan to have categories and landing pages optimized for related terms. For example:
Consumer Holidays
- Halloween – "Halloween costume ideas"
- Thanksgiving – "Thanksgiving gift basket"
- Christmas or Hanukkah – "Gifts for Dad"
- New Year's – "New Year's champagne flutes"
Retail Top Sales Days
- Black Friday – "Black Friday promotions"
- Cyber Monday – "Cyber Monday flash sales"
- Green Monday – "Christmas gift shipping deadline"
- Free Shipping Day – "Christmas gift free shipping"
2. Conduct Gifting and Holiday Keyword Research
The next step is to drill deeper into category terms. Review last year's organic and paid keywords, as well as on-site search terms for high search count and high conversion terms.
Google Trends and Google AdWords Keyword Research Tool are invaluable sourcing for brainstorming keyword lists and uncovering potential new target terms for holiday 2013 optimization.
A quick review of Google Trends shopping results reveals that "secret santa gifts" was a rising term in Q4 2012. With a little bit of creativity, terms like this can be a great way to expand visibility of the site's holiday gift guides.
3. Identify Products to Include in Site Gift Guides and Categories
With target terms identified, such as "secret santa gifts" or "top gifts for coworkers," what follows should be a review of appropriate products to build out a rich landing page. Gift cards, accessories, novelty items, and personalized products are good bets, in addition to top sellers and items in the range of $25 to $50 (gift averages may vary based on industry).
4. Publish Holiday Pages Early
While waiting for the merchandising team to upload holiday products to these new categories, site owners can get a head start by publishing a landing page with a coming soon banner placeholder to drive interest and give search engines time to index the page ahead of the peak November and December sales season. This tactic also works well to capture early bird holiday shoppers; according to a 2013 Google Consumer Study, 30% of shoppers start their holiday purchase process before Halloween.
5. Optimize Categories and Products With Keywords in Attributes, URL and Copy Blocks
Finally, it's time to apply keyword insights to meta descriptions, title tags and URLs. Pages will hold more SEO value if they also contain paragraph text copy using target terms, as post-Panda search engine optimization is increasingly tied to relevant content.
6. Build Links Through Features in the Blog, Email, Social Properties
Lastly, drive links to holiday pages by highlighting gift categories on the site's blog, in scheduled email blasts, and Facebook, Instagram, and other social properties. Pinterest is particularly suited for promotion of gift content. Consider creating a holiday gift idea pinterest board (optimized with keyword targets in the name and description) and include top identified holiday products, therein driving deep links and eyeballs to the site. This is where creativity counts. With a little luck, a Pinterest board may even index on the first page of search results.
Go ahead, start brainstorming and tipping the marketing team off to this year's clever holiday acquisition strategy!
Original Article Post by Amanda Massello @ Search Engine Watch
When looking for fresh link building ideas, seek inspiration from PR pros. They have long used several tried and tested methods to enhance the brand image and sales of their clients.Forget the measly press release – that is one PR tactic that has been used and abused by many companies as a shortcut method to scale their link building efforts. And, as we all know, shortcut methods rarely work long-term in SEO.Instead, let's explore a few of the most effective public relations strategies that can be slightly tweaked to positively impact SEO on a longer-term basis. As an additional benefit, these tactics will also help to grow your online brand and your sales.
The ideas fall under two main categories, which are essentially clever ways to toot your own horn and a means to leverage the good deeds your company does to earn links and goodwill.
Leveraging Your Company's Authoritative Figure
Every company has at least one person on its leadership team whose accomplishments are worth shouting from the rooftops. Usually it is your CEO or it could even be your COO or CFO. If they are successful thought leaders and have useful information to share, then leverage them as the authority figures for your company.
Here are the best outlets for this.
1. As Guest Contributors
If they are good writers, apply to have your authority figures guest write a periodic column for an online publication. Even if they aren't good writers, you could enlist the help of professional writers to edit and perfect their columns, so they can still share their valuable advice and expertise.
Important: these columns shouldn't contain any sales pitches. They should instead aim to help the reader learn new things, provide significant value, and generate interest.
Then, pitch to local media outlets, industry-specific websites or media; or aim higher and apply to sites such as Huffington Post or Forbes. It is easier to get on media outlet websites than on TV, print or radio. This will have the added advantage of securing you a link from a high quality website, as well as helping you effectively reach a wider audience.
In order to do this most effectively, write two to three articles to showcase the breadth of writing talent and pitch them to the websites, either directly or with the help of a PR agency that has the contacts to get them in front of the right people. You can also add in a short list of proposed future topics, so they have an idea of what to expect in future months.
It's important to provide unique articles to each source; having the same article published by two different sources will sink the relationships faster than you can say battleship. Keep in mind the audience of each website and look at other articles they have published to get a feel for what will work best for that source.
When placing the link don't try to have a link in every article as it will look overtly sales-y and discourage the relationship with the website. Instead, one link from the bio section is enough, since with each new article published you will secure additional links to the bio page, strengthening that link back to your site.
2. As Guest Talent
Is there a business-related TV or radio show on your local or industry-specific media? Reach out to them and have your authority figure go on air to share advice or perhaps take questions from the audience. In giving their time to help others, it will not only build their reputation (and your company's), but will also get you a great link back to your site from the web page of the show.
You can even look at Internet radio stations or popular podcasts, which would provide a higher likelihood of getting a recurring guest spot to build longer-lasting value. As you build up the repertoire of guest spots for your authority figure, you can then reach out to bigger and better media outlets to increase your chances of success for getting accepted for a guest spot there.
Once again, it's important here to not try to slip in any sales pitches at all. In providing value to others, you will gain back enough of a benefit to make it worth the time and effort. Here too, the bio section on the site is sufficient for the link to your site.
3. Conferences/Corporate Events
Are there marketing or industry-specific conferences your company attends? If so, consider asking your authority figures to pitch to speak, if they are comfortable doing so.
Hosting or sponsoring these conferences or other networking events is another good way to gain links and exposure, without the need to actually be a speaker if they shy away from public speaking.
Alternatively, consider entering the top executives or the company itself into awards competitions. Examples of awards to consider competing for include:
- Top executive awards, wherein C-suite management can enter to win a top CEO or Smart CXO award
- Growth awards such as Inc. 5000 or local area fast growth company awards
- Best workplace type awards
- Awards for going green or for innovation
Do Good Deeds and Garner Press Coverage
Look for genuine opportunities to help others in order to secure press coverage for your company. If any acts of kindness or activities of the company are interesting enough to warrant attention from the press, then take advantage of the link value they could provide.
Here are some of the easier ways to secure press coverage.
4. Charitable Contributions
Consider making a donation or organizing a charity drive with a differentiation factor so it provides enough of a human interest angle to generate press attention. If your company is passionate about a particular charity, then being creative in your efforts will help to raise money and awareness for the charity, and could have the karmic benefit of earning you an authoritative link as well.
For example, a New Jersey-based tech company (arguably not the sexiest industry for earning PR coverage) had their employees work out of a giant inflatable snow globe in freezing December in order to raise interest for their coat drive for One Warm Coat. They succeeded in securing a lot of media coverage with the local arms of CBS news, ABC news and NBC radio.
Another example of a well-executed charitable campaign that served to raise a lot of awareness for the charity comes from one of our industry's finest leaders.
Wil Reynolds of SEER Interactive is also well-known for his charitable contributions with his entire team. The time he spent sleeping outside in the cold for the charity Covenant House even earned him a mention on Forbes.com, without the SEO value of this participation even being a goal at all.
5. Contests
Competing to win something for free has mass appeal. Sponsors of the competition can even grab press attention.
For example, Pillsbury does a great job with their Bake-Off contest, garnering both press and online attention. The winner for using a contest to gain PR attention has to go to Tourism Queensland, which launched a contest to fill their job opening for island caretaker via their "Best Job in the World Contest." It got vast amounts of press coverage from all the top media outlets around the world and even ended up crashing their website.
On a smaller scale, while all contests may not necessarily earn you links from the press, a well-executed campaign with social media tie-in can still secure several high quality links and promote brand awareness. Other tactics for contests to consider:
- Scholarships: Giving away money to students can help a company list their site on university websites, and if the winning essay has enough of a human interest angle, it can garner press attention.
- Giveaways: Local businesses can run fun contests to give away products or servants to residents in their area. For example, construction firms can run a "boring bathroom" or "ugly windows" competitions to enable residents to win home makeovers, and garner some local press coverage.
- Honor Local Heroes: A surer bet for securing local press is by honoring and recognizing a hometown hero. Hosting an event or giving away cash or services to thank these unsung heroes will improve goodwill for the company and also secure you a press link. Tie in social media to involve more of the community online for even better results.
Summary
SEO can have so much more of an impact on the company than simply affecting rankings. A strong outreach campaign can greatly promote the brand, create goodwill and boost sales above and beyond any ranking improvements that can be influenced. Thus, looking at the traditional public relations agencies is always a great go-to resource when strategizing outreach campaigns.
Do you have other ideas or tactics you have used successfully? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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