Christmas Time is Here! 5 Tips for Seasonal SEO

Christmas Time Is Here - 5 Seasonal SEO TipsI knew Labor Day was just around the corner when I walked into Walmart and saw a big Christmas display (rolling eyes).  Yes, Christmas time is coming quickly and while it still irritates me a bit that we get Christmas displays in store months before Christmas, when it comes to SEO, you really need to start months early.

Christmas is big for Christian bookstores.  Churches usually put on Christmas events and one of the two most attended services at a church is likely to be either Christmas Eve or the Sunday before Christmas.  Even though Christmas time is already boom for many, it can be even better if you follow some simple seasonal SEO practices.

5 Seasonal SEO Tips:

Start early.  You don’t have to start announcing your Christmas events/products months early, but you do need to create the pages about them and optimize them months before Christmas.  It takes time for the search engines to index and change rankings.  So, if you haven’t already started, get to it.

Use separate keyword research with seasonal trends.  Keyword research for seasonal search terms is a little different.  If I look for the popularity of “advent wreath” and get last month’s (September’s) estimated searches, I’ll find very few searches.

Thankfully, Google’s keyword tool offers the “Local Search Trends” column which shows the approximate search popularity for each month of the past year.  By looking at the trends, I can see how much traffic seasonal keywords got last year during November and December.

Use social media.  As the Christmas events get closer, social media will be a great way to get the word out.  Giving your members a page to share with their friends on Facebook or Twitter will not only provide the social benefit of letting more people know about the event, but also provide social shares which can directly impact your rankings.

Create seasonal content.  Often times we only think about creating the pages for our products or events.  Unfortunately, this doesn’t always lead to a lot of sharing or inbound links, especially for products.  So, create some Christmas themed content for people to share.  Christmas provides lots of opportunities, from touching stories, to funny cartoons, to tips and gift ideas, etc.  People just seem more willing to share those things around Christmas.  So, create the content and share it and have that creative seasonal content link to your product pages or event pages.  This provide indirect link juice and greater awareness.

Recycle Christmas Web PagesRecycle.  No, not bottles and paper, but rather content and pages.  Every year I see that same stories and cartoons get passed around.  So, don’t be afraid to reuse some popular seasonal content from last year or a few years ago.  If you don’t think it will spread much again, maybe you can breathe new life into the content with a few updates or graphic changes.

Even more important is recycling pages.  Don’t delete your Christmas pages each year and create new ones the next year!!  You’re throwing away links.  Use the same page(s) every year.  You can change the content, but don’t change the URL.  Just remove the page from you navigation menu when you aren’t using and then add it again the following year.  If you really want to create entirely new pages, at least create 301 redirects from the old pages to the new ones.  Why throw away all the work you did last year?

Alright, it’s time to get started.  If you need to create new pages for your Christmas products and events, get to it.  If you still have the old pages from last year, even better.

What do you think?

What tips do you have for seasonal SEO/marketing?

Have you already started your Christmas marketing?

4 Responses to “Christmas Time is Here! 5 Tips for Seasonal SEO”

  1. Christmas is the main event for everyone who is belonging to the culture and every one wants to spend that event as much as they do. so from this site, we get the 5 Tips for Seasonal SEO because the people want to be perfect, so this is suitable for that kind of peoples

  2. All branches of science viz. Science, Physics, Chemistry, number juggling further in light of the fact that the mental science are the fundamental segments of the movement work. when human eyes envision Associate in Nursing thing, an alikeness is engraved on the tissue layer of the eyes for a brief range of your time.

  3. With the help of tactile nerves, the human cerebrum deciphers this picture and imagines it in light of the factthat the genuine and unique article.

  4. The human eyes will recognize 2 pictures in the event that they appear to be once 1/24th second separated.