Beef Up Your Search Engine Optimization and Marketing This Fall

The color of the leaves are a-changing, the cool air is starting to blow in, signifying that now right now is a wonderful time to beef up your stale and stagment SEO, just in time for the upcoming holidays. Did you know that most e-commerce websites receive more hits and sales in November and December than during any other time of the year? Believe it!! According to Comscore, online holiday shopping was up 14 percent in 2012 alone, and the surge in online commerce is expected to triple during the 2013 holiday season. So if you'd like to make the most of the flood of buyers who will be hitting the internet this fall and winter, simply follow these tips for seasonal SEO.

Look, holiday shoppers will be searching for specific terms so the best way to get traffic is to create landing pages around those specific keywords. Sounds easy right? IT IS!! A useful aspect about Google’s new Keyword Planner tool is that it not only returns results for specific terms, but for groups of similar keywords, so USE IT and ABUSE IT! We do..

Google's Keyword Planner also gives you historical performance information when you hover over the stats button. What is this black magic you say? We get it, amazing! Using this tooltip and data you can see that Google searches for terms related to “Christmas presents for kids” start to peak in October. You can and should  also plug in known consumer shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. For instance, “Black Friday toy airplane sale” or “Cyber Monday smartphone deals.” You can also get insights from Google Trends.

Create Holiday-Specific Content

Content Marketing remains one of the best, low-cost ways for businesses to promote themselves online. The easiest way to do this is through a blog. A company’s blog is where you share about your industry, products, services, and company goings-on. It’s where consumers go for news and information that can help them solve problems.

Aside from text-based blog posts, there are other forms of content you can share, including:

 - Infographics, charts, and illustrations
 - Podcasts and guest podcasts
 - ebooks and special reports for download
 - Slideshows
 
The best method is to create content around holiday themes such as “Christmas decorating ideas” or “Great gift ideas for mother dearest”, okay okay "Great gift ideas for mom" might be a better search phrase (again, keyword research comes in handy here), but make sure to avoid creating run-of-the-mill content that everyone sees every year. Remember, consumers want to see fresh content, so take some time to brainstorm on how to be unique while remaining relevant. Get it? Good! Let's move on..

Knowing what we now know it is also a great opportunity to create deep links to your landing pages, so do just that. The point of content marketing is not to self-promote, but to offer valuable information to your customers. Crazy right? We know.  And for heaven's sakes please do not forget to make your content easily shareable. Always be sure to use high quality images that will catch a reader’s eye, and make share buttons visible at the top and bottom of blog posts.

Create New Backlinks

Now after you’ve created some fresh new content and landing pages, it is now the perfect time to get some link juice. You can do this via your email newsletter (Powered by emailContactor.com - Campaign Management starting at $5.95 per month!!!) and social media accounts like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and Pinterest with focus being on Pintrest. Because of its visual nature, Pinterest is AWESOME for promoting gifts. Sweet right? Heck yeah bro, start a Pinterest board around your holiday promotions and complete with keyword sets in the title and description. Simple right? Now you're done.. smile and be happy. Just kidding, you need to make sure that you don’t forget to link back from your boards to your landing pages and other content. Why? Because backlinks are essentially how people spread online information through word of mouth. it is for this reason that you want to make sure your content is stuff that people would want to talk about and share. Okay that sounds like a good enough reason but let's remind you that the SEARCH Engines like Googl and Bing will rank you based on your social relevance.. so make sure to start talking about your coming holiday promotions early so as to generate buzz, and give your links time to spread around.

So when working on your backlink strategy or a "backlink profile" remember it’s important to remember not to engage in link scheming (see tip number five below). According to Google Webmaster guidelines, link schemes can include paying for native advertising (otherwise known as advertorials), engaging in large-scale guest posting, and using anchored keywords. So when you are creating your backlinks make sure to follow the rules.
 
Run a PPC Campaign

Look, PPC requires a budget, but starting out is still much more affordable than traditional forms of advertising (radio, television, print). Running a successful PPC campaign takes some time and planning, which is why companies often opt to hire outside agencies (like us) to manage it for them. However, going at it on your own is feasible and not rocket science. Know this, most companies start out with Google Adwords and Yahoo/Bing adCenter, though there are also other networks to choose from. You should and can start out by conducting research to see which keywords are best to rank for, then get to work on creating PPC ads that will make you stand out. See Hubspot’s recent article on creating PPC ads that people will want to click.

Do Some Clean Up

Have you reviewed Google’s Webmaster guidelines lately? This set of guidelines is what Google uses to determine which sites get rewarded for good SEO practices, and which get penalized for bad practices. This excellent resource at Feed the Bot highlights the most relevant aspects of the webmaster guidelines. Do an audit of your website (or hire us  to do it for you) to see if everything is in line with Google’s guidelines. This way you are less likely to have the surprise of your life when your site is de-indexed. As they say, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.
 
Summary

Fall is a prime time to revamp your SEO efforts to meet the coming holiday demand.  It’s also a good time to reevaluate your brand and sales goals, since they must be in line with your online marketing efforts. The truth is, most e-commerce sites don’t put as much time into holiday preparation as they ought to. With good research and some earnest legwork, you can make your website holiday ready.

So there you have it, a few great reasons you should be beefing up your serach engine optimization and marketing strategies this Fall. I forgot to mention, we are both a Google & Bing Development partner, we DEVELOP specifically for both engines and have for years. We're in the know, we live and breathe what we preach on a daily basis. Yeah, really! We suppose if you do not believe us you can try online marketing on your own, but you'll be back... they always come back.

Let's be serious, we know what we're doing and we can help you. For more information regarding our search inclusion services call or email us today, (402) 218-4423 or support @ omahamediagroup . com.

We would love to assist you with your search inclusion and marketing needs!