Holiday SEO Pitfalls To Avoid: Common Mistakes And How To Fix Them via @sejournal, @wburton27

With the holiday approaching fast, it’s time to go through holiday SEO pitfalls and learn how to avoid and fix them.

Salesforce predicts a 2% year-over-year global sales growth for November and December, totaling $1.19 trillion, with U.S. sales expected to reach $277 billion – also up 2% from last year.

With people holding on to their wallets and watching every penny, you must fight for every dollar.

Make sure you have a solid holiday SEO strategy to win, especially since there are five fewer shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas compared to 2023.

Plus, Google is getting more competitive and pushing organic results further down the page.

Mistake #1: Late Planning And Implementation

Some businesses wait until November or December to start building their holiday SEO strategy, which does not leave a lot of time to get new content indexed and ranked.

The Solution

Start holiday SEO planning three to four months in advance.

If you’re planning your holiday content in November and expect to rank in December for “Christmas Holiday gifts” with a brand new page, it is not going to happen. You should build out a page way in advance.

Create a content calendar focusing on your top products, guides, and helpful content. Look at last year’s sales and analytics data to show you what products sold the most and bought in the most revenue.

This will also help your company decide what items you should keep in stock based on previous order history.

Implement technical SEO updates like making sure your pages load as quickly as possible and your shopping cart process is smooth, quick, and easy to add new products or delete old or out-of-stock items.

Use historical data and SEO tools like Exploding Topics and Google Trends to predict trending topics and make sure you have helpful and useful content that is original, unique, and engaging.

Mistake #2: Lack Of An Integrated Strategy

Some businesses rely on organic search as the only channel to bring traffic.

Unfortunately, organic search is getting pushed down the fold due to AI overviews, paid search, and other factors.

In order to be successful, you must have an integrated strategy that works with paid search, social, and video.

Also, start thinking of SEO as “search engine everywhere” to maximize your website’s visibility across all digital marketing channels. This can drive more organic traffic, better visibility, and a consistent brand message, boosting sales and leads across all platforms and customer touchpoints.

The Solution

Get support from relevant stakeholders and decision-makers by showing them data on organic, paid, and how other channels work together to drive performance.

Share data and content plans. If you’re building content and new landing pages, let SEO optimize it, share learnings to incorporate into paid search ad copy, and vice versa. Also, the content should be shared on social channels to drive organic and social performance.

Plus, implement an omnichannel approach to show the value of an integrated strategy.

Mistake #3: Poor URL Structure For Seasonal Content

Some businesses create new URLs every year for holiday content, which is not a recommended practice because you will have to set up redirects, secure backlinks, and gain authority.

The Solution

Use evergreen URLs (e.g., /holiday-gift-guide instead of /holiday-gift-guide-2024), and do not change the URL strategy. Keep it consistent all the time.

Update existing content and landing pages rather than creating new URLs.

Implement 301 redirects from old holiday URLs to new URLs to transfer some equity to the new URLs.

Maintain consistent internal linking structure to reinforce important pages and help search engines understand your site structure.

Mistake #4: Poor Category And Filter Optimization

Do not allow Google and other search engines to index duplicate content from multiple filter combinations and category pages.

The Solution

Use canonical tags to inform Google that this is the specified version of the page or implement robots.txt directives for filtered pages for the search engines to ignore.

Update and optimize your titles and metadata with unique and original content.

Create unique content for the main category pages. Think outside the box and offer content that provides value to end users and meets their intent.

For example, if you have a category page about Christmas gifts for 5-year-olds, make sure you have a video, imagery, and questions that people are asking, and you’re optimized for shopping results since that is a transactional keyword.

For instance, REI does a great job at making sure the filter content has a canonical tag on it.

Screenshot from REI Shop, November 2024

Mistake #5: Not Optimizing For Local

Local searches are particularly important, especially during the holidays, as 42% of Google searches have local intent.

Google places a strong emphasis on local relevance in its search results to provide users with the most helpful information based on their location.

If your local search is not optimized, you’re missing an opportunity to get in front of your local audience during the holiday season when local queries begin to spike.

The Solution

Optimize your local listings and make sure your local assets are filled out with detailed business information, high-quality photos, regular updates, and actively respond to customer reviews.

Update holiday business hours to make sure that customers know when you’re open and when you’re not.

Create location-specific landing pages to give your site a chance to rank for location-based searches (e.g., [Surprise dolls near Fargo North Dakota]).

Optimize local holiday keywords and maintain consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) information across search engines and directories.

Encourage holiday-specific reviews by asking customers if they like your product or the experience they had shopping at your online store.

Mistake #6: Lack Of High-Quality Content

If you’re a brand with thousands or millions of pages or working on a small team, you have a lot on your plate and may rush to create holiday content.

Rushing content just to get it out there may result in low-quality content that does not demonstrate experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).

Additionally, if you do not have high-quality content that is people first, you run the risk of getting hit by a core algorithm update.

The Solution

Create comprehensive gift guides that are unique and offer value to end users. For example, you can break down gift guides for men, women, kids, grandparents, etc.

Develop unique product descriptions that are different from those of your competitors.

Oftentimes, when a brand sells the same product as competitors, the product description is identical. Search what questions people ask about that product and include it in your descriptions or your page.

Update existing content with fresh information, surveys, information, and links or mentions to high-authoritative sites. Always create people-first content that is helpful and useful as opposed to creating content that is not natural.

Prioritize and plan. You may not get to everything, but if you can cover off on the biggest money makers, you will be in decent shape if you move the needle and drive high-quality traffic that converts.

Conduct keyword research and competitor analysis to help inform content strategy.

Speak to the current year and relevant trends in your holiday SEO content, like “2024 Best Holiday Gifts.”

Mistake #7: Technical SEO Oversight

We all know mistakes can happen, especially during holidays, when you get a lot of traffic.

The Solution

Have an always-on technical approach. Monitor and optimize site speed.

If you see that your top product page loads slowly, try to fix it right away to drive more sales and traffic.

Implement product and breadcrumb schema on your holiday products to give Google more information about your content.

Ensure proper handling of out-of-stock items so customers know what to expect and when the items will be back in stock.

If you have 404 error pages, fix them, make sure the URLs are 200, and load the content people came to your site for.

Mistake #8: Poor Internal Linking Strategy

Internal linking is essential during this season and can reinforce important pages, especially holiday-specific pages and promotions.

The Solution

Create a holiday hub page and update navigation to feature seasonal categories that do not change.

Mark it up using breadcrumb schema, so Google will understand your site navigation.

Have strong CTAs to drive more traffic and sales of your products, especially if you’re using discounts, e.g., Unlock 30% off just for you!

You may also link between holiday-related content. For example, red baseball hats can have an internal link to pink baseball hats because they are close enough in color.

Mistake #9: Ignoring Historical Data

Not utilizing last year’s data to inform your current holiday SEO strategy could lead to missed opportunities.

The Solution

Analyze last year’s top-performing pages using Google Analytics 4 or other analytics tools. This will help you prioritize your SEO efforts.

Review historical keyword trends. Make sure you have the content and assets to be relevant for those terms this year.

Identify successful promotional strategies used last year that you can incorporate this year to drive better engagement and more sales.

Use analytics data to predict inventory demands and have a strategy for out-of-stock items or a surge in sales.

Mistake #10: Inadequate Performance Monitoring

Some websites do not have proper tracking set up for the holiday season.

We all know that GA4 is cumbersome, so work with your analytics team to make sure GA4 is set up correctly, tracking events and attributing correctly to organic research.

The Solution 

Conduct an analytics audit and data review with your team. Track performance metrics, monitor competitors’ activities, test your content, and have a plan in place for traffic spokes.

Mistake #11: Poor Mobile Optimization

With the majority of U.S. consumers using their mobile phones to shop on Amazon and other big box retailers, having a poorly optimized mobile site can hurt rankings and conversions.

The Solution

Make sure your site is optimized, provides a good mobile experience, loads quickly, and has a quick and easy checkout process.

Wrapping Up

With the holidays approaching, early planning is critical to SEO success.

Optimize for mobile and local, and make sure your site has a strong technical foundation.

Build out high-quality, people-first content that is helpful, and use historical data to predict trends from the previous year.

SEO is not about rankings; it’s about providing users with useful content and a seamless user experience. Adopting these strategies will help convert seasonal traffic into sales while building long-term SEO value for your site.

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Featured Image: maxbelchenko/Shutterstock