How To Optimize Your Ecommerce Site For Holiday Shoppers via @sejournal, @wburton27

Peak shopping periods like Black Friday, Halloween, Christmas, and other holidays attract millions of shoppers online.

They also present prime opportunities for ecommerce and retail brands to drive incremental revenue and traffic for the holiday season.

According to the NRF, the 2024 holiday forecast is consistent with its forecast that annual sales for 2024 will be between 2.5% and 3.5% over 2023. Some noteworthy mentions:

One differentiating characteristic from last year’s holiday shopping season is that the shopping period between Thanksgiving and Christmas will be six days shorter, totaling 26 days. Additional contributing factors this year could include the economic impact of Hurricanes Helene and Milton; even though the 2024 U.S. presidential election will take place during the winter holiday season, it is impossible to measure its impact on current or future spending.

Screenshot from NRF.com, October 2024

According to Statista, in the U.S., a lot of holiday consumers intend to buy products for 2024 for the holiday celebration, with 97% for Halloween, 92% for Thanksgiving, and 96% for Christmas.

Screenshot from Statista, October 2024

Since sales are expected to be up year over year, what are the best ways to optimize your site for the holidays? When should you start, and what should you do? Let’s explore.

SEO Tips For Optimizing Your Ecommerce Website

Plan Ahead

One of the most important aspects of optimizing your site for the holidays is planning.

If you build landing pages now for Christmas and expect them to rank for competitive terms, it won’t happen.

Always build out your content calendar in advance (i.e., two to three months or more ahead of time).

Make sure you do your keyword research and start planning which content you need to create, get approvals for, deploy, etc.

Use Evergreen URLs

Create reusable URLs for promotions that you can use year after year. You can mention the date or year in the page title or copy and then change it each year, but don’t use it in the URL.

I can’t tell you that, in my 20 years of doing SEO, I saw a lot of big brands make the mistake of either taking down their landing pages or adding the year to their landing page URL for seasonal products.

The good news is that most big box retailers are doing this correctly now.

For example, Target has a dedicated landing page for its Thanksgiving TV deal at https://www.target.com/s/samsung+tv+deals+thanksgiving.

Now, if it were to put in a year, it would have to redirect the page every year, but it is following a good SEO strategy. This allows the pages to age, secure links, build authority, and be used for internal links.

Screenshot from Target.com, October 2024

Prepare For AI Overviews

We live in a world where AI has changed user behavior, and people ask questions about your brand and our product.

Screenshot from search for [plasma TV], Google, October 2024

Make sure your site is optimized for AI Overviews and follows best practices:

Follow Google’s Search Essentials Guide. Support and expand on the information in AI Overviews. Target long-tail information queries. Make sure the content is relevant and answers questions. Format the content structure. Keep content fresh and updated.

Blend SEO And PPC Strategy

Unfortunately, SEO keeps getting pushed down further and further down the page.

You must work with your paid search team to build a blended strategy for ranking competitive keywords and owning the entire SERP.

For example, a search for [what is the best TV to buy for thanksgiving] has transactional intent. The SERPs show sponsored listings first, followed by videos and People Also Ask (PAA).

Having both a paid ad and ranking organically is key to capturing more clicks and potential sales.

Paid search can also create holiday-themed ad campaigns targeting your trophy keywords and drive more sales.

Build out content that uses the PAA strategy. This feature in the Google SERPs provides end users with additional questions related to their search query and quick answers.

Don’t Forget About Reddit

Reddit has been showing up in the SERPS for questions regarding holiday queries.

This represents an opportunity to get in front of your target audience, so make sure to follow Reddit’s best practices, which include:

Identify relevant subreddits related to your products (e.g., r/Gift ideas). Avoid self-promotion and engage with the community. Share relevant content, optimize, and monitor performance. Post, network, build relationships, and participate in discussions.

Screenshot from search for [holiday gift ideas], Google, October 2024

Optimize Speed And Performance

Make sure your site is optimized for mobile devices, loads as quickly as possible – preferably under 3 seconds – and passes Core Web Vitals.

It’s important from a user experience perspective, especially because most shopping will be done using a mobile device. Avoid big holiday hero images, interstitials, etc.

Offer Holiday Gift Guides And Promotions

Display promotions on your homepage to drive incremental clicks and sales.

If you had holiday pages from last year, you might want to refresh the content so that you can update it in time for the holiday season with new and popular products, seasonal messaging, and images.

Use Holiday-Specific Keywords In Product Descriptions

Product descriptions are especially important and can improve your ecommerce site’s visibility during the holiday shopping season.

Using relevant holiday keywords can help your products appear in holiday-related research and make them more appealing to shoppers looking for relevant products.

After you conduct your keyword research for your holiday terms using your favorite tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, etc., produce a list of terms including:

General terms: “holiday,” “festive,” “seasonal,” “gift.” Specific holidays: “Christmas,” “Hanukkah,” “New Year’s,” “Kwanzaa.” Gift-giving terms: “stocking stuffer,” “secret Santa,” “white elephant.” Emotional terms: “joy,” “cheer,” “merry,” “celebrate.”

Highlight holiday use cases. Describe how the product can be used during the holidays or why it makes a great gift, and add videos.

Use seasonal modifiers; add holiday-specific adjectives to your product titles and descriptions. Example for clothing:

Original: “Red Knit Sweater.” Holiday version: Festive Red Knit Sweater, Perfect for Holiday Parties.

Leverage Email Marketing For Holiday Campaigns

While email marketing doesn’t directly impact SEO, it can indirectly help your SEO efforts during the holiday season.

Having targeted email campaigns can bring previous customers back to your store, as long as they’re personalized based on previous purchases, browsing interest, and limited offers.

Plan For Out-Of-Stock Items

With the recent events in the world, i.e., U.S. port strikes by 45,000 dock workers, wars, hurricanes, an uncertain presidential election, and the fact that COVID is still around, there are still some issues with the supply chain.

You always need to have a plan if your products aren’t available if something happens.

In this case, it is recommended to stock up on products that have sold out in previous years and make sure your inventory management system is integrated with your website in real time.

Other alternatives include:

Emailing customers when products are back in stock. Internally linking to related products.

Engage Through Social Media

Social platforms are critical to engaging customers and driving sales.

Creating useful and shareable content, holiday giveaways, and social media deals can drive engagement metrics and promote your holiday SEO content to attract links and social endorsements. In addition, shoppable posts facilitate discovery and purchases on social platforms.

Add An On-Site Search Functionality 

Adding in a site search, if you don’t have one, can significantly improve user experience, increase conversions, and indirectly benefit your SEO efforts.

Users like to search using on-site functionality.

Run A Tech And Internal Security Audit

With the number of cyber security threats, data breaches, and incremental web traffic during the holidays, always run a technical audit on the site and make sure:

Your site has a valid, working SSL certificate installed, so all your data is encrypted and safe. Your product pages return to 200 response codes and load quickly and properly. Run a vulnerability scan on your website to make sure there are no issues.

Use Product Schema

Use structured data (i.e., Product schema) so Google can understand your products and show product discounts and sales prices, which could have a positive impact on rankings and clicks.

Have A Simple Checkout Process

While not exactly pertaining to SEO, having a checkout process that is hard for users to navigate can have a detrimental impact on your online sales.

You need your checkout process to be quick and easy to complete a purchase, which will help:

Reduce cart abandonment. Improve customer experience. Increase conversion rates. Complete purchase faster. Strengthen positive brand perception.

Being Festive With Design

There is nothing better than visiting a website that puts you in the holiday mood.

For example, with Halloween approaching, Target does an excellent job updating its imagery to match the Halloween theme.

It’s also an innovative idea to build out gift guides, holiday FAQs, and holiday categories and optimize them to improve your customer experience, drive customers deeper into your website, and increase product purchases.

Screenshot from Target.com, October 2024

Product Reviews

Don’t forget about your product reviews. It is highly recommended to have detailed reviews of your most popular holiday products, showcasing why they are needed, useful, and relevant and make great holiday gifts.

Review KPIs

To make sure the holiday season is a success, start by reviewing your KPIs such as: 

Revenue, traffic, and sales year-over-year. Rank, impressions, and clicks. Click-through rates. Conversions.

Wrapping Up

The holiday season presents an excellent opportunity for ecommerce businesses to drive more sales and build customer loyalty.

To capitalize on the holiday season, it’s crucial to plan ahead and create an exceptional customer experience.

Work with your paid and social teams to develop a blended marketing strategy, run technical and security audits, and ensure a smooth checkout process.

Also, leverage email marketing and other tactics to drive incremental revenue and traffic while building lasting relationships with your customers for years to come.

More resources:

29 Must-Have Features For Ecommerce Websites Top 10 Essential Website Optimization Strategies A Complete Guide To Holiday Marketing

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Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock