It’s coming! Holiday season – time for all the seasonally based websites to get cracking, and the sites that offer services to those sites to start hopping! It’s not too late to get ready for the holidays; in fact, a push started now should get you in place just in time for the after Thanksgiving rush.
The importance of a solid marketing campaign for the holidays can not be overstated. There is huge competition at this time of year, and you have to be prepared.
If you were watching last year, you can probably see what items were hot and what keyword searches were being run. You want to start optimizing now for phrases such as ‘best gifts dads’ or ‘gift ten year old’. Anything to do with electronics will be hot, so don’t forget that the DVR market and stuff like the iPhone and gPhone will be completely smoking. This is where you can capitalize if you have any products or services even remotely connected to the field – look for long tail keyword phrases and see if you can snap up a bit of traffic.
Even if you just run AdWords or affiliate sites, now is the time to work on solid optimization. Write entertaining, strongly optimized articles about gift giving and the holidays, with emphasis on different types of gifts that you can get good clicks for. Hopefully your customer will leave your site pumped up and credit card in hand, ready to purchase something and finalize your commission.
Don’t forget current events like the bail out and gas prices. Headlines like ‘Tired of pump prices? Gifts that won’t wear a hole in your wallet’ and ‘Don’t get mad about the bailout, get even. Make your gifts this year with our eBook of tips and ideas and save your money.’
You can surely find a way to capitalize on almost anything if you can come up with a line and a hook. Once the fish bites, it’s up to you whether you land him yourself or release him into the affiliate tank to hopefully make a selection.
As the holidays inch closer, remember that fast shipping becomes a priority, so jump on that as well.
‘Need a gift pronto? Free fast shipping with delivery before Christmas.’ Absorb your shipping cost into the price of the item – desperation won’t blink an eye – and then you can advertise free shipping (diabolical, right?).
There are a hundred marketing ploys you can use in the months to come to boost your sales and your site’s exposure. We’ll be taking a more in depth look as time crawls by – but do consider spending some time and money on SEO NOW to reap the benefits later. You can only win when you start actively pursuing the traffic and the consumers.
Keeping your eye on the goal and constantly remembering to remind the consumers that YOU have what they need is the best policy. SEO/SEM is really going out and finding out what the question or problem is, and providing the answer or solution.
Great post. I’d also say that SEO/SEM is important because of the following:
- it helps you cast a wider net to bring more prospects in.
- it allows you to create separate pages so that your print campaigns come to you site and search comes to another page on the site.
- it provides you feedback as to what people really want to know based on the phrases they are using to find you.
But the most important thing is that it help you focus on solving their problems, not selling something…