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Cyber Monday has become a very important day for SEOs.

What is Cyber Monday? Investipedia gives this definition:

An expression used in online retailing to describe the Monday following U.S. Thanksgiving weekend. Cyber Monday is generally thought of as the start of the online holiday shopping season. Similar to Black Friday, (the unofficial start of the holiday season for offline businesses), online retailers will usually offer special promotions on this day.

Also known as “Black Monday”.

There are a couple of theories as to why online sales increase on Cyber Monday, although some debate whether all retailers experience the same trend. One theory suggests that people see items in the shopping malls over the weekend and wait until Monday to buy them online, where they can compare prices, avoid lines and/or take advantage of free shipping or other offers. Another theory states that people have faster internet connections at work and, therefore, wait until then to make online purchases.

According to Scott Silverman, the head of Shop.org, the term was coined based on research showing that 77% of online retailers reported a significant increase in sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving in 2004.

In late November 2005, the New York Times reported that:

“The name Cyber Monday grew out of the observation that millions of otherwise productive working Americans, fresh off a Thanksgiving weekend of window shopping, were returning to high-speed Internet connections at work Monday and buying what they liked.”

Not everyone feel the same; Business Week reports:

Contrary to what the recent blitz of media coverage implies, Cyber Monday isn’t nearly the biggest online shopping or spending day of the year. It ranks only as the 12th-biggest day historically, according to market researcher comScore Networks. It’s not even the first big day of the season.

For most online retailers, the bigger spending day of the season to date was way back on Nov. 22, three days before Black Friday. What’s more, most e-tailers say the season’s top spending day comes much later, between around Dec. 5 and Dec. 15.

However, Cyber Monday is still a big deal for online shopping, as any SEO will know. This means it is a great time to push just a little harder – allocate a little more budget that weekend for paid search, and reap the benefits