Search Engine Optimization News Blog

According to one of the latest reports of CNNMoney.com, there is a dramatic change in people’s holiday shopping trends. This year all the stores anticipated lesser holiday sales because of the credit crunch and financial recession. Adding to the financial stress there is another factor that seems to affect the sales in the US stores. More people are opting to do their holiday shopping using online stores as opposed to visiting the regular stores. Online spending has increased dramatically when compared to last year. One of the directors of TNS Retail forward, Mary Brett Whitfield notes that, “Despite slowing retail sales in many channels this holiday season, online shopping is likely to be one of the few bright spots.”

Number of people who plan to do their holiday shopping for $500 and above in the regular stores is more likely to fall from 21% to 16%. This is a very steep fall within a year. On the other hand, those who plan to spend over $500 online is expected to increase from 4% to 5%. This shows that there is an overall reduction in holiday spending and in the reduced scale of shopping, there is an increase in the online spending.

Looking at the figures for those who have lesser budget for shopping, say from $100 to $499, there is a marked difference in the figures from the previous year’s figures. It has increased from 1% to 4%. This section of people are more likely to spend less in their stores. This might prompt more businesses to go online to tap on the increasing online traffic for holiday shopping. This implies that we can expect increased online competition. If there is going to be a sector that is going to flourish, it is ITES sector and in particular, the SEO and SEM services.

Already to help their customers fight competition, SEM companies are using alternative SEO strategies and one of the most popular and effective form of strategy that has been widely adapted in 2008 is social media marketing.

Online stores too try to woo more customers through special offers and deals for the holiday season. You can find great deals, incentives and discounts when you shop online. Moreover, the possibility of comparison shopping to is attracting more users online, especially when everyone is cutback on the expenses as much as possible. As per one of the surveys among those surveyed one of the factors that people said that will motivate them to go or online shopping besides others is free shipping. Almost 97% women and 87% men indicated that the most attractive incentive would be free shipping. Some of the most popular items on the holiday shopping list include clothing, movies, books and toys. Some of the stores that are enjoying increased sales traffic include, Ebay, Amazon.com, Wal-Mart Stores, Best Buy, etc. On the other hand, retailers hit all time low last month in their sales levels.