Have you prepared your new keywords to help attract customers to your Christmas offers? The Christmas season is fast approaching and provides you with quick way to increase traffic to your website. All you need to do is simply adjust your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy.
Here are some quick SEO tips to help you explore the hottest relevant Christmas-related keywords to make your website appeal to both search engines and visitors this festive season.
Why optimise your site for Christmas (and other seasons)
When we optimise a website, individual pages or business blog posts, we call this ‘on-page SEO’. It’s when we place relevant keywords within the content and behind the page, to help you focus your keywords around your offer so it stands out in search engine results. That is, to rise above the competition.
Done well, you shouldn’t attract random visitors to your website. With strong relevant keywords, you can reel in prospective customers who are seriously searching for what you’re offering.
Let’s say from January to October you offer “bags for mum” but now you want to promote them as gifts to buy for mum this Christmas.
You could focus your pages and blog posts on keywords such as:
- “Christmas gifts for mum”
- “Christmas gift ideas for mum”
- “Christmas presents for mum”
- “Christmas present ideas for mum”
This helps you attract the searchers who are shopping the internet for Christmas gifts.
To tell them that you’re offering what they’re looking for, you should add these keywords into your content
- first to tell search engines to make your offer appear in their results when people type those keywords, and
- second because you want the results to tell them to click through to your website.
So you can see how this can increase your chances of people finding you.
Why do a quick Christmas keyword research with Google Trends
The first and perhaps the best trick when doing your Christmas keyword research lies in knowing exactly what your target audience is looking for on search engines. But how do you know what people are typing when searching for the Christmas gifts you’re offering?
Use Google Trends to find trending Christmas keywords.
Start with some simple research in Google Trends to discover how well your proposed keywords performed during last year’s Christmas shopping season.
To show you my results from Google Trends, let’s continue with the “bags for mum” example. I looked up new keywords like we mentioned before:
- “Christmas gifts for mum”
- “Christmas gift ideas for mum”
- “Christmas presents for mum”
- “Christmas present ideas for mum”
But some weren’t quite trendy. The result:
Google Trends shows that in my region (Australia), the following group of keywords were trending better between October 2013 and January 2014, and peaked during the 15 to 21 December period:
- “Christmas gifts for mum” in blue
- “gifts for mum” (still trended well without “Christmas”) in red
- “ideas for mum” (“Christmas gift ideas for mum” wasn’t trending enough) in orange
- “Christmas presents for mum” in green
As you can see, in October 2014Â each of these keywords were becoming as popular as they were in 2013. I can only predict that the trend will keep rising. If I wanted to, I could go ahead and use these keywords in my content about bags for mums.
As an example, if I’m keen to promote “large leather handbags” for mum this Christmas, I could write something like:
If you’re looking for Christmas gifts for mum, we have a new line of large leather handbags you should consider. Â Does your mum like to carry her books wherever she goes? They’ll fit well in…
Once you’ve found your keywords, optimise your page
When you optimise your web pages or blog posts, you’ll add your keywords in the following places:
- the slug aka URL of your page or post
- the title tag – try your best to place them near the beginning of your title
- the body text – aim for the most natural way and avoid stuffing with keywords
- the internal or external links – I encourage using descriptive link text
- the image file name, its title an ALT attribute
- the meta description
Just be sure to avoid stuffing keywords everywhere. You want your content and meta data to appear natural.
Bonus SEO ideas for keyword research for Christmas offers
When you’re researching keywords for your website, individual pages or blog posts, I recommend doing the following:
- Spend at least 15-30 minutes exploring seasonal keywords that can help you leverage trends and attract as many potential customers as you can.
- Look for synonyms and related keywords to make your content sound as natural as possible while at the same time helping search engines to find your offer.
- Always include long tail keywords. They’re much easier to rank for because they are more specific.
- Come up with a list of additional long tail keywords that you could test. For example, and depending on your offer, try using attractive words like “free”, “best”, “top”, “cheap”, “rare” alongside your keyword (e.g. “top gifts for mum”) to make your long tail keywords even stronger.
Don’t waste too much time. Just search and move on!
Google Trends can quickly help you generate effective keywords for your Christmas offers. And as you can see, you don’t need to be an SEO expert to find trending words. Just brainstorm some keywords and find out if they were trending in Google Trends during October to January of the previous year. If they were, there’s a high chance people would be searching for them this year.
[cta headline=”Need help to optimise your content for Christmas?”] By taking advantage of my affordable SEO services, you can attract more customers. Call me on 0416 513 843 today. If you prefer to email, click here to request your FREE consultation.[/cta]
Very useful Rhonda, I know I should pay more attention to SEO and this has helped me work out how. Thanks!