Once the “ber-months” (as my lovely assistant likes to call September, October, November and December) hit the calendar, organised people like to start to prepare for the Christmas season. They start to think about presents, those diligent personal assistants book the best venues for the office Christmas party and get good deals on Christmas corporate gifts.

It may sound too early for most of us, but if you have a business, it will pay off to join the organised team and get your online store optimised for the holidays too!

At this time of the year, people are starting to look for products and services that are Christmas related such as gifts, Christmast party venues, Christmas gathering venues, Christmas rampers, decorations and a lot more. This means that online searches for Christmas related products is starting to rise too!

So this is the right time for you to start optimising your website for the holiday season.
The searches will increase for most products, but expect high competition for it as well, so it’s better to start early if you want to guarantee your share of the traffic. Below are some few points that would help you get started.

Do Your Research for Trends

Search engine optimisation always starts with keyword research and same applies to your Christmas optimisation. If you don’t know what keywords to start with, you may want to check keywords that were searched the most last Christmas season. Some keywords may be a bit outdated, but you are bound to find some keywords that could be used depending on your business niche.

Another great tool you could use to do your research specifically for this season is Google Trends. This is a free tool that even big businesses use, not just for Christmas holidays but for other seasonal holidays too! Go check it out and start doing your research.

Optimising your Meta Tags for the Season

Optimising your meta tags is something that you should really take time to do and make sure to do it in the most enticing way possible.

We all know that Title tags are the first thing users see on search engines results page. This is an opportunity for your business to take advantage of the rising traffic because of the season! Optimise your webpages’ title tags by using your most important keywords, plus adding in your seasonal promos such as Free Shipping, Discounts, Vouchers, etc. This will surely catch a viewer’s eye.

Your Meta Description tags should support your title tags too. Create your meta descriptions using your most important keywords including seasonal promos as mentioned above. An ideal meta description is precise and informative and should be no longer than 160 characters long.

Optimise Social Media Accounts

Aside from your website, you should not forget to optimise social media accounts too! It’s not difficult to give your social media accounts the Christmas-y look. This is another way for you to broadcast your Christmas promos plus a great way to interact with your social media followers and start building relationship with your consumer.

Prepare E-mail Newsletters

E-mail newsletters still works wonders specially when it comes to this type of holiday. Get your newsletters revamped and include your enticing seasonal promos.

Blog Your Heart Out this Season

If you do have a news or blog section on your website, you could use this platform to add a little spin to your promotions. This could also be used to explain more of what social media’s and newsletters can’t do. Make sure to optimise your blog post entries with your most important keywords.

All the points mentioned above can be used to help you take advantage of the season’s rising traffic. With a bit of creativity and variation, this could give your website the most traffic it could have for the year and this should reflect on your profit margins! Just make sure to optimise with the consumer in mind, not just the searh engines, but make it search-engine friendly.