Lily Nguyen | Secomapp

The Black Friday weekend is quickly approaching once again. With over 5.1 billion dollars sold through Shopify stores during 2020’s Black Friday weekend (up from 1.5 billion in 2018), this is definitely one of the biggest opportunities for business owners. However, with a large array of Black Friday choices available, how can you set your Shopify store apart from other competitors? For eCommerce, a winning holiday SEO strategy is one way to stand out and attract more buyers to your website. Organic search traffic is even more essential this year since ad costs on Facebook and YouTube have already risen by 89% and 108%. By investing early in search engine optimization, you can ensure good placement in SERPs ahead of everybody else in order to capture more traffic and convert more sales. Here are 5 imperative SEO strategies that you can implement to get your store prepared right now! 1) Review Your Technical On-Page SEO Before you officially launch your holiday sales blitz, the first thing that you should do is review your SEO basics and optimize your website’s technical foundation to position pages to be crawled, indexed, and ranked appropriately. Here are some technical SEO fundamentals that you should take care of: Resolving 404 error pagesPlacing 301 redirects on broken linksEnsuring that your host server can handle high-visitor trafficOptimizing page speed for quick load-outs Review Technical SEO A) Resolving 404 error pages The 404-error occurs when a page cannot be found. Usually, this isn't a serious problem. However, if you have too many non-function pages on your site, then search engines can easily pick them out and make your site less trustworthy. The best way of resolving these issues is to create a custom 404 page. It is especially essential for eCommerce stores that have plans to market themselves on Black Friday. B) Putting 301 redirects on broken links Another powerful Black Friday SEO technique that’s often overlooked is the addition of 301 redirects to pages. eCommerce websites have hundreds of product pages. From time to time, they have to change the URLs of these pages. So, when a bot searches that specific link, it will come to a blank page - this can significantly drop the URL from the SERP. In order to fix it, you will be required to place a 301 redirect. This will replace the old link with the new one without harming your rank on SERPs. C) Your servers must handle the increased traffic You should ask yourself whether your Shopify website is capable of handling the increased web traffic spike during the whole Black Friday holiday (which includes Cyber Monday). To manage the traffic head-on, you will need to have a reliable cloud hosting service that offers auto-scaling features like Cloudways. The main reason why most websites crash during the sales period is because they are incapable of handling an unprecedented surge of web traffic on their store. D) Optimizing page speed All the websites that have optimized pages for speed are more likely to rank higher in the search engines. Not only do they receive a better position in the SERPs, but users also enjoy it. With this in mind, you must improve the load time of your eCommerce store by implementing advanced-cache on the server and platform-level plugins. You can also add CSS minifying scripts to enhance your web page speed during the whole shopping season. Don't forget to test all your pages before Black Friday. 2) Keyword Strategies The next step to increase organic traffic is to rank for particular keywords. In this case, you will want to put your focus on keywords that are associated with Black Friday. To start your keyword research, focus on: Black Friday keywordsYour product keywordsBuzz keywords linked to the holiday season Go to Google Analytics (a free tool for keyword researching) and see which pages drove the largest traffic and have the best sales conversions. Search Volume – The search volume will tell you the number of people that are searching for that precise keyword. Generally, the higher the volume, the bigger the audience. Keyword Difficulty – This is determined by the number of online business websites ranking for this specific keyword at the moment. The lower the score, the more straightforward it is to rank for that keyword. Keyword Strategies In terms of keyword research, the most highly searched terms on this holiday are “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday.” Mix these terms with your product, and you have a winning combination. You can add the following keywords as well: “gifts,” “delivery,” and “deals.” Now that you have an idea of your target keywords and how difficult it is to rank for them, you can add them to your shop to milk some of the Black Friday traffic. You will be able to add content on literally any section of your site. Google will drag it, index it (essentially, store the content in its memory), and use it to determine whether or not to rank your website. Here are some of the most common placements: Page Title The page title that you set will appear on the tabs of the browsers, the titles of social media posts, and, maybe most importantly, on the search engine results pages. If you’re looking for a Black Friday deal on appliances, these pages will come up top. We tried to search for “2021 Black Friday deals”, but there aren't a lot of options - yet. If you start ahead of time, you might have the opportunity to claim some of the top rankings before others. When you're writing your page titles, be sure to include your most valuable keywords at the front of the title - this will not only assist you to rank higher but also get more clicks from your target audience. URLs and Links When possible, you should also include your keywords in the URLs and links of your Shopify website. This will indicate to Google that your page is, in fact, all about the topic of the keyword. Target uses this technique quite smart. It doesn’t make sense to implement Black Friday keywords to each product's URL because this holiday weekend only happens once a year. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that you cannot add the keyword to some relatable pages. Product Descriptions Finally, be sure that you pay careful attention to the keywords in your product description. You should aim to include the main keyword somewhere at the beginning of the product description and a couple of times throughout the text. Just remember, don't overuse it! 3) Create A Specific Landing Page Creating a specific landing page meant for all your Black Friday deals is a perfect way to attract more viewers to your Shopify store. This will not only provide you with the opportunity to stick the keyword in the URL, but it also allows you to link out to your products throughout your shop. In order to make a successful landing page, you will need to feature keyword-optimized URLs, interesting headlines, and descriptive ad copy. Additionally, you can create timestamps, such as "coming soon" or “limited time offer” titles to your page - this will create huge anticipation for its release and encourage all the users to make a purchase before it’s no longer available. Create a Specific Landing Page Once you have the pages made, you should add them to your XML sitemap as well as your website’s navigation. By doing this, you will allow all your returning customers and crawlers to quickly find your pages and access them. 4) Customer Reviews Are HUGE With a massive list of product listings and unique deals, people tend to perform a lot more research on the internet before making the final purchasing decision. Recent research performed by BrightLocal found that over 92% of the buyers read customer reviews, and 68% say that positive reviews make them trust the business a lot more. Since they are already interested in the product, you want to prevent them from leaving your website and assist them in making the final decision. The best way of doing this is by adding any type of customer reviews, case studies, or even testimonials somewhere near the product description or summary. Ideally, you’ll want to look for a Shopify app that will make the entire customer review process a lot easier and more professional. Fera Reviews will provide you with review-collecting and displaying abilities at the most economical prices. The best part is that this app will be able to take care of all the tough work for you and automatically request reviews from your customers - leaving you enough time to focus on all the other SEO steps. Apart from that, customer reviews can also have a positive impact on the search engine placement as well (based on Google's updated policy). So, with the assistance of Fera, you will also be able to show product reviews that will show up in search engine results with a rating badge and number of customers. 5) Optimize The User Experience While this should be a big priority throughout the year, you should pay additional attention during the holidays, especially on such high-traffic days like Black Friday. Your Shopify store must be simple to navigate from any device (tablet, smartphone, PC, laptop, etc.), and it should be capable of handling a lot of users simultaneously. Optimizing page speed All the websites that have optimized pages for speed are more likely to rank higher on search engines. Not only do they receive a better position in the SERPs, but users also enjoy it. Therefore, you must improve the load time of your eCommerce store by implementing advanced-cache on the server and platform-level plugins. You can also add CSS minifying scripts to enhance your web page speed during the whole shopping season. Don't forget to test all your pages before the official Black Friday. Mobile optimization Black Friday 2020 broke mobile shopping records, with $3.6 billion worth of sales coming from smartphone devices. So, before the entire weekend begins, take care of the mobile optimization. Most of the modern themes on Shopify are designed to be responsive, meaning that they adjust your site to multiple screen sizes. However, just to be entirely sure, go ahead and check! Here’s how: First things first, be sure to log into your Shopify account. Next, select the "Online Store" channel located in the left sidebar of your screen. Once you're there, click the blue "Customize" button. This will pop up on your site and allow you to fully personalize it. You will be able to switch between the "Mobile" and "Desktop" views by tapping the little icons at the top-middle position on your display. Conclusion Holiday eCommerce sales are some of the best opportunities for eCommerce business owners. After reading our article, you will be able to improve your SEO and get your Shopify store on some of the top placements. If you have any types of additional questions regarding this particular topic, don't forget to leave them below in the comment segment. Happy holidays! Auditor: Vasko Ikonomov - From Fera Product Reviews App

Author: Lily Nguyen

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