The holidays are here and Jacksonville is ready to celebrate! Christmas trees are up in the stores, and the Santas have descended upon the malls.
For a lot of businesses, the holiday season also means a sales bonanza. Many small firms struggle throughout the year and Christmas is the one time of year that really makes all the year’s efforts worthwhile.
So you might think targeting the holiday sales rush is a great SEO strategy – and it can be – with enough advanced planning and effort. In fact, the best time to start working on SEO for Christmas 2023 was about six months ago.
SEO Time Delays
Building a website takes time, and ranking high in search engines takes even longer. According to Moz, it takes a minimum of four months for new links to consistently result in a single rank increase, and even after 6-12 months you’re only seeing about 80% of a link’s potential impact.
Part of this is due to the fact that links can be lost just as easily as they’re gained, so it is just the ones that last that are truly valuable.
Holiday Competition
The other issue is that everyone else has already thought about this tactic, and the search keywords for Christmas have long ago been snapped up and developed. These sites may focus on sales for a month or two out of the year, but they’re working on it throughout the year and they’ve been at it for decades by now.
Stand out from the Crowd
Is there a special product, service, or event that you’re hosting for the holidays? Anything that helps you to stand out from the crowd will help to make your holiday SEO goals a reality. While everyone’s looking for presents, there may be fewer options for a local concert, party, nativity scene, or whatever you can do that’s just a little bit unique and different.
Maybe you’ve got special items that only come on sale for a portion of the year, or an extra service that isn’t normally available. Is Santa coming? Are there special deals or discounts that are only here for Christmas? Focusing on this unique details will help differentiate your firm from the crowd, and it will go a long way toward establishing a unique SEO niche. As always, content is king, so anything that makes your content unique is like putting money in the bank.
Big challenge, big rewards
The reality is that Christmas SEO isn’t a silver bullet that will solve your company’s sales goals. But with a good plan and plenty of advanced action, it’s something that can add a whole lot of cheer to your company’s annual numbers.
If a Christmas sale is in your future, start thinking about it now, two days after Christmas! If you’re thinking about starting in the summer, you may as well be starting for Christmas of 2024. Check this google search for “Christmas 2026” – these people are playing a long game and it is quite profitable for the ones who know what they are doing!
Does this mean you should give up and focus on something easier? Maybe! Not every company can compete on every keyword, and it’s important to stay focused on the phrases and terms that deliver the best sales and conversion rates. For many businesses, Christmas sales aren’t anything different than normal business – just with a big higher volume.
But if there’s anything that differentiates your brand around the holidays, now is the time to start getting the word out! The challenges may be big, but so are the rewards.