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Black Friday started in America as the Friday after Thanksgiving in the US, traditionally it marks the start of the shopping season and over the years has been adopted by marketers in Europe.
Leveraging the pre-Christmas craziness of Black Friday is the perfect way to boost business ahead of the festivities - but you might be wondering how to ensure your website is up to the task.
[refresher] An SEO strategy is how brands increase the volume of organic traffic to their website - the strategy should encompass both technical elements of a site (broken links, errors etc.) as well as things like your metadata, calls to action and content plan.
Now, we can’t make you a promise that doing X will magically double your conversions over the holiday period as every business is different… but what we can do is help you ensure you are aware of the key things most businesses miss so that you can focus on them ahead of time!
Remember anyone shopping on a day such as Black Friday is more than likely already looking to spend money. Appear for the right terms and have a functional, optimised website and you are already going for gold.
#1 KNOW YOUR BUSINESS
You need to know WHICH marketing days will benefit your brand… Black Friday doesn’t always work for everyone. However (and it’s a big however), if you put your marketing head on we can ensure you there is almost always a way to make Black Friday work for your business.
Adding a spin to enhance your marketing strategy is a great way of boosting sales. Think of the time of year that Black Friday falls and what YOUR customer will be after around this time and present them with the offers they’ve been waiting for. Don’t provide random offers just to partake in the Black Friday events, always ensure it is relevant to your market for it to have the impact you desire.
You can also see which offers resulted in the best impact previously and work these into your Black Friday marketing strategy too.
#2 ENSURE YOUR SITE CAN BE FOUND VIA SEARCH
It might seem like a simple task, but with everyone upping their game ahead of Black Friday you want to ensure you’re putting your best foot forward if you want to rank for those key terms! Be sure to address the following:
Keyword Research
If you’re looking to create specific Black Friday content then we recommend doing specific business-related keyword research to ensure your tailoring any blog content, product pages or service landing pages to the right phrases. There are several tools you can use (some with trials) to help you do this research such as Google suggests, People Also Ask and Google Trends.
When doing this research, try to look at the actual SERPs to see who is currently ranking for those terms, how they have optimised for those terms and whether it is actually possible to compete. If it is a well-known company with high authority it may be worth looking for more niche terms to target.
Our SERP simulator is a free tool that allows you to compare your Meta Data to that of the top-ranking SERPs for any keyword or phrase - you might find it handy for determining which key terms to go after and how!
You can also leverage Google Search Console to understand how users are already finding your landing page(s), check out you site’s overall performance, filter by season and then choose landing page. This will reveal what users searched to find your page in SERPs.
Competitor Research
What did your competitors produce for Black Friday last year in terms of content? How did their pages look? Can you rework it, add your expertise to it and produce something similar for Black Friday this year? If they are appearing in the search for these terms, then you can too!
Avoid 404s
Check your website for broken links and 404 pages. It’s important that none of your links throw up 404 errors or broken redirect chains. You can use Google Search Console or tools such as Semrush, Screaming Frog and Content King to find any broken links before your users!
#3 OPTIMISE FOR BLACK FRIDAY TERMS
Meta titles, descriptions, H1 titles and image tags can have a HUGE impact on search results and fast.
Using your research, determine which pages you want to optimise for Black Friday and work in your keywords (naturally) across these areas. This is the same for blog content and bespoke landing pages, we also recommend keeping URLs simple where possible i.e., www.yourwebsiteurl.co.uk/black-friday/
Keep your audience at the heart of your optimisations by writing human-centric meta titles and descriptions.
#4 ADD BLACK FRIDAY LANDING PAGES TO YOUR NAVIGATION
Where appropriate, you might want to consider adding your Black Friday landing pages into your main navigation. This helps ensure people can find your pages AFTER they’ve landed on your website, which is especially important for return customers who might not be navigating to your site from specific Black Friday terms.
You could even colour them differently to capture people’s attention. This is especially helpful if you opt to not use website banners (see tip #10) as they work in a similar way, without being too intrusive or slowing your site down.
#5 KEEP YOUR BLACK FRIDAY LANDING PAGES EVERGREEN
We recommend avoiding using dates or years for your landing page URLs, meta titles, descriptions etc. All of these elements to a page are super important to the optimisation of the landing pages on your website. But, when you start adding a date or a year into the text you could potentially jeopardise your click-through rate from Google and from users already on your site and navigating their way around.
For example, if you have a page from the previous year for Black Friday and the meta title reads: Our Top Picks This Black Friday 2021 | Reflect Digital the likelihood is someone searching in 2022 is going to avoid this page as they’ll assume it’s outdated.
What to do instead:
This way your URL will stay alive, year after year, with the following benefits:
#6 CREATE A BLACK FRIDAY-SPECIFIC CONTENT CALENDAR
Having an all-year-round content calendar will help you plan campaigns months in advance to ensure you’re not running behind when it comes to creating new blogs, videos, emails, social posts and more!
As part of this planning process, you’ll be preparing content well in advance of your deadline, giving your business more SEO opportunities. We also recommend considering how Digital PR might play a role in your content calendar, especially when it comes to Black Friday. Building links through publications is a great tactic for increasing visibility and traffic to your site.
Top tip: Create content that answers questions. Google Trends is great for finding exactly what topics your market is interested in. BUT, what you might know about is the Glimpse extension. Glimpse uses Google Trends to provide deeper insights into content trends:
#7 CREATE CONTENT FOR PEOPLE
It’s easy to get wrapped up in producing content to rank on Google. But, you must have a clear picture of what your target market will get from the piece you’re sharing.
Clear headings, bullet points (but not too many), pictures, infographics and quotes can all help to break up your content and make it more digestible. Quotes can also help build credibility too, win-win.
It’s also worth thinking about what can you bring to your piece that your competitors aren’t? What’s your ‘so what?’
#8 INTERNAL LINKS
If you create new content please please please ensure that there are internal links (A) from other pages on the website to your new page and (B) from your new page to other relevant pages on the website. This helps to create a user journey on your website and could potentially keep them on the site for longer, increasing the chances of conversion.
Be sure to try and use the keywords as natural as possible as your hyperlink text to increase authority around those terms for that page. Google will assume that if a user clicked on the keyword anchor text X and goes to page Y and stays on the page to read or even converts to a sale, then page Y must be highly relevant to the keyword X (the anchor text used to send that user to that page).
This is the same logic with someone clicking through to your website from Google SERPS too!
Important: Remember to use the right keywords for the right pages. Refer back to where you mapped your keywords to the target pages and use this as a rule of thumb to avoid cannibalisation!
#9 CALLS TO ACTION
Calls to action are ESSENTIAL.
There is absolutely no point in creating new landing pages or blog content on the website if there is no way for the potential customer to convert into a sale or a lead. Be sure to add internal links to contact us pages or even things like ‘buy now,’ ‘find out more,’ and ‘you may also like…’
It is also important to not just add calls to actions as internal links but also as clear and precise areas within the page such as blocks at the end of the page.
#10 CONSIDER HOMEPAGE BANNERS
Now, pop-ups can often be considered spammy. However, they often convert very well. If you use pop-ups already and these work for you then of course you should be utilising this marketing tactic for the Black Friday shoppers!
However, for an alternative option, we would highly consider creating banners for your homepage if your website development allows for this. Create really eye-catching, on-brand banners highlighting your Black Friday offers. If you plan ahead and plan well, you could change this daily in the lead-up to Black Friday with different offers each day and then hit them with a huge offer on Black Friday that your consumers will not be able to resist!
You have the opportunity to optimise banners too as well as any imagery that you use on your website with your targeted Black Friday keywords.
Whether you’re preparing your website for Black Friday or another holiday, there’s one key thing to keep in mind: do it in advance. A summary of our advice includes:
Looking for more helpful Black Friday content? Take a look at the following insights pieces for more advice:
This article was originally published to Reflect Digital on 27th September 2022.
