The winter season is typically the most profitable for online retailers. Each year the percentage of shopping done online continues to increase, making ecommerce sites increasingly important, even for most brick and mortar stores. This makes it critical that your site is ready for the holiday season with not just the best SEO services, but with the right content to attract holiday sales.

Keywords

As we all know, good keyword use is vital for good search engine rankings. What you might not consider is the impact of keywords on holiday shopping. While you can hope that most shoppers search for products by name or by your company name, you don’t want to miss out on any holiday or Christmas references.

Rather than revising the keywords from your main website pages, your best strategy is to use Christmas and holiday-related keywords on specific pages that relate to seasonal items. If your products don’t include many season-specific offerings, your blog can be a good place to feature holiday shopping-related keywords. You might also consider adding a new website page specifically targeting holiday-related frequently asked questions. This would be a chance to add keywords while providing valuable information and assistance to potential customers.

Highlight Gift Ideas

It may seem obvious to you that your products would make great gifts, but that is not necessarily obvious to your site visitors. Your blog is the perfect place to give visitors ideas for gifts. Think of the categories of people who are difficult to shop for and provide ideas for solutions to the frustrated shoppers who visit your site.  Perhaps they never considered buying an apron for their dad but your site features fun, manly designs their dad would love. Without your suggestion, they probably would never have visited the apron portion of your site to find this perfect gift.

Blog It

Bring the holidays to life on your blog. Upbeat, festive articles will help get visitors into the holiday spirit. Christmas and other winter themes will help provide holiday inspiration while the content encourages shoppers to buy. Set the theme of happy times and highlight the gifts that recipients will want to receive. Keep in mind that your blog doesn’t need to simply focus on your products. Try to provide a range of information that is fun and helpful to your site’s visitors.

Highlight Speedy Service

Timing is always important for holiday shoppers. No one wants to get their heart set on a particular purchase only to find it is out of stock or shipping prohibitively expensive. Even worse is the prospect of ordering items that don’t arrive by Christmas or Hanukkiah. Add a banner to highlight your free shipping, fast turnaround, or even guarantees that items will arrive on time. Any assurances or incentives should be front and centre to encourage shoppers to stay on your site and complete their purchases.

Be Clear

While people might take a chance on purchases for themselves, busy holiday shoppers are less likely to buy items if there is too much uncertainly. Your product descriptions need to be clear and accurate so that shoppers feel confident that their purchase will match their expectations. Check your product pages now to make sure sizing information is clearly posted, that the materials, qualities, and other details are explained. The rest of the year site visitors might simply contact your company to ask for clarification, fewer people will have the luxury of spending that kind of time once the holidays near.

To make your company’s holidays happy, take a few minutes now to make sure your website is helping to make the selling season successful. A little extra effort now could pay off tremendously on your company’s bottom line.