Preparing for Peak as a marketing manager or an in-house SEO can feel like a huge challenge. Not only do you have existing, ongoing responsibilities to handle, you now have to prepare for the busiest time of the year, too.
Whether it’s Black Friday deals, Christmas promotions or January sales, it’s the time of year that many businesses make their money.
| In the UK, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Boxing Day, and January sales typically represent a large proportion of total annual sales and are the key eCommerce peaks. eCommerce retailers report up to a 240% and 380% increase in revenue on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, respectively. (Whistl) |
As a marketing and SEO professional, what should you do to ensure your website is ready for Peak season?
We’ve run enough peak-season SEO campaigns for our eCommerce clients to know which levers to pull to move the needle and actually deliver results and ROI.
In this practical and to-the-point guide, we’ve listed our top SEO tactics to help you prepare and optimise your website for the upcoming Peak season.
1. Start Planning for Peak Early
When thinking about SEO campaigns in particular, it’s critical to start planning early. If there’s new content in the pipeline as part of the campaign, it needs time to get crawled and ranked before the promotion, campaign, or launch.
Similarly, integrating SEO plans with other channels is key – SEO can help inform other areas, such as PPC and social media, but this only works if everyone is on the same page.
Proper planning will ensure your website is in a prime position at the right time before Peak arrives.
| When to Start | Start thinking about this at the end of Q2 or the start of Q3 at the latest |
| Useful Tools | Monday.com, Slack, Infinity |
| Timeframe | It can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 weeks for campaign planning |
2. Analyse Past Peak Performance
As part of the planning process, you should be looking at past performance to help inform your future strategy.
Take a deep dive into GA4 and look at metrics such as sessions, conversion rates and landing page revenue during previous Peak periods. This will give you an understanding of what worked well in the past and what areas need improvement.
In other words, using a data-driven approach to SEO will guide your decisions for the upcoming Peak season.
| When to Start | Factor analysing past performance into your planning sessions |
| Useful Tools | GA4, Google Search Console, ahrefs, SEMrush |
| Timeframe | 1 week to gather the data, 2-4 weeks to analyse and find insights |
3. Run an Audit to Identify Major Tech SEO Issues
Peak isn’t a time to roll out a site-wide tech SEO strategy. However, identifying and fixing issues that impact search viability and the customer journey is a must.
For example, do you have key pages that are slow to load or not optimised for mobile? Are there broken links or duplicate content that could be negatively affecting your rankings?
Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and Screaming Frog will identify major issues like these, which can significantly impact your website’s performance, so you can prioritise fixing them before the Peak season begins.
| When to Start | Run this around 1 month out from when you plan to start tech SEO work |
| Useful Tools | Screaming Frog, PageSpeed Insights |
| Timeframe | 1 week to gather the data, 1 week to analyse and prioritise fixes |
4. Create Newsworthy Content & Campaigns for Backlinks
Are you launching a new product or running a newsworthy promo or campaign? Getting links back to your website from authoritative, high-quality sources is a great way to boost your pages’ visibility in the SERPs.
Kicking this off at the start of your peak campaign will ensure you get links back in time for them to make a difference when it matters.
Sometimes, publishers can take weeks or even months to publish content, so plan ahead and reach out to them early.
| When to Start | At least 8 weeks out from campaign or product launch |
| Useful Tools | GA4, Google Search Console, ahrefs, SEMrush |
| Timeframe | 1 week to write PR pieces, 2 weeks of distribution, 4 weeks waiting for placements to go live |
5. Align SEO Content to Trends from Other Platforms
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Noticed a trend on socials that might fit your product range or audience? It’s highly likely that your customers are also searching for it on Google.
To capture this traffic, create landing pages, collection or category pages, tutorial pages and blogs.
Doing this will introduce your brand to a new audience and drive higher awareness, website traffic and online sales. Plus, it reinforces your brand as relevant and up-to-date with current trends.
| When to Start | Start this process when you start thinking about your content strategy |
| Useful Tools | TikTok, Pinterest, Google Trends |
| Timeframe | 1 week to gather the data, 2-4 weeks to analyse and find insights |
6. Optimise Category Page Content for SEO
If your eCommerce category pages currently have products and nothing else, you’re not providing a great user experience.
At this stage of the customer journey, customers are still browsing and may not know exactly what they’re looking for.
By adding informative and engaging content, such as collection page descriptions, FAQs, customer reviews and related blog posts and videos, you can showcase your products in a more compelling way and encourage potential customers to make a purchase.
Not only does this improve the user experience, but it also helps with SEO.
By incorporating relevant keywords into the category page content, you can increase your chances of ranking higher in search engine results for those specific keywords, giving you greater online coverage.
| When to Start | Aim to get all changes live at least 4 weeks before campaign or promotion goes live |
| Useful Tools | ahrefs, SEMrush, GA4, Google Search Console |
| Timeframe | 1 week to gather the data, 2 weeks to analyse and find insights, 2 weeks to write and publish category/collection page copy |
7. Optimise Product Page UX & Descriptions for SEO
Customers want essential information served up swiftly and clearly, and want to be able to checkout quickly and easily. Any barriers are not useful and are likely to result in lost sales.
To optimise your product page user experience, focus on providing essential information in a clear and organised way.
This includes high-quality product images, detailed descriptions, key features and specifications, and customer reviews.
Product descriptions should be informative and concise, highlighting the benefits and unique selling points of your product. Use bullet points or numbered lists to break up the text and make it easier to read.
| When to Start | At least 8 weeks out from when you want changes to go live |
| Useful Tools | Microsoft Clarity, GA4 |
| Timeframe | 1-2 weeks to gather the data, 2-4 weeks to analyse and make recommendations, 2-4 weeks to implement recommendations |
8. Update Meta Titles & Descriptions in Line With Promos
If you’re running promos or campaigns during Peak, this should carry through to every piece of online real estate you have, including meta titles and descriptions.
Keeping these updated will help increase click-through rates and could even promote higher ranks due to better interaction in the SERP. It’s also a great way to differentiate from retailers, suppliers and competitors.
| When to Start | As soon as the promo or campaign goes live |
| Useful Tools | Google Search Console, ahrefs, SEMrush |
| Timeframe | 1 day to write and upload new meta titles and descriptions |
A Note On Peak SEO Planning & Strategy
In order to run a successful Peak SEO campaign, planning is critical.
Every campaign should be planned from start to finish, with key dates, objectives, and actions clearly defined. This will ensure your website has the best chance of ranking during peak times when competition is at its highest.
Part of the planning process means engaging all key stakeholders, including content writers, designers, developers, and marketing teams, so everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals and dates.
Set internal KPIs that you want to measure while the campaign is running, too.
It’s not just about getting to Peak with a plan. Is your plan working, and are you making the most of your Peak opportunities? Do parts of the plan need to be tweaked?
Staying on top of your data is crucial.
Make the Changes That Matter Most for Peak SEO Performance!
Ultimately, you want to achieve the best results you can for the budget or hours you have allocated to your SEO project. The only way to do this is by focusing on the actions and metrics that matter the most.
To get these insights, you need to dig into your data, review your competitors, and look at what’s happening with consumers in your market. Is UX and ease of purchase more important than great product imagery? Does price matter more than a well-crafted product description?
While there are plenty of factors that influence a customer’s purchase decision, focusing on the ones that have the most impact will lead to better SEO results.
So take the time to analyse your data, prioritise your actions, and make those crucial changes that will bring you to the top of search engine rankings this Peak!
Get a FREE SEO audit to kick off your Peak planning
