Keyword for the Holidays: Prepare!

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The holidays are just around the corner and your site should be fully prepared to service the volume of expected visitors. Traffic and sales increase during the holiday season. Sometimes this season is a flash between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but for others it lasts from October to January. Whatever your traffic pattern, if you want to have a successful holiday season, now is the time to make a plan and review it twice.

Here are some basic tips to consider:

• Break out your budget and review it. Make necessary modifications now instead of scrambling in November.
• Hire and train the holiday staff. Don't wait. New employees need time to become proficient before the rush hits.
• Take the time now to give your site a thorough inspection and ensure that it will sustain the expected traffic.
• Update your site's content. Make sure to continually add relevant information and keep product descriptions up to date.
• Build your holiday pages early. Introduce seasonal graphics at the beginning of November
• Consider your website from an end-user perspective. The goal is to make finding information as simple as possible.
• Give your visitors gift ideas that relate to the people in their life. Do your research and come up with some suggestions, such as gift guides for different customer types.
• Work out any special Web cross-marketing promotions and line up your holiday advertising campaigns.
• Perform search engine optimization. The goal of search engine optimization is to get your pages listed on those critical first pages.

Here are some basic rules for search engine optimization. Apply these to every page, because each page of your site is a separate entity:

• Choose appropriate keywords or phrases for each page. Phrasing matters, so use the most popular ones.
• Put the keywords or phrases that you've chosen in the page's title tag, meta keywords and meta description.
• Make sure your selected keywords or phrases are repeated wisely throughout the content of the page. But don't overdo it; your page may be rejected as spam.
• Give each page an appropriate title that includes the keyword or phrase at least once.
• Don't use your business name as the title for every page. Your headline must emphasize a clear benefit of your product. A well-written headline has the power to double – or even triple – your sales overnight.

Do whatever it takes to get your site ready for the holiday season now. Every day you wait is another day of missed opportunities and lost profits. If you've worked hard to build and refine your site, this holiday shopping season should be profitable for you.

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