Guide for a strategic Black Friday SEO plan

Preparing for Black Friday is something that is constantly changing for everyone year after year for both users and websites, whether it is due to changes in trends, the evolution of search engines or the progression of our business.

This is why it is necessary to to have clear points on which to pivot and work with our web siteWe have to be able to adapt to all these changes in a simpler and safer way. So, from Geotelecom, as SEO agencywe will share with you the keys to have a strategic plan to improve your SEO on Black Friday.

First of all, it should be made clear that by the time you are reading this it may already be too late. SEO is slow, a year ahead, and when you work well in advance is when you really get good results.

However, this does not mean that you cannot start now and opt to have in the future (near or distant) a good positioning of your website for the next Black Friday. Also consider that it is possible that your competitors have not started either or have not prepared well and you can surpass them.

WHAT IS AN SEO STRATEGIC PLAN?

As in many other disciplines, especially in the field of online marketing, this type of plan is aimed at outlining a series of tasks to achieve a goalin the case of SEO, being the to position our website at the top for specific keywords or searches.

What changes to apply to the web, how to review the searches made by users in other years or study your competition are some of the points that are applied in Black Friday in this kind of strategic plans. Having them is very important since it allows you to be prepared and have your website positioned and optimized in advance in order to be able to climb in time for the appointed date.

HOW TO DETERMINE THE POTENTIAL OF YOUR WEBSITE AND BUSINESS

Let's start with the starting point. What you can achieve will obviously be marked by these two pillars since, if your business does not fit the Black Friday model or your website does not allow you to develop actions to improve positioning, there will be no option to fight to be the first.

Thus, the first point would be, on the one hand, to examine the feasibility of develop your business during Black Friday online and, on the other hand, to analyze the potential of your website and other organic channels to improve your positioning.

In terms of SEO on your website, the most important things to consider are be able to create new pages within your domain that can be worked on to focus on our target keywords, in this case those related to Black Friday.

This involves not only to be able to work on the content of these pagesbut also to be able to make more technical optimizations such as those that affect how your website is displayed in the search results (SERPS), those that improve performance and loading speed, or those that optimize search engine crawling.

All of the above is helpful in order to optimize your new pages to the maximum, although not everything is required to get to the top. Of course, the more you can improve, the more likely you are to succeed.

On the other hand, they also have a great deal of freedom for adjust the design of your pagesIn addition to helping in the above, it will also allow you to improve the user experience (UX) of whoever enters those pages and you can better direct your content to achieve the objectives you are looking for (CRO) during this Black Friday campaign.

To be added, rely on other channels or complementsas Youtube o My BusinessThe use of a web site is very useful in some types of business because it helps not only to attract traffic, but also to be able to integrate into the web easily.

PREPARING FOR BLACK FRIDAY

Now that we know what we can start working with, let's determine what we are going to focus on for the Black Friday campaign. In this case we should focus on three steps:

• Our goal for Black FridayThis starts from the most general, which would be to sell, attract traffic or get contacts among others; to the most concrete, such as what product you are going to sell, what user profile you are interested in attracting or for what purpose you are looking to get contacts. This is essential because it marks the entire approach, from the initial research that lays the foundations for the development of the SEO plan and other channels, to the creation and finalization of the page that will fight for positioning.
• Study of the KeywordsThe search trend analysis: this is done to learn about search trends both in previous years and in the past few months to keep abreast of trends. The data extracted here will largely determine how the rest of the strategic plan evolves. It may also be interesting to look at other channels by doing this as they can help us to see previous user behavior or how they search in fully transactional environments, such as Amazon.
• Competitive analysisWe can learn where our competitors are in order to learn and take advantage of what they have succeeded in. It also has weight as far as keywords are concerned since we can get ideas and see which ones have been able to work better for them.

It should be said that you don't just have to close yourself to your direct competition. The term Black Friday is exploited by all the online marketplaces during those days, so you analyze in other sectors can help you to come up with new ideas or to see optimizations that do not exist in your circle of competitors.

You can also be guided by some of the points we highlight from SEO positioning strategies for Black Friday in another of our blog posts.

DETERMINE THE ACTION PLAN

This is where the annual plan to be followed for the Black Friday campaignThe company's marketing strategy is based on the following factors that affect all marketing channels and departments.

SEO needs to be done well in advance.around 3 months minimumWe have already carried out the creation of pages or modifications for SEO optimization and that these are positioned and gaining positions so that on the dates of Black Friday you can be at the top.

This does not mean that you should have decided all the points in advance, but the most important ones that affect the keywords to be positioned, the objective and the content of the page so that it does not undergo radical changes every so often or shortly before its moment to shine.

Based on this, a series of the most relevant elements could be highlighted, without emphasizing the most general ones such as duration, although there may be many others depending on the peculiarity of each one. These elements are:

• Target KeywordsAfter all of the above, it is necessary to determine what the SEO will focus on during Black Friday, thus closing the themes of the pages in order to further optimize the keywords to be applied both in the content and in the technical aspects.
• Application of offersThe following are just a part of the variety of options that are given to attract the user. This has its implication on the development of the pages and focus content on SEO.
• General SEO actionsYou must determine which page models are going to be used, how many, for what purpose and also knowing which paths you want to create for the user with each one. We will discuss the page model to be chosen later on. It should also be noted whether it is possible to connect with other channels, so that you can work together and come out with a cohesive Black Friday campaign with great potential.
• Page design and contentIt is not necessary to close it completely, but it is necessary to determine which elements are going to appear, since the SEO is going to work from them. This is where you can make proposals and evaluations of points or totally SEO aspects that can help positioning, to make them fit in time with the final idea.
• Other aspectsif it is to be carried out linkbuildingIf it is going to be worked from previous months with other contents and pages or only for key days, images and banners, how it will be linked on the web, if these pages will be used in other channels, etc.

OPTIONS TO CARRY OUT ON BLACK FRIDAY

When making the action plan for SEO, there are certain possible scenarios to carry out, so let's detail some of the aspects to take into account.

Black Friday approachDepending on the objective you are looking for at this time and your type of business, the SEO work will take one side or another.

• Ecommerce and servicesIn the case of the sale of products or services, it is very possible that we want to focus on certain specific products, brands or categories. In this case, we must be clear that we must also optimize these pages because they are where users will end up. In addition, it is convenient to make a good internal linking to favor the crawling of the page, since they are usually large webs.
• Contacts or leadsIn these webs it will be very important to give information about what you offer and to have related contents in other pages that link to it.
• User attractionHere it comes into play to study very well the keywords to be worked and to prepare previous related contents that reinforce the Black Friday pages. It is also necessary to bet a lot on informative and helpful content for the Black Friday period.

Black Friday page optionsTo determine how many pages to have, you have to look at the number of keywords you want to target for positioning. However, how they will be at the level of design and distribution is something that you are going to draw. There are usually recommendations based on the purpose of the page, but this does not mean that you can make several types, combine concepts or make them all the same.

• Categoriesis common in ecommerce because it is easy to make, but not to optimize, and allows to show many products. When it comes to SEO, it can be done in the same way as others, as long as the store template allows you to make changes and add content. The bad thing is that you are tied to the overall design of the web, except if it is a custom web or with very high customization option.
• Landingsare the most versatile, can be made from scratch or based on templates of your website, allowing greater freedom to include what you want. They have both an informative profile and a showcase of products or services, which gives you more optimization facilities and more possible to make a design for the user. You can learn more about this page model in our post on how to optimize a landing page for Black Friday.
• Blog postsThese are informative in their entirety, although they can include products and are the best tool to prepare the user before Black Friday. It is best to bet on keywords long tailhave less competition and can more easily achieve a good positioning. They must be related to your main keywords and correspond to the user's conversion funnel, in such a way that they solve doubts related to your product or service.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE SEO ACTION PLAN

Once everything has been decided, the only thing left to do is to carry it out. As we mentioned above, the ideal is to have that page or pages aimed at working on your Black Friday campaign as soon as possible. But if you don't, at least 2-3 months before the date of the event. with respect to the key date.

The only exception is blog posts which, as is logical, have to be published during the previous weeks to answer questions about all the searches that users are doing to prepare and choose their star product.

Normally these pages keep a more informative aspect and call to keep abreast of what may happen. In the end, the offers or promotions that are going to be launched will not be shown unless it is very clear and there is no fear of competition. Even so, you can take advantage of this to make reference to other offers in the meantime if you want and encourage the possibility of conversion.

While all this is going on and Black Friday is coming up, make sure you follow a few key but obvious points about on-page SEO:

• That the content of the page is relevant and responds to the keyword you have chosen to targetThe purpose of this is to ensure that Google understands its purpose and does not confuse it because it ends up relating it to another term or objective of the page.
• That the technical optimization (meta robots, structured data, etc.) support that content while allowing for crawling and indexing.. At this point it is usually important to link these pages to the rest of the website. For example, through the footer or a site map. If you control well what appears, there would be no problem if there were users who enter it, it can even be used to encourage people to join your site. newsletter to be aware when the offers start.
• Review its status after completion and launch before the big day. This is important given that from the development side to external agents such as search engines or the market can make unexpected changes and catch you unprepared and out of time for when you are going to put all your offers.

A change in page styles, a change in Google's algorithm or a change in user trends may require modifications in order to avoid losing the work done.

Other tasks such as have the page indexed by Google via Search Consolea good link on the web, or even linkbuilding strategiesare common during the period when the site is already developed and waiting for Black Friday to approach.

Finally, when the time comes it will be time to make the changes in order to get the pages ready so that users can enter and take advantage of your Black Friday campaign, if your website resists the increase of users and does not end up throwing a server error.

BALANCE AND PREPARATION FOR NEXT YEAR

Once the Black Friday period is over, as in any strategic plan, the only thing left to do is to make the control of everything that happenedAnalyze the results obtained and determine which things worked, which did not and how did the results compare to the objectives you had planned to achieve.

About the resultsIn the case of SEO, it is worth bearing in mind the SEO maxim that achieving a good position takes timeeven more so in a season with so much competition. It is possible to be the first in Google searches in your first year, but it is better to be realistic or cautious and aim for lower levels, letting seniority support you to achieve it in the coming years. It is also important to pay attention to the difference between main keywords and long tails both in terms of the traffic they can achieve and the difficulty they have in positioning themselves.

As an added highlight, look at the bounce rate, the average stay and use tools to track user sessions, it will help you understand many things about the functioning of your design, the performance of the website and the offers you have made. With this you will be able to improve substantially for future years and will serve as a reinforcement to understand more about your website and business for your overall Black Friday strategic plan.

Finally, what do we do with all the work that has been done? Well, luckily in SEO this can be taken advantage of. Your pages must be maintained year after yearso that they achieve seniority and do not have to work on their positioning again.

The only necessary changes would be, at the end of the year, to change everything that refers to that year's Black Friday to update it to next year's, so that next year's search intentionality is already working.

With all this, you will already have the strategic SEO plan for Black Friday ready, waiting to execute it again the following year. You would only have to follow the same steps, except for creating new pages if you are going to target different keywords compared to the previous year.

The best thing about all this is that can be applied to any campaignWhether it's for this Christmas or next year, this strategic plan will work for all of them.