In some cases yes, for others there may yet be time. Regardless of industry, there are some fundamental ways to properly handle your holiday pages.

Planning is crucial. Since it takes several months to build up authority in the major search engines, any page you want to rank during a specific time period needs to be developed and launched at least three months in advance. It is ideal to plan six months ahead of time from important seasons, and to determine what keywords to target, what content is needed to support these keywords, and what link development efforts will be undertaken.

Ensure that you know your business goals, high-ticket products or services, and any other factors that contribute to a successful holiday season for your company. This information will fuel your campaign and help you to stay on track with your SEO efforts.

Keyword research is always the starting point for SEO. Conduct research that takes into account the increase in seasonal demand – what types of keywords has your target audience used in previous years during this same period of time? Has there been an increase in certain types of search terms based on the economy, such as “discount”?

Next, develop new content or optimize existing relevant pages with your target keywords. Keep in mind that an existing page should already have history and authority with the search engines, which might help you get ahead with favorable rankings in search results. If you are starting from scratch, make sure that you are linking from powerful areas of your site, such as the Home page. Often the HTML sitemap has good strength as well, so holiday pages should be listed here.

Finally, plan out your link development efforts. If you’re starting with a new page, aggressive link development is needed to position your content within the top search results. Even existing pages will have to have extensive link development efforts to compete for highly-searched keywords.

What’s the bottom line? Plan ahead! Creating new pages right before the holidays is a recipe for failure. Keep your holiday pages live all-year long if possible, so that the strength they achieve each year isn’t lost. Adjust your keyword and content strategies each year as the search market changes – if consumers are interested in plastic angels one year, and animatronic reindeer the next, make sure your keywords and content are geared specifically to these trends.

For help planning your holiday marketing efforts, contact Rosetta.