“It’s nearly Black Friday. Now is the time to break sales records!”
… That’s something I hear in the days and weeks leading up to Black Friday. But why wait until just before the biggest sales day of the year to remind yourself? Why not ensure everything is planned well in advance? And most importantly – why not include Black Friday as a key part of your SEO strategy?
The battle for customers intensifies each year. That’s why planning is crucial – especially if you recognise yourself in the quote above.
It’s perfectly reasonable that only just before Black Friday do we finally decide which products and categories to focus on. I’m just looking at it through my SEO lens and thinking:
How can I contribute with a long-term strategy that will keep delivering results year after year?
Read on to hear my thoughts and recommendations.
Black Friday SEO in the short term
For those familiar with SEO, it’s no secret that it is a long-term strategy – and this also applies to Black Friday SEO. However, there are short-term actions you can take in the weeks leading up to Black Friday.
Analyse last year’s Black Friday trends
Data, data and more data. Advertising budgets are massive before and during Black Friday. The more budget you allocate to platforms like Facebook and Google Ads, the more data you can extract and utilise.
This data can cover campaigns, products, and specific categories that performed well – or not so well.
When things get hectic in the days leading up to Black Friday, it’s easy to develop tunnel vision. The campaign is set, and we become fixated on just one area.
But… Sometimes the products or campaigns you least expected can actually perform surprisingly well. That’s why it’s worth analysing last year’s trends. Where was demand highest? Where did we exceed expectations? Why did certain products or campaigns perform so well?
Are you relatively new to the market and don’t have your own data yet?
Don’t worry. Google Trends can help you identify trends and gain valuable insights: Google Trends
Use tools like Google Trends to find out if certain services or products peak in November.
Provide essential information for your visitors
This one seems obvious – and you probably think: We tell customers everything we want to.
But here’s the problem: All communication is determined by the recipient! So, just because you communicate what you want, doesn’t mean it’s what your customers or visitors want to hear.
Example:
“Save 40% on bikes this Black Friday.” The classic phrase. We see it everywhere as Black Friday approaches. And yes – it’s a fantastic offer.
But, with this example, you’re not considering those for whom:
- Return policy is essential because it’s a Christmas gift
- Delivery time is crucial
- Shipping should be included in the price
- Right to cancellation is important for the purchase
- They value other parameters above just price
The short summary: Yes, price matters on Black Friday. But my point is that price rarely stands alone. If delivery takes four weeks, there’s no return policy, and shipping is twice as expensive, these are real barriers to purchase.
Get the technical side right
Technical SEO. It can feel complicated – terms like “Schema”, “JavaScript”, “HTML”, and “rendering” are thrown around. The list is long, the issues even longer, and honestly, it can be a daunting task.
So here’s a gift for you: Four straightforward things you can check today!
Test your purchase flow
Is this directly technical SEO? Maybe not. But there are often technical tasks hidden within, especially if changes are needed. I highly recommend you test buying different products from various devices and browsers. Is anything preventing a smooth purchase?
This isn’t just for Black Friday – it applies the other 364 days of the year, too!
Imagine you are searching for a specific product. You care about fast delivery and high response rates. You’re using an iPhone 8 with Google Chrome. Are there any issues?
Repeat this for a range of different scenarios. Some things will be easier to spot than others.
Speed
Your customers are busy, impatient, and ready to buy. All signs point to this Black Friday being your best yet for sales. But a slow website can ruin everything. If your site is slow to load, there are hundreds of competitors ready to snap up your customers.
That’s why I strongly recommend you check your website speed – and do it in good time. You can check it here.
Alongside that tool, use the classic approach: The manual test. “Surf the web” and visit both your website and your competitors’ sites. Are you faster? Are they faster than you?
Once you’ve tested your website speed, don’t hesitate to contact your developer or a reputable web agency. They can assist with everything from analysis to implementation.
Need a helping hand? Read more here.
Can your website handle a ‘traffic boom’?
Traffic and revenue – hopefully – will explode on your website on Black Friday. But are you sure your website can cope with the increased load?
Imagine: It’s March, your annual tax statement is ready, and you want to check if you’re getting a refund. But you’re stuck in a long queue!
This approach might be frustrating for the user, but it’s used to prevent your website from crashing – which would be even worse for everyone. But what can you do?
The best recommendation is to contact your web hosting provider and simply ask: How many visitors can my website handle at once?
From there, you can assess whether you’re well covered in this area – or if they can help you prepare for the upcoming challenge.
Conversion optimisation
Conversion Rate Optimisation, or CRO, is about improving your efforts to increase the number of conversions. A conversion can be many things, and there’s a distinction between hard and soft conversions. Examples of hard conversions include purchases on your webshop, booking a meeting, completing a form, etc.
Soft conversions might be the number of visitors to a specific page, product reviews, time spent on a page, and similar metrics.
But how do you optimise for conversions?
Optimise your Black Friday pages
Your visitors and potential customers are in a hurry on Black Friday. So, it’s vital that the pages you want to drive traffic to (through all channels) quickly signal exactly what users expect. They should immediately identify with the page, its content, and message. If not, there’s a high chance they’ll leave straight away.
Are your USPs clear?
We’ve touched on this – but why should customers choose you? The eternal question, with no single answer. You have some great selling points that parts of your audience value. Show them! While competitors push lower prices, next-day delivery, 100-day free returns, etc., you might stand out for sustainability or free delivery. Sometimes that’s why customers choose you – and sometimes why they don’t.
Quick and frictionless navigation
“All roads lead to Rome.” A classic (if overused) saying, but it’s true in SEO. Think of Rome as your ‘money pages’ – pages that convert, products with low return rates, etc. And all the other pages are the roads that should lead to Rome.
Your customers don’t only arrive via Google – they come through Facebook ads, display banners, news articles, and many other channels, landing on a variety of pages.
Make sure your most visited pages clearly link internally to your money pages. The quicker you can direct visitors there, the more who will see those pages – and the higher your chance of securing the order.
Category and product filtering?
This is a “no-brainer” in my book. We’ve ensured visitors are quickly sent to the pages we want. But every visitor has different preferences, and you probably sell hundreds of products within a single category.
There’s no guarantee they’re searching for a specific product – perhaps just the cheapest or best-selling in that category. Imagine landing on a television page, knowing you want a 55-inch model. How long would it take to sort through them all without a filter?
Exactly.
… and of course, many more actions
Conversion optimisation isn’t a checklist you can follow from A to Z and consider the job done.
There are many elements involved.
Take the time to work on conversion optimisation and follow these recommendations:
- Set a goal. What do you want to achieve with conversion optimisation?
- Define your optimisation. Which categories/services do you want more of?
- Actions. What initiatives will you use to achieve your goal?
By following this approach, you’ll already be well on your way.
With conversion optimisation, it’s about “Fail Fast, Fail Forward”. Have the courage to make changes and to make mistakes. As long as you learn from your errors, it rarely goes horribly wrong. But if you don’t fail quickly, you’ll rarely get that valuable “aha” moment.
Mistakes are good, mistakes are healthy – as long as you learn from them!
Is Black Friday the right time for major tests and changes?
My answer is both yes and no.
No, you shouldn’t change everything overnight and just hope for the best.
But yes, it is an ideal opportunity to make changes, as long as you follow these three points: Goal setting, definition, and actions.
By focusing on a specific area, you can learn from it. What should you do next? What did you gain from the experience? And how much better prepared will you be for next year’s Black Friday?
Summary of a few impactful actions
We’ve covered four actions you can test yourself. Their impact could determine whether you wake up after Black Friday feeling satisfied – or disappointed.
In summary, short-term Black Friday SEO is about delivering an outstanding user experience. Make it easy and convenient for your visitors to complete the desired action. And crucially, get the most out of the traffic you’re paying for through Google Ads and Facebook.
Be willing to test, set ambitious goals, and, above all, don’t be afraid to make mistakes. As long as you learn from them, you’ll keep improving your conversion optimisation.
Don’t forget Cyber Monday – or the Christmas rush!
Wait – we’re not done yet. The Monday after Black Friday is Cyber Monday. Less than a month later, it’s Christmas. This underlines just how critical November and December are for your webshop and business.
The actions we’ve discussed, from purchase flow to speed and handling traffic spikes, don’t only apply to Black Friday. They’re relevant for every major sales event. In fact, these efforts will naturally increase your effectiveness over time.
Imagine if, through these optimisations, you could improve your conversion rate from 1% to 2%? That’s a doubling of conversions without changing your traffic – traffic you’re likely paying for across many channels. Here’s a quick calculation as an example:
Now it’s time to get started. This is a sustainable solution you can launch in the short term – with long-term benefits for your business. Which brings us to: What does Black Friday SEO look like in the long term?
Stick with me a little longer to find out!
Black Friday SEO for the long term
Black Friday – it’s just one day, right? And SEO takes ages to get going and deliver results. Do they even work together?
The short answer: Yes! They work perfectly together. Search behaviour is incredibly complex around Black Friday. What isn’t searched for the other 364 days of the year can see huge search volumes on just one day. Wouldn’t you love to rank highly for these keywords? Of course you would. Here’s exactly what to do – served up on a silver platter!
Conduct a unique Black Friday keyword analysis
If you work with SEO, know about it, or have only heard of it, you’re probably familiar with the term “keyword analysis”. If not, it’s basically the process of determining how much demand there is for the specific keywords that matter to you and your business.
To apply this to Black Friday SEO, the first step is to do exactly that: a keyword analysis focused on Black Friday and your most important keywords. Here’s an example of what it might look like:
This simple analysis demonstrates the demand for my services (bikes) specifically on Black Friday. Great! So I just need to add those keywords to my landing pages, update my page titles, and I’ll rank at the top of Google, right?
If only it were that easy.
Unfortunately, there’s more to it. As we always say at WeMarket: A keyword analysis is completely useless if you don’t actually use it or put it into a concrete action plan. So let me share my recommendations for what you should do next.
Create unique “Black Friday + keyword” landing pages
Just as you do now – or should do if you’re not already – you need to target your content towards different keywords. We’re not optimising keywords – we’re optimising your site and content to match the right intent for one or more search terms.
Before you put your Black Friday keyword analysis to use, make sure you create a “master” Black Friday page. This page should capture potential Google searches like “Brand Name + Black Friday” – for example, “Power Black Friday”.
You can build this page however you like. One idea is the classic Black Friday countdown. You could also collect leads for your newsletter, offering those who sign up a sneak peek at the products and categories that will be discounted.
Now, back to your Black Friday keyword analysis.
Once it’s ready, it’s time to take action! In short, I recommend creating unique and targeted pages for “Black Friday Bikes”, “Cargo Bike Black Friday”, etc. Group your keywords and decide which ones should be included in your content.
When you’re delivering the right content, I can’t emphasise the value of evergreen content enough. Evergreen content is material you can reuse year after year. This way, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every single Black Friday.
If one year you offer 25% off everything, and the next year it’s 40% off selected items, don’t include those specifics. Examples of evergreen content are those that always match your focus: Black Friday + keyword.
Instead, make your pages accessible through navigation. Once Black Friday is over, simply hide the pages. This strengthens your SEO efforts.
In the weeks and months leading up to Black Friday, make sure you use internal links to your Black Friday categories. This way, both users and search engines can easily find your pages. However, there should always be at least one internal link to your Black Friday pages, such as from relevant blog posts.
Black Friday SEO do’s and don’ts
With all SEO, there are some fundamental do’s and don’ts – and the same goes for Black Friday SEO.
This section isn’t too long, as many of the things you should do are already covered above. If you’ve made it this far, you know them all. If not, scroll back and read again – it’s worth it!
Don’t delete your pages once the day is over
Now, let’s talk about what you shouldn’t do. The core of SEO is optimising existing content or creating new material. When you add new content, it can take weeks or months for Google to find and index your page – let alone for it to reach page 1 or the top of Google.
So, it’s vital not to delete your Black Friday pages when the day is over. Otherwise, you’ll have to start from scratch again next year. Instead, hide these pages from your navigation until next time – and make them visible when Black Friday approaches.
Year in the URL
Continuing from above, these pages should contain evergreen content and shouldn’t be deleted. Make sure they’re suitable for every Black Friday – this year, next year, and for years to come. So, don’t add the year to your page URLs. This ties you down when you work on Black Friday SEO in the future.
Taking the bike example, I recommend structuring your URLs like this:
yourwebsite.com/black-friday-bikes
yourwebsite.com/black-friday-bikes/cargo-bike
yourwebsite.com/black-friday-bikes/electric-bike
yourwebsite.com/black-friday-bikes/womens-bike
yourwebsite.com/black-friday-bikes/kids-bike
yourwebsite.com/black-friday-bikes/racing-bike
yourwebsite.com/black-friday-bikes/electric-cargo-bike
It’s important to stress that your URL structure depends a lot on your industry, CMS, and current site structure.
Highlight the year – for example, “Black Friday Bikes 2022” – in other ways.
Add the year to your page title, meta description, headings, and the anchor text you use for internal linking.
The common thread here is that you can easily change and optimise these elements without much hassle. Just do it well ahead of Black Friday to give search engines time to assess your content before the big day. SEO is about sending the right signals in good time. The more signals we send to search engines, the better.
Speaking of signals, structured data is one of the most powerful signals your business can send.
Implementing Schema on Black Friday pages
I won’t go into too much detail here. You can read much more about structured data here.
In brief, structured data is about tagging relevant information. This information is pure gold for search engines. They crawl your HTML code, allowing you to signal that you’re running Black Friday offers and in which niche or sector. As with all SEO, do this well in advance. It can take time for Google to crawl your page, find your optimisations, and index them.
FAQ Schema
On your “master” Black Friday page, use FAQ Schema. You can read much more about it here.
This allows you to tag questions and answers and have them appear directly in search results. For example:
When is Black Friday 2023?
Does “brand” have Black Friday deals in 2023?
etc.
This is what it looks like when implemented correctly.
Sales Event Schema
Black Friday is a defined sales event – also called a Sales Event. There is, of course, a specific Sales Event Markup for this purpose. The code looks like this – just update the red highlighted sections to suit your business:
<script type=’application/ld+json’>
{
“@context”: “https://www.schema.org”,
“@type”: “SaleEvent”,
“name”: “Black Friday 2022“,
“url”: “https://wemarket.fi/black-friday/“, “description”: “Grab a bargain and book a meeting today.”, “startDate”: “2022-11-25T00:00“,
“endDate”: “2022-26-28T00:00“,
“location”: {
“@type”: “Place”,
“name”: “WeMarket“,
“sameAs”: “https://wemarket.fi“, “address”: {
“@type”: “Text”, “streetAddress”: “”, “addressLocality”: “”
} }
} </script>
All you need to do is copy this code, update the highlighted sections, and paste it onto your page. Easy. Now, search engines have plenty of information about your business and Black Friday.
You can add more elements than those in the code above. Read more about it here.
Summary
*Deep breath*
– And let’s wrap up. There is almost certainly more potential in your Black Friday SEO strategy than you think.
There are plenty of smaller areas you can address in the short term, like purchase flow, site speed, and the overall user experience. These don’t just deliver results on Black Friday – they have benefits all year round and far into the future.
The long-term strategy takes more effort. It requires detailed analysis, content creation, and adjustments at odd times – both before and after Black Friday. See this blog post as your armour for the Battle for Customers. You are now ready – happy Black Friday from WeMarket.
