Black Friday SEO – the top 4 tips to prepare for the festive season

As the cliche goes, the year really has flown by. As well as it is the time to bring out those oversized puffer jackets and Doc Martens, the digital age heralds the latest edition of our favourite time of the year. No, it’s not Christmas; instead, enter the somewhat ominously phrased ‘Black Friday’ (probably needs a rebrand); it is now a staple part of the holiday season, with retailers offering shoppers cut-price deals on a range of product ranges.

However, with the cost of living crisis engulfing the UK, signalling a shift in consumer habits, it is more important than ever to keep SEO at the forefront of your mind when looking to maximise the benefits of Black Friday. Indexation and ranking within Google is not an overnight phenomenon, hence it requires the help of an SEO agency to plan what needs to be done in the weeks and months prior. The below four tips will leave you in the best place to navigate this busy period and futureproof you for the next, no matter what the Google algorithm updates throw at you.

1. Build An Evergreen Black Friday Landing Page early

From an SEO perspective, an evergreen landing page dedicated to Black Friday is the optimal way to continuously be visible year in and year out. This will save you time having to build out a new page each year, and keep the authority built over time without the need to no index or redirect outdated pages from previous years.

✅ https://www.example.co.uk/black-friday

❌ https://www.example.co.uk/black-friday-2023-deals

As shown in the landing page below, Watford FC have created a bespoke Black Friday page which allows users to sign up for early access. 

As a result, it ensures we reach customers who are already searching for Black Friday deals in anticipation of the date itself, familiarising themselves with the site as a whole. Once the Black Friday landing page and any associated thematic pages have been created, it is important to add them to your XML sitemap and navigation. Therefore, they will continue to generate valuable traffic from Black Friday and holiday-related searches preceding weeks and months.

2. Target Long-Tail Keywords

Integrating deeper pages targeting long-tail keywords into your Black Friday SEO strategy will help to maintain your appeal to a diverse range of shoppers by offering a speciality that aligns with key product areas.  

See Nike’s varying Black Friday pages based on product categories: 

Attracting relevant traffic is the best way to improve your Black Friday sales, and long-tail keywords play a vital role in this. Matching these keywords with user intent will increase the likelihood of conversions, with examples of such keywords being ‘Black Friday trainer deals’ or ‘Mens Black Friday trainer discounts’.  

These keywords will invariably have less search volume than the more generic terms. However, they capture a much more niche audience who are further along the conversion funnel. Optimising the content and metadata, such as the titles and descriptions, to better match search intent will also form a part of this strategy.

See the below example: 

3. Improve The Overall UX & CRO

Shoppers want to find offers on websites easily and smoothly, as well as avoid the frustration of coming across out-of-stock products which are not updated. As seen with ASOS, a landing page with clear CTA signposting key offers is desirable as part of an overall strategy for Black Friday.

To avoid a high bounce rate of users exiting the website, there are a number of best practice recommendations which should be implemented.  As standard, Core Web Vitals play an important role in improving the overall page experience, specifically ensuring it loads with optimal speed.

At Distinctly, we conduct Core Web Vitals audits to assess the capabilities of your website from a mobile perspective to provide recommendations on improving the mobile experience.  

Recommendations for optimising the mobile experience can include the following:

• Compressing images
• Caching unused Javascript
• Lazy loading images
• Pre-loading LCP 

In addition, you can leverage your USPs to promote customer retention and brand loyalty via the following:

• Same day delivery
• 100% money-back guarantee
• Authentic reviews
• Product comparisons (‘You may also like’)
• Social proof
  

Therefore, regularly testing your mobile performance using tools such as Page Speed Insights and Lighthouse will maintain a strong SEO posture for your Black Friday strategy. A combination of these factors, alongside faceted navigation, are the foundations for improving the overall UX and CRO of the website for Black Friday.

4. Ensure Smooth Mobile Experience

A crucial consideration to make when implementing a Black Friday strategy for SEO is to ensure the website is mobile-friendly and loads all the required elements to fit a mobile screen. A Salesforce study revealed that in 2022, mobile devices made up a staggering 76% of Cyber Week eCommerce traffic, including Black Friday. As such, making sure that it is responsive to different screen sizes will mean that shoppers are more likely to remain on the site and click through to product deals, ultimately driving conversions. 

As seen in the below example for Nike’s Black Friday landing page, there are a series of features which are ideal for Black Friday:

• ‘Free Delivery & Returns’ banner
• ‘Nike Black Friday 2023’ H1 tag
• Clear navigation bar
• ‘Filter’ option to improve UX

An SEO strategy for Black Friday is now essential in the digital age, with shoppers eager to search for the best deals out there within a short timeframe.  We have listed the top 4 tips to keep in mind when devising your SEO strategy for Black Friday, keeping the user experience at the forefront. Contact us today to find out more about the SEO services we offer here.