When's The Best Time to Start Doing SEO for the Holiday Season?

Do You Have A Search Engine Optimization Strategy In Place for the Holidays? 

We know it's early, but as the holidays creep up closer and closer, it’s not uncommon that businesses reach out to us and ask things like “How can I rank #1 for my best search term?” “When do I need to get started for my holiday SEO?” or “Can I start a website redesign and have it done by Halloween?” 

As the year comes to a close, we see a diversion in service businesses and eCommerce business. For service businesses like engineers, architects, and lawyers, business can slow down a little because people are focused on the holidays. For eCommerce businesses, this is the time of year where your sales ramp up and you are often at your busiest. Either way, whether you’re hoping for more business or wanting to optimize those already coming to you, now’s the time to get started on your SEO strategy.

First, if you keep reading SEO and have no idea what I’m talking about, check out one of our blogs on SEO. Next, let’s understand how long SEO takes to start working. 

How long does organic SEO take to start working?

Immediate results are not really an option. The first couple weeks of your SEO strategy will be researching, doing competitor analysis, and auditing your current SEO status and deciding the best strategy to move forward with. We promise it’s better to crawl before you walk in this sense because you’ll be moving forward with a data driven strategy rather than random guesses about keywords. 

After the audit, onsite optimization will occur. This means technical SEO work that is done behind the scenes; meta-tagging, backlinking, correcting headers, etc. From there, we recommend ongoing SEO content creation, like expanding your service pages and blogging. 

So how fast will you see results? With organic SEO some users see results within a couple weeks, while others it can take up to a few months. It’s dependant upon the age and authority of your domain (how long your website has been up and the number of people linking back to your site), the keywords you are hoping to go for (how popular they are and the space you are in), and a few other more technical factors.

That being said, if you're afraid to start now thinking your SEO will kick in after a couple weeks, the good thing about SEO strategy is it just keeps getting better over time. The more continual optimization you are doing, the more powerful your site becomes. That means, even if you see results pretty quickly, you'll continue to see better and more results as the holiday season approaches. 

But what if I want a faster option? 

That’s where we recommend using Google AdWords, Pay-Per-Click strategies, and retargeting ads. These strategies can be implemented quicker, but still take some time to see the results you desire. They require account set-up and initiation, but then it takes time to perfect the bidding and . All of our work is based off of ongoing optimization and it takes time for Google to recognize the changes made on your site. 

The success of your PPC campaign is based on both the time invested and keywords you’re after. If you have a crowded market with words capturing large bids, it can take awhile to perfect the market and decide the best strategy for going after those. One thing that does help with PPC is engaging with organic SEO, email marketing, and social media marketing along with your PPC campaign, because it builds brand awareness to help boost your PPC results.

So when should I start SEO for the holiday season? 

In case you haven’t guessed… right now! In order to do the research necessary, allow for Google bots to crawl your site, and to accurately prepare, it’s good to start as soon as possible if you want to be up and seeing results by the holiday season. 

Not only does it take awhile to really ramp up, we also recommend that you are doing the heavy lifting work now before the holiday season gets busy (or the opposite, dies down!) Take the time to prepare and be proactive about your digital marketing strategy. Future you will thank you, we promise!

Ready to get your holiday SEO strategy started? 

We’ve got the team ready to help you. We’d love to help you prepare, strategize, and forecast to end your year strong. Reach out to one of our digital strategists through our contact form, or call us at 206.384.4909 and let’s get your strategy going.