As the holiday season ushers in, consumers are all eyes and ears on this year’s huge annual shopping event: Black Friday. Starting on November 27th, consumers will make their way to different websites and apps in hopes to get the best deals online. So, is your website ready?
It’s indeed the season of giving, so Google has shared some guidance on best SEO practices for companies setting up their Black Friday and Cyber Monday landing pages. If you’re reading this, then you want to be ahead of the game in Google search results, so let’s start!
Use recurring URLs
A simple, yet radical change—Google is advising companies and site owners to use permanent URLs for their Black Friday pages.
As one of the most-awaited events of the year, site owners usually switch up their strategy and set up new sale pages. Traditionally, retailers set up new pages dedicated to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, only to get those URLs taken down later.
However, Google states that this isn’t an ideal strategy for Black Friday pages, or for any web page for that matter. This is because new pages don’t build link equity. Link equity refers to the SEO value of a link, which is gained over time.
To solve the problem, Google had an ingenious plan to recommend recurring URLs to use for Black Friday pages.
“Use a recurring URL, not a new URL for each occurrence of the event. Give the landing page of recurring events a meaningful URL that reflects the event that is used each year (for example, use /sale/black-friday, not /sale/2020/black-friday).”
Here are the major reasons why Google says it’s more beneficial than new pages:
- URLs build link equity when other pages link to them. With recurring URLs, you can build link equity much easier. Why? Longer existing URLs have more potential to increase link equity, so they can rank better in search results.
- An older URL, even with a moderate amount of link equity, still has greater chances to rank over a newly published page with no link equity.
Publish early
Early birds do indeed catch the worm. Google advises retailers to create Black Friday sales page well before the sale begins so Googlebot has time to discover and index it.
Don’t forget standard SEO best practices
Getting up-to-date information regarding SEO is crucial. But implementing new information is just as important as following standard SEO best practices.
Link to different pages
Ensure that your Black Friday landing page include links that direct users to your homepage or other pages to your website so that visitors can find your pages faster and improve overall user experience.
Include high-quality images
Don’t forget to create and optimise visuals that represent your sale. Google recommends trimming white space around the borders of the image, ensuring optimum quality.
Request Google for a recrawl
Once you’ve updated your landing page with new or additional content, ask Google to recrawl the page to get your new content up and running.
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Source: Google Webmaster Central Blog