Black Friday SEO Strategies to Grow Incremental Revenue

Paid media spend is through the roof in Q4, especially in the Black Friday-Cyber Monday timeframe. One way to mitigate huge spend increases and stay on target for your growth goals: SEO strategies that capture the buying intent of the season.

(Note: these work for any seasonal spikes, e.g. July Fourth for watersports products, so look for ways to apply them all year.)

We segment our holiday strategies into the following initiatives:

• Keywords
• Landing pages
• Blog content
• Category and product page optimization
• Email and social campaigns
• Structured data and rich snippets

Let’s dig into each.

ID Holiday-Specific Keyword Targets

Around just about any holiday, we recommend you target long-tail keywords that capture user shopping intent, e.g. 

• “{holiday} {product category} deals”
• “{holiday} {products}”
• “{products} {holiday}”
• “{holiday} {general category} deals”

So this could look like:

• “Black Friday pickleball deals”
• “Black Friday pickleball gear”
• “Pickleball gear Black Friday”
• “Black Friday sporting goods deals”

Build Holiday-Specific Landing Pages

This has worked well in the past, particularly for clients who build these pages and refresh the content within them every year (and hide them when they’re not seasonally relevant). We recommend creating a dedicated landing page for each major holiday or promotional event – for instance, a Black Friday hub that contains all of your product promotions, with clear CTAs and details about the season’s discounts and promotions.

Don’t be afraid to get creative in enticing users to take actions with short- and long-term value attached. Options include creating a countdown timer for the landing page and offering access to additional discounts for new and existing email subscribers. 

Leverage Your Blog Content for Holiday Traffic

Go up the funnel just a bit and use your holiday as a segue into teaching users more about your products. Following our pickleball example, holiday-specific blog posts could include:

• How pickleball can burn off those holiday calories
• Why pickleball is a great choice to entertain the family during holiday gatherings
• Best pickleball Christmas gear to get your grandkids hooked
  
  

Optimize Category & Product Pages for Holiday Shoppers

Your product and category pages aren’t set-and-forget; use the holidays to update messaging to add holiday urgency.

First, update your product descriptions: “The most popular paddle in pickleball is back in stock for the holidays – save 10% before they sell out.”

Next, consider bundle deals to add to your category pages: “New for Black Friday: save 20% on our pickleball start-up package including two paddles, four balls, and a pop-up net.”

Holiday Email and Social Campaigns 

Supplement your SEO and paid campaigns by fleshing out other owned media, specifically email and Instagram/TikTok.

Email Strategy 

At minimum, your holiday email campaigns should promote Black Friday sales, bundles, and new content. Emails should include:

• Eye-catching subject lines
• A hierarchy of content 
• Mobile-friendly design
• A strong call-to-action (CTA)
• An interactive element

Make sure to leverage your prime email real estate (subject lines and preheaders) to call out exclusive holiday discounts (e.g. “Exclusive Black Friday Pickleball Deals – Shop Now to Save 20%”).

Social Media Strategy

Make sure you’ve got your holiday social media strategy ready to go with fresh creative and offers. We recommend:

• Making your content shoppable

• • Post where users can purchase items directly from the image

• Using keywords in hashtags and product descriptions

• Trying holiday giveaway posts:

• Build brand awareness and gain email users with a holiday freebie with entry by signing up with an email

Remember, anything that gains traction organically should be considered for paid campaigns – even just boosted posts – as well.

Use Structured Data to Capture Holiday Rich Snippets

Most SEOs know all about structured data and schema, but a surprising number don’t update those initiatives to capitalize on holiday shopping seasons.

For product schema markup, we recommend that you:

• Update product pages to include structured data markup to enable rich snippets. 
• Use schema to highlight special Black Friday deals, including percentage or fixed discounts to encourage clicks.

For review and offer schema:

• Leverage reviews and sale offers in schema markup to stand out during Black Friday searches.
  • Add average rating and number of reviews using AggregateRating schema. Adds social proof, encouraging conversions from users who value peer feedback.
  • Set the duration of the Black Friday sale, giving users a sense of urgency (e.g., “Only available until [end of sale]”).
  • Implement schema that reflects discounted bundle offers, such as “Save 20% when you purchase a set of two pickleball paddles.”

Perhaps most importantly, make sure you’ve got reporting set up to understand what’s working and how big an impact the initiatives have on your holiday growth. If you’d like to brainstorm more ideas or insights on using your organic properties to drive seasonal results in your vertical, drop us a line to chat!