Once an American holiday that didn’t make much of a ripple over the pond, in 2024, Statista predicted Black Friday spending in the UK would reach over £9 billion—and this figure will grow even more in the future.
If you want to claim your share, it’s time to spruce up your SEO strategy and website in preparation for next year.
10 Steps to Black Friday success
Step 1: Conduct a post-event analysis (immediately after Black Friday)
The first step in your post-Black Friday clean-up is to evaluate your website’s performance. To find out what went right and where there’s room for improvement, you should analyse key metrics like traffic, conversion rates, bounce rates, and sales.
By analysing your metrics, you can identify which keywords drove the most traffic and conversions, which pages didn’t perform as expected, and why. You should also study your competitors’ campaigns to identify trends and missed opportunities.
Tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console are ideal for gaining insights into user behaviour. Once your research is complete, use it to inform your next steps.
Step 2: Update and optimise content (1–2 months post-event)
SEO is a long game, so now’s the time to refresh and repurpose your Black Friday content. Instead of letting landing pages and blog posts sit idle, update them to remain relevant all year.
To do this, you can remove time-sensitive language, highlight ongoing deals or evergreen products, and incorporate insights from your post-event analysis to improve content quality.
Don’t forget to update meta titles, descriptions, and keywords based on what worked this year and to check your Black Friday pages are optimised for long-tail keywords like “best Black Friday deals for [product category]” to capture pre-event traffic next year.
Step 3: Perform a technical SEO audit (2–3 months post-event)
Technical issues can hurt your website’s performance, so a thorough SEO audit is crucial to ensure the changes you’ve made are helping, not hindering, your rankings and visibility.
Focus on:
- Site speed: Optimise your website’s speed by compressing images, enabling browser caching, and reducing server response times.
- Mobile-friendliness: Ensure your site is responsive and provides a seamless user experience across devices.
Broken links: Identify and fix broken links or outdated redirects. - Crawl errors: Use Google Search Console to detect and resolve crawl issues.
By addressing these technical issues early on, you’ll create a solid foundation for future optimisation efforts.
Step 4: Start keyword research early (9–10 months before Black Friday)
Remember what we said about SEO being a long game? Keywords are the foundation of a good SEO strategy, and you should begin your research early to understand the keywords and phrases your target audience will search for next Black Friday.
Use tools like Google Trends and SEMrush to identify emerging search trends and to analyse your competitors’ top-performing keywords from this year. When it comes to keywords, create categories based on intent, such as informational, navigational, or transactional, to guide your content strategy and focus on specific, niche phrases to attract highly targeted traffic.
Step 5: Develop a content calendar (9 months before Black Friday)
A content calendar is essential for tracking your optimisation efforts. You can use it to align your content with your keyword strategy and business goals and to maintain a clear view of deadlines for drafts, reviews, and publishing. This will go a long way towards avoiding those dreaded last-minute rushes.
Your calendar should include pre-event content such as blogs and guides, landing pages optimised for Black Friday-related keywords, and product showcases highlighting top-selling items. Creating comparison guides is also a good idea, as is educational content such as tips, tutorials, or FAQs related to your products or services.
Step 6: Build Backlinks And Partnerships (Year-Round)
High-quality backlinks are a vital component of SEO as they boost your website’s authority and search rankings. But for them to add value, you need to start building them well in advance.
You can build backlinks in several ways, including:
- Collaborating with influencers: Partner with bloggers or influencers in your niche to create promotional content.
- Submit guest posts: Contribute high-quality articles to reputable brand-relevant websites.
- Establish partnerships: Collaborate with complementary brands to cross-promote content or deals.
Step 7: Optimise for site speed and user experience (3–4 months before Black Friday)
As Black Friday approaches, your website must be ready to handle a surge in traffic. Site speed and user experience (UX) are critical factors for retaining visitors and maximising conversions, and they’re also essential for search results rankings.
There are several ways to achieve faster page speeds and improved UX, including using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to deliver fast loading times regardless of user location, simplifying navigation and using high-quality images and videos optimised for speedy loading times.
To check you’ve got your optimisation right, run load tests to ensure your website can handle increased traffic without crashing.
Step 8: Launch a pre-Black Friday campaign (1–2 months before)
Building anticipation is key to a successful Black Friday campaign, and using SEO is an excellent way to support your marketing efforts.
Leading up to the event, check that all your Black Friday-specific pages are live and fully optimised for targeted keywords. On these pages, create a sense of urgency and buzz around specific promotions by using countdown timers and limited-time offers to drive conversions.
To maximise your reach, promote your campaign through social media, paid ads, and influencer collaborations, and send personalised emails that link to your Black Friday landing pages.
Step 9: Monitor and adjust (during Black Friday)
Even with thorough preparation, real-time monitoring is essential during Black Friday. Throughout the weekend, track metrics like traffic, page load times, and user behaviour to pinpoint any issues and resolve them quickly. With the use of analytics tools for monitoring performance, you can make on-the-fly adjustments to optimise conversions.
Step 10: Repeat the cycle (post-event)
After Black Friday, revisit your post-event analysis and start the cycle again. Continuous improvement helps you to stay ahead and ensure your website remains a top-ranked destination for shoppers looking for a great deal.
Final thoughts
Preparing your website for Black Friday is a year-round effort that involves strategic planning, execution, and analysis. By starting early, you can create an SEO strategy to optimise your website well in advance, positioning your business for success.
If you’re not sure how to get your website Black Friday ready, don’t worry! We offer a
free SEO audit to help you get a clear overview of how your website is performing. Get in touch to book your audit today.
