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For E- commerce SEO campaigns, Halloween and Christmas 2015 are now too late to target. If marketing managers are thinking about making an impact with SEO, complete with measurable KPI-driven revenue targets, Easter is now the best goal to set.
Seasonality within E-commerce SEO
The seasonality of the E-commerce industry is at the core of any campaign, whether it is a standard marketing campaign, TV advertisement or SEO.
Different types of advertising and marketing will have different planning, lead in, execution and result cycles and the result cycle likely to be seen from an SEO campaign will be three months minimum, meaning all Christmas campaigns should have been planned with execution already underway and results beginning to show. Thinking about the seasonal optimisation of a website is also a necessity and should start at least three months in advance to the season itself.
The POLARIS E-Commerce SEO Seasonality Guide
When should E-commerce marketers start their SEO campaigns for best results on targeted sales seasons?
| Jan | Easter |
| Feb | Easter |
| Mar | Summer Trends |
| Apr | Summer Trends |
| May | Summer Trends |
| Jun | Late Summer Trends |
| Jul | Christmas/Halloween |
| Aug | Christmas/Halloween |
| Sep | Christmas/New Year |
| Oct | Christmas/New Year |
| Nov | Christmas |
| Dec | Easter |
Any Easter planning in terms of SEO for an E-commerce company should already be in the planning stages, with Christmas work (and results already achieved) maintained and improved upon until the end of the year.
Thinking Ahead in Buying Cycles
Following seasonality, E-commerce SEO campaigns need to be thought about in terms of buying cycles. The main focus here should be the difference between the buying phases and research phases.
It is imperative to understand the difference between a researcher and a buyer, and the type of keywords, actions and micro-moments they will take.
The POLARIS User Engagement Measurement Guide
| Action | Phase | Potential KPI |
| Short tail research | Research | Organic/Paid site engagement |
| Product browsing | Research | Organic/Paid product engagement |
| Product comparison | Research | More info/newsletter sign up |
| Reviews reading | Research/Buying | Trust Pilor/Feefo Engagement |
| Long tail research | Research/Buying | Return user engagement |
| Price comparisons | Buying | Final conversion type |
| Final search | Buying | Final Sale |
Of course, this is an overview of a potential engagement and different products will have different life cycles – extensive research into persona profiling and how buyers engage will allow marketing managers to better understand product buying cycles. Putting SEO campaigns into different phases will allow for the overall SEO strategy to be split and be much more targeted than it would be if an online store was attempting to capture users in different mindsets with the same keyword.
For example, initial searches are likely to be broader – ‘Easter eggs’ – and this is what kicks off the research phase. However, further down the line a user may have decided which Easter egg they want to buy, creating buying and much more targeted terms; for example, ‘Maltesers easter egg with cup’.
Schema Tagging
Thinking ahead about schema tagging will also make a huge difference in time for Easter and in an overall E-commerce SEO campaign.
Schema tagging has long been a problem for E-commerce companies as products are often built into the structure of the website, so changing prices and descriptions in line with schema tagging can be difficult.
Working on the dev site on site-wide schema implementation now with a view of going live in early 2016 will result in being able expand a product listing in Google’s search results pages, expanding the possibility for a range of landing pages to be used across all campaigns.
This will require adding <div> tags around product listings, prices and descriptions.
Schema tagging will increase its impact on mobile search in 2016 and as the Knowledge Graph increases in size there will need to be greater focus on how to utilise the additional elements it adds to Google SERPs.
POLARIS is an SEO Agency in London specialising in the E-commerce industry.
