Conducting Holiday Research — Tyson Stockton // Searchmetrics

Quotes

• “There is definitely a heightened focus. Its a great opportunity for SEOs out there in the e-commerce space. I would say that the stakes are a little higher this year because ofthe online presence that is filling the potential void that some people are seeing from in-store presence.” -Tyson

• “The thing that is a little more heightened this year is to be looking at some of the shiftings and how some of the search demand has changed for different categories and sub-categories of the product that maybe you would tip or compete on.” -Tyson

• “One way of doing it is looking at past years performance and looking at it not just on my own domain but also competitors. From there I am building my list of keywords set of things I want to go after. At that stage, you want to look at how keywords have been trending, so if you want to do it on a basic or rudimentary level, I will be looking at something like Google keyword trends.” -Tyson

• “First I would be looking at what is my category performance. What categories are expected to be trending more this year, which categories we are seeing with more uploads, and then using those whether you want to prioritize your linking algorithm or you wantto add some content refresh for. That would be my first safe bet.” -Tyson

• “The other ones I look at that has potential of having a different strategy is the specific day events. We talked before is there going to be a Black Friday? I would say that the reason why it is a little more uncertain is because I think my expectation isit would be more a rolling sale period and so the importance of having a strong sale clearance, holiday general pages is important and then those can be connected to your Black Friday, but I wont expect it to have a sharp, pointed spike in demand like the previous years.” -Tyson

• “It seems like the big challenge for doing your holiday researches is trying to predict what are the hot products and you need to start working now to be able to implement your holiday changes.” -Ben

• “Focus on your buckets. So maybe its the sale pages but maybe they dont need to be populated yet with the complete products. You need to have the reliance of working with your business partners, etc. and they will give you that inside information.” -Tyson

• “From the search side, I will be looking at changing or decreasing search demand over previous years and then also looking at how search demand has been changing.” -Tyson

• “It seems like there really is three classifications of research you need to do. You need to research your holiday event specific pages, your Black Friday, Cyber Monday event type pages, and youre also looking at the product pages. And the problem that I have is that you have to prioritize really all of these and thats not prioritizing thats working hard.” -Ben

• “Number one is category pages and then I would go to key products and very closely at a similar level is your evergreen sale pages. I would prioritize this over one day sale event type of pages.” -Tyson