It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas...

By Aisling Brennan
Online Marketing Account Manager

Now that long hot days of summer are but a distant memory, it's time to start strategizing for the upcoming Christmas campaign to ensure your site attracts the requisite seasonal market.

With Search Engine Marketing (SEM) timing is crucial as search engines can take weeks, or even months, to find your website, recognize any changes or updates made, and reindex the results. And if you have new products or services, updated pricing, special offers or even delivery options, you must implement these changes and optimize the content as soon as possible in order to ensure you meet the deadline. Otherwise, potential customers may end up shopping at the competition.

The first step in any successful SEM campaign is to conduct intensive keyword research. This is key to understanding your target market. What are this years trends? Consumers, especially young consumers, as rather fickle so understanding current market trends and potential "hot" items will enable you to position your website well to take advantage of this year's online rush for the latest items. Use Google Adwords Keyword Tool or Overture's Keyword Suggestion Tool to determine what your target market is looking for.

Once you've identified the core keywords, optimize the content on the site to target them specifically. Don't target more than 2-3 keywords per page. Include the keywords in the title and description tags of the pages' Meta Data, pepper them throughout the content of the body text, include in text links and as headers within the page.

Another program to include in your SEM strategy is a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign. Including your core keyterms in a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign guarantees high visibility during these crucial sales periods. Google and Yahoo! offer the two most popular PPC networks and are worth investigating. Yahoo! Search Marketing enables you to determine how much advertisers are paying per click before you embark on a campaign so you can estimate budgets required accordingly.

To conclude if you plan well enough in advance this two pronged approach will ensure that you can take advantage of increased organic rankings and PPC visibility in time to meet the Christmas rush.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...