Cashing in on Valentines Day and other “retail holidays”

Whether you own an E-commerce site, an affiliate site or even a blog, it is important that you make the most of the numerous “selling seasons” that occur every year. In light of this, this blog post is aimed at optimizing your site for Valentines Day which is coming up in just a couple of weeks.

Now, I realize that you’ve only just removed the Christmas trees and snowflakes from your site as we move on from the Christmas selling season (if you haven’t taken your tree down by now, it’s bad luck), but that doesn’t mean that you can rest on your laurels for another 12 months until next Christmas. There are plenty selling seasons to focus on throughout the year – Valentine Day, Easter, Guy Fawkes, Independence day, Australia day, Thanksgiving and the list goes on depending on where in the world you are situated. It is massively important that you find a way to capitalize on these days and use them to your selling advantage.

As we can see in the graph below taken from Google insights, we can see how enormously search for Valentines Day related searches increases every February:

Google trends showing the increase in Valentines related searches every February

There are numerous ways in which you can optimize your site to take advantage of these massive influxes for Valentines Day Ideas etc.:

1. 1. Design Changes

Changing the look and feel of your site ever so slightly will immediately remind visitors to your site that Valentines Day is approaching. Instinctively they will want to see what services and Valentines Day gifts you have to offer. Add things like banners, images or simply make your company logo appear a bit more “loved up”. Do everything you can to remind users that the special day is approaching; this will help create awareness and ideally convert into sales.

1. 2. Structural changes

Add a special section to your site dedicated to Valentines Day cards, Valentines Day Gift Ideas or promotions. If you need to rearrange your homepage slightly to accommodate these sections, then do it, it will be worth it. Remember that Valentines Day is often said to be created by retailers simply to make money of consumers, so hey, if you’re a retailer, you may as well live up to expectations and cash in.

1. 3. Get campaigning

Do whatever you can to get in touch with old and new lovesick puppies as early and as aggressively as you can. Use your content networks, your mailing lists and your numerous press sources to ensure that everyone knows what you’re offering to people who want to wish loved ones “Happy Valentines Day!” Remember you need to get started before all your competitors to ensure that you take full advantage of the selling season (Christmas will soon be advertised in July at this rate).

1. 4. Keywords, Keywords and more Keywords

Ensure that your SEO keywords as well as your PPC keywords are perfectly optimized to attract potential customers to your site. Use Google insights to see what the most popular keywords are and add these to all areas of your site and blog etc. Taking a look at the last 30 days for UK Valentines Day related searches below, you can get an idea of what the keyword trends are for this year:

Keywords trends from Google Insights

The above information is obviously geared at preparation for Valentines Day, but as I’ve mentioned before, there are plenty shopping and search trends throughout the year that you need to cash in on, regardless of what industry you’re in. So get planning now, dust off your calendar and see what money making opportunities there are in the next twelve. Remember to start early and ensure you catch the over-excited Valentines Day shoppers as well as the last minute “romantics”.

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Tags: google search based keyword tool, Google Trends, valentines day