Holidays Can Improve Your Backlink Strategy
Holidays are coming up, so you might be excited to take a few days off, enjoy your favorite Christmas cookies, go holiday shopping, and share a holiday meal with your loved ones. But hold on before you loosen up — your backlink strategy is calling for an update!
Backlink strategy during the holidays? You might ask why because you already have so much on your plate running holiday marketing campaigns, dealing with seasonal discounts, and searching for tactics to increase sales. So, can’t the backlink strategy wait?
The global pandemic has increased the number of online shoppers, and this year, eCommerce holiday sales are projected to reach a record $206.88 billion. So naturally, this means that your website will need to stand out from the competition more than ever before.
Online holiday shoppers use search engines like Google to find your eCommerce website most of the time. And to appear in their search queries, you need to level up your SEO even if it’s snowing outside and your house smells like Christmas cookies.
Why Are Backlinks Important?
Backlinks are amongst the most crucial aspects determining your website’s ranking in search engines. These are other websites that are linking to yours, which indicates to search engines that your page is relevant in a search query and provides valuable information. Therefore, backlinks are among the primary ranking factors and help Google understand which pages are more valuable and trustworthy.
Why is a Strong Backlink Strategy Crucial?
Many SEO newbies launch their backlink strategy with the philosophy the more is better. However, having a high number of backlinks is not how Google will decide if your website is authoritative. A fewer number of backlinks from high-ranking, trustworthy websites will drive much better results for your SEO than loads of backlinks from unreliable websites (which might not boost your rankings even in the slightest).
Setting up a strong backlink strategy will help:
- Acquire more high-quality backlinks
- Get backlinks from high-ranking authoritative websites
- Target topically-relevant websites
- Earn local backlinks
- Improve search engine rankings
Why Set Up a Holiday Backlink Strategy?
Holidays create numerous opportunities for building a successful backlink strategy more than any other season of the year. This is because there are so many events happening in the area, so many new topics arising, and so many new ways to season up your digital marketing strategy. Here are a few methods you can use to improve your backlink strategy and get more links this holiday season.
Create Holiday Content
Holiday seasons offer whole new possibilities for your writers to get creative and create holiday-specific unique content they can only write about once per year, so don’t let them miss that chance.
Not only will holiday content resonate with your audience’s expectations (they do expect festive articles from their favorite brands), but it can also help you acquire more backlinks from others. That’s because many companies like you will also want to write about holiday-specific topics, and if they find your articles helpful, they will link to your website.
The most popular holiday content types are holiday gift guides, holiday-specific educational articles, holiday tips, DIY holiday decorations, and holiday recipe posts. On top of that, you can create local holiday content to acquire more relevant, high-quality local backlinks, crucial to your local SEO. For example, you can write about local holiday events, local holiday tips, location-related listicles such as “5 Best Reasons to Spend Christmas in Charleston”, location-related how-to articles such as “How to Spend this Holiday Season in Savannah.”
Sponsor Local Holiday Events
The holiday season is when plenty of local events happen, and it’s your chance to gain more local backlinks. Holidays bring more sponsorship opportunities which is an excellent way to increase brand awareness and the number of local backlinks.
All you’ll need is to find a local event or a team that lists their sponsors on the website and links to them. Ensure they include your brand’s name on their website — it won’t count as a backlink if they don’t actually link to your website.
Once you sponsor an event, write a press release for it that organizers can promote – that’s also an excellent way to acquire a backlink. Similarly, you can sponsor community projects or make donations. Such projects receive wide media coverage and can help you get more backlinks and evoke positive feelings amongst prospects towards your brand.
Host Holiday Events
Do you know what’s better than sponsoring an event? It’s hosting one. That’s because, as an organizer of the event, you are at the wheel of promoting it.
Organizing holiday events is one of the greatest ways to acquire local backlinks. Firstly because your team will be in charge of promoting the event, and that means your brand name will appear on many different platforms like social media, sponsors’ websites, local news, and press releases. Other sponsors or local partners will also promote the event, and that won’t happen without mentioning your business name, which translates to plenty of backlinks.
And of course, besides link-building, hosting events is a beautiful way to increase brand awareness, attract more customers, appear as a local leader in the industry, give your business more credibility, and of course, spread the holiday joy!
Start a New Trend in The Community
Finally, starting a new holiday trend in the community is another excellent way to spread the holiday joy and, of course, acquire more backlinks.
For example, you can launch a “pay it forward” trend with the concept of paying forward to someone in the community to get paid forward in the future. The acts of kindness can be as simple as buying a cup of coffee to the next customer in the line during the holidays, walking with dogs from a local animals shelter, reconnecting with old friends, delivering meals to someone who is sick, etc.
Launch a contest where people share their stories on social media, for example, how they paid it forward to someone, or how someone paid it forward to them. You can ask users to tag your page every time they share a story with a chance to be featured on your page. That way, you increase your brand exposure and your social media following. And again, write a press release — that’s another wonderful source of acquiring more backlinks. Choose 1-2 winners at the end of the competition and award them with a monetary gift or a donation in their name to a charity they choose.
We hope the tips above will help your business stand out from the competition this holiday season, acquire more backlinks from other websites, improve ranking, and of course, spread the holiday spirit in the community. Happy holidays from the Internet Marketing Geeks!
