Tips for online sales success leading up to the holiday season

As businesses gear up for the busiest shopping season of the year they can take advantage of a few simple steps to make it easier for potential customers to find them online:/p>

1. Add Christmas and seasonally relevant product and service information to your online properties

These include your website, your business’ social media pages and business directory services like Hotfrog, which allows unlimited addition of products and services for free. This simple step is often overlooked but can be incredibly valuable in making your site appear in searches for seasonal gifts and services.

2. Make your online updates before the end of October

Give search engines sufficient time to index and rank the new content. Updating your information well in advance of the holiday season will help ensure your products and services are more easily found throughout the busy shopping season.

3. Modify or add Christmas-specific and seasonal keywords to your content and listing

Focus on specific products and services you are marketing during the holidays – the more precisely you can define these, the better chance that online search users looking for something specific or unique will find you.

If small businesses want to compete during this holiday season, their online marketing activity needs to begin sooner to increase the chance of strong search engine positions during a very competitive and cluttered time of the year. In today’s economy, small businesses are looking for every competitive advantage they can get and often overlook some simple, free, yet powerful things that they can do to stand out from the crowd.