As the holiday season arrives, it signals the end of the year and the perfect time to prepare for next year’s SEO strategies. While people enjoy eggnog frappuccinos, cooler weather, and early Christmas lights, it’s also a time for reflection, even in the realm of SEO.
As this year’s SEO strategy winds down, now’s the optimal time to position your site for a strong start in the first quarter. If your strategy heavily relies on link acquisition through manual outreach, consider shifting your focus, as response rates traditionally drop in November and December due to holiday absences.
Here are some ways to use this “downtime” to build strategies for a successful start to the next year:
### Prioritizing the Future
While I’m not suggesting you abandon your current link-building strategy—backlinks remain valuable year-round—it’s worth noting that website owners are typically less responsive during the holidays. Using this time to prepare your site for future links can be more beneficial.
Instead of hastily pushing for the last bit of ROI this year, invest in long-term initiatives that will yield dividends in the future. These initiatives include:
– Competitive analysis and review
– Content planning and creation
– Auditing technical and on-page SEO issues
Focus on activities that will impact your website’s long-term future to optimize your end-of-year SEO efforts.
### Competitive Analysis and Review
As the year ends, it’s an excellent opportunity to assess your competitors and review their search activities. Analyze your competitors’ content to see which pages drive organic traffic for them. Tools can help compile lists of top competitor pages. Review these pages to determine if creating similar content on your site makes sense. Consider factors like:
– Relevance to your audience
– Existing content covering the topic
– Type of traffic from ranking for this term (top, middle, bottom)
– Resources and time required to create competing pages
It’s crucial to ask these questions instead of copying competitors, as their top pages may not align with your site, audience, or goals. Track keyword movements for your competitors over the year to identify areas where they might be surpassing you.
SEO isn’t only about gaining new keyword rankings. It requires defending existing ones as search results evolve. Monitoring competitor keyword growth aids in spotting threats before they materialize.
If you notice competitors gaining ground in areas where you’re losing, consider:
– Updating existing pages with fresh and in-depth content
– Optimizing on-page factors
– Reviewing internal linking opportunities
– Engaging in manual promotion for external backlinks
Reviewing competitor strategies provides valuable insights, and year-end is an ideal time for such analysis.
### Content Planning and Creation
Beyond analyzing competitor strategies, the year’s end is an opportunity to review your content initiatives. Planning your editorial calendar now can prevent falling behind amid the hectic new year.
While creating seasonal content might be a priority, such work should commence well before the holiday season. Instead, prioritize future content marketing activities informed by competitor insights. Refresh and update existing pages, repurpose content, and create new content where impactful. Plot everything out with deadlines before the new year’s chaos begins to avoid missing important initiatives.
Use this time to build a content queue for steady launches in the upcoming months. Working ahead of schedule is more effective than rushing to meet deadlines. Allocate resources to content planning and creation if available.
### Audit Technical and On-Page SEO Issues
As the year concludes, audit your website’s technical and on-page SEO. Technical improvements often get postponed when time and resources are tight. If considering a late link-building effort or addressing postponed technical issues, prioritize fixing technical problems now.
Common issues that accumulate over time include:
– Broken images and links
– Redirect chains
– 404 errors and other status errors
– Duplicate content
– Missing alt text, etc.
Resolving these issues enhances your site’s overall search performance. Conduct sitewide audits and review page-level SEO issues. Small-scale on-page optimizations can defend against new competitor pages in search results. These optimizations include:
– Page speed and mobile-friendliness improvements
– Transcriptions for multimedia content
– Increased keyword focus and header optimizations
– Schema markup and optimized formats for SERP features
These optimizations align perfectly with content updates for the new year and can significantly improve search result positioning.
### Conclusion
The year-end, particularly for link acquisition, can be slow due to holidays and vacations. However, there remains plenty of SEO work to do to end the year strong and position your site for future success. Key activities include:
– Competitive analysis and review
– Content planning and creation
– Auditing technical and on-page SEO issues
Instead of receiving yet another out-of-office reply, use this season to prepare your website and brand for a strong start in the new year.
