“What are you doing for Christmas?”
I was a little shocked to be asked that question last week by a friend. It’s usually a question that gets asked in the last week or two leading up to 25 December as plans are made with family and friends for the day’s celebrations. I’m not sure if my friend is just super organised – but the question got me thinking not only about what I was personally doing for Christmas and the end of the year but what I was doing on my blogs.
You see there are only 42 days til Christmas and when you’re running an entrepreneurial blog on a topic with some sort of a consumer focus 42 days isn’t that long to make sure you’re ready if you need to make significant changes to your blog.
Over the next couple of weeks I’m going to run a series to help readers fine tune their blog for the holiday season.
But before I get into the ‘how to stuff’ – let me explore the ‘why’.
Why would you need to tweak your blog for the holidays?
Let me start by saying that you may not need to do so. Some blogs will already be well optimised for the holidays (either intentionally or by accident) while others won’t have a commercial nature that could be capitalised at this time of year. But for those of you who do do have entrepreneurial blogs read on for two reasons why this time of year can be more profitable for some bloggers:
Good ideas for updating a website before Christmas. The changes will take some time to get indexed – does that mean that the changes will still be reflected in the search engines after the holiday season is over? Do you get a feeling for how long it takes to be added and go from there?
Depends on the type of site, imo. I can’t see changing my seo blog ( http://www.wmseo.com ). As most of my readers want clean and easy + simple content to read. But I could understand other blogs pumping up their Amozon links and stuff…
Very interesting ideas. It is worthy trying them out.
Good advice. I do have a Christmas related blog that’s already ready for the season. I don’t know if my SEO and Marketing Blog will see any changes though!
Great Posts . Another things I have experianced is that if you want to tap the niche market you have to think small. That is if you want to bring in substantial visitors you got to write for a community that is very selective and specific . I think comunicating with your fellow bloggers both offline and Online is a must for bulidng a word of mouth effect . While logic says ,most visitors to a blog comes from Blog directories and Blog searches ,however I get more visitors from search engines .You can use vertical social networking websites to get some mileage. But be careful you have to tread honestly .Desist from writing anything that is remotely concerned with spam.
[…] On the WorldWideWeb, Darren Rowse has been writing a great series of articles on How To Fine Tune Your Blog For Christmas. These have been really helpful as this is Blogtrepreneur’s first Christmas – Im pretty excited about the whole thing. […]
[…] PS: don’t forget that Google has a similar tool that updates weekly at Zeitgeist where as of writing this you’ll see that ‘Christmas’ terms are starting to climb the rankings (hope you’ve optimized your blog for Christmas!). No doubt they’ll release their 2006 summary Zeitgeist in the coming weeks. If you enjoyed this post Subscribe to the Free ProBlogger Newsletter […]
[…] Darren tells us “How to Fine Tune Your Blog for Christmas“ […]
Thanks for the tips. This is a very useful post. I might also add that for musicians, it doesn’t hurt to add links to original Christmas songs. After posting this song of mine at my site last Christmas, it hit the top 30, landing at #21 among the mp3 downloads tracked at mp3000:
Black Santa
Dr. BLT ft. Michael C.
words and music by Dr. BLT (c) 2006
http://www.drblt.net/music/BLKSanta.mp3
This year, after only being posted at my site a few weeks, this song of mine is also poised for chart success:
Brand New Christmas Song
words and music by Dr. BLT (c) 2006
http://www.drblt.net/music/BNewXaSong.mp3
If I can make it without a record contract, so can you.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
and may all your New Year’s dreams come true!
Dr. Bruce L. Thiessen
aka, Dr. BLT
[…] A number of people have asked to see links to the complete series of posts on Fine Tuning Your Blog for Christmas in the one post – so here you have it – all 13 tips side by side. Enjoy: […]
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While placebloggers such as myself can have some tough issues with optimizing our sites for certain times of the year, events, etc., because of our necessarily limited geographical scope (and therefore web presence), we can really shine when it comes to Christmas/holiday optimization.
For example, even though people are turning more and more to the Internet to shop (which helps product blogs), there are still numbers of people crowding local malls and shopping districts looking for interesting ideas for gifts.
If you’re a placeblogger, why not feature a few exciting or offbeat retail ideas in your area and link up to the local homeless services donation page. That should drive some place-related search traffic to your page if done correctly.
Although this is an older blog I still wanted to comment and say thanks for posting, this is really good information not just for blogs but for sites gearing up for the christmas season, thanks you
Thanks. I wish I could go back in time and work on my blog a little but I think I have it about right. Its Christmas time and that can’t be delayed!
http://www.411onholidays.com/blog