I’m always perplexed this time of year when the stores start running their back to school ads. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but do these ads start running earlier and earlier each year? Around our house we do our back to school shopping as late as possible, and I don’t know if that means we miss out on some good sales pricing or we get even better deals as stores try to deplete their back to school inventories.
But there is something to be said about marketing for the season early. And believe it or not, if you want your site optimized and performing well for the Christmas season, you’re almost too late. Seriously. Most optimization campaigns take several months to really start performing strongly. Considering Christmas shopping starts in November, you’ve only got four months to get your site performing strongly in the search results. That means your optimization needs to start today.
Of course, if you’ve got a brand new site, well, you most likely won’t get good rankings this Christmas season, but it’s about time to start your SEO program so you can be ready for the next. Newish sites can take over 12 months to start performing well in the search results, longer if you don’t start your SEO/link building/marketing campaigns right away. That, my friends, is the glorious aging delay.
But if your site is optimized and you get links, the aging delay can be shortened and the performance coming out of that delay can be much much stronger than it would have been otherwise.
So, while the brick and mortar stores prepare for going back to school, online stores need to be preparing for Christmas. Don’t wait, or you’ll find that the season (and your competitors) have long passed you by.