Optimise for Christmas, urges Yahoo!

28 September 2007

Yahoo! is urging advertisers to optimise their content with festive keywords in the run-up to Christmas.

And that may not simply mean using terms such as "Christmas" and "holiday gift", the search engine notes.

Marketing manager Michael Mattis observes in a Yahoo! Search Marketing blog post that less obvious phrases show an increase in search traffic over the festive season.

These include words like "Hanukkah", he points out, while more abstract terms like "gift for dad" also gain popularity in the run-up to Christmas.

"The holidays can be the make or break season for retailers, whether online, offline or a little of both," he writes.

"For obvious and quite unsentimental reasons, we prefer our advertisers to be on the 'make' end of the scale."

Targeting bargain-hunters with phrases such as "free shipping" can also increase revenues, he adds.

And creating themed landing pages with the name of the holiday in the title is suggested as a means of increasing search engine visibility.

Inside AdWords blogger Christina recently offered similar advice to Google advertisers, intimating that they should create a "fine-tuned winter holiday campaign".

Category: Natural search