If you’re running an ecommerce site that hosts Black Friday specials, you’ll want to pay attention to this news.
Google says you should use a permalink for your Black Friday sales pages.
In other words, use the same URL every year. For example, use http://mysite.com/sale/black-friday instead of http://mysite.com/2020/sale/black-friday
Why? For the answer to that, read on.
Year-Specific Black Friday Sales Pages
Hey, I get it. You probably think it’s a great idea to put the year in your Black Friday and Cyber Monday URLs.
After all, you want your page optimized for the current holiday year, right?
It’s understandable that you would go there. But you don’t need to.
Instead, just skip the year all together and create a recurring link (or permalink) that you can use year after year. That’s what Google says.
Google’s rationale? The Black Friday and Cyber Monday pages should bring new sales. Not new URLs.
Also, you build up link equity when you use the same URL every year. Link equity, in case you’re unfamiliar with the term, is SEO page value that builds up over time.
So if you keep the same recurring link every year, you’re more likely to do well in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
And, let’s face it, you’ll save yourself a little bit of work when you don’t have to create a new URL every year. Instead, you can just update the same URL you used in the past.
You could also get clever and put sales on the holiday pages throughout the year. People who find their way to those URLs will think they’ve pulled a fast one on you when they order something that’s only supposed to go on sale during Black Friday.
But you’ve landed the sale.
Additional Black Friday Sales Page Recommendations
In addition to keeping permalink from year-to-year for Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, Google also dropped a few other pro tips that could put cash in your pocket.
Here they are, in no particular order.
- Publish early. Don’t wait until Thanksgiving day to publish your Black Friday sales page. Get it done well ahead of time so Googlebot can find the page and index it.
- Follow best-practices. When you’re putting a sales page out there, pay attention to the usual tricks of the trade that you’d use to optimize any other page. Make sure your H1 title tag matches the <title> tag on the page. Put keywords in the headers. And make sure the page loads in a jiffy.
- Add internal links. Want a free link? You can get one easily by linking to pages on your own site. Make sure you link to Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales pages as well as any other holiday-themed pages you’ve created to boost sales towards the end of the year.
- Include a high-quality image. A picture is worth a thousand words. In your case, it could be worth a thousand dollars. Add high quality images on your holiday pages that highlight product benefits. Google also recommends that you trim the whitespace around the edge of each image.
- Recrawl the landing page. When you populate a landing page with new content, ask Google to recrawl the page. That’s how you’ll get your new content indexed as quickly as possible.
Wrapping It Up
Although it may seem tempting to include years in your holiday page URLs, resist the urge to do so.
Instead, use the same holiday-themed URLs year after year. Just update the contents and request a recrawl.
That’s how you’ll build link equity. That’s how you’ll land more sales with recurring links for your Black Friday sales pages.
