Search engines are a lot like Santa Clause. They require plenty of notice before setting out to work. While St Nick has the whole world on his delivery list, Google, Yahoo and their contemporaries have to trawl every page on the world wide web to find out who’s been naughty and nice.

So, how do you pump up your web presence and increase your chances of a page one listing in time for Christmas? In truth, sprucing up your internet presence is an on-going process but getting your internet site up to date right now means you’re more likely to attract the right kinds of shoppers and keep them on your site long enough to make a purchase as festive fever kicks in.

Step 1: Add New Content
The first battle is attracting hordes of cash-rich online shoppers to the site when they start to tick off items on the seasonal shopping list. That is where longer-term search engine optimisation (SEO) comes into play. Like the ad says, a site is for life, not just for Christmas.

But, if you are only just sitting down with search engine optimisation in mind, refreshing the content of the landing page and key product pages is a great place to start. Not only will this encourage the search engine spiders to crawl the site and re-index the content, you’ll also be giving return visitors new reasons to place their order.

The updated content should be full of your key terms. The tricky part is making the text flow naturally so experiment with a few draft versions before uploading. Include your most important search words as early as possible, placing them in the title, first line and then first paragraph of the text. Repeat them throughout, being careful that they fit in with the general structure of the page. Use synonyms as a way of bumping up your page relevance and retaining the interest of the reader.

Step 2: Submit Your Site Map To The Top 3 Search Engines
Although there is some debate as to how frequently you should re-submit your site map to search engines like Google and Yahoo, it is generally accepted that the big three are slow to get round to re-visiting your site. That said, for search engine optimisation purposes you should aim to re-submit your URL each time you add a new page or significant new content.

Google has a very handy suite of web master tools, allowing your to quickly submit your site to their database. It will give you lots of handy information such as the last time your site was indexed and if your site map is in the correct format.

Step 3: Tell The World About Your Christmas Offers
Most search engines rank your web site on the number of other sites linking back to you. Building up a collection of relevant link backs takes time but, to ensure you increase your search engine optimisation presence before Christmas, you can speed the process along by sending out a well-written press release about your seasonal offers, including a link to your home page.

If you’re not confident in your ability to succinetly sell your site with the written word, enlist the help of a press release writing service such as that offered by Top Position. We will also send the press release out to media for you.

If you opt to do it yourself, submit the PR to as many free press distribution channels as you can. Now is also a good time to familiarise yourself with social media sites and open a company blog to raise awareness of your festive features amongst web users and drive targeted traffic to your site.

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