Google recommends creating Black Friday sales page early

Google updates its best practice recommendations for Black Friday and Cyber Monday pages.

As Thanksgiving is right around the corner, Google has shared a set of tips for marketers to bring in more traffic to Black Friday sales pages. Among them, the most important step they recommend is to create a page early for the Black Friday sale. This ensures that Googlebot indexes these pages early, improving the chance of the page ranking higher than competition.

Here is exactly what Google says: “Create the page early. Make sure you create the page well before the sale so Googlebot has time to discover and index the page. Make sure you are not blocking Google from crawling the URL” 

It is that time of the year when preparations for Thanksgiving digital marketing activities are in full swing for companies targeting sales around Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday sales. And, in case you are a business looking for a little assistance from experts in digital marketing, feel free to check out our services page to find out how we can leverage Google’s recommendations and best practices to build sales for your business.

Google shared this tip and 5 other recommendations as part of their yearly pitch to marketers, right before Thanksgiving digital marketing activities kicks in, on the Webmaster Central Blog.

Let us see in more detail on creating a page early, and also analyze the other recommendations put forward by Google.

Updating Black Friday Page early

Why does Google recommend creating Black Friday pages early?

Because the more time the page exists on the web, the more time that Googlebot gets to discover the page and index it.

As soon as you have the marketing plan ready for sales around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, get your resources to build new attractive content and update the Black Friday page.

Use visually engaging images that captivate the reader’s attention. Discounts and offers should be shown prominently on the page. 

Action buttons are to be judiciously placed such that they are easy to find. Once the user takes action, the experience in the subsequent steps need to be robust.

As more and more users who trickle onto your pages from Google search interacts and takes actions on the page, Google increasingly shows your page to more and more users. 

Given the right amount of time, this positive user behavior is valued. And if done correctly, your page would be ranking up top, right when the Black Friday sales are in full swing. More sales, happy customers, a win-win for everyone!

What are Google’s recommendations For Black Friday & Cyber Monday?

Here are Google’s additional recommendations in order to rank your Black Friday sales page higher in search results:

1. Follow standard SEO best practices

   Google has an article for starters that lists out the standard SEO best practices to follow. If it is too much for you, our SEO experts can assist you to build a spanking new page that meets all SEO requirements.
   
   

2. Use internal Link building techniques

   Link to the sales landing pages from your home page and other relevant pages. Pages that link directly from the home page get more prominence as Googlebot (and users) reaches the page quicker.
   
   

3. Retain the old sale page URL

   Instead of creating a new page every year, re-use the existing Black Friday sale page URL with new offers and fresh content.
   
   Eg. Instead of www.yourdomain.com/black-friday-sale/2020/ you could use www.yourdomain.com/black-friday-sale/ every year.
   Because as time goes by, a URL gains link equity as more and more good quality pages link to them.
   
   So the longer a URL exists on the web the better chance it has for ranking higher in search results, over a competitor’s new page with no link equity.
   
   

4. Include a high quality image showing relevant data

   Include a static image on the page containing up-to-date information of your sale. Whitespace around the borders of the image needs to be trimmed.
   
   Make sure to use a good quality image that is visually engaging. Of course you can take help from Google’s Images best practices guide and Images Web Fundamentals guide.
   
   

5. Recrawl your Black Friday sale page

   Once you are happy with the content on the page, and ensure that it follows all steps discussed above, get Google to recrawl your page.
   
   Rather than waiting for Googlebot to automatically discover and crawl your page, this will help to get your content indexed more quickly as you are letting Googlebot know that you have fresh content ready to be indexed.
   
   Note that this will not immediately summon Googlebot to crawl the page. Status of the crawl request is made available in the tool.

Source: Google Webmaster Center Blog