The Black Friday month is finally here. It’s time for businesses to look into their black friday SEO checklist to make the most out of it. Let’s dive deeper into what to do before and during the sale to make it work in your brand’s favor.
Black Friday is one of the biggest opportunities for businesses to attract new customers, boost traffic, and increase sales. This is when almost every brand runs great discount offers, sales, BOGO deals, and other types of sales promotions to sell as much as they can. But with so many brands competing for attention at the same time, standing out online is quite challenging. It requires more than just discounts and sales.
You need to prepare from now itself. Pre-announce your black friday offers or at least give a hint to your customers about what is coming. But how to make sure your target audience sees these pre-launch announcements? That’s where a strong SEO strategy comes into play. MadHawks have helped various brands up their SEO game. Now, we are here to guide you through what to do before, during, and after Black Friday to make sure your website performs at its best throughout the shopping season.
Before Black Friday: Create & Implement a Strong SEO Strategy
Preparing your website in advance is the most crucial step to include in your black friday SEO checklist for a successful Black Friday. Search engines need time to crawl and index your pages, so it’s important that you start optimizing your pages a few weeks before the actual sale.
1. Optimize Your Website Speed and Mobile Experience
Online shoppers are very impatient, especially during sales. If your website takes too long to load, visitors are highly likely to leave and choose your competitor. Make sure that your website takes less than 4 seconds to load, and, for the best impact, less than 2 seconds. Compress images, remove unnecessary plugins, and test your website speed using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights. Also, make sure your site is mobile-friendly since a large number of Black Friday purchases happen on phones.
2. Update Meta Tags and On-Page Content
Your meta titles, descriptions, and on-page content should reflect the upcoming sale. Include keywords related to Black Friday, such as “Black Friday Deals 2025” or “Black Friday Sale,” but keep them natural. Do some keyword research to find the latest keyword trends and search queries. Write engaging descriptions that clearly tell users what they can expect. This not only improves your ranking but also increases your click-through rate when your page appears in search results.
3. Create Dedicated Black Friday Pages
Having a dedicated landing page for Black Friday helps both search engines and users understand where to find deals. You can create a single Black Friday page that links to different product categories. Optimize this page with targeted keywords. Instead of creating a new landing page every year, you can reuse and update it every season, helping you build authority and rankings over time.
4. Improve Internal Linking
Internal links help search engines understand your site structure and guide users toward relevant pages. Before the sale, connect your Black Friday landing page with your top-performing product or category pages. It helps search engines with crawling and indexing the page, and boosts visibility for the pages you want to rank higher.
5. Fix Technical SEO Issues
Broken links, duplicate content, and slow-loading pages can affect how search engines crawl your site. Run a technical SEO audit to identify and fix these issues. Check your sitemap, robots.txt, and ensure all sale-related pages are crawlable. The smoother your technical setup, the easier it is for search engines to index your deals quickly.
6. Prepare Your Content Marketing Plan
Start publishing content around Black Friday well in advance. Blog posts, gift guides, or sale announcements can attract visitors early and signal to search engines that your site is relevant for black Friday-related searches. Keep your content easy to read, informative, keyword-rich (without stuffing), and most importantly, audience-friendly.
7. Set Up Structured Data
Structured data helps search engines display additional information about your deals, such as prices, ratings, and availability. Implementing it can increase your chances of appearing in rich results, such as featured snippets, AI overviews, etc, which attract more clicks during competitive periods.
8. Test Checkout
Even with perfect SEO, sales can drop if users face problems at checkout. Test your payment gateways, discount codes, and forms to make sure everything runs smoothly. You can do test orders for that. A seamless user experience will reduce cart abandonment and improve conversions during the sale.
During Black Friday: Focus on Maximum Engagement
Once the sale starts, your goal should be to maintain high visibility of your landing pages and maximum engagement. Here’s how you can do that:
1. Monitor Website Performance
Traffic fluctuations are common during Black Friday sales, and they can slow down your website. Keep a close watch on server performance, loading time, and user behavior. Try to handle heavy traffic efficiently and make sure your site doesn’t crash often during this time. It will negatively impact user behaviour and increase the bounce rate of your site.
2. Update Content in Real Time
As deals run out or new offers go live, update your website content accordingly. Keeping your content fresh and accurate improves user trust and SEO. Search engines prefer updated content because it shows your site is active and relevant. So, update details about ongoing offers, stock, etc, as frequently as you can.
3. Promote Your Landing Page Across Social Media
Make sure your Black Friday page is easily discoverable, i.e, your target audience should be able to find it easily. Promote it through emails, social media, and paid campaigns. The more traffic you bring to it, the stronger its SEO performance becomes, which leads to higher visibility. Also, ensure that your external ongoing promotions link directly to your optimized Black Friday page, not just your homepage.
4. Track Keyword Rankings and Traffic
During the sale, monitor which keywords are bringing in the most traffic. Use analytics tools to track real-time performance. This helps you identify opportunities for quick adjustments, such as editing titles or updating content to better match trending search queries.
5. Focus on User Intent
Some users may be comparing prices, some may be just checking out deals, while others are ready to buy. Make your content clear and engaging for every type of audience. Highlight key benefits of your deals and products, create urgency with limited-time offers, and make your call-to-action buttons visible and compelling. Fulfilling user intent is the key to success in this highly competitive era.
6. Manage Customer Reviews and Engagement
Positive reviews can influence buying decisions during the sale. Respond promptly to customer questions and feedback on your website or social media channels. Quick responses and visible engagement build trust, which can boost conversions. Also, try to build a personal connection with your audience through engaging and personalized responses, as a good connection builds trust.
After Black Friday: Don’t Just Stop Everything
Once the sale ends, many businesses stop optimizing, but that’s a significant mistake. What to do after black friday must be there in your Black Friday SEO checklist. The post-sale period is valuable for strengthening SEO and preparing for future campaigns.
1. Keep the Black Friday Page Live
Instead of removing the Black Friday page, keep it live and update it with a “Sale Ended” message. This page can continue to attract traffic from long-tail searches. You can later modify it for other promotions like Cyber Monday or next year’s black friday sale. Keeping it indexed also helps preserve SEO value built during the campaign.
2. Analyze Performance
Review your analytics to see what worked and what didn’t. Check metrics like page views, bounce rate, conversions, and keyword rankings. Identify which pages performed best and which keywords brought the most traffic. This data helps you refine your strategy for upcoming sales and regular marketing efforts.
3. Repurpose High-Performing Content
If a blog or landing page performed well, don’t let it go to waste after the sale. Repurpose it into new content formats or update it for other sales seasons. Maintaining valuable pages ensures steady traffic and keeps your site relevant throughout the year.
4. Reach Out to New Customers
After Black Friday, focus on building relationships with the new audience you gained. Send follow-up emails, thank customers for their purchase, and introduce them to related products or loyalty programs. Returning customers are more valuable than one-time buyers, so make sure to keep them engaged.
5. Repurpose Backlinks
If your Black Friday content earned attention, try converting that into long-term SEO benefits by gaining backlinks. Reach out to blogs or websites that featured your products and encourage them to link back to your sales page or store. Quality backlinks strengthen your authority and help sustain rankings even after the sales season.
6. Update Your Product Pages
Once the discounts are over, update your product descriptions, prices, and meta information. Avoid outdated offers that could confuse users or mislead search engines. Keeping your site accurate helps maintain trust and transparency.
Final Thoughts
A successful Black Friday SEO strategy goes beyond a single weekend. It’s about preparation, monitoring, and continuous optimization. By strengthening your SEO strategy before the sale, staying active during it, and analyzing results afterward, you can make the most out of your black Friday deals and prepare better for upcoming sales events as well.
Search engines prioritize websites that are consistent, so keep refining your approach throughout the year. The more you plan and optimize, the more visible your brand becomes when it matters most. The above Black Friday SEO checklist is all you need to make this sale season a success for your brand. Being a renowned SEO agency, MadHawks can guide you further in the process. If you need expert help or suggestions, feel free to book your free consultation now!
FAQs
- What should be on my Black Friday SEO checklist?
Ans. Your Black Friday SEO checklist should include what to do before, during, and after the sales. Some of the most important steps include creating a dedicated landing page, optimizing it for trending keywords, mobile optimization, optimizing website loading speed, etc.
- How early should I begin preparing my Black Friday SEO campaign?
Ans. You should start preparing for your Black Friday SEO campaign at least a few weeks before the actual sale starts.
- What SEO tasks should I focus on during the Black Friday sale?
Ans. During the black friday sale, you should focus on maximum visibility of your campaigns, engagement with your audience, technical performance of your website, and user intent.
