How to write SEO driven gift guides
It’s an all too familiar situation - you need to buy a gift for a parent, and you haven’t a clue where to start looking. So you go to Google and search for “gifts for parents”, “great gifts for gardeners”, “best gifts for people who like tea”. You find a few brands you’ve heard of, some you haven’t, and you get researching.That’s a situation that many holiday shoppers will go through as they try to find that one perfect gift. Want to know a great way you can capture those unsure customers? Gift guides.
You may have heard before that gift guides are great marketing tools for Shopify merchants, we’ve even mentioned them in a previous article. However if you want to write a really great gift guide you need to be strategic and consider SEO as well as your potential audiences.
Why write gift guides?
There are plenty of reasons why gift guides make for great holiday content for merchants. One of the best is that they’re easy to put together - all they require is a concept for who the gift guide is targeted towards, and the products that best fit in. More specifically though, gift guides are great for your holiday marketing strategy and SEO.
When it comes to marketing, gift guides make for highly shareable content - people can send them to those looking for ideas, and share them on their own social media. Beyond that, a gift guide contextualizes your products for people. Customers can see who would use them and what for, helping them to imagine how that product fits into their own routine or that of their intended recipient. For potential holiday customers shopping in a niche they’re unfamiliar with, they can see complementary products in one easy location rather than trying to navigate a catalog of products out of context. Say you know someone who likes cold brew coffee, you could see a gift guide that includes a cold brew jug they already have alongside other items they might not have - gift sorted!
For SEO, you’re getting more keywords and links on your site about your products targeting customer intent. You’re targeting people looking for specific gift ideas, and as time goes on those guides can build authority on search engines meaning your store will come up in more searches for people looking for gift ideas.
How to write SEO driven gift guides
Incorporate keywords
As with everything to do with your store, keywords are important. Gift guides offer the opportunity to get both your seasonal and year-round target keywords on an additional page in an authentic way. Be tactical with how you use these, don’t just spam all of them in every gift guide you write. Use your seasonal keywords alongside keywords that match the products and audiences you’re looking to target. This will ensure they’re picked up by search engines, and that they reach the right audience.
Include internal links and image tags
A gift guide without links to the products would be like opening up a present and the box being empty. Including links to the products you’re writing about in your guide will not only make it easier for your potential customers, but also these links help the authority of the gift guide and product pages for SEO.
We’ve detailed in a previous blog the importance of image tags, and gift guides are no different. Be clever with your use of keywords in tags in your gift guide so the images appear in searches relevant to your target audience at this time of the year.
Target unique audiences
You know your usual target audience, but your customer set during the holidays is quite different. There is a good chance the people buying your products are purchasing gifts for other people, so gift guides should reflect that. As well as considering the obvious styles of gift guide - e.g. “Gifts for cat lovers” - think about your customer’s situation as its own unique audience. By this we mean thinking about when they’re making a purchase and what will be important to them. A good example of this is last-minute customers.
The researching phase of the holiday shopping season tends to get a lot of focus and for good reason, however last-minute shoppers are also a big market to tap into - 16% of US Christmas shoppers plan to finish purchasing the week before Christmas. Gift guides specifically targeted to procrastinating shoppers only adds to the SEO content on your store. Prompt shipping is of high importance to this audience, so including keywords and phrases related to shipping expectations is an extra bonus on top of the other keywords you’re already incorporating into the guide.
-----
The holidays can be difficult finding gifts for different people with different hobbies and interests. By creating gift guides you can help make your customers’ lives a little easier, and reap the benefits in the process when they go to click “Checkout” as a result. Putting that little extra time into ensuring those guides are SEO driven can go a long way in bringing more customers to your store year-round in their hunt for that ideal gift.