High-Value SEO Keyword Guide for Black Friday Cyber Monday

There are lots of things online businesses need to take care of before Black Friday and Cyber Monday come around, like:

• preparing your store for the increased traffic
• putting together holiday email marketing campaigns
• polishing your social media posts

But there’s one more thing you can’t afford to overlook, and that’s optimizing your website for search engines. To do holiday SEO, you need to rank for certain keywords. It’s also crucial to know which keywords you want to drive traffic from.

I know, SEO is tough and it can get tricky, especially if you’re new to it. But don’t let tricky cost you sales this holiday season. Instead, use the Black Friday Cyber Monday shopping craze as an opportunity to draw more attention to your brand and products.

Read on to find out what are the most valuable Black Friday Cyber Monday SEO keywords (there are more than 150). More importantly, learn how to use these keywords to increase valuable traffic and boost sales this holiday season.

Black Friday Cyber Monday search patterns

In 2020, 59% of consumers said they did more of their holiday shopping online than in brick-and-mortar stores. Due to the global pandemic, online stores became a safer and more pleasant alternative to in-person shopping. In 2021, there were 900 million more online shoppers than in 2020.

Typically, shoppers start looking up generic, non-branded Black Friday Cyber Monday deals (search queries like smartphone discounts, toy offers, clothing deals) in October. Searches become more specific only about two weeks before Thanksgiving weekend in the US (search queries like biggest iPhone discounts, best Hot Wheels offers, cheap ASOS deals).

Gaining an online presence on search engines takes time. If you want to appear in the search results during Black Friday Cyber Monday, you’ll need to get started now.

Holiday SEO keyword research

The first step to content optimization is keyword research. To help you figure out which keywords to use (without needing pricey SEO tools), we did holiday keyword research for you and grouped the keywords into 4 categories:

• Black Friday keywords
• Cyber Monday keywords
• Printful product keywords
• Buzz keywords

Each keyword table comes with useful metrics that’ll help you predict their potential value and competitiveness. Here’s a quick guide on what each metric means:

• Search volume is a rough estimate of the number of monthly searches for a keyword. The higher the search volume, the more people Google it. We used US and global search volume data suggested by Ahrefs Keyword Explorer.
• Difficulty score, on a scale from 0 to 100, shows how difficult it is to compete for a ranking spot in the search results. The lower the score, the easier it is to rank for the keyword.
• SERP features are other types of info blocks that appear on search engine results pages (SERPs), all of which may draw traffic away from your organic links.

And now, finally, let’s get onto the keywords!

High-value Black Friday keywords

This year Black Friday falls on November 25th, which means you’ve got less than three months to get the attention of holiday shoppers.

Every year, online retailers start promoting their Black Friday deals earlier than the previous year, so you should do the same. It’s a strategic move that lets shoppers find deals and plan their purchases once the big shopping day comes around.

This year, businesses will start their Black Friday Cyber Monday craze as early as the beginning of November. Which leaves you one thing to do: hurry up.

Ultimate Cyber Monday keywords

After the Black Friday shopping craze, it’s time for Cyber Monday. Last year, Cyber reached a new record of $12.12 billion in sales.

If you want to boost your sales this holiday season, mark November 28th on your marketing calendar and start optimizing your website for valuable Cyber Monday keywords right away.

Popular Printful product-related keywords

Apparel and accessories is one of the top-selling product categories during Cyber Week. If your store offers any of these product categories, you need to make them search-friendly.

Here are the most important keywords your products should be ranking for this holiday season:

The most searched buzz phrases

While you want Google to favor your website content, at the end of the day, it’s humans who will buy your products. This set of keywords will give you an idea of which buzzwords or phrases (even if they sound a little cheesy) you should focus on to drive shoppers’ attention to your store:

How to use Black Friday Cyber Monday keywords

So you know you need to optimize your store for search engines, and you have the most important holiday keywords on hand. What next? Here are the most important SEO elements where your keywords should go.

Page titles (title tags)

Your store’s page titles appear as links in search engine results pages (SERPs), web browser tabs, and social media post thumbnails.

When writing your page titles, make sure to include the most valuable keywords. Ideally, place the keywords at the beginning of the title to help you rank higher. It’s important to make each page title unique—Google doesn’t like repetitive content and may mark it as spam. Also, try to stay within 60 characters to avoid your page title being cut off, as you can see in the example above.

Main headings

The main heading appears in the body text of your website. Add a couple of Black Friday Cyber Monday buzzwords to your main heading to make your website rank on search results.

Just like page titles, you want your main headings to be unique—don’t repeat the same heading over and over again on different pages. The main headings should also be optimized for the most valuable Black Friday Cyber Monday SEO keywords related to the page topic. 

Alt image tag and image file names

Since Google bots can’t see the images, they use alt image tags and file names to understand the content. An alt tag is a short and simple description of the image. Alt image tags are also used by screen readers for the visually impaired. So it’s crucial that whatever info you include in the alt tag is true to the image itself.

For example, a good alt tag for the image below would be: photo of a woman wearing a baseball cap. And a good file name for it would be: denim-baseball-cap.jpg

URLs

Keep your URLs short, simple, and include a focus keyword or phrase, as it helps search engines recognize what the page is about. If you’re planning to create a new landing page to promote your Black Friday Cyber Monday deals, choosing a URL that contains a valuable keyword is a must.

Anchor texts

Google uses hyperlinks to understand the relevance and value of pages on your site. Links can be:

• internal—you linking to your own pages
• external—someone else linking your pages on their website.

Think of each link, internal or external, as a vote—the more you have, the better. And while the link (or vote) itself is important, anchor text is what helps Google figure out what the vote is for.

An anchor text is part of the content where the link is added (or anchored) to. So, in a way, it hints at what content you’ll find in the link.

Link your holiday-related pages in product categories, blogs, or other landing pages. Then use a keyword-optimized anchor text to direct customers to your Black Friday Cyber Monday offer page.

Long tail keywords

Some markets are more competitive than others. And if you happen to be competing with companies that have a large marketing budget and dominate search results already, ranking for generic keywords like “t-shirt” or “sports bra” will be difficult.

Your best bet is optimizing pages for long tail keywords. Here’s how a long tail keyword works:

generic keyword + specifications = long tail keyword

Since long tail keywords are more detailed, they get less search traffic but usually have a higher conversion rate and are easier to rank for.

So, let’s say you’re selling yoga leggings. Instead of targeting the yoga leggings keyword, try leopard print yoga leggings, or any other cool detail about your product.

Start optimizing your content for BFCM

Optimizing your content for higher rankings in search results is important all year round, but it’s crucial during busy shopping seasons like Black Friday Cyber Monday. Use this guide to identify the most valuable keywords and start optimizing your website with them in mind today.

What’s your experience with using holiday SEO to get the most out of the Black Friday Cyber Monday season? Share your wisdom in the comments below!

This article was originally published in October 2018; it has since been updated.