It’s definitely still summer weather here in southern California, but the holidays are quickly approaching and that means the biggest deals and internet sales EVER will be happening soon: Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If you have an online shop, now is the time to start thinking about those deals and how to boost sales and bookings during this holiday season!

I’m not going to give you the best rate to discount your products for Black Friday or what combo deals to attract potential clients, etc. In this post, I’m going to be walking you through my best tips for generating more organic traffic in Google, so you can generate more leads and sales during this time. So, let’s talk about it!

Related: E-Commerce Sites: How to Write Product Descriptions

Tip #1: Ranking in Google

Here’s the deal. Google is THE most used platform for internet searches. If you have a website, a blog, an Etsy shop, Google can rank your pages on these sites in search results for internet users. In order to boost organic search traffic on these pages, it’s important to optimize the content on these pages for ranking in Google. “How do I do this?” you ask? Let me give you a rundown:

1. Start posting Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales EARLY.

As you’ll see via Google Trends, searches in Google using the term “Black Friday” start to ramp up during October. Capitalize on reaching and capturing that early foot traffic by posting blog posts about your Black Friday deals, listing your black friday promo announcements in your shop a few weeks early to get people excited! Using keywords that have to do with “Black Friday” and/or “Cyber Monday” will tell the Google bots/crawlers how this content should be indexed and this will get your content under those searches.

2. Ranking high up in Google isn’t always easy, and it requires some keyword research!

Depending on the keywords you’re using, ranking in Google isn’t always easy. A keyword like “Black Friday” has over 1 BILLION pieces of content (ahem, COMPETITION). But, if you get more specific with the keyword and use words like “Black Friday discount on art supplies,” the results become less dense, making it easier for YOUR content to rank higher in the results if optimized for this keyphrase!

Now, this type of content might seem advanced for some. If so, check out my course Show Up in Searches, where I teach you all you need to know about search engine optimization and ranking in Google!

Tip #2: Introduce New Products/Services

Nothing creates more buzz than launching a new product AND offering it at a discounted price at launch. Give your audience some sneak peeks of the new product or service you’re announcing to start piquing people’s interest early!

Tip #3: Make sure to talk about it on all your platforms!

Email list, Instagram, Pinterest, all the things. You might feel like you're talking about Black Friday deals until you’re blue in the face, but guess what? Not everyone is seeing all of your posts and repetition is KEY for creating that urgency in potential buyers. And if you struggle with sales and marketing because it feels sleazy, here’s the deal:

You own a business. Business owners need to sell their products, so therefore, business owner = sales person. Got it?

Tip #4: Optimize for speed and mobile

Nothing makes a potential customer more frustrated than slow loading time. Or if the website is difficult to navigate on mobile. Did you know that over 60% of all website purchases happen on mobile devices these days? You can probably thank Zucks and Instagram ads for that! Make sure your website, product pages, booking pages and EVERYTHING is optimized for mobile and is firing quickly to capture every potential sale!

Tip #5: Don’t beat yourself up

Set realistic goals and set “stretch” goals, but don’t get discouraged if your Black Friday and Cyber Monday don’t do what you expect. Or you might see some other small businesses in your circle celebrating huge wins, shipping out ALLLLL the orders, while you had a single purchase. From your mom. Remember, this takes WORK. Go back to the drawing table and look very closely at what worked and what didn’t work. Look at the analytics on your website. What days had the most traffic? Why is that? How long did your website visitors stay on your website for? Did they leave after visiting your homepage because nothing told them to check out the products page? What could you have done differently in your marketing?

There’s no such thing as failures. Only successes and lessons! You’ll kill it next Black Friday!