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With Thanksgiving just around the corner it is time to refresh your seasonal optimization if you haven’t already.

This is because the words you used to capture traffic last holiday season will not likely capture traffic this season.

In this article I look at some of the tools you can use to help improve your site for this holiday season.

Any marketer, both online and offline, should know what Black Friday is.

This is the day when the Christmas season “officially” starts.

That is, this is the Friday immediately after Thanksgiving when most retailers begin the big push for the holiday season.

Because of this, many retailers plan for months in advance of the day, and launch massive advertising campaigns which begin on this Friday and carry through to a few days before Christmas.

Seasonal SEO should be no different.  The majority of your site should be re-optimized to target the broader audiences now.

A recent study shows that 41% of Internet users use search on a daily basis.  That means that online searching and shopping are going to be bigger in 2005 than any year before.

Therefore, of you run an online business you need to prepare for this surge in traffic.  After all, if you aren’t in front of your competition you stand to lose business.

The nice thing is that online shopping, or more specifically searching, has already begun.

So what does that mean for you?

If you are an online retailer and want to take advantage of the renewed interest in search now is the time to research some of those gems that people are searching for but are not generating tons of competitive results.

Because search is growing so much, people are beginning their quest for the perfect gift early.  This means that they’ve already begun searching for whatever it is their loved ones have asked for.

This means you can already begin to make a list of the most used gift terms and reoptimize your site (or pages within your site) to target these phrases.

How do you find these terms?

There are many ways to find them.  And, depending on your budget,they could be easy to find or somewhat difficult.

Let’s start with the way to find them if you have money.

A quick way to do it is spend some money on a keyword research tool like Word Tracker.  For a small fee (even as little as a daily subscription) can give you access to their keyword research database.

Then you can search for synonyms and other terms related to your product, as well as get search volumes and other numbers to help you determine if the phrase is worth competing for.

On the free side there are tools like the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool which shows you what phrases have been searched for in the past month, as well as the search volumes.

This is a pretty good tool as it takes into account both MSN and Yahoo! Search volumes so you can get a pretty good idea if the phrase is worthwhile.

What next

Well, it’s pretty simple.  Once you’ve researched these words and found the gems its time to optimize your pages for them.

Be sure to add the terms to your meta tags and work them into the body text when appropriate.

Also, if you can, try and do some link building for those terms to try and help boost your link popularity to those pages.

Finally, be sure to check the current cost per click for those phrases in Google and YPN.  It may be worthwhile (and easier) just to bid on the terms you’ve found.

Finally, be sure to perform this series of steps a few times between now and Christmas.  After all, people’s search habits will change as we get closer to Christmas.  They may start looking for similar products (For example,the new Xbox will likely sell out soon, so people will begin shopping for alternatives like PlayStation or GameCube).

Also, if you offer things like free shipping, or other incentives to purchase, be sure to emphasize these to your customers.  These types of incentives can also turn a browser into a buyer.  As the deadline for purchasing draws near one must be sure they are selling the customer the right things.

For example, during the first week of December your customers want to be sure they will receive their purchases before Christmas, therefore giving them discounts or other free items probably isn’t as important to them as guaranteed delivery.

Also, at this time of year, it’s probably a good idea to emphasize your returns policy – it will be one more thing they can feel comfortable about – knowing that if they have problems there won’t be a hassle in returning an item.

Remember that like many brick and mortar retailers, Christmas can make or break you.  Why not help things along by ensuring all your customers needs are taken care of?

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com