This is the last in our series on holiday planning.
Each of the past 9 Daily Gold Nuggets gave you tips and strategies for marketing through November and December this year.
Each day we told you to write some new content and add new pages to your website. Photographs were equally important to include in each new page we suggested adding.
We also gave you ideas for changing your home page throughout the holiday season including who to target and when to target them.
It all sounds like a lot of work to do during your busiest time of the year. However, there's a trick to making it work smoothly.
Ready for the trick? Here it is...
Use your content management system to set up all the pages now. And we really do me ALL the pages, including the variations of your home page.
Make them live on your site, but don't include them in any of your navigation menus. It's really important not to include them prematurely in the navigation since you don't want to confuse your customers or give ideas to the other jewelry store in town.
So set up real pages exactly how you want them right now while you have some free time, and make sure the URLs are working.
Each of these special holiday pages needs to be added to your Google XML Sitemap and submitted to your Google Webmaster Tools account. If this sounds confusing just give your webmaster a call.
Once submitted through Webmaster Tools, it takes about 30 days for the pages to appear in search results. In December, your website should appear in the SERPs when someone searches for jewelry or "last minute gifts."
Any holiday specific pages should be added to your general navigation menus throughout November and December when the timing is appropriate. Then remove those pages again when appropriate.
Now for our concluding jewelry website trick.
Instead of feverishly changing your website throughout the holiday season, you will simply set up a "302 Redirect" from your home page to each of the pages you will created in advance.
CONCLUDING EXAMPLE:
We told you to change your home page each Monday in the holiday season to say something like "Didn't find what you were looking for over the weekend?"
Instead of editing your page every Monday morning, simply set up this page now using a special URL like "mondayindex.html." Then, on those Mondays, you simply add a "redirect" from your normal "index.html" page to the special "mondayindex.html." All visitors that day will see the special page instead of the normal home page.
That sounds technical, but it shouldn't be difficult using your CMS. Ask your webmaster for help if the redirect feature is not easy to find. This feature is part of every programming language and therefore should be available inside every content management system.
We hope this extended special series of Daily Gold Nuggets helped you with your holiday planning and we look forward to your feedback either on http://jwag.biz or in a reply email. Please tell your industry friends about our education series if you found this helpful.
Questions about the Holiday Planning Nuggets? Most likely someone else has the same question, so please email them to us and we'll provide answers in an open forum or a private reply.
Remember this special series was not public. Only our Gold jWAG Subscribers and those who receive these daily emails are able to read them. Not even our Friday DIGEST readers were able to see them.
DISCLAIMER: Although all the information presented in this special holiday planning series was based off years of statistical data and attempted consumer psychological reasoning, prior results are not an accurate prediction of the future. Please review your own data for your site if you have it. Do not make any financial judgments based off this information; it's only meant to help you strategize your advertising efforts. Best wishes for a successfully planned holiday marketing campaign. Google TFYQA and have a great day.
DISCLAIMER: To protect the investment from our Gold Subscriber we have limited access to our extended series of Daily Nuggets regarding the Holiday Season. Gold Subscriptions are only available to 1 retail jewelry store per zip code. Please call 888-872-0274 for more details or visit https://www.jwag.biz/myaccount/new.html
