With the online dating industry’s peak season just around the corner, it’s time to be sure that you’re prepared! Each year the online dating industry sees a huge, natural uplift in organic traffic from December 26th until the end of January. It’s not just because singletons sign up to new dating sites for a “New Year, New Me” approach, but also because the Christmas and New Year period happens to lead to a high volume of splits.
Whether you’re running sites on our mainstream or casual networks, be ready for a huge spike in traffic! It’s essential that you start preparing your Christmas campaigns now to ensure that you are generating the highest possible returns from your acquisition efforts in the coming weeks.
Here are some of our top SEO tips to make sure you’re making then most of the peak season
‘Tis the season for SEO
Keyword research
For any SEO related planning, always start with keyword research as it will make the foundation for all of your on-page SEO. Here are a few tools we recommend to find suggested keywords:
- Google Keyword Planner
- Ahrefs
- SEMRush
You will need to obtain your list of keywords from those tools and refine this list to those most relevant to online dating and those with the highest search volume and best intent over during peak season (Boxing day through to the end of January). Then boom , you have a lovely list of keywords you can use across your landing pages and seasonal blogs.
Img 1: Google Keyword Planner, filtered to peak season to find keywords
Seasonal landing pages
Having festive landing pages is an extremely important part of preparing campaigns for December. Add some festive cheer with seasonal imagery but remember, we’re still in a global pandemic, so get the tone right. Focus on maintaining connections and dating safely – don’t ignore the wider picture.
This goes for your PPC ads too. Your messaging must be sensitive and empathetic to your target audience. Or, your ad might not even be opened in the first place. Make sure that you showcase the value of an online dating service given the circumstances people are in – we’re helping people stay connected online at a difficult time for many.
Don’t forget to update the copy to include keywords you will have found using the tools above. As we enter the New Year, switch focus from Christmas to ‘New Year, New Me’ to capture all of the singletons looking for love.
Tip: Make sure the changes you make are consistent across mobile and desktop and are still in keeping with the theme and colour scheme of the rest of your site. Also, be sure to take your site’s geography into the planning – a couple building a snowman won’t work down under.
You must have a user-friendly website
A top tip we all know and love, but we find this worth repeating time and time again as it’s super important is having a user-friendly website is essential to ensure users don’t immediately leave your site when they find it (bounce). You must ensure it is user-friendly on both desktop and, more importantly, mobile, as Google uses mobile-first indexing. Here are a couple of tools we recommend that will help you:
- Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test – to check whether Google considers your website mobile-friendly
- Google’s Page Speed Insights – to ensure your website has fast loading speeds to reduce the likelihood of a user bouncing
Img 2: Google Mobile Friendly Test after checking landing page
If you have any questions about how to start getting ready for peak season, please reach out to us here. Later this week we’ll be sharing more info about how to prepare your paid campaigns. Keep your eyes peeled.