With Black Friday around the corner and the UK in another lockdown with ‘non-essential’ shops forced to close, e-commerce sites will be busier than ever.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two relatively new dates in the diary of shoppers in the UK. A tradition in America as it marks the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday spell a bumper weekend of sales and website interest.; and this year more than any others, retailers need to be ready!

But how to deal with this shopping event that feels like it is getting bigger and bigger every year?

According to best practices guidelines that were shared by Google, it is recommended that there are set and permanent URLs used for any Black Friday and Cyber Monday pages.

Although each year we have new sales, new products and new goals and objectives from a sales point of view, there should always be the same sale page.

Google says:

“Use a recurring URL, not a new URL for each occurrence of the event. Give the landing page of recurring events a meaningful URL that reflects the event that is used each year.”

For example:

It is not recommended that the following URL is used, as it is date specific and therefore can’t be used again in the future – mywebsite/sale/2020/blackfriday.

However a URL like mywebsite/sale/blackfriday CAN be used over and over again, and it is easy for designers and webmasters to change the graphics and animation each year to reflect the selling message etc.

By using a recurring URL, you will be allowing the pages to build valuable link equity, which is something that can only be achieved over time. Therefore an older page that has been used before with a higher amount of link equity will rank and perform better than a new page each time.

Tip for Black Friday Page Creation

  • Ensure your pages follow standard SEO practice but also serve the user with the information they need.
  • Publish the page and get products on the page as soon as possible – even if they can’t be bought at that time; this is to allow the page and items (if you have Schema mark up written) to potentially rank and perform. If you put all of the pages / products live the night before, you will struggle.
  • Ensure there is a prominent link to the Black Friday page/s from the homepage – internal links help Google to understand the importance of the page and also ensure that users can get there quickly.
  • When you have your Black Friday page live and published with the new / additional content, request that the Googlebot recrawl the page to get the content in the system and indexed quickly. (note: there are no guarantees on timescale when you ask Google to recrawl, so best to be prepared and do it earlier than later)
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