Black Friday: best practices for e-Commerce sites
Like sales, more than sales: Black Friday and Cyber Monday are now global events, anticipated by consumers and crucial especially for those selling online. And precisely those who own or manage an e-Commerce site cannot leave anything to chance to intercept customers in this period of very high demand, especially when it comes to SEO. Visibility on search engines becomes essential and playing ahead is necessary to secure a prominent place in Google’s SERPs , and this implies strategic planning, which aims to not only optimize the site’s content for the most relevant searches of the moment, but also prepare one’s e-Commerce to flawlessly handle high traffic and ensure a smooth experience for users, whether on desktop or mobile. Flawless technical SEO, timely analysis of seasonality, and perfecting the user experience can make all the difference, turning simple traffic into real conversions. So let’s find out the key SEO strategies for Black Friday and Cyber Monday and all the tips and best practices for e-Commerce businesses that want to maximize both sales and visibility in organic searches during these peak traffic periods.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday: what they are and why they are critical for e-Commerce
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two central dates for large-scale shopping and, for consumers, they represent the eagerly awaited opportunity to gain access to irresistible discounts and promotions.
Originally born in the United States, these special days have taken on a global dimension, transforming into true global online shopping holidays. Black Friday, in particular, has a longer history and is linked to physical stores, while Cyber Monday is already the “child” of digital commerce and has further fueled the wave of online shopping with a day of promotions dedicated exclusively to Web shoppers.
In recent years, lines in front of physical stores have gradually become “virtual queues,” with millions of users simultaneously accessing vendors’ websites, ready to grab the best bargains.
That’s why the period in which these two events fall is one of the most important of the year for those involved in SEO and e-Commerce: these events offer online sellers an unparalleled opportunity to maximize visibility on search engines on the very days when millions of consumers are looking for deals and promotions, and initiate searches with high purchase intent.
While they represent a valuable opportunity to make money in terms of direct sales, they are also the ideal ground for implementing SEO strategies that can determine the success or failure of an online business, not only in the short term, but also throughout the rest of the year.
To put it another way, the combination of these two days has generated a ripple effect that affects not only merchants, but also the entire strategic set-up of online marketing. For an e-Commerce business, then, it is no longer just about “doing business,” but about taking full advantage of the scalable impact these events can have on brand visibility , customer base, and, of course, overall revenue.
The role of SEO for e-Commerce during traffic peaks
These events are characterized by a huge increase in online competition, with exponential traffic pouring into search engines. The SERP becomes a crucial battleground, and being able to appear well-positioned there means dominating the flow of purchases.
Searches generate very high volume queries that, if intercepted by sites with well-optimized SEO, lead to significant results in terms of traffic and conversions. But care must be taken to interpret and analyze this data correctly.
For example, SEOZoom tells us that the keyword “black friday” has a volume of 201k monthly searches, but this is only the aggregate figure: in fact, deepening the investigation with our seasonality algorithm, we notice that users’ interest begins to arise in September and peaks in November, where the volume is close to 2 million searches. And even a more sectoral query like “cyber monday” has the same trend: the aggregate volume is 14.8k, but in November it almost increases tenfold and exceeds 110 thousand searches.
Here, then, we are faced with the two major elements of criticality and complexity: the extreme competitiveness of keywords, but also the need to anticipate the work in order to be properly positioned at the “right time,” that is, when user searches reach the real peak.
Another increasingly common phenomenon that needs to be properly evaluated is theextension of promotions beyond Black Friday alone. Many brands, in fact, choose to anticipate or extend discounts, focusing on a real Black Week or, in some cases, in a Black Month. This model not only amplifies the opportunity to attract traffic and sales, but also changes the user search cycle by extending it over a longer period of time. Consequently, planned SEO must adapt to these changes, optimizing site visibility not only for Black Friday, but for an entire “season” of discounts, where competition continues for weeks.
Proper preparation requires a long-term vision and a multi-layered, structured SEO strategy. Creating new promotional pages on the heels of events and hoping for organic traffic is an outdated approach. In fact, optimization must begin long before the hottest days arrive, because Google rewards constancy: it means that optimized pages with stable URLs (e.g. /black-friday/ or /cyber-monday/) tend to consolidate authority over time, gradually gaining in scalability in the SERP. And it’s not just about updating products and offers, it’s about improving the internal structure of the site, making sure links are solid and landing pages have great content and performance.
During peak periods, users do not accept slow loading times or difficult browsing experiences. For this reason, optimizing not only in terms of content, but also from a technical performance perspective , is a key aspect of the anticipated strategy. Implementing best practices on Core Web Vitals (load times, visual stability, site responsiveness) is what can really make a difference, especially when the competition is so fierce. Speed and user experience are now an integral part of SEO ranking, determining who will rank well when the user searches for crucial keywords, such as “Black Friday deals.”
Ultimately, it’s not just about “being there” when searches explode, but about being ready in advance with a digital ecosystem that works in an integrated way: SEO, UX and technical performance must converge toward a single goal, ensuring our eCommerce visibility and speed appeal , both on peak days and in the long term.
SEO strategies for Black Friday… and beyond: how to deal with every peak eCommerce event
We talk about Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but these are certainly not the only peak events for those running an eCommerce business: today there are numerous other occasions that result in similar traffic peaks and require the same caution in terms of SEO optimization and site management. For example, equally relevant sales events with a global reach are now common, such as Amazon’s Prime Day and Singles’ Day, which has become an essential reference for online sales in Asia but has now been exported to other international markets, including Italy.
Prime Day is the day of exclusive discounts organized annually by Amazon reserved for members of its Prime program . First launched in 2015, it does not have a fixed date, but is usually in July, representing an important opportunity for eCommerce businesses selling through Amazon to participate in a shopping event in the middle of summer, coping with a wave of traffic concentrated in a few hours. In 2024, moreover, Amazon “doubled down” on this occasion with the two days of “ Prime Deals” promoted in October.
Singles’ Day (11/11), which has become popular in China thanks to Alibaba and Aliexpress, has gradually garnered international interest and is now one of the world’s most profitable business events, with record sales. Even this event, culturally linked to the idea of celebrating singles, has evolved into a day of cross-promotions across all sectors, replicating in part the logic of wild shopping typical of Black Friday.
And then there are also other well-established dates, such as local seasonal sales, Back to School and even holidays like Christmas or Mother’s Day, which see significant increases in traffic for e-Commerce. Each such event generates a substantial sales projection, with spikes in access that test the resilience and organization of the website.
What is the common thread? That all such events-from Prime Day to local events to well-known global events-require an advanced level of strategic attention : optimizing user experience, ensuring excellent performance, and planning SEO to intercept traffic well in advance to amplify conversion opportunities proactively and sustainably.
Black Friday: history, origin, meaning of the name
Black Friday is held every year on the Friday following Thanksgiving, the important and heartfelt U.S. holiday celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November. This means that Black Friday falls on a different date each year, but always on a Friday and within the last weekend of November.
Its roots lie in the U.S. business environment of the 1960s, but its true emergence as a mass shopping phenomenon dates back to more recent times. According to the most widely accepted reconstructions today, the term “Black Friday” was initially used by Philadelphia police to describe the heavy and chaotic pedestrian and automobile traffic that characterized the day following the Thanksgiving celebration.
Later on, the term was reinterpreted by merchants with a more positive connotation , to emphasize the importance of red and black in the accounting records: from a situation of debt and “loss” (red) typical of the early months of the year, many stores were finally seeing their first major profits come right during the Black Friday period, thus “in the black.”
Over the years, Black Friday has become a global phenomenon that no longer affects only physical stores: thanks to the spread of the Internet and e-commerce, it is now one of the busiest times in e-Commerce as well, with thousands of sites aiming to offer steep discounts to attract old and new customers.
Cyber Monday: history, origin, meaning of the name
If Black Friday was originally intended to incentivize sales offline and in physical stores, Cyber Monday was created specifically to promote online sales. Coined in 2005 by the National Retail Federation, the date was created to take advantage of a phenomenon that had already become established: on the Monday following Thanksgiving Day, consumers flooded online stores to take advantage of additional promotions and discounts they would not find in their Black Friday purchases. From this need, the concept of Cyber Monday developed as a day dedicated exclusively to virtual shopping, with promotions targeted only on e-Commerce.
Time-wise, then, Cyber Monday is held annually on the Monday following Black Friday and usually falls at the beginning of the last full week of November, although it can sometimes “happen” in the very first days of December as well.
The term “Cyber” refers to the idea of technology and digital, creating a sharp distinction from Black Friday, which, in its traditional meaning, referred mainly to discounts in physical stores. However, over time, the barriers between offline and online shopping have become less clear-cut, and today both days are considered essential for any sales channel, whether in a physical point of sale or on a digital platform.
For a brand active in e-Commerce, focusing on Cyber Monday has also become essential to ensure extended promotional sales, leading the website to face a double challenge: maintaining high technical performance even during sustained traffic peaks and effectively managing remarketing to retain surfers who may not have completed their purchase yet. Optimizing SEO for these two consecutive events allows you to capitalize on the entire weekend of sales and attract new customers through high-volume queries that dominate searches.
E-Commerce data during Black Friday: how purchases and trends are changing
Before we get to the operational part, there are some data that can give us a full understanding of the scope of this special period and the impact it has on those who sell online.
Indeed, in recent years, Black Friday has continued to evolve, establishing itself as one of the highlights for digital commerce globally. From 2020 to 2023 we have witnessed major transformations both in consumer behavior and in the strategies adopted by e-Commerce: if initially Black Friday was an almost exclusively physical event, aimed at bringing customers to stores, today the situation has changed radically, especially after the new shopping habits that matured during the pandemic. E-commerce has experienced exponential growth, not only in English-speaking countries but also in Europe and, in particular, in Italy, where this day has become a real opportunity to maximize sales on a digital scale.
In 2023, for example, data tell us a success story for e-Commerce, with online sales reaching historic peaks. In the United States, in particular, according to Adobe Analytics , Black Friday sales hit a new record of $9.8 billion, a 7.5 percent growth over 2022. This upward trend is not a point anomaly, but a reflection of the strategic behavior of consumers who, increasingly aware of “timed” deals, anticipate their purchases to maximize their discounts. Online platforms are the primary access point for these purchases, thanks to the integration of technologies such as flexible “Buy Now, Pay Later” type payments, which grew 47 percent year-on-year, facilitating higher spending even at a time of economic instability.
At the level of product sectors, the focus remains dominated by technology even for Black Friday. Electronic devices such as smartwatches, TVs and game consoles were among the best-selling products, supported by significant discounts that boosted purchases. In contrast, sectors such as home tools performed less brightly. This data highlights a change in the type of consumers participating in Black Friday: we are talking about a younger audience, accustomed to handling deals via smartphones-in fact, sales from mobile devices consolidated their impact, accounting for as much as $5.3 billion of total sales.
The most recent data confirm how the online shopping experience has now deeply ingrained new habits, making eCommerce an essential part of the customer journey. In Italy, this trend has been particularly evident. Since 2020, there has been a steady increase in people preferring to shop online during Black Friday, a phenomenon that was previously more rooted in the United States. Accelerated digitization has brought more diverse audiences to the web, making digital marketing and SEO strategies that can respond promptly to seasonal spikes in traffic imperative.
Key e-Commerce statistics over the period globally and in Italy
Analysis of recent data highlights how both globally and in Italy certain trends have become central to those selling online. In particular, some patterns have emerged that every e-Commerce should know and use to optimize their strategy.
- Online sales growing steadily. In the United States, Black Friday 2023 online sales reached $9.8 billion (up 7.5 percent from the previous year). In parallel, Italian sales, especially in the electronics and entertainment sectors, saw an increase of 476 percent compared to a normal day.
- Purchases from mobile. Purchasing via mobile devices has taken a dominant role. More than 50% of online sales in the United States were completed from smartphones. This trend is also relevant in Italy, with an increasing percentage of users preferring mobile to compare prices and finalize purchases.
- Flexible payments on the rise. Payment solutions such as Buy Now, Pay Later have grown 47 percent in the United States, offering consumers the ability to spread costs over time, incentivizing the purchase of high-end goods such as electronics and jewelry.
- Growth of Cyber Monday. Although Black Friday retains its central role, Cyber Monday has established itself with $12.4 billion in sales in 2023 alone in the United States, registering 9.6 percent growth over 2022. In Italy, too, retailers report significant sales spikes on Monday, with a focus on clothing and technology devices.
- Moderate but effective discounts. While Black Friday once meant exceptional discounts, consumers now perceive the markdowns as less impactful. With an average discount of 35 percent, consumers are less attracted to the deals as they were in the past, although they still see Black Friday as an opportunity to plan Christmas shopping.
This data paints a picture where eCommerce plays a preponderant role in global and Italian sales, and where advance planning and SEO optimization of seasonal events is a key part of the success of any marketing strategy. Staying competitive means optimizing not only prices and offers, but also the entire online user experience, with a focus on site load speed and conversion from mobile.
SEO for e-Commerce: best practices for Black Friday and Cyber Monday
How consumers shop is a valuable clue for those involved in SEO and optimizing their e-Commerce performance, and there are of course specific interventions we can apply to prepare effective landing pages for promotional sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and more generally to optimize landing pages for “hot” sales throughout the year.
Support for this also comes from Google, which has dedicated a special insight on optimizations for e-Commerce for the year-end vacation season, which, as Alan Kent of Google’s Search Relations Team writes, represents “a peak time for many merchants, with special sales events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.”
And it is precisely merchants who can “help Google highlight their sales events by providing landing pages with relevant content and high-quality images,” following the best practices outlined for gaining visibility during these concurrent phases of online traffic.
- Work in advance
“Be sure to create the page well before the sale so that Googlebot has time to discover and index the page,” writes Kent, who then urges checking a few technical steps, starting with ‘not preventing Google from crawling the URL’ with the robots.txt file or with noindex in the robots meta tags. To make sure everything is in order as intended, we can use the Search Console’s URL Inspection tool.
- Apply standard SEO best practices.
Like any other web page, these landing pages should also be created by referring to the classic best practices of SEO and on-page SEO optimization , remembering what Google‘s specific tips for e-Commerce, the four steps to open an online store and the Google Search Console tools useful for e-Commerce.
- Using links to increase visibility
It is important to link landing pages to the home page (or other page of similar strength), because these links help increase its visibility and allow users (and Google) to find the landing page more quickly.
- Use a recurring URL
Another practical guideline is to use recurring URLs, and not create a new URL for each occurrence of the event. Specifically, Kent urges that the recurring events landing page be given a “meaningful URL that reflects the event being used each year,” using /sale/ black-friday and not /sale/2020/black-friday.
- Leveraging images
We know how much images can mean to a site and, in particular, to e-Commerce.Therefore, Google recommends including a relevant, high-quality, preferably static image on the landing page that provides an up-to-date representation of your sale, which is also useful for intercepting people who linger on Google Images results. Again, there are some pointers to optimizing images for SEO, such as trimming white space around borders and using a visually appealing, good-quality image.
- Have the page crawled again
After testing the validity of structured data, it may be useful to ask Google to crawl the page again to update content more quickly.
SEO strategies for e-Commerce: how to manage activities for Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Before, during and after: the work to get ready for Black Friday and other peak events such as Prime Day or Cyber Monday cannot be limited to a single time and date.
Before the big day, it is essential to optimize the site well in advance to ensure good rankings when searches are at their peak. During the event, you need to monitor and correct any critical technical issues in real time, ensuring optimal performance and an effective shopping experience. After, data analysis and promotional page optimization are critical to capitalize on gains in visibility and traffic even once the bidding season is over.
Let’s look at some small practical and operational insights.
- Before Black Friday: technical and strategic preparation
Preparation for Black Friday absolutely cannot begin in the run-up to the event: SEO optimization must start months in advance, as search engines need time to properly index pages. The first steps include creating or updating landing pages specifically for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, ensuring that the URLs are recurring and consolidated: as mentioned, in this way, Google can retain the authority built in previous years, improving the chances of climbing the SERPs on peak days.
Another crucial step is the analysis of seasonal keywords: with SEOZoom for example, we can of identify the main and long-tail keywords that users will start searching for as early as September, so as to optimize title, meta description and text content well in advance.
From a technical point of view, it is crucial to devote ourselves tooptimizing the performance of the site. We know that Google positively evaluates factors such as loading speed and visual stability via Core Web Vitals, but in the run-up to Black Friday these aspects become essential. Pages cannot be allowed to take more than 2-3 seconds to load; any delays can translate into lost SEO visibility and potential sales. Therefore, optimizing images, minimizing CSS/JS files and improving the user experience (UX) are all tasks that need to be completed before the event. Finally, let’s make sure we have working and properly set up internal links to drive traffic from home pages and main categories to promotional pages.
- During Black Friday: monitoring and responsiveness
Once Black Friday has arrived, the focus is on constant monitoring and the ability to respond promptly to any issues. During high traffic events, even the slightest glitches or slowdowns can trigger significant customer losses and negatively convert all preparatory SEO work. The first step is to keep an eye on server and availability metrics: stress generated by increased traffic could slow loading or, worse, cause temporary site outages. It is important to use real-time monitoring tools to detect any drops in speed or 404 and 500 errors, which should be corrected quickly.
In parallel, it is important to monitor the performance of the most viewed pages, using Google Analytics or tools such as SEOZoom to analyze user behavior, understand which pages generate the most sales, and take action on any critical issues (e.g., abandoned carts or problems with finalizing purchases). During Black Friday, the UX needs to be perfect: you need to reduce the steps required to complete a transaction, make sure the checkout process is fast and intuitive, and make key information such as shipping charges or available payment methods accessible.
- After Black Friday: data analysis and ongoing optimization
After the event is over, the work does not stop: it is time to turn todata analysis, which will reveal what worked best, where problems were found, and where there is room for improvement.
In-depth analysis of traffic, sales, and user behavior can provide valuable information to optimize future peak events and improve overall SEO strategy. Using Google Analytics, we can track top-selling product categories, check conversion rates from different traffic sources (organic, paid, referral), and use SEOZoom to evaluate the effectiveness of selected keywords.
This data is critical for improving not only future peak events, but also the overall e-Commerce SEO strategy.
Another important step in post-Black Friday is the management of remarketing. Many users do not complete a purchase right away, but may return to the site to close the order later, perhaps after doing some more comparison research. Retargeting and follow-up campaigns , targeting personalized communications, allow us to retrieve those who have added products to the cart without finalizing or who have simply visited product pages without purchasing.
In addition,site optimization must continue even after the event: it is essential to update promotional pages, removing products no longer available or expired offers, but keeping active pages optimized for evergreen and durable keywords, so as to preserve the authority gained through SEO activities even in the long run.
How to optimize e-Commerce strategies for Black Friday and other events (FAQ)
It’s quite natural to have small questions about how best to optimize your eCommerce to maximize traffic and conversions in preparation for Black Friday and other similar seasonal events.
That’s why we’ve collected some of the most frequently asked questions we receive related to SEO and optimization strategies to adopt during these crucial times, summarizing the guidance given with some thoughts that we hope will be helpful.
- Is it necessary to create a new page for each Black Friday?
No, it is not necessary. On the contrary, it is advisable to maintain recurring URLs for Black Friday promotional pages, such as “/black-friday” or “/offers-black-friday,” and simply update the content from year to year. This approach preserves the page’s accumulated authority on Google, helping it rank better in seasonal queries. Google prefers stable URLs that are already indexed, making it easier to resume ranking in relevant SERPs when the promotion season arrives.
- How long before the event should the site be optimized?
Ideally, SEO optimization for Black Friday should begin at least two to three months before. This gives time for search engines, such as Google, to index the pages properly and to check the SEO strategy to the new emerging queries in time and adapt it appropriately. Content, meta tags and technical optimizations should be implemented well in advance, so as to ensure maximum visibility when the volume of searches begins to rise.
- What are the most important keywords to consider for Black Friday?
Keywords should be selected carefully, considering both generic keywords (“Black Friday deals,” “Black Friday 2024 discounts”) and long-tail keywords that are more specific to your industry and products (“Black Friday Samsung TV,” “Black Friday smartwatch discount”). The more detailed and targeted users’ searches are, the more likely they are to convert them into sales. For effective keyword analysis we can of course use SEOZoom and its tools to identify not only those with high search volume, but also with manageable competition, so as to target SEO efforts more effectively.
- How do Core Web Vitals affect Black Friday SEO?
Core Web Vitals are key metrics that Google uses to evaluate the quality of the user experience. During events like Black Friday, where site traffic can increase dramatically, maintaining excellent values for Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) , Interaction to Next Paint (INP) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) can serve to achieve and maintain good rankings. But there is a broader argument to be made that goes beyond ranking: a site that loads slowly or responds late to user actions is likely to lose visibility and ultimately see lower conversion rates. And so, the goal is not to aim to outperform metrics uncritically, but to work to make sure the site loads quickly and maintains a smooth UX even under stress.
- How important is mobile for Black Friday?
Mobile is an essential part of sales during Black Friday. In 2023, about $5.3 billion was spent via mobile devices in the United States alone during this day. Optimizing your eCommerce so that it offers a mobile-friendly experience is therefore imperative. This includes fast loading times, an intuitive layout and the ability to complete orders easily from smartphones. Also from an SEO perspective, Google applies mobile-first indexing logic, so optimizing for mobile also directly affects the overall ranking of the site.
- How can we best prepare the internal link structure for Black Friday?
Internal links are an essential aspect of SEO even during Black Friday. Promotional pages should be easily accessible from both the homepage and the main category pages. Linking offer pages directly to key products and dedicated sections ensures better navigation for visitors and improves indexing by Google. It is crucial that internal links are planned strategically, associating the most relevant products with promotion pages to push the best offers in a targeted manner.
- How can I optimize bid images for SEO?
Image optimization is another key component of SEO, especially during high-viewing events such as Black Friday. This means making sure images are compressed for fast loading times and eliminating any unnecessary white space around images, for example. And then always use descriptive ALT text tags to help Google understand the visual content of our pages and support the difficulties of any users with disabilities, and integrate Schema Markup tools to specify prices and discounts on products. Google Images is an often overlooked tool, and optimizing images for that channel can significantly increase traffic, especially if products feature highly searched discounts or special offers.
- When should I request a rescan from Google to update page content?
Once pages have been updated with new content for Black Friday, it can be useful to request a rescan using tools such as Google Search Console. Doing so ensures that Google quickly scans the updated pages, making it easier to index the latest information, including new offers or discounted prices. Although this is not a mandatory procedure, doing so can reduce reindexing time and get updated content into the SERPs as quickly as possible.
