High-Value SEO Keyword Guide for Black Friday Cyber Monday

There are lots of things online businesses need to take care of before Black Friday and Cyber Monday come around, like:

preparing your store for the increased traffic
putting together holiday email marketing campaigns

But there’s one more thing you can’t afford to overlook, and that’s optimizing your website for search engines. To do holiday SEO, you need to rank for certain keywords. It’s also crucial to know which keywords you want to drive traffic from.

I know, SEO is tough and it can get tricky, especially if you’re new to it. But don’t let tricky cost you sales this holiday season. Instead, use the Black Friday Cyber Monday shopping craze as an opportunity to draw more attention to your brand and products.

Read on to find out what are the most valuable Black Friday Cyber Monday SEO keywords. More importantly, learn how to use these keywords to increase valuable traffic and boost sales this holiday season.

Black Friday Cyber Monday search patterns

Typically, shoppers start looking up generic, non-branded Black Friday Cyber Monday deals (search queries like smartphone discounts, toy offers, clothing deals) in October. Searches become more specific only about two weeks before Thanksgiving weekend in the US (search queries like biggest iPhone discounts, best Hot Wheels offers, cheap ASOS deals).

Source: Google Trends

Gaining an online presence on search engines takes time. If you want to appear in the search results during Black Friday Cyber Monday, you’ll need to get started now.

Holiday SEO keyword research

The first step to content optimization is keyword research. To help you figure out which keywords to use (without needing pricey SEO tools), we did holiday keyword research for you and grouped the keywords into 3 categories:

Black Friday keywords
Cyber Monday keywords
Printful product keywords

Each keyword table comes with useful metrics that’ll help you predict their potential value and competitiveness. Here’s a quick guide on what each metric means:

Search volume is a rough estimate of the number of monthly searches for a keyword. The higher the search volume, the more people Google it. We used US and global search volume data suggested by Ahrefs Keyword Explorer.
Difficulty score, on a scale from 0 to 100, shows how difficult it is to compete for a ranking spot in the search results. The lower the score, the easier it is to rank for the keyword.

Pro tip: Focus your efforts on keywords that strike a good balance of high search volume and small competition.

And now, finally, let’s get onto the keywords!

High-value Black Friday keywords

This year Black Friday falls on November 29th.

Every year, online retailers start promoting their Black Friday deals earlier than the previous year, so you should do the same. It’s a strategic move that lets shoppers find deals and plan their purchases once the big shopping day comes around.

This year, businesses will start their Black Friday Cyber Monday craze as early as the beginning of November. Which leaves you one thing to do: hurry up.

Keyword
Search Volume (Global)
Search Volume (USA)
Difficulty Score

black friday deals
528,000
355,000
90

black friday
3,300,000
261,000
92

best black friday deals
94,000
72,000
83

black friday sales
138,000
50,000
93

black friday ads
48,000
46,000
82

black friday sale deals
34,000
14,000
93

Ultimate Cyber Monday keywords

After the Black Friday shopping craze, it’s time for Cyber Monday. Last year, Cyber reached a new record of $11.3 billion in sales.

If you want to boost your sales this holiday season, mark December 2nd on your marketing calendar and start optimizing your website for valuable Cyber Monday keywords right away.

Keyword
Search Volume (Global)
Search Volume (USA)
Difficulty Score

cyber monday
458,000
70,000
73

cyber monday deals
181,000
148,000
69

best cyber monday deals
32,000
28,000
67

when is cyber monday
28,000
20,000
56

cyber monday sales
11,000
7,800
66

black friday cyber monday deals
7,900
5,000
59

Popular Printful product-related keywords

Apparel and accessories is one of the top-selling product categories during Cyber Week. If your store offers any of these product categories, you need to make them search-friendly.

Here are the most important keywords your products should be ranking for this holiday season:

Keyword
Search Volume (Global)
Search Volume (USA)
Difficulty Score

black friday clothing deals
3,500
2,000
10

black friday clothes
3,600
1,500
17

black friday deals clothes
1,900
900
24

black friday clothing sales
1,600
700
20

best black friday clothing deals
700
500
5

black friday workout clothes
350
250
0

clothing black friday
350
200
9

mens black friday clothing deals
150
150
3

black friday womens clothing
450
150
4

black friday kids clothing deals
90
80
0

black friday maternity clothes
150
60
1

black friday running clothes
150
40
0

black friday yoga clothes
90
30
0

cyber monday clothing deals
1400
1000
11

cyber monday clothing sales
800
500
10

cyber monday women’s clothing
200
150
1

cyber monday clothing sales
700
600
43

baby clothes black friday
600
200
22

black friday deals clothing
450
250
42

cyber monday clothing
400
200
53

How to use Black Friday Cyber Monday keywords

So you know you need to optimize your store for search engines, and you have the most important holiday keywords on hand. What next? Here are the most important SEO elements where your keywords should go.

Page titles (title tags)

Your store’s page titles appear as links in search engine results pages (SERPs), web browser tabs, and social media post thumbnails.

When writing your page titles, make sure to include the most valuable keywords. Ideally, place the keywords at the beginning of the title to help you rank higher. It’s important to make each page title unique—Google doesn’t like repetitive content and may mark it as spam. Also, try to stay within 60 characters to avoid your page title being cut off, as you can see in the example above.

Pro tip: Use tools like Google SERP Simulator to preview how your page titles will look in search results once published.

Main headings

The main heading appears in the body text of your website. Add a couple of Black Friday Cyber Monday buzzwords to your main heading to make your website rank on search results.

Example of the main heading

Just like page titles, you want your main headings to be unique—don’t repeat the same heading over and over again on different pages. The main headings should also be optimized for the most valuable Black Friday Cyber Monday SEO keywords related to the page topic. 

Alt image tag and image file names

Since Google bots can’t see the images, they use alt image tags and file names to understand the content. An alt tag is a short and simple description of the image. Alt image tags are also used by screen readers for the visually impaired. So it’s crucial that whatever info you include in the alt tag is true to the image itself.

For example, a good alt tag for the image below would be: photo of a woman wearing a baseball cap. And a good file name for it would be: denim-baseball-cap.jpg

Pro tip: Make your alt tags and file names slightly different to have more keyword ops.

URLs

Keep your URLs short, simple, and include a focus keyword or phrase, as it helps search engines recognize what the page is about. If you’re planning to create a new landing page to promote your Black Friday Cyber Monday deals, choosing a URL that contains a valuable keyword is a must.

Anchor texts

Google uses hyperlinks to understand the relevance and value of pages on your site. Links can be:

internal—you linking to your own pages
external—someone else linking your pages on their website.

Think of each link, internal or external, as a vote—the more you have, the better. And while the link (or vote) itself is important, anchor text is what helps Google figure out what the vote is for.

An anchor text is part of the content where the link is added (or anchored) to. So, in a way, it hints at what content you’ll find in the link.

Source: MOZ

Link your holiday-related pages in product categories, blogs, or other landing pages. Then use a keyword-optimized anchor text to direct customers to your Black Friday Cyber Monday offer page.

Pro tip: Google values in-content links way more than footer and sidebar links.

Long tail keywords

Some markets are more competitive than others. And if you happen to be competing with companies that have a large marketing budget and dominate search results already, ranking for generic keywords like “t-shirt” or “sports bra” will be difficult.

Your best bet is optimizing pages for long tail keywords. Here’s how a long tail keyword works:

generic keyword + specifications = long tail keyword

Since long tail keywords are more detailed, they get less search traffic but usually have a higher conversion rate and are easier to rank for.

So, let’s say you’re selling yoga leggings. Instead of targeting the yoga leggings keyword, try leopard print yoga leggings, or any other cool detail about your product.

Start optimizing your content for BFCM

Optimizing your content for higher rankings in search results is important all year round, but it’s crucial during busy shopping seasons like Black Friday Cyber Monday. Use this guide to identify the most valuable keywords and start optimizing your website with them in mind today.

What’s your experience with using holiday SEO to get the most out of the Black Friday Cyber Monday season? Share your wisdom in the comments below!