Updated: October 27, 2015
If you’re reading this, then congratulations—you survived the biggest shopping weekend of the year. Retail sales following the Thanksgiving holiday broke records this year, but not because of people sleeping in Best Buy parking lots or throwing elbows during a mad Walmart rush.
Cyber Monday reports are in, and according to market data it was the heaviest online shopping day to date. Retail e-commerce spending from desktops topped $2 billion for the first time—and that doesn’t even include the rapidly-growing share of mobile commerce sales.
Here are the highlights:
- Total e-commerce sales were up by 8.5% year-over-year, although average order values were down by 3.5%
- There was a 16.7% year-over-year increase in same-store sales on Cyber Monday
- Mobile comprised 41.2% of e-commerce traffic and 21.9% of sales on Cyber Monday (up from 15.9% last year)
- Email marketing fueled almost one-quarter (23.9%) of e-commerce orders on Cyber Monday
- Shoppers referred from Facebook had an average order value of $123.44, 26.2% higher than those referred from Pinterest ($97.78)
For the internet marketer, these stats can potentially have major implications on the development of client sites and making sure consumers are led from “screen shopping” to actual conversions.
As we finally get into that busy time of the year for web traffic, we’ve gathered some other SEO headlines from the last couple weeks that we think you’ll find resourceful and interesting:
SEO
- Find out here how you can make your landing pages more effective with compelling content, dazzling design and by inserting images in just the right places.
- Predicting the future of SEO is a lot like trying to catch a bar of soap—sooner or later most theories will slip up. However, this Search Engine Land article explores the last half-decade of SEO and provides some good key insights into what to the next five years may have in store.
- Josh Bachynski from Moz hosts a video whiteboard about the top do’s and don’ts for your website in light of Google’s Panda 4.1 algorithm, which he likens to Freddy Krueger: “always kind of there in the background, in your nightmares, waiting to strike at any site, whether they think they’re breaking the rules or not.”
Link Building
- Check out this blog post from the president and founder of SEO Advantage on the importance of building relationships as well as links.
- This entertaining piece shows you how to rate the quality of your backlinks and take them from B-rated bombers to Blockbuster hits (aka from Plan 9 from Outer Space to The Godfather).
- Find out what common link building mistakes you may be making without even knowing it.
Content Marketing
- You’ll want to see this case study showing which six attributes are all that separate viral content from the duds.
- With 2014 nearly put to rest, a new research report conducted an autopsy on what SEO strategies worked this year and what didn’t. Topping the list as the most effective SEO strategy is creating quality content.
- Guest blogging is, like, so 2013. Or is it? Find out why this SEO expert says you shouldn’t dismiss guest blogging from your content strategy.
- What should you be doing with old content and pages? Or a better question, what can you do? Lunametrics answers these questions and more in part 1 of their blog series.
- And finally, you may have noticed by now that I’m a sucker for good infographics, like this one from KISSmetrics about balancing the art and science of content marketing.
That’s all we have for you all today. As always, please leave us a comment below with any other tips, stories or headlines from the SEOsphere. May the SERP rankings be with you.