The Independent and TechRadar share the spoils in different ways…
We’ve often heard (or asked) the question: ‘who won Black Friday SEO this year?’ – and while the main players might seem the same every 12 months, the way the search results (SERPs) play out alters dramatically.
Given the better web co. team and I have a long history (working across both editorial and SEO) when it comes to ranking for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s been fascinating digging into this year’s results.
However, I don’t want to call out ‘winners’, as there are too many ways to define that term. Instead, I’m looking at ranking performance, as there have been some strong SEO strategies at play – leading to some genuine shifts in what’s working (and what’s not) for Black Friday.
Before we begin, just something to note: this post is not designed to ‘out’ anyone’s SEO efforts or techniques – we’re friends with many audience teams who have worked so hard on their Black Friday plans, so this post is instead focused on sharing the results of their efforts and highlighting their success.
Therefore, this isn’t advice on ‘how to win Black Friday’ but understanding who ranked well… although if you wanted to talk Black Friday SEO strategies directly I’m always keen.
How were the rankings analysed?
The way brands handled the transition between Black Friday and Cyber Monday was interesting this year, so that’s the story I’ve focused on, told through the performance in rankings.
When looking at how prominent each site was in the SERPs, I’m going to be transparent on what I did and why, so you can make your own decision about whether the results align with how you’d approach this.
In addition, I’m making the source data public, so if anyone wants to make tweaks to the modelling please feel free to do so. If you use the data for any of your own analysis that you make public, please do credit and link back to this post.
Here’s what I did:
- Gathered the 150 most popular search terms including either ‘Black Friday’ or ‘Cyber Monday’, based on November 2023 search volumes, using KeywordTool.io. The list was stripped of any terms that included a year (either 2023 or 2024), replaced by the next most popular – but was otherwise unedited.
- Plugged this keyword list into AWR Cloud to record one set of rankings each day. Friday’s rankings were taken during the peak traffic time of 8AM to 8:30AM on Friday, and rankings for Saturday, Sunday and Monday were taken shortly after midnight each day (as per AWR’s normal schedule).
- The rankings were exported into this Google Sheet. For Friday and Saturday I used the 150 keywords including Black Friday. For Sunday and Monday, Cyber Monday keywords were in use.
- Assigned points to each brand based on the ranking position. Points were awarded to anyone ranking in the top ten – 10 points for position one, down to one point for position 10.
- Only half points were awarded for Saturday and Sunday, reflecting the fact these days are of less importance than the peak days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday themselves – although they can still be super valuable.
- The points across the four days were added together to give the full weekend score.
The data I’m sharing is as clean as it can be, designed to make it easy for you to use yourself and develop as you see fit – transparency is the goal here.
However, there were two potential alterations that I’m considering investigating in the future, especially if there’s interest:
The first was a weighting for click-through-rate by position, rather than using a simple linear scale of 1-10, as ranking in positions 1-3 is much more valuable than low page one rankings.
However, there are questions to be considered with this approach: what scale do I use? What about SERPs with more universal search features, ads and abundances of Google real estate that would reduce CTR, which all varies per keyword?
This used to be much easier in the ‘10 blue link’ days, but click through studies aren’t as common or useful now with SERPs looking so different per query, so it’ll be tricky to use data I’d feel comfortable with.
Another important factor, but also might ‘muddy’ the data too far, is to include search volume. Now, if this was a study of evergreen terms I would’ve absolutely done this, but as an annual event that has a peak of just a few days, the search volumes available just aren’t accurate enough.
So, for simplicity, I decided against using search volumes for this exercise, but it could be an interesting test to see if some brands are able to rank more strongly for larger or smaller terms.’
If you have any thoughts at all, please comment on my LinkedIn post with suggestions and I’d love to potentially run another version of the data using the most common ideas as a follow up.
So, who ranked best for Black Friday in the UK?
In terms of visibility, the most visible brands in UK search results for Black Friday 2024 search terms were:
The Independent absolutely nailed its execution, with brilliant search presence in the build up, the most visibility over the whole weekend for Black Friday terms and almost twice as much as any other publisher going after the same keywords.
John Lewis and Amazon were the prominent UK retailers, which makes sense given their size, and are followed by consumer champions Which? and long-time Black Friday stalwarts TechRadar.
Intriguingly, Reddit only appears at number seven – something of an anomaly for SEO analysis in 2024, right?
The rest of the top 20 is a mix of high-profile retailers (Currys, Very, Argos, JD Sports), brands (o2, Easyjet, Apple, Ugg) and more publishers (Money Saving Expert, Radio Times, Express, Good Housekeeping, Glamour).
Another thing that caught my eye is blackfriday.expert, a voucher/ portal type of site, proving exact match domains are still relatively powerful for this type of event (if I ran this same analysis in the US you would see BlackFriday.com be extremely prominent, but they don’t focus on the UK).
Here are the 20 most visible brands for Black Friday search terms in Google UK, on Black Friday 2024 itself:
And who ranked best for Cyber Monday?
Now, this is where things get really interesting: the most visible brands in UK search results for Cyber Monday 2024 search terms were very different from those that performed well for Black Friday:
Let’s be clear: this is a new set of terms (those including Cyber Monday rather than Black Friday) – brands didn’t ‘lose’ ranking during the duration of the event necessarily, but made a choice over where to put their efforts (i.e. making a concerted effort to rank specifically for Cyber Monday search terms).
Future Publishing is a big winner here, with the first, third and fourth SERPs taken by its brands (TechRadar, TomsGuide and GamesRadar).
But what does this stark difference mean? Well, firstly (and perhaps obviously) if a brand wants to rank well for Cyber Monday, it needs to target terms that contain that keyphrase. Those that have a clear Cyber Monday strategy will almost certainly outperform those that don’t.
The downside there is the extra resource needed to create and maintain these pages. The execution is also more complicated, requiring a very clear plan of attack, overseen by skilled SEO practitioners.
The alternative approach, which the data supports, is that ignoring Cyber Monday completely is also a valid approach.
It would appear that both The Independent and Which have taken this approach, and focusing all their efforts on maximising Black Friday rankings has worked really well.
Even though this piece is only designed to talk about ranking performance, it’s worth highlighting the disparity in search volumes between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which is especially stark in the UK. With more search demand for Black Friday than Cyber Monday, it’s likely that achieving a top ranking on Friday would maximise traffic and revenue.
So, if you were going to pick one SEO battle and thought you could perform well, Black Friday is the right target.
However, only a few sites can achieve good rankings at the scale we’re talking about here, and most of you are unlikely to be working with brands or domains able to compete at the very top.
If this is you, consider zigging where others zag – if others are targeting the main Black Friday SEO terms, you might be able to achieve a strong ranking for a lower volume term or going all-in on Cyber Monday.
It’s far more valuable to be well-placed on the front page for a less-popular term than being on page two – and essentially invisible – for something with high search volumes.
So, be realistic: work out where you think you’re likely to be able to rank well, rather than shooting for the appetising, but treacherously competitive, terms..
Here are the 20 most visible brands in Google Cyber Monday 2024, for Cyber Monday specific search terms.
Note: You’ll see this top 20 contains more US brands than the Black Friday list. This reinforces the point that Cyber Monday is a more recognised event in America, and the US emphasis bleeds into the UK SERPs.
In conclusion…
So, what have we learned from looking at the weekend’s data? The Independent has performed really well in the rankings it was targeting – a performance born from excellent performance in the build up to the weekend, but also well-planned Black Friday pages that had a strong focus from its team throughout the entire period.
Google was also quite broad in the way it shared around the rankings, sprinkling in a mixture of retailers, publishers and brands, as it continues its attempts to provide more useful results for shoppers who, perhaps, are still trying to understand how the Black Friday sales work in the UK.
The fact the Cyber Monday high performers were so different to those that hit the heights for Black Friday – with TechRadar leading the way there – shows that a contra-strategy can work well.
Equally, the amount of US pages (which are less useful to a UK audience) shows there’s a lot less competition for these terms too.
If we combine the points across the entire sales period, it paints an interesting picture of who performed best overall:
Here’s the full list of the most visible brands in Google UK, over the four-day BFCM 2024 period:
Hopefully you found this analysis of BFCM 2024 SEO performance insightful. If you would like to discuss it any further or have any feedback, do comment on my LinkedIn post or get in contact – -I’d love to hear from you.