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At some point we may see Santa actually holding a Jack-o-lantern, unless these folks have their way. Whatever's too early offline though isn't online in terms of preparing your online store for the holiday season.

Give Santa A Break, Start Your Holiday SEO Early

About of third of online shoppers have already started their holiday shopping, according to ShopLocal. That doesn't mean you should annoy them with Christmas lights on your website, just know that they're out there, prowling around your garage before dawn to beat out the amateur yard-salers.

Getting started well in advance of the holiday season has two benefits: serving a significant portion of the online marketplace on their timeline; and giving the search engines time to index and rank your site relevancy just before the madness begins.

Even if Google is getting faster at indexing, it doesn't hurt to get a head start.

Matt McGee over at SearchEngineLand has put together a nice checklist about how to get ready for holiday search. His advice spans doing your keyword research, things to avoid, remembering the needs of the customers and delivering what they need before they ask for them.

And also, from a practicality standpoint, McGee reminds us:

If you're upgrading your web site to get ready for the holidays, let your web developer know now. Back in my days as a designer/developer, our phone started ringing off the hook right after Labor Day. Your designer may have the same experience, so if you wait until the last minute, it might be too late!

 Read the rest of Matt's post for some good tips on how to get ready.