Seasonality in SEO: How to Build a Successful SEO Marketing Strategy Based on the Season

If you own a business or work with the promotion of a certain product/service, you may have noticed how user demand changes throughout the year. These cyclical fluctuations in site traffic are called seasonality and depend on many external factors such as natural happenings, man-made happenings, changing seasons, or cultural traditions of countries.

How Does Seasonality Affect Business and SEO?

Let’s say your site sells leather and fur products. It is obvious that the demand for fur coats and jackets increases in the autumn-winter period, therefore, it is at this time that the amount of traffic on the site increases significantly, and the chances of selling the product increase. On the contrary, a decline awaits you as users’ interest in warm clothes fades away during the summertime. The decline in interest is called the slow season and should also be factored into your SEO and marketing strategy.

Almost any branch of business can be seasonalized to one degree or another. Even if you are selling souvenirs and the traffic is not changing too much, it will definitely increase during the Christmas holidays.

Recommendation: Track fluctuations in website traffic throughout the year. If you find that it grows more than 30-40% at any time, your business can be considered seasonal. Use this knowledge when further planning your SEO marketing strategy.

Researching Seasonal Requests for Website Optimization

Website promotion does not tolerate lulls and delays. In order not to lose potential customers, you need to regularly produce content and keep the site alive. In order to make sure that your business does not lose its relevance and maintain its position in the search results, fill the site with seasonal searches, relevant notes, and fresh news.

You can use the Keyword Planner in Google Adwords and Google Trends to identify and search for relevant searches. Read more in How to Do Keyword Research and How to use Google Trends for SEO.

How to Determine Seasonality for Your Business

There are 4 main types of seasonality that can be foundational to your SEO strategy. Let’s get acquainted with them.

1. Multi-month seasonality

It can last between 3 to 9 months and depend on many factors, including meteorological, cultural, epidemiological, and financial factors. A good example is a demand for masks and disinfectants during the Covid-19 epidemic.

2. Holidays and events

A simple and straightforward seasonality type are those associated with major international holidays, individual country celebrations, and world events.

3. Traffic fluctuation

A very difficult type of demand for a business is hopping traffic. It depends on constantly changing factors. For example, people do renovations throughout the year. If you sell bathroom tiles, it is difficult to predict when the demand will increase.

4. Peak interest with a gradual decline

Usually, this type is typical for the beginning of the year. People strive to change their lives, sign up for a gym, a swimming pool, stop drinking, start reading books, and so on. Along with the wave of enthusiasm, trending searches slowly decline.

We figured out the concept of seasonality, so let’s move on to the question of how to prepare a seasonal SEO strategy and what needs to be done during periods of peak demand, as well as how to avoid a lull in the slow season.

What Is a Seasonal SEO Strategy?

A seasonal SEO strategy uses the same tools to increase conversions as a regular SEO strategy but is based on specific topics and a given time frame.

There are two types of seasonal strategies:

• Event strategy (New Year, Christmas, Street Food Festival)
• Temporary strategy (winter, summer, certain months)

Optimizing your site based on seasonality will help you maintain your position in the market, meet the needs of your audience, and attract additional traffic.

Start preparing for the implementation of seasonal strategies in advance. Ideally, it is better to plan at least a quarter. Prepare a plan and choose the holidays or local events around which you plan to build your promotion. Think about what promotions and special offers you can provide to users and why they will be relevant only for a certain period of time. Choose the appropriate keywords and phrases for your promotions that you will use in the future. Create supportive content for seasonal requests in advance, such as relevant landing pages, and choose the platforms you will work with. Read the related article – SEO Strategy.

How to Be Prepared for Each Season?

1. Conduct a site analysis

Use Google Analytics to analyze the rise and fall in demand for a product/service throughout the year. As we mentioned earlier, you can determine which period is your peak, which is not, and plan your next steps with the help of analytics. For more information on the topic, see the Guide to Google Analytics article.

2. Plan

To avoid stopping promotion, divide the work into three periods, and plan actions for each of them.

• The first period is preparatory.

Before the start of the peak season, prepare everything that you may need for this. You will have planned the impact force of various activities already. During this period, begin to increase the audience’s interest in the product/service. Returning to the leather and fur business example, offer customers a refurbishment service for their sheepskin coats, fur coats, and jackets before they will require them for daily wear.

• The second period is the peak.

Here you will use the maximum amount of effort to achieve sales results. You send mailings, place advertisements, offer favorable terms, and carry out promotions. Explain to your customers why they urgently need to buy a fur coat and how it will warm them in the long cold winter.

• The third period is the slow season or falling interest.

At this stage, the main task will be to minimize the decline. Keep researching and expanding your audience. Think about what else you can offer while your product/service is not particularly relevant. Spend this time on additional advertising, PR, sponsorship, and improving future marketing strategies.

Ideally, all these three periods should be closely interconnected and will logically move from one to the other.

3. Create a seasonal content calendar

A calendar is needed to draw up a diagram of interaction with a potential client. Don’t expect to have enough time to decide what to publish and when to publish during the peak season You should already do so in advance. List the dates and topics for publications in the calendar, indicate the person in charge, and select the platforms you plan to use. Read more about it in this article – Website Content Audit.

4. Research keywords

To drive targeted traffic, you need to know what your audience is looking for. This also applies to seasonal requests. Pay special attention to long-tail keywords because they work best for seasonal SEO strategies. More information in this Long Tail Keywords article.

5. Optimize your site

Check the navigation menu, landing pages, the relevance of promotional offers, and more. Try to avoid confusion at all costs. For example, special, promotional call-to-action buttons should be placed on the corresponding pages. The button “Buy a fur coat with a discount until January 29” should not hang on the site until the beginning of spring.

Whatever business you own, remember to take seasonality into account. With the right and thoughtful approach, the effort invested will meet expectations and will eventually convert into traffic and profit.