Seasonal SEO Campaigns

Although seasonal events such as Christmas only come round once a year, SEO campaigns need to be in full swing a long time before. In fact, when it comes to seasonal landing pages, they are something you need to work on all year round in order to see the benefits.

Here we take a look at some of the main factors you should take into account when preparing Seasonal SEO Campaigns for a seasonal or event focused SEO campaign:

When promoting seasonal events through an SEO campaign on websites, many are under the impression that the page should only be visible when they are physically promoting it. For e.g., an online retailer selling Christmas gifts will often only want a Christmas gifts page on their site weeks before customers are most likely to be searching for it. This approach however, will not get you results.

It’s important to have seasonal events pages on your site at all times, not only because optimising a page at the last minute will be too late, but by constantly maintaining it you have a better chance of achieving a higher ranking when people actually begin searching for your seasonal offerings. Your page being in existence and live longer, will mean that it has greater authority – you can always maintain/change the content but mention that the products for the seasonal event will be coming soon.

In order for this method to be effective, try not to use time-indicator URL’s for events, e.g., use www.sitename.co.uk/christmas instead of www.sitename.co.uk/christmas-2012.

Your landing page can be made relevant to visitors all year round by using it to promote anything from related products to an email notification service for when seasonal promotions begin.

Maintaining a small link building campaign throughout the year will help your page build up your authority online. Then, during the months surrounding your seasonal promotion, you can up your spend and promote the page via further search and social channels. With effective planning, you can ensure that you have a schedule of events that are a success for your site in terms of seasonal traffic and conversions, as well as new opportunities.

At the time of a seasonal event you will have relevant content on your seasonal page. However, once the event is over, you will be left with old information. Keep your page fresh by creating an archive, housing all previous event details such as images and other recaps on a new URL. This way the home URL for the event will never change and will always remain top priority.

Google is quite happy for websites to have multiple pages based on similar topics, as long as they are all named differently and link in such a way that it’s obvious to search engines which are most important, for e.g. Gifts – Christmas Gifts.

This will enable search engines to match the right keywords with the right pages so that you don’t end up competing with yourself on SERPs.

In the weeks leading up to a seasonal event, there is likely to be more competition for the top spot on Google, which could cause your page to drop rankings at a crucial time.

Because organic search results can often reflect new links very quickly, it can be tricky to decide on the right time to start your online efforts. Your best bet is to get your site established in SERPs early, rather than take your chances at the last minute when you could risk missing out on both traffic and sales – the last thing you want is to rank for your event after it’s already come and gone.

By combining these efforts with Google friendly content, even when your page isn’t relevant it should still receive some generic traffic throughout the rest of the year and bring potential customers to your site.