As we enter the winter months and begin the build-up to Christmas, many digital marketers will be shifting their focus towards their brands’ festive campaigns. In SEO, running a seasonal campaign at any time of year can require you to deviate from your usual approach in order to maximise results. To minimise any headaches from seasonal strategising, we’ve put together our whistle-stop guide on optimising time-based content.
Keyword research
As with any SEO campaign, you will need to identify the right keywords to optimise for, but this process can be trickier for these types of campaigns. The search volumes on some keyword research tools are often a monthly average based on the last year, meaning they won’t reflect seasonal shifts.
This is something you’ll need to keep in mind when doing your research. If a keyword seems like a good fit, try not to be too discouraged if it has a low search volume, as it’s likely that the true number will be much higher over the height of the season.
Create a content calendar
Once you know what keywords you want to optimise for, you can begin putting together your content calendar. Based on your research, think about the pages, content and blog posts that will be needed to maximise your ranking potential, then organise these in a single place so you know what needs to be created and when it should be published.
The right approach will vary for every site, but a good starting point is often to create a top level landing page to act as the hub for your seasonal campaign. This can feature the core content required to rank for your primary keyword, along with links to related pages and, for e-commerce sites, relevant product ranges.
The landing page can then be supported with blog posts that address your target customers’ needs and interests, while remaining relevant to core offering and keywords.
Optimise content
When the planning stage is over, it’s time to implement your calendar as efficiently as possible. Remember to apply SEO best practices when creating your content, ensuring that keywords are organically placed in their pages’ headings and body copy, as well as all of the meta data. You may also want to include them in the pages’ URLs if it’s possible to do so in a way that’s technically practical.
Remember to update it next year
There’s no need to delete seasonal content when the peak period is over. It can often attract traffic to your site even during the off-season, and any links to these pages will likely remain active, so they will continue to support your site’s overall SEO performance. Plus, turning off these pages can actually have a negative impact if not maintained properly, as it’ll result in either a lot of redirects or a lot of 404 errors.
In fact, you can even make little tweaks to this content to keep it relevant during these down periods. For instance, adding something along the lines of “Looks like you’re planning ahead this year! We’re not quite ready yet, but for now you can check out this range instead” to these pages can work a treat.
However, there will be a need to update this content the following year. As the peak season begins to roll around again, remember to give the page a thorough once over, updating it with relevant dates, fresh content and any new product ranges. It’ll also be a good idea to re-optimise it so that you’re still using the most appropriate keywords in the right way. Then, simply update the page so it appears as new.
Discover more insights
To learn more about how you can refine your SEO strategy, explore the full range of insights available on the It Works Media blog. Alternatively, get in touch with a member of our team, today, to find out how we can help to grow your brand.
