Doing SEO for the Holidays - Everything you need to know

Doing SEO for the Holidays - Everything you need to know

Seasonal SEO has been around ever since SEO became a thing. It focuses on long-term optimizations for short period profits, but those brief periods can mean A LOT of profit when the holiday season is over. Don't be afraid of seasonal SEO, at the core of it, SEO is a long-term strategy, waiting for results is part of the job.

So, why is seasonal SEO different?

Because in most countries the holiday season comes once a year. And that's usually all about celebrating Chrismas and other winter-based holidays; it also involves the new year as well as other festivals.
With the traditional SEO, you are continually improving your content and pages in the home you will continuously get better ranks and more organic traffic.
With Seasonal SEO you will work ahead of time, often blindly with that hope that your positions and overall organic traffic will be good enough for about two months of the year as long as the holidays shopping spree lasts.

Why should you waste time with seasonal SEO?

Because everyone else does the same! Most brands out there are slowly preparing for Chrismas every year, and most of them are deadly serious about it, they plan to make a profit in the holiday season, if you have competitors in your niche that are doing this, you need to get in on the action!

And it isn't all about SEO; your general marketing should shit direction and adopt a holiday spirit if you want to sell anything. Holiday banners, holiday offers, special sales, special landing pages, holiday newsletters and everything in between should be implemented. Chrismas is the biggest buying period of the year.

So what does Seasonal SEO consists off?

Well, this is pretty simple. Seasonal SEO consists of aligning your content to fit a list of seasonal keywords and phrases that are only searched by users during the holiday period.
These keywords will only be relevant and bring you decent traffic during the holiday you are targeting, keep in mind once this period is over your optimisation will be worthless until next year.
So have a plan on how you are going to serve this type of content. Think really carefully about what you are going to edit, create and delete concerning content.

The main drawback of Seasonal SEO

You need to start early. If you are reading this article now and you think it is time to prepare your SEO for Chrismas, you may already be too late in the game to make a difference. It will take time to put everything in effect and for Google to notice the changes before you know it Christmas will be here.

It all needs to start at least three months in advance. Research, content building, on-page optimization and link building.
Keep in mind Seasonal SEO is a secondary tactic; it should be an additional SEO strategy, not your main one! Throughout the year your main focus should be normal SEO, this is just a plus.

Is Seasonal SEO worth it?

Yes. As I said, if your competitors are doing it, you should do it too. And if your competitors are dumb enough not to do it, you should find a way to do it!
Ask yourself:
- how important is for your business to sell for very specific periods of the year?
- what are your competitors doing and how strong are they?
- can you really turn a profit around?

Other types of Seasons to focus on

Of course, when referring to the holiday season, most of us think of Chrismas. But there are plenty other holidays you can implement seasonal SEO on:

- Other Holidays. Halloween, Labor Day, Valentine's Day, etc.
- Actual Season. Spring, summer, Autumn, Winter. All of them may have a different type of keyword research.
- Don't miss other trends, fads and specific patterns you may discover.