How Much Does Seasonality Impact Your SEO Success?

Every business has its good and its slow seasons. And seasonality can have a big impact on how you perceive your SEO success. If you notice a drop in traffic and sales over a few months it’s entirely possible that seasonality is at play and it’s not actually anything wrong with your SEO campaign. Here are three things to keep in mind:

When search volume drops so will organic traffic.

Imagine you own a landscaping company. I would assume that the winter is your off-season, right? Few homeowners are seriously looking into hiring a landscaping company in February when there is a foot of snow on the ground, so search volume for related keywords like “Boston landscaping company” or “backyard landscaping” is bound to take a hit. When search volume for your main keywords drops don’t be surprised to see your organic traffic slip right alongside it; if people aren’t searching there isn’t really anything your SEO program can do. How can you get more traffic when no one is looking for your services? This doesn’t mean that you SEO program is failing, it just means you’re in the off-season for your business.

Take a look back as far as your site analytics will let you. If seasonality really is at play you’ll notice similar dips in traffic every year around the same time.

Great content will go unnoticed if no one is ready for it.

Sticking with our landscaping company example—let’s say you wrote a blog post about designing your backyard around an in-ground pool. That’s a great spin on landscaping that many homeowners would probably find very interesting…but not in November. In November homeowners are more likely to be looking for tips on how to protect their garden beds in the winter months because that’s their primary concern at that time of year. You might have written a fantastic piece of content that your audience would normally gobble right up but because you’re using it in the off-season its impact is significantly dampened.

One way to prepare your content marketing efforts for the off-season is to create an editorial calendar and brainstorm ideas for the whole year. This will help ensure you’re creating the right kind of content at the right time when you audience needs it most. Also keep in mind that older content can be useful from year to year provided it’s still relevant. A post about winterizing your garden might get even more activity next winter because the post has had time to age and build search engine trust.

Ranking well in the off-season doesn’t mean much.

While I am against ranking reports at the end-all-be-all measurement of SEO success, I do understand that the sites that rank well usually are the ones that get the lion’s share of the traffic. But ranking well in the off-season doesn’t mean much for your business in the end. Again, if no one is searching for what you have to offer it doesn’t matter where you fall in the SERPs; the organic traffic just isn’t there. It might actually be easier to rank better in the off-season (depending on your niche) is your competition has out their SEO on the back-burner for the time being.

Seasonality can have a really dramatic impact on your SEO success. Every business is bound to be affected by seasonality in some way or another. Some businesses, like landscapers or Christmas tree farms, are affected by the actual calendar seasons (Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall) while other businesses might have “seasons” of their own based on a variety of factors. The thing to remember is that, during the off-season, you can’t give up on your SEO in the off-season though, you want to continue your link building, social media marketing, and content marketing so that when your site is back “in season” it’s ready to go!