Milena Fietko 
Published: 18.07.2019 
5 minute 
What strategy to adopt in SEO activities in the seasonal industry? When to start SEO activities? What can an entrepreneur running a website that has seasonal traffic do? Find the answers below.
.Specifics of the seasonal industry
. .Running a business requires an entrepreneur to have an excellent knowledge of the industry, the market and his target audience. Even at the stage of creating a business plan, you can determine which areas of the business you should invest in during the year. Thanks to trend research, it is possible to indicate with a high degree of accuracy which months of the year will be the most profitable for the business, and when we will have to deal with the so-called dead season.
.Already at this stage, then, comes the issue of seasonality, which is also well known in online marketing. However, we often think that the digital space is isolated from the real one and seasonality will not exist there. Nothing could be further from the truth! Seasonality of a site is an issue faced not only by businesses, but also by SEO and SEM agencies running campaigns for such businesses.
Example of seasonal industry
. .Selling LEGO bricks online? Be prepared for the fact that the season for them doesn’t last all year – you’ll get the most traffic in May before Children’s Day, and the real “harvest” starts at the end of November, when people start buying gifts for Christmas.
.There’s no tragedy yet with LEGO bricks: it’s a popular birthday gift, and after all, kids’ birthdays are year-round (let’s not kid ourselves – big kids play with blocks, too, so LEGO bricks as a gift for an adult jeweler will be a great idea, too). That’s worse if you’re selling baubles – you only have a season of +/- a month.
.When to start SEO activities in the seasonal industry?
. .In seasonal industries, it’s easy to see when the greatest interest in a product/service occurs, and when the season is dead. All you have to do is reach for tools such as Google Trends:
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When are such companies most likely to approach an SEO agency? Usually when interest in a product or service is slow to start. If the season is short, the SEO company has a poor chance of building satisfactory results and the cooperation usually ends right after the season.
.The client expects very good results from month to month and a real boom during the peak season. In contrast, SEO does not work ad hoc. The first month is usually an analytical time: auditing the site, choosing the right strategy of action. The effects do not come overnight.
. .So when is the best time to start SEO efforts? Let them continue all year long regardless of the season!
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Customer expectations – bet on education
.Investing in SEO, an entrepreneur expects increases in website traffic, sales and a quick return on investment. often explaining that no one will buy baubles in July accomplishes nothing. “I invested in SEO, then why don’t I have month-to-month increases?” – sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”
.How to deal with this? Educate your customers. For large companies and high budgets, this is usually not an issue. Clients are aware of which periods of the year their business will be profitable. They are also aware that the investment in SEO will not pay off immediately.
. .On the other hand, however, we have a small and medium-sized client who invests much less money in SEO than a larger client. For him, however, the amounts are relatively high – he often has to overinvest in order for SEO activities to pay off for him. Not surprisingly, such a client will expect larger and faster results of activities. Many times I have encountered the thinking that this is not why someone invested in SEO, so that the increases will not be seen every month.
.Customer education is one thing. How the SEO service is sold is also important. It is often at this point that a mistake is made. By promising pears in the sky, the salesman preemptively derails further cooperation with the client.
SEO activities and the seasonality of the site
. .When it comes to seasonality and promotional campaigns, advertising Google Ads work well. Especially those building consumer awareness of the brand.
. .SEO, on the other hand, is an often underutilized channel that can help prepare for the season and generate additional traffic to the site beyond. The very process of positioning throughout the year will help prepare the site for the season. After all, we are aiming for the highest possible positions in organic search results at all times. Consequently, by building them throughout the pre-season, we are prepared when the season finally arrives.
. . .Seasonal blog
. .A good idea to draw additional traffic to your site during the off-season is to run a “seasonal” blog. Here I’ll use a store selling high-speed juicers and blenders as an example. As you can see from the site’s seasonality chart below, we can expect the highest traffic in September:
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A content strategy was implemented for the client, which involved creating blogposts related to a particular season (season for specific fruits, preserves, juices). For example, for the barbecue season, which began in May, an article was prepared on how to prepare homemade mustard from a blender that would work well for barbecues. In winter, meanwhile, you can prepare “juices for the cold” – all using a juicer, of course.
. .In such articles, of course, linked products related to the topic. Those interested in juices can directly go from such an article to the product and purchase it. Having a blog also affects Topical Authority of the site, and linking in such an article a key phrase allows to raise its position (of course, this is not enough, you need all the SEO Magic for this :)). In addition, the site records regular increases in visibility:
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Change the positioned subject line
. .Another element of an SEO strategy should be changing the positioned subject matter, and thus the key phrases, as the season progresses. A good example here would be an LED lighting store.
.In the spring-summer season, it is worth switching from positioning phrases related to LED lighting in general, to garden, terrace lighting. In winter, if you have Christmas decorations in your assortment for home lighting – focus on phrases related to them.
. .Exposing a promotional assortment on the website
. .A good idea for seasonal activities is to expose bookmarks on the site related to a specific event, holiday etc. Below is an example of preparing for the school season and the “Back to school” bookmark:
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Events and sales
. .Another idea for gathering seasonal traffic is tocreate and position sub-pages for specific, name-recognized sales. It’s popular to create a Black Friday tab that will be unveiled and positioned seasonally every year, and over the years it will gain strength and perform better and better in subsequent viewings. The biggest players are doing this.
.Often the bookmark is hidden or taken off the page altogether, while there are companies that keep it in the page structure all the time – example: x-kom.pl:
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Gifts, holidays … dedicated sub-pages
.If the assortment of the positioned site sells for specific holidays, it is a good idea to create dedicated subpages “Gifts for…”. In the main menu, you can place a Opportunities tab and group the assortment that will fit a specific event.
.This is primarily a practice that gift stores follow, but nothing prevents you from implementing such a division in stores with other assortments. An example from the My gift dna store below:
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Adjusting your SEO budget
. .For small businesses that are very much affected by seasonality, you can go so far as to sustain SEO efforts during the dead season (e.g., reduce the budget for activities during that period), and intensify them before the season (depending on the industry, about 3 months before the start of the season), when clients begin to do their due diligence and identify their needs.
.This is not a perfect solution, but it will allow for continuity of positioning efforts and will be a step towards the customer and understanding their business. With such decisions, we can gain a loyal customer who will feel that we understand their needs.
.React to the current situation
.The low season does not have to derail your chance for high profits at all. Increased sales can be influenced by many factors such as weather, competitors’ actions or cultural events. Mobile networks use this very well to keep their customers. For example, when the Polish national team wins a soccer match in an important event, one of the mobile operators gives its customers additional internet in the number of gigabytes corresponding to the number of goals.
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How does this relate to SEO? Very often one of the elements of an SEO strategy is to create Social mentions for clients. As a professional, you probably observe thousands of hashtags gaining popularity during the week. Give your client such promotional activities. Want to know how much an SEO specialist earns in the industry? Check out our report >>
. .Consulting in our industry is still undervalued by clients (and by us too), but it’s definitely worth educating and proving that our knowledge and following trends can help them with their business.
.“Why did it drop!” – how to evaluate off-season SEO efforts and report results?
.When it comes to seasonality, we cannot rely solely on month-to-month traffic figures. So how can we assess whether SEO work is going in the right direction? First of all, we should compare traffic not month-to-month, but year-to-year.
. .Year-to-year traffic comparison
. .Example: during the holiday season, most industries will see a decline between May and June (the start of the vacation season). From month to month, it does not look colorful:
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However, taking into account the seasonal decline and comparing year-on-year traffic, we already draw a very different picture:
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Key phrase positions
. .The second way to check SEO effects is to increase key phrase positions. This is the fastest visible and easiest way to see if your SEO efforts are going in the right direction.
.Customers can use their own monitoring and check on their own the growth of key phrases on which the SEO company is working. And of course, I’m not talking about the positioning billed for the effect based on a limited number of key phrases – such an action is already a thing of the past.
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SEO agencies should also send monitored key phrases in their reports, along with information on how their position has changed over the past month (or another unit in which reports are sent). An example of phrase monitoring from the Serprobot tool:
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Page visibility
. .With an increase in the position of key phrases comes an increase in visibility, which can be monitored, such as with the Senuto tool. The process of getting more phrases into the Top50, then into the Top10 and Top3 will result in a regular increase in visibility.
.We can’t blindly trust the charts, however. Toolbases contain a limited number of keywords. However, they are regularly replenished, so visibility charts show increasingly accurate data and cover a larger pool of keywords.
.There are, however, industries, such as the erotic industry, for which the keyword pool is still small (this is due to the fact that it has high restrictions on advertising and it is hard to pull data on searches for specific key phrases). An example of a regular visibility chart for daniken.com.pl (number of phrases in the Top10) below:
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How to explain seasonality to the customer – tools that speak for us
.In addition to typical seasonality, websites throughout the year may experience fluctuations in traffic. How do we know when to expect drops? All we need to do is reach out to two tools: Senuto and its site seasonality chart, and Google Trends, where we can check the trends of a given keyword or specific topic.
. .For example, an online bookstore will see its peak season in January due to New Year’s sales. The second spike in traffic will occur in November-December, before Christmas. The biggest drops in traffic, however, occur during the holiday season.
. .Below is the Site Seasonality Chart from Senuto, which, based on current keyword positions, determines the traffic a site is likely to get each month:
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Recognizing the site’s seasonality enables you to plan your work for the entire year, with a campaign geared toward specific events: Women’s Day, Christmas, Mother’s Day, etc. It is also a great tool for planning Google Ads campaigns.
. .Similar trends throughout the year can be determined from Google Trends:
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Transition…
.In addition to the typical seasonality usually associated with specific events, weather, time of year, etc., we can also talk about trends. There are businesses that just … pass away. Most often, an old product is replaced by a newer version. Or something that was in fashion a few years ago passes away and gives way to a new fashion.
.An example is rc models (controlled cars, airplanes, etc.), for which the fad eventually passed away with the arrival of drones on the market. Below is a trend chart from Google Trends for both issues:
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How to update content and bring old content back to life >
.Seasonal business – what can an entrepreneur do?
.When running a business whose products or services are typically seasonal, you can prepare for this in advance and adjust your operations accordingly. Smaller entrepreneurs in particular should think about hedging for the times when the website will not bring the expected traffic and thus will not fulfill the business goal of generating a profit.
Particularly for smaller businesses, you should also think about hedging for the times when the website will not bring the expected traffic and thus will not fulfill the business goal of generating a profit. . .
Expansion of product range
. .Knowingly, you can have several businesses for each season, but not everyone can afford to run several businesses at the same time. The first step to take in this case is to think about expanding your assortment.
The first step to take is to think about expanding your assortment. .
And here you should be careful not to make a mistake. Making your store a “mish-mash” is not a good idea, as it will affect your company’s identity and perception. If you run a LEGO store, the additional assortment could be other toys (although in this case it won’t affect seasonality). On the other hand, if you retrofit this store with… cell phones, you may gain additional traffic, but the perception of your store as being typically from LEGO will be severely disturbed.
.Example: A good example of a seasonal assortment is parasols. Ordinary ones – those we carry with us during inclement weather – sell according to the weather conditions. Remember the torrential downpour in May this year? This umbrella store sure does:
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Well, but what can such a store do when the sun is giving out? Think about how it can expand its assortment. In this case, it’s quite simple – enter the market with garden umbrellas (they sell well around May and June, when it gets warmer).
.But what’s next? We’ve got fall, early spring taken care of, what to do about summer? Enter umbrellas for the beaches – those that you can pack in a suitcase and carry on a plane are gaining in popularity. This takes care of our turnover until next fall. Worse in the winter – we won’t get it done with umbrellas anymore, well, unless the decent, frost- and wind-resistant ones, but not many people are looking for them. Instead, you can consider introducing something for all seasons, such as hats instead of umbrellas.
. . .Sales
. .What else can an entrepreneur do? SALE! A well-executed promotional campaign can work great in the off-season. Especially if you want to “push out” an assortment that will be outdated/fashionable next season. During the year you can arrange sales practically all the time. The most popular are New Year’s sales, holiday sales and Black Friday and Cyber Monday. A well-prepared promotional strategy during these periods will allow you to use the off-season to drive sales.
.SEO in the seasonal industry – Summary
. .Running a seasonal business is not the easiest thing to do. Usually, activities are planned on the principle of “pocketing” the season to survive the dead season. A conscious marketing strategy, supporting the business with SEO activities, keeping up to date with trends can help build traffic and generate sales in the off-season.
.The most important thing – for both the entrepreneur and the SEO agency – is not to wake up just before the season and not to catch on to short-term solutions, but to consciously plan and consistently implement actions whose effect will be seen all year long.
