Well, is the title little confusing for you? What’s seasonal search engine traffic by the way, and how to get it if it’s free? It’s no technical term or SEO term as such, but it’s my brainchild.
What is seasonal traffic?
This is the traffic that may not be generated all year long but at particular time of the year. So it’s surge in traffic for some time, and I am 110% sure no webmaster or blogger would mind an extra surge in traffic other than the regular one.
How to target seasonal search engine traffic?
I experimented with this idea recently and started getting the traffic within a week for those targeted keywords. This is what you would need to do, simple steps to follow
- Keep in mind the upcoming festival or event. Preferably watch for something coming up next month. If your blog is visited by Google bot or any search engine bot often, then even 2-3 weeks time period is fine too.
- Research the keywords that would be searched often during this time period, and make a quick list. You might take help of few keyword suggestion tools wiz. Overture’s keywords suggestion tool.
- Build a post around these keywords. Keep in mind that this post should be inline with your blog theme and categorized well. I mean, do not write something about Christmas on a finance blog at least. If you see, I have a category called “life” that is a generic category and I post my ramblings about anything in there.
- Try to incorporate the keywords in the title of the post itself, that will give the results little quicker. Read more about optimizing title of the blog post for search engines.
- Use alternate keywords in the same post if possible. But this is not mandatory as such. [After observing Google's behavior - I found out that the search engines pick up combination of keywords from all over the blog. Sometimes, one keyword from one post, and another from second post. So more varied topics on the blog, more traffic you receive. But this might not be targeted traffic all time]
- Post this in your blog and you are done. Just keep your fingers crossed and keep watching your visitor analysis.
Did it work for me, yes it did! I kept in mind that Valentines is coming up on 14th February and most of guys and girls search online for valentine gift ideas to gift their loved ones, isn’t it. I posted about valentine gift ideas only 6 days back, and I started getting traffic for this keyword within a week. Check this Google search engine result for valentine gift ideas and you shall find my website at No 1 spot right now in Google India.
This might differ as per local search engines, and I am seeing the website at different places. The sitemeter visitor analysis showing me this particular search keyword often though and I am expecting more traffic till 14th Feb. See even if it’s good SEO technique to target seasonal keywords, due to the dynamic nature of internet, your search engine ranking may go up or down eventually. It will be completely depend on your blog’s or website’s ranking in search engines. You must read how to work on your search engine rankings by building quality backlinks.
Also, marking up calendars 2-3 weeks before a special event would definitely be a better alternative for the ones who cant remember well like me. lol
Excellent article, but IMHO nothing fundamentally new. Seasonal keywords long enjoyed many site owners.