Optimise your Seasonal Content
For many businesses, including visitor attractions, there are a number of different seasonal periods throughout the year which are key promotional periods - particularly the gift-giving period of Christmas!
Many of these will likely apply to you, but do you have the content on your website to match?
Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, and other holidays are perfect opportunities to increase your sales and attract new customers. But to make the most of these seasonal periods, you need to have the right content on your website.
In the post we’ll look at:
- What are your seasonal content gaps?
- Improving your seasonal content
- What to do with pages when the event or season is over
Identifying Your Seasonal Content Gaps
The first step in optimising your website for seasonal promotions is identifying your seasonal content gaps. You need to ask yourself: do I have enough content on my website to promote my business during key seasonal periods? If not, you need to create new content that's relevant to the season.
You’ll likely know what times of year are the most important to your business, and for many, this is usually Christmas. Whatever it is, do you actually have the content to match?
For example, if you're a visitor attraction and Christmas is a popular time of year for you with special products and events, you should have a dedicated page on your website about Christmas that is the go-to master page of all things Christmas at your attraction to help target those important Christmas search terms.
Improving Your Seasonal Content Visibility
Once you've identified your seasonal content gaps, as well as possibly creating brand new pages, the next step is to improve any existing seasonal content you may have already. In a nutshell, you need to make sure that your seasonal pages are optimised for search engines and that they're engaging for your audience.
To do this, you should ensure that you include relevant keywords in key on-page areas, such as the page title, H1, and intro copy.
You should also consider creating brand new written content that's relevant to the season and your offerings.
For example, are there events mainly for kids? Include content that covers what you offer for children. This will help target search terms relating to 'things to do with kids' during that seasonal time.
Will opening times be different? Put that vital information on the page!
Particularly in the case of Christmas, you may very well be running different opening times. Make sure you include information like this on a dedicated Christmas page if relevant (as well as your normal opening times page should you have one).
If you’re creating your dedicated page for the first time, do not ‘date’ the URL by including the year that you happen to be in, otherwise it will go out of date and become irrelevant the next year and you’ll have to create a new page.
touristattraction.com/christmas-2023/ - ❌
touristattraction.com/christmas/ - ✅
You can easily change the page title to include the relevant year, and as a bonus tip, it is always worth including the year as many seasonal event searches include the year. Being able to keep using the same page and updating it every year will allow it to gain some SEO ‘credibility’.
Off-site, be sure to utilise your Google business page and list any seasonal events or promotions you have running.
There will also likely be some aggregator sites and bloggers who rank well for ‘SEASONAL EVENT + LOCATION’. Contacting them about featuring on their list could uncover a new stream of traffic. This is especially worth considering if you’re nowhere near ranking for those desired search terms yourself.
Location, location, location
It's important that you include your local area within your seasonal content updates and amendments. For example, you are highly unlikely to rank well for 'christmas events 2023', but 'christmas events CITY/LOCATION 2023' is much more realistic and of course, much more targeted.
Boosting Seasonal Content - An Example
Halloween is usually a popular time of year for most visitor attractions, but for one client of ours in particular, it’s an extra special time!
However, when first analysing their site, we saw that they didn’t have any dedicated content on Halloween - just a single page listing a couple of events with no copy whatsoever.
The next step was clear, we got to work on populating this page with content!
Simply by including ‘events’ and local indicators in on-page areas such as the page title, H1 and intro text, this helped boost the page to where we wanted it to be.
Including the location in brand new written content, in the context of Halloween events, helped give a boost to locally-led search terms.
The result? The Halloween page was now appear on the first page for searches relating to things to do at Halloween in their area, and began ranking for many new variations within that keyword cluster.
There was a 330% increase in organic traffic over the previous year when we first implemented the changes! A welcome sight after two stagnant years.
Making the Most of Your Seasonal Pages
After the season is over, you might wonder what to do with your seasonal pages. Should you delete them or keep them on your website?
The answer is that you should keep them on your website and update them for the next season. This will help you maintain your organic search rankings and keep your content fresh. Don’t remove the pages or wipe out the content!
Seasonal promotions are a great way to boost your sales and attract new customers. To make the most of these opportunities, you need to have the right content on your website.
By identifying your seasonal content gaps, improving your existing seasonal content, and making the most of your seasonal pages, you can optimise your website for seasonal promotions and outrank your competitors.
