There’s a lot to be said about striking while the season is hot. Readers enjoy articles about what’s relevant to them right now. Of-the-moment seasonal topics can bring an influx of first-time traffic. For blog writers seeking something to talk about, there’s no place like here for the holidays.  

The Most Wonderful Times of the Year

Before Christmas and Hanukah, give them gift ideas. If it’s Easter, push bunnies and baskets. Come Fall, haul out the scarecrows and skeletons. In between, hail President’s Day and other clearance celebrations.

Using seasonal blog writing to leverage SEO is about more than inserting the words “Thanksgiving” or “Holidays” in the copy a few dozen times. Actually, the term “seasonal” is much more inclusive and can mean any of the following:

 

• Major holidays: Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas.
• Super sales: Memorial Day, Labor Day, Black Friday.
• Regional and sports: Mardi Gras, Cinco de Mayo, Super Bowl Sunday.
• Four seasons: Each 3-month period of climate change.
• Busiest times of year: Pool season, ski season, flu season, back-to-school.
• Temporary trends: Short spikes in demand likely to fade; fads.

The Pros and Cons of Seasonal Content

Attract New Customers

Pro: With so much of the population online searching during peak times, you’ll attract new visitors who may come back during off-seasons or between holidays.

Con: You’re not building brand trust. That boost in traffic during December could be a bust by January. Establishing trust takes time and consistency, not shifting from one trend to the next.

Keyword Relevance

Pro: Changing the emphasis from “Local Pancake House” to “Homemade Syrup Gifts” around the holidays may attract a flurry of connoisseurs from all over the world.

Con: Or it may just confuse your customers and set back the long-term steady keyword strategy you’ve established.

Competition

Pro:  Gain short-term high relevance and surpass competition (how many homemade syrups are there? Not many.) With no one else optimizing, you’ll be the first to rank.

Con: Opportunity is lost by focusing on specialized keywords. If the competition sticks with “Pancake House,” they could overtake you in search.

Sense of Urgency

Pro: People are more likely to take action if they think an offer is only for one season.

Con: Timing is crucial. Post your blog content perfectly or you’ll miss the moment.

Drive traffic

Pro: Trending content and seasonal keywords will capture a higher percentage of motivated buyers.

Con: The season could be over by the time you start to earn rankings for new keywords.

Make Content Reusable

Just like getting down the box of decorations to see what you can reuse from last year, you have to assess your seasonal content assets. Holiday-based optimization will make more sense if you don’t have to sink a lot of time into creating new content.

Blog content writers are pressured to constantly come up with content that is fresh and relevant in one of two categories: trending and evergreen. Let’s look at the differences to determine how both will work to our advantage.

Trending topics

Trends of the day get a lot of engagement for a short period of time then go off grid forever. You might write about a fabulous Haunted House fundraiser your industry is sponsoring in 2017. While it is frighteningly well attended this year, chances are you’ll have to come up with something in its place next year whether the event repeats or not.

Some examples of trending topics would be this year’s Oscar’s Best Picture mix-up, the top 10 Disney collectible ornaments of 2017 and patriotic 4th of July Kale Salad.

Evergreen topics

By contrast, evergreen content, like the tree, has staying power and stamina. It’ll ever  be green (relevant) to your particular industry’s audience. It can include informational or how-to articles, profiles of established leaders or short histories.

Everlasting evergreen content is important to long-term search engine optimization. Ideas that stand the test of time should always be in your arsenal.

Examples of evergreen topics include the history of the Oscars since 1953, timeless Christmas ornaments or favorite 4th of July Bean Salad.

Sometimes you can recycle content or bring it out of storage. For example, people tend to have the same questions every year:

• How long to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving
• How to color Easter eggs
• How to hang Christmas lights
• How to mix a mint julep

Reusing last year’s content can be as easy as tweaking the title and freshening the content so it’s not duplicated on your site. (Run it through Copyscape.) Switching out graphics and photography makes it all new again.

Trends Spotting

We don’t mean to say you can never reference current events. Jumping on a big news story attracts newcomers. Try to create content you can continue to use. For example, if writing for a sporting goods store, consider a series of five blogs covering the great golf games throughout the year: The Masters, The U.S. Open, The British Open and the PGA Tournament–all culminating with the FedEx Cup. Make most of the content evergreen about the course and contest. If done right, you’ll increase traffic, find new followers and see sales rise by simply switching out the names of the leading players.  

If your content could use seasoning, we hope we’ve served up some spicy takeaways. Identify a company’s busy times. Anticipate the type of content needed to tie in with the time periods we’ve identified. Use slow parts of the year to build blogs with both evergreen and trending topics. Find killer keywords. if the competition is low and your content is loaded, it could exceed expectations.

If you need help with seasonal blog topics, we are here to help. We research, write, optimize and post on your blog and social media, so you don’t have to!