Use Summer to your SEO Advantage…
The seasons are known to have a substantial impact on the moods and spending habits of consumers. Traditional retailers have long leveraged this fact to their advantage with seasonal displays (think temporary stands full of either sunglasses or de-icer). The seasons can also have a significant effect upon the way people search online and what they search for. Recognise this fact in your content strategy and you can begin to reap the benefits this summer.
Summer search queries
For some sectors, the way that summer affects SEO is obvious. Fashion retailers will undoubtedly have more luck with keywords centred around summer clothing than around woolly jumpers and thermal underwear, while anyone offering outdoor activities is likely to receive substantial increases in traffic.
But it is possible for virtually any business to leverage the summer to their advantage, if they can simply produce seasonally relevant content that is related to what they do and offer. To work out what you can offer summer searchers, you first need to consider what they’re searching for. This includes:
- Anything related to holidays, camping or barbecues
- Things to do (activities, events, destinations etc)
- Ways to stay cool
- Sportswear and accessories
- Gardening tips
Spend a few minutes brainstorming and you’re sure to come up with plenty more. The point is that once you know what they’re looking for, you can begin connecting the dots between that and what you have to offer. For example, if you run a garage or other automotive business you might publish a blog post on ‘Five essential tips for motor maintenance in a heatwave’. If you sell rucksacks, or wellies for that matter, you might run a post on ‘Summer festival essentials’. Museums might even gain interest from holidaymakers by featuring content on ‘Things to do on a rainy day in xxx’.
The content should of course be at least loosely related to your products or services, otherwise you’ll receive few conversions. But if you can tap into these summer search trends, you can gain important traffic flows for terms that your competitors may have neglected.
While summer-related content might seem to offer only short-term benefits to your website or blog, it’s important to remember that summer happens every year as regular as, well, the seasons. So archive that content for future SEO goodness.
