Seasonal SEO Campaign. What will be your Post SEO Strategy? Here is a Valentines Day Campaign Story

So you created a Seasonal SEO Campaign? Let’s assume you created a specific campaign for the Holiday season or for Valentines Day. For example you came up with a campaign for a Florist. Since Flowers is one of the best seasonal products on Valentines Day.

Let’s go back to the campaign that you created prior to this Valentines Day. You stated a Champaign a few months ago trying to optimize the florist site for Valentine’s Day. You would have probably created specific pages to optimize for Valentines day Flowers. In that page, your content might be history, Facts, etc to create a Valentines Day theme. You would have also give anchor links, internal links to your site and yes also to have them buy products related to that season, probably a link saying Buy Valentines Day Flowers Now. The reason to do this might be to give users not only just Valentines Day flowers but also tips, facts and to share your knowledge since you are an expert in that field. Makes sense to me.

The search engines love fresh content. Again this is prior to this Valentines Day, visits your site, finds some great content for the visitors, finds new information and assumes that this site will provide visitors some valuable information related to the season. Your page view increases eventually ending up with more sales until Valentines Day. Awesome, So far so good.

Valentines Day is over, not every one will look online for this specific keyword. But you have those pages how would you handle? What will your Post SEO Strategy?

Let’s discuss some of the possibilities here:

From a User Point of View:

1. If you decide to either delete or make it inactive or decided to have a 301 redirect? Those pages you created specifically for Valentine’s Day will not be visible, even if some one searched for it.
2. In case they search for it. It will give a 404 error to those searches. Since this page is content related to that holiday, you might still want to keep those pages, so that it is visible only to the searches that specifically search for it. You can eliminate from the visual navigation but still keep the page live
3. This also will help your client to rank for all year round and it will be easy to optimize for the next year same day, since you already have a presence for this keyword
   This page will only be visible if a user knows this URL: For ex: www.xyz.com/pages/valentinesday.html those who search and find this page will find useful.

From a Search Engine point of View:

1. Since this page is inactive, the search engines look at the page and don’t find those pages and will give a 404 error to the searchers. If you have the pages live ( which wont be visible to the visitors, unless they type in specific URL) the search engine will still index and keep it in the database, giving an overall results if someone searches for the terms.
2. Since this is the trend for a few more day still search engine will rank some of the content in the SEPR’s, Which is a good thing.
3. To conclude, having this page live is good from a search engine point of view.
4. Another way to handle this is to do a 301 redirect or Robot.txt and send visitors to another page. Again if you decide not to rank for the keywords after the season. So the next time you try to optimize a site for this theme you will have to start from a scratch.

From the Client point of View:

1. The Florist when searched for it, may see here and there these pages popping up in the search results for a while even after the season is over, this happens for all the sites, since search engines keep the index for a while.
2. Some of the clients might think this is a problem, that they still see some of the pages even after the season, What would you do to get around this? My personal suggestion: Send an email with the above both user and search engine point of view benefit and educate and just inform them this is a good thing.

From an SEO point of View:

1. Ok what would you as an SEO do? Well you might still keep the pages, but be careful with the anchor links which you created to point the visitors to your specific products, why? Because those products you sold only for these special occasions would have been inactive by now. So tweaking the Anchor links and other links will be useful.
2. Tip: Use those anchor links for a different campaign but related to this theme. If you are creative you can link this theme to another theme.
3. You would have probably tweaked some other page Title, Description, content and links optimizing to this campaign. Double check those pages.
4. With the advanced search feature, you can see where all those keywords are appearing, you can search by Specific URL, Title, Body. Scan those places and tweak it .

Conclusion:

So overall having these pages are good for SEO and user point of view, but as a SEO, tweak, fine tune those content rather tan eliminating the page completely.

This is my own personal opinion. Do you have any experience or story to share about seasonal SEO? Feel free to comment

Why Would Google Webmaster Guidelines Say So?

A few Days earlier I was talking to a customer about why your Business needs Internet Marketing Strategy? We had a very interesting conversation. He said....

"I don't want to be number 1 in Google, I already have clients and I am doing well for B2B, so I don't expect to be top rankings in search engines. But I wanted to know how a website can be user friendly"?

Here is the interesting part. "How the Website can be user friendly"?

Don't Google and other Search Engines expect the same too? Yes that is what all the search engines expect. The easier and useful for the users, the most importance it gives for ranking too.

Lets see some of the Guidelines by Google

Google Says:

Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.

Why Google says that?

So that it is easier for the users to have a clear hierarchy and text link, all users should be able to read. Text links helps everyone to view. No matter what browser, what version the user use. The text makes everyone to access. Users don't want to have trouble finding other pages, text link makes it easier to access other pages. If I want to buy something online, I want to know more about the company and their history, so I like to go read more about them. So make all the pages reachable from at least one static text link.

Google Says:

Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.

Why Google says that?

Users don't want be lost exploring the site, they like to easily navigate your website like a shopping complex. In case even if they were lost they can go to the maps and find their destination. And once they view they view the map, It should be easier to find their destination, so organize your site maps

Google Says:

Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.

Why Google says that?

User wants to find useful information that is the reason they go online. To find information. Give visitors useful, valuable information. Give more links, tips and write articles about your expertise. Give some value to the users, they will come back to your site. Describe the content, not everyone using the internet is an expert. Help them to understand what the content is about.

Google Says:

Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.

Why Google says that?

Keyword. The words users' type to find your site. Have that word in the copy so that users know that this site is about that particular keyword. Make it easier for search engine to find your website and index it.

Google Says:

Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images.

Why Google says that?

No all users can view images. It might not be compatible in all browsers. Not only the users can't view even the crawlers doesn't recognize image.

Google Says:

Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate.

Why Google says that?

Give a Title and describe the alt tags. Alt tags are used to show what the image is about. Everyone needs a Title to recognize. Giving a title is giving a name. Help others know what this site is about by seeing the Title.

Google Says:

Check for broken links and correct HTML.

Why Google says that?

Nobody wants to view a bad URL or Error when they visit a site. When a user clicks on the links, they expect to go that page to view that page. Correct HTML helps and gives a standard to your website.

Google says:

If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.

Why Google says that?

If you have a dynamic page make is easier for users and search engines to navigate and find out. Don't confuse the users and the search engines

Google says:

Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

Why Google says that? D

on't fill the page with link, Limit your links, again don't confuse your users