Looking to increase the search engine rankings of your seasonally focused business? A strategic optimization approach that maximizes online visibility during peak periods is vital.
At First Rank SEO, we’ve helped numerous seasonal businesses boost their organic traffic and increase their overall exposure and revenue.
Below, we’ll delve deeply into the campaign strategy we developed for one particular client that increased its number of new users by 185% and its number of engaged sessions by 142% over just one year!
A Client With Seasonal Service Offerings
The client in this case study offers landscaping services in the summer and snow removal services in the winter. When the company first approached our team, it sought to bolster its online visibility through an SEO campaign targeting searches with local intent. We immediately realized that a successful SEO strategy would need to factor in the different key services offered in summer versus winter. And so we set out to develop and implement a customized plan with our signature dedication and expertise.Why Customized SEO Is Critical for Seasonal Businesses
Because of the changing rotation of services offered throughout the year, seasonal businesses present a unique challenge in terms of search engine optimization. An effective SEO campaign must consider the primary services provided in different seasons and the strategic timing of rankings for search terms linked to those services.
At First Rank, we anticipate seasonal changes by shifting our main campaign focus a few months before each target season begins. This ensures that rankings will be peaking when each peak season hits for our clients.
Seasonal campaigns are built on the same principles as standard SEO campaigns but must take the following into consideration:
Adapting Content Strategies
Seasonal shifts provide an opportunity to refresh and adapt content strategies by creating season-specific content as each new season rolls around.Building Relevant Backlinks
Getting relevant backlinks is fundamental to a seasonally aware SEO strategy. For instance, authoritative snow-related backlinks are crucial to our client’s campaign in the winter season but could actually detract from it in the summertime.
Preparing for the Off-Season
With seasonal businesses, developing a strategy for maintaining online visibility during the off-season is critical. This might include creating evergreen content or exploring other ways to keep target audiences engaged.
Our Strategy: Targeted Optimization for Peak Periods
At First Rank, we always make it a top priority to get to know our clients’ businesses from the inside out. With seasonally driven businesses, it’s also vitally important for us to gain an in-depth understanding of exactly when various key services are in demand so that we can tailor our SEO approach accordingly.
With our landscaping/snow removal client, we invested time in gaining a comprehensive understanding of the business’s seasonal rhythms before building out individual service pages for every service offered (in both seasons).
Why did we take this approach? Because we knew that it would be extremely difficult to attempt to rank a single page (such as a homepage) for multiple services in different seasons.
We optimized each individual service page using the following proven techniques:
Keyword Research
Our in-depth understanding of the local landscape/snow removal industry allowed us to target high-volume keywords we knew our client could realistically rank for. The results were phenomenal.
Our client now consistently ranks in top positions for a wide variety of seasonal search terms (summer terms shown below). The SERP rankings for many of these keywords and phrases have increased by 99 positions or more:
Over the past year, our client has gone from not ranking at all for the search term “landscaping Winnipeg” to consistently ranking in the number one spot:
Competitor Research
Just as with other campaigns, competitor research is a crucial element of search engine optimization for our seasonal business clients. We’re meticulous about investigating the results that are ranking for desired keywords in each season and for each service offered and then using that information to strategically boost our clients’ rankings.
Content
High-quality content is core to driving organic traffic in any successful SEO campaign. For our landscaping/snow removal client, we created unique service page content and bolstered it on an ongoing basis with relevant, seasonally aware, and optimized supporting content. In this way, we successfully positioned our client’s business as an authority in its niche.
GBP Optimization
Google Business Profile (GBP) optimization is crucial for local SEO, and seasonal businesses are no exception. In this case, we ensured our client’s business profile was strategically optimized and added industry-specific posts that followed the seasons.
Our Results: An Astronomical Transformation in Visibility
Thanks to our team’s strategic approach, our client’s business has achieved unprecedented online visibility, traffic, and engagement over the past twelve months.
During the same 3-month period in 2023 vs. 2024, the business’s total impressions (the number of times a website appears in search results) increased by more than 8 times. Its total clicks (the number of times a website is clicked from a search results page) more than doubled:
Over the course of one full year, there was also a steady upward increase in the website’s number of total impressions. We fully expect this trend to continue.
