Seasonal SEO - as the name suggests - is a highly targeted form of search engine optimisation aimed at achieving rankings on a topic at a specific point in the year, these typically being key buying times such as Christmas, Easter, Valentines Day or any period that might be important to a particular company’s activities.

We’ve recently developed a seasonal SEO programme for the Beamish Wild Ropes Activity Centre, based on attracting visitors during the school summer holidays. Following some on-site and off-site SEO work the site is now ranking 1st page (on Google.co.uk) on a selection of client-specified keyterms, including;

“summer fun for kids North East” - 7th

“summer fun for kids County Durham” - 1st

“summer holiday activities Durham” - 5th

“family fun in County Durham” - 6th

“family days out in County Durham” - 7th

The preparation required for a seasonal SEO campaign varies between websites, and can range from weeks to months in advance, depending on the keyterm topic, competition and general search proficiency of the website in question. Organic SEO - as ever - depends on various external factors so it’s always best to plan ahead as much as possible by phasing in the campaign over a number of weeks to help ensure that you hit the rankings you target at precisely the right time. Getting the timing wrong can have far-reaching consequences - there’s no business benefit at all in reaching the 1st page when no-one is searching for the keyterms anymore.

Seasonal SEO campaigns should be linked in with your company’s wider marketing strategy, and have the ability to seamlessly shift to the next relevant target when required, while always retaining the core SEO focus of the website throughout the year.

Interested in a seasonal SEO campaign for your company website? Get in touch with Green Media to find out more.

Contrary to popular belief, pay per click (PPC) isn’t about throwing money at your account until it gets to the top of your searches. This way you’ll end up spending way over budget for a lot of very general traffic, and your conversion/ROI rate just won’t stack up.

PPC also tends to be something that a lot of SEO “experts” and amateurs think is easy to jump into and get immediate impacts without any real knowledge of the systems or strategies that should be used, which more often than not results in poor performance.

However, PPC can be a really effective platform when it’s used to its potential. Here are some quick ideas to get your PPC moving in the right direction.

1. Use organic SEO priniciples

Think about how you create your keyword list - terms that are difficult to achieve on organic searches translate to being competitive and expensive to achieve on PPC. The answer? Go long tail and be specific - you’ll find that CPCs are lower and the quality of visitor is higher.

2. Cut poor performers out

If your campaign contains a straggler keyterm that’s generating nothing and getting a far lower success (clicks/impressions/positioning/conversions) rate than the others then get rid of it. Your Quality Score is based on the whole campaign and poor performers can drag the entire thing down.

3. Be creative with your ad copy

An obvious but often overlooked PPC issue. How to do it? Look at the competitor ads on any given keyterm, you’re sure to find at least a few that are basically saying exactly the same thing - avoid doing this at all costs. You need to make your ad sufficiently different to stand out, and get as many USPs in as possible to encourage a click. It’s amazing how much detail can be squeezed into those 70 characters.

4. Write lots of ad variations and use them all

The main PPC systems allow multiple ads to be assigned to campaigns, and they carry out their own “survival of the fittest” process to determine the most effective. The result? The best ads are shown the most. This is a great help to marketers, and there’s no excuse not to use it. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, get a load of ads written up and let them sink or swim on their own. Once you know which ad style works the best, refine and improve it even more.

5. Diversify with ad groups

Don’t lump all your keywords in together. If the scope of your campaign is broad enough, use ad groups to split it up. This will let you create more specific ads for each topic, and move away from being too general.

6. Make your display URL jump out

While the display URL is a fairly rigid element, why not try introducing capital letters to make individual words stand out more? Look at this example, it’s clear which one is more attention-grabbing;

www.freshredroses.com

www.FreshRedRoses.com

… a minor point? Maybe, but in a competitive market every tactic helps.

Green Media are Google Adwords Professional Qualified, which means that every single PPC campaign we create and manage is handled in the most appropriate and effective way. We employ all of the techniques described here, as well as some more advanced methods learned through years of experience to achieve the best results. Get in touch to find out how PPC by Green Media can help your business.