If you were like most of our clients, traffic across the board was probably down between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Why? The holidays of course! Most B2B businesses see a noticeable slow down in the amount of traffic, leads, engagement metrics and final orders during that time period simply because people are taking more vacation time or are working 1\/2 days, and budgets for the next year haven’t been 100% approved. Simply put there is just less time and less money to do business! The holidays are an obvious “season” that affect most B2B companies (or if you are a B2C company for the better!), but depending on what you sell\/offer, your business might be very heavily influenced by a season of its own, and therefore your SEO is hit hard! After all, if no one is searching for your products\/services because it’s the wrong time than there can be no organic traffic!<\/p>\n
For instance, Boston has seen record snowfalls this winter and all of it came within a very short amount of time. November, December and most of January passed with barely a flurry. Snow ![\"Seasonality\"](\"https:\/\/eqo6k4wde6o.exactdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/148170879.jpg?strip=all\")
removal companies are probably grateful for all the snow in the last month because suddenly there is a huge demand for their services. But come April, that demand will die down and their organic traffic will die with it. This doesn’t mean SEO isn’t working or that these companies did something wrong and that’s why their organic traffic vanished; it simply means the demand is no longer there.<\/p>\n
Not sure if your SEO program is being driven by seasonality? Look at the organic traffic to your site year-over-year and see if the dips and surges occurred the same time last year. I’ve seen some sites where it’s practically a carbon-copy year over year (albeit 2014 is overall higher than 2013!). This is the clearest indication that seasonality is at play. So before you panic and think that your SEO program has taken a turn for the worst be sure that this isn’t just your “normal” season. With all the changes that Google is constantly pushing down the pipeline it’s very easy to panic and assume the worst, but before you freak out take a step back and evaluate the situation. What is the data really telling you?<\/p>\n