With the most commonly felt business season just behind us, it is a good
time to review the seasonality of your website and how to optimize your
Search Engine Marketing campaigns to make use of the seasonal
predictability of search and buying patterns. If your website optimized
its seasonal opportunities in preparation for the season just past, this
is an excellent time to ensure your predictions and strategies were
accurate as well as to begin mapping out plans for next year. If your
website did not make full use of seasonality, this is an excellent time
to learn how to identify seasonal Search Engine Marketing opportunities
and how to make the best use of them.
While some industries and websites are more affected by the seasons,
almost all websites experience some degree of seasonality. Determining
what impact seasons have on your website will allow you to improve the
profitability of your website.
This is Part 1 of a 3 part series that will explore the use of
seasonality to your website’s increase profitability. In Part 1, we
explore how to identify the seasonality of your website. In Part 2 we
will review Organic and Sponsored Search Engine strategies that will
assist you in seasonal optimization. In Part 3 we will explore on-site
seasonal strategies.
Identifying Website Seasonality
| Web analytics is a vital tool for the analysis of seasonality. Effective
analytics provide the ability to not only show what keywords your
customers are using in search engines and when, but the profitability of
each keyword and the and website navigation and buying patterns of each
keyword. For many websites with complex, extended buying funnel activity
however, there is an inability to directly link one keyword to a sale.
There can be many search keywords (both organic and sponsored) as well
as direct URL access used by the same customer to make a single
purchase. |
|
““Determining
what impact seasons have on your website will allow
you to improve the profitability of your website.” |
|
Whether your web analytics is able to link each purchase to an
individual keyword or not, knowing the seasonality of the keywords being
used to find your website is an excellent first step towards
successfully identifying patterns in seasonality.
Depending upon your web analytics program, much of the information
required in the following exercise may already be available to you.
However, even if you have to obtain the information from your website
log files, it will be well worth your efforts.
Begin by extracting a list of keywords and the number of times they were
used to find your website for each of the last 12, 24, or 36 months.
There have been noticeable changes in search patterns as the internet
has matured – be certain that the data you use is still relevant.
Group your data into individual months, combining data where more than
one year has been used. If your website is searched for on for over a
hundred different keywords, we recommend organizing your keywords based
on the percentage of total keywords. For example if your website
received 10,778 searches in March and 1,078 were from keyword 1 – then
keyword 1 is 10% of total March keyword searches.
You may find that you have a core list of keywords that are constantly
the top referring keywords for your site from month to month. Tracking
these keywords is an important part of establishing your website’s
seasonality as their percentage of total keywords and their related
purchase patterns my vary seasonally.
Review non-core keywords and where appropriate group them into
seasonally relevant categories. For example – if your website shows a
large number of searches in March that contain the term St. Patrick or
St Paddy – add all of these keywords into one category such as St.
Patrick’s Day. You may also have to create categories for Easter, Spring
as well as a number of other categories for this same month. If you have
a large number of core keywords, you may find it necessary to
categorized them into non-seasonal categories as well.
Use a spreadsheet to show the top keywords for each month of the year.
Depending on the number of keywords used to find your website, you may
find it necessary to restrict the number of keywords and categories you
will be able to use to view seasonality.
The following is a sample spread sheet:
As you review your spread sheet, you will be able to see the search
keyword seasonality that applies to your website. You should be able to
identify when searches start using seasonal specific keywords and when
they stop. You should also be able to identify the seasonal fluctuations
in your core ‘non-seasonal’ keywords. This exercise will allow you to
get a clearer view the seasonality of your website.
Next week in Part 2 we will review organic and sponsored strategies that
will assist you in seasonal optimization of your Search Engine Marketing
campaigns. |
enquiro research