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While it feels like retailers start selling their holiday items earlier and earlier every year, there is a reason for the seemingly premature retail holiday season: demand. According to a Statista survey, the Christmas shopping season can start as early as September, with some consumers beginning their holiday shopping even earlier. So, by decking their halls before the autumn leaves fall, these retailers are anticipating and addressing the needs of their customers.

SEO content creation works in much the same way. It is not enough to simply optimize for specific keywords, SEO content creators also must optimize to anticipate and address the needs of their target audience. Quite frankly, the recipe for delivering useful online content that gets discovered is one part science and two parts intuition.

The good news is that, much like holiday shopping, certain search traffic is seasonal. Why is this good news? Because savvy SEO content creators can tap into seasonal search cycles to curate content that's near-evergreen. Here's how to do it.

The Science of Seasonal KeywordS

There are a number of keyword research tools available. However, most tend to focus on monthly search volume. This monthly focus makes it easy to overlook some seasonal keyword opportunities.

Seasonal keywords generate most of their search traffic during specific times of the year - times that may or may not correlate with a monthly cycle. These keywords can relate to certain events (e.g., Halloween, New York Fashion Week, the annual INBOUND marketing conference) or even to astronomical seasons (i.e., winter, spring, summer, and fall).

Therefore, to take full advantage of the near-evergreen potential of seasonal content, SEO content creators must look beyond monthly search volume to identify these seasonal keyword opportunities. 

Google Trends is one keyword research tool that makes it easy to filter down to specific dates and time ranges, allowing you to zero in on cyclical events and prepare content optimized for seasonal keywords months in advance by seeing what was popular in the past. You can also learn a lot about your target audience by diving deeper into different categories in Google Trends.

The Intuition of SeO Content Creation

Speaking of your target audience, the seasonal content you create also must be optimized to anticipate and address their needs. As an SEO content creator, you should already have a solid understanding of your target audience. (If not, develop a buyer persona - stat!)

By leveraging this understanding of your target audience, you can intuitively find a way to foresee what their next inquiry might be, and either address that aspect within the content itself or lead them to another piece of content that answers the predicted inquiry.

This is often accomplished by exploring the who, what, when, where, and how of the seasonal topic. Answering these key questions can help you provide your target audience with meaningful content.

In closing, to harness the near-evergreen power of seasonal content, it takes a pinch of seasonal keyword research and a healthy dash of intuition. When in doubt, think about your target audience and what they might need the most - after all, they’re the ones for whom you're creating SEO content.

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