Hi there, and welcome to issue #23 of the Outranked SEO newsletter.
This week, I'm talking about how to do SEO for seasonal pages and rank for seasonal terms.
You're invited to The eCommerce SEO Summit 2025...
On 20th November, Digitaloft is hosting a free half-day virtual event for marketers working for, and with, eCommerce retailers.
Join us on the afternoon of 20th November to discover the strategies and tactics that you need to be paying attention to as an eCommerce retailer if you want to drive growth in 2026.
We’re bringing together a mix of sessions and panel discussions led by the SEOs working with, and for, some of the fastest growing eCommerce brands out there right now, including Crystal Carter (Wix), Ryan Jones (SEOTesting), Anthony Barone (StudioHawk UK), Amy Gibson (Digitaloft) and myself. We're also hosting an exciting panel discussion on 'The Future of the eCommerce SERPs' which we'll be revealing next week.
With Black Friday & Cyber Monday, Thanksgiving and Christmas just around the corner, lots of marketing teams are starting to ask questions about where they rank for seasonal terms and how they can maximise traffic during these periods.
I see brands making the same mistakes year after year when it comes to how they approach SEO for these key windows of opportunity.
So this week, I've put together a quick roundup of my do's and don'ts for seasonal SEO. They're in no particular order; they're all important.
1. If you've not already got seasonal pages, launch them ASAP
I've seen too many brands launch their Black Friday, Christmas, Valentines Day, Mothers Day or other seasonal event pages (usually a sale of some kind, but sometimes just a collection of products) at the point they expect people to start buying.
That's too late if you want to be visible organically.
If you don't already have seasonal pages, go launch them. Even if they've not got the final deals you'll be pushing on.
And this is both for seasonal categories (or services) and sales.
Want a great example?
We're still over a month out from Black Friday, but Appliances Direct's 'Black Friday TV Deals' page ranks in the top organic spot. Are these deals their final Black Friday deals? I highly doubt it at all. But that's not the point.
This page exists and ranks, ready to make the most of the surge of traffic in November.
John Lewis is the same.
Worry less about which deals are on the page right now and more about whether a page exists that's worthy of ranking.
Don't leave it too late to create these pages.
2. Keep the year out of your URLs
Maybe the biggest mistake I see made is URLs like this:
website.com/black-friday-deals-2025
You need to keep the year out of these URLs, otherwise you'll need to change them each year.
And yes, when this happens some of you will forget to redirect the old to the new, meaning you're essentially starting again from scratch each year.
Instead, use:
website.com/black-friday-deals
That's your evergreen 'Black Friday Deals' page.
Update the date in the H1, title tag and the copy, but keep it out of the URL.
3. Keep these pages live all year round, just remove from the navigation
Make sure you keep these pages live all year round.
If you don't, again, it's almost like starting from scratch each year.
Instead, just remove them from your navigation menus. But keep them live so they stay indexed by Google.
We're months off Easter, as an example, yet I can still find 'Easter Card' collections available.
Will new cards be added for 2026? Probably. But who is even searching for Easter Cards in October, anyway?
The point is that when these pages stay live, they retain their rankings.
And as I've said many times before (hey, we've spent the last 5 years working with a Christmas tree retailer), if you work to improve the visibility of these pages out-of-season, you'll be there ranking, visible and ready to grab the traffic once the search demand increases.
More fool your competitors who panic-optimise these pages a few weeks before.
4. Work to get featured in third-party results that rank for seasonal terms, not just your own site
SEO, in my opinion, hasn't been about only your own site for a long time. I wrote about this a few weeks ago.
If you really want to win big with seasonal SEO, go take a look at what's actually ranking on the SERPs. For things like "Black Friday [category] Deals" you'll see a mix of eCommerce stores and publishers.
Between Appliances Direct and John Lewis (the examples I used above) for "Black Friday TV Deals" is this roundup from The Sun:
Lots of publishers are already getting their Black Friday deals articles ready (you know, publish in advance, get them ranking and be there when the demand starts...)
And what do you know, they're using evergreen URLs, not a new one for 2025.
You have an opportunity to get your own deals featured in these articles, which often rank prominently on the SERPs.
How?
Product PR.
If you're a brand who wants your deals featured in the press this Black Friday, get in touch. Or have a read of how we earned 100+ pieces of Black Friday deals coverage for JD Outdoors last year here.
Rank your own deals page and get your deals featured in publishers roundups and you've a nice little seasonal SERP takeover going on!
5. Update high-traffic informational content with seasonal deals (where it makes sense)
You've probably got informational content (gift guides etc) that ranks pretty well and drives traffic.
Traffic to this type of content spikes during seasonal shopping periods, but few go and update this to truly take advantage of it.
Go add your seasonal banners or deals into these posts. You should be updating them anyway, but even more so during these times when traffic spikes.
Make sure relevant informational content truly reflects the deals and products available in these periods. Don't be afraid to keep updating these pieces of content throughout the year, changing the recommendations of products and the like for each seasonal event.
It's making what you've already got work harder to drive more sales.
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If you learned something from this issue or it’s made you think about SEO a little differently, please consider forwarding it to someone else on your team.
I’m on a mission to make sure more SEO investment actually has an impact on real business metrics.
Appreciate you making it to the end; same time next week?
- James Brockbank
P.S. If you ever need expert support with SEO or digital PR and want to drive results that actually matter, I’d love to chat. Let’s talk.
📌 This week’s bookmarks:
If I could only send three links to a fellow marketer this week, it’d be these…
I've spent the last 10 years building an agency that's perfectly positioned to help ambitious brands to drive real business growth from SEO and digital PR.
You might have seen me speaking at events like BrightonSEO, SMX and the International Search Summit.