Seasonal content is one area that too few websites take advantage of. This is for a few reasons, but primarily because when a website writer comes up with an idea for a great holiday-related article, it tends to be only a few weeks or days before the holiday and there just isn’t enough time for that article to get traction in the search engines before the season is over.

If you are one of those people who comes up with brilliant article ideas a few days before the actual holiday, you can start preparing to earn money off that content next holiday season. Because let’s face it, the majority of us won’t remember that great article idea next year, nor will be remember we were going to write it at all until it is too late to get it ranking or even written before the holiday has passed yet again.

The other reason is that webmasters tend to dismiss seasonal content because it is only searched for over such a short period of time each year, then lies dormant, without earning any revenue, for the other eleven months of the year. And the thinking is that it is better to have content that is searched for throughout the entire year, not just the 2-4 weeks that seasonal content tends to be searched for.

However, many webmasters find that seasonal content can drive a huge number of sales or clicks, even though that seasonal content tends to only be heavily used for a short period of time each year. There are sites that can make the majority of its yearly income simply through well ranked seasonal content driving visitors to the site in droves over the period of a few weeks. So there is the potentiall that you could more than double your income simply by adding some seasonal content.

So here is a plan of action you can use in order to timeline yourself better. Once you do this, you can easily add the new content to your site in the best way to get the related holiday traffic next time around before it comes upon you again and you realize that you missed the boat again.

Let’s use Valentine’s Day as an example, but this obviously works for all the various holidays celebrated throughout the world. Take the holiday and brainstorm all the kinds of articles you could write about Valentine’s Day. The history of, the best presents for, recipes for a romantic Valentine’s dinner or desert, Valentine’s Day crafts for kids, and so on. It is important to look beyond the obvious articles… in this case, it would be gifts for Valentine’s Day, but there are many other avenues you can take that go far beyond that while still staying on the holiday in question.

If you are really inspired, sit down and start writing articles to go along with each of those article ideas. Don’t forget that they don’t need to be great lengthy essays. Sometimes 250 words or so is all that is needed.

Not inspired? Set it aside and pull it out again, timing it so that you can have the content going online about six months prior to the holiday if your site is newer, or about three months prior if your site is older and well-indexed in the search engines. Keep in mind if you are writing the content yourself or hiring writers that you will need to factor that time into it. Even the best of us can take longer than we think to write a series of articles, and if you are hiring a writer you can have a few false starts while you find the right author. If you need to, be sure to add the date to your calendar so you remember when you need to start working on it.

Once the content is written, add it to your site, but there is no need to put it on the front page of your site, making it obvious to visitors that you are trying to get new seasonal content indexed. Let’s face it, a Valentine’s Day article showing up on your homepage in September will look pretty odd. So instead, place it in the appropriate category or subdirectory and let it get indexed.

Then when January comes around, it is the time to place your Valentine’s Day articles front and center on your homepage. This will not only allow visitors to your site to see the articles you have, but the new frontpage links will give a boost to your rankings for those articles, helping them pop up higher in the search engine rankings when the majority of people starting searching for Valentine’s Day related keywords.

More webmasters would definitely make more money if they focused more on season content and the income it can bring. It is a mistake to dismiss it simply because people tend to search for those keywords over a 2-4 week period once a year. So start readying up your seasonal content so you can be prepared for the next holidays by checking your calendar to see what holidays are happening in the next 3-6 months or start by focusing on Valentine’s Day and start preparing your seasonal content for increased revenue.

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Written on April 19, 2007 at 8:26 pm and filed under Writing Content. You can make a comment, or trackback from your own site.