Areej AbuAli, the founder of Crawlina, discusses site architecture optimization for seasonality, specifically focusing on e-commerce websites. Seasonal SEO involves driving conversions during periods of increased interest, such as holidays, specific times of the year, or product launches. The key question to ask when planning for seasonality is when the business’s peak periods occur. This is crucial in developing an effective SEO strategy. The process of optimizing for seasonality can be divided into three phases: before peak, during peak, and after peak.

Before peak, it is important to benchmark the website’s performance in the previous peak period. This includes analyzing traffic, revenue, and leads generated during that time. This data will be used later to evaluate the success of the current peak period. In addition to benchmarking, forecasting is also necessary to predict the traffic and revenue for the upcoming peak period. This can be done by analyzing current rankings and seasonal search volume. It is important to share this information with stakeholders to align expectations.

During the planning phase, it is essential to ensure all reporting is set up properly. Automated dashboards can be useful for monitoring and curating data. Seasonal page updates should also be prioritized, including homepage updates, updates to product landing pages (PLPs) and product detail pages (PDPs). Internal linking between these pages and supporting content and blog assets is crucial. Updating evergreen content and meta tags is recommended, as well as relying on what has worked in the past rather than creating new pages from scratch. Tech checks should also be conducted to ensure crawlability and indexability. Lastly, having an out-of-stock plan in place is important to prevent 404 errors.

When it’s time to go live, it is important to have a go-live checklist to ensure that everything is crawlable and indexable. Taking a breath and stepping back is also important at this point, as the bulk of the work is done during the before-peak phase.

During the peak period, monitoring data is crucial. Comparing current performance to benchmark data helps determine if targets and predictions are being met. Monitoring tech issues, such as out-of-stock items or crawlability issues, is also important. Updating stakeholders regularly with transparent and accessible reporting is recommended.

After the peak period, communication becomes crucial. SEO is just one channel among many, and it is important to communicate the results to the larger team. Responding to questions and analyzing the performance of different channels is essential.

Overall, optimizing site architecture for seasonality involves careful planning and monitoring. By understanding peak periods, benchmarking performance, updating pages and content, and communicating results, businesses can maximize their success during seasonal periods.