What is the best choise for seasonal pages that rank after the season is over?
-
Hello and thank you for your attention.
I am optimizing a travel website and I have a few problems. Every time I get a good rank for a particular keyword the owners take down the page because the offer is over. They also take down the category because the season is over. That is why I loose all the rankings. What is the best option in this cases and how should I guide the whole team that putts offers and new categories on the website? Would a Static sitemap be enough - I do not know what to do as moving a category from the main menu to a sitemap - another page on the website would result in loosing authority - and SERP.
Thank you!
-
Maybe you could show your client this http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=Vacation%20in%20Greece&geo=US&cmpt=q
Which shows, although you get more traffic in summer there is still search traffic for the rest of the year for the pages they are taking down.
This is an incentive for them to keep those pages up and for you to maintain your SEO plans.
Just an idea to try win them round to keeping the pages up.
-
The problem isn't really an SEO problem it's a communication problem, you need to explain the problems to your client and try to make them aware of the impact it will have on their business.
With regard to your sitemap question so long as the page is still present and accessible you should be fine (provided the information on it is kept up to date). It will lose some authority by not being visible elsewhere but it should regain that quite quickly once it is re-instated.
If you have 400 links on a page it might be time to start consolidating some of the categories into broader terms, or removing the links when they fall out of season. Don't remove the page just move the links to a less prominent location.
-
I would tend to avoid the 301 redirection in this case because it isn't an actual permanent redirect.
Leave the page up, make sure the content isn't misleading or confusing (no old offers, clear mentions of what year you are referring to). Point any internal links to the current relevant special offer, and cycle that process as the seasons change.
Patrick McKenzie who the man responsible for http://www.bingocardcreator.com/ has a separate domain for each season. It's overkill at this scale, but the overall process is pretty much what I described above, the pages never go away, the 'internal' links to them are simply switched out to whichever is relevant.
-
The problem is that if I add the category in the footer - and all the categories actually I would have too many links on my main page - I currently have 400 and the correct number would be 100.
-
The problem is the name of the category - in the main menu. For example we have the category: Vacation in Greece. This category is seasonal and after the summer was over the admins of the website - usually employs of the travel agency that have nothing to do with SEO, just removed it.
-
Leave the links to the seasonal categories in the footer, when it comes round to the season just reactivate it in the nav.
-
Keep the page up, but 301 redirect it to the page a customer is going to find most useful. That page may be the equivalent deal for the new season, or a page listing the current new-season deals for that destination. That way, any sites who had linked to old offers will pass their link juice to the new offer.
This way, most of the link juice is preserved and the customer is less likely to bounce.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Best practice to 301 NON-WWW pages?
Hi Guys, Have a site which has 302 redirects installed for pages like: https://domain.com.au/ to https://www.domain.com.au/ (302 redirect) Is it worth changing the redirect to a 301? This is a large site, like 10,000 pages. Also does anyone know how can this be done via Magento? Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bridhard80 -
Blog page ranked in a matter of hours, now what to continue climbing ?
Hello, I just published a blog page a few days ago and it currently ranks on 3 rd page for the keyword "loire valley bike tours". Something I haven't managed to do for years with my page that talks about tours in the loire valley. My guess is that I have better content on it. Now my question is : will it continue climbing (if so at what rate) or will it stay there unless I improve my content and get links to it or will google calculate its PR and have it slowly climb over time...without changing anything. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Best SEO Practices for FAQ Page
Hi all, I'm looking for some tips on best practices for FAQ pages. In particular, is it better to have all questions and answers listed on one page, or should each question have its own page - given that there's enough content for it Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brian-madden0 -
Totally lost ranking for a targetted page - and dont understand why
I am trying to rank this page https://www.vitari.no/regnskapssystem/visma-net/ for keyword visma.net on google.no. At first it went really well, and I was on first page, ranking as number 8. Then it fell to second page. But then it totally dissapeared. If I go to google.no now and search for visma.net, its not on any of the pages, I have looked through them all. I have used moz and other seo tools to analyze, and try to understand what has happened. But I simply cant understand it. And I cant get rankings back. I've been fighting with this for a long time. However - other pages on the site is ranking for the same keyword. If anyone has an answer leading to me solving this, they will be my hero of the day!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | contenting0 -
New pages not ranking
I published some new landing pages about a month a go which are much better quality than previous pages and on an optimised URL. The old pages never ranked and the new pages aren't ranking either although they are much better. The old pages 301 redirect to the new pages. Any quick ways I can at least get them ranking? Not expecting Page 1 overnight but to at least see the new pages on Page 5 would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
What to do when your home page an index for a series of pages.
I have created an index stack. My home page is http://www.southernwhitewater.com The home page is the index itself and the 1st page http://www.southernwhitewater.com/nz-adventure-tours-whitewater-river-rafting-hunting-fishing My home page (if your look at it through moz bat for chrome bar} incorporates all the pages in the index. Is this Bad? I would prefer to index each page separately. As per my site index in the footer What is the best way to optimize all these pages individually and still have the customers arrive at the top to a picture. rel= canonical? Any help would be great!! http://www.southernwhitewater.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VelocityWebsites0 -
Too many on page links - product pages
Some of the pages on my client's website have too many on page links because they have lists of all their products. Is there anything I should/could do about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlightAnalytics0 -
Have completed keyword analysis and on page optimization. What else can I do to help improve SERP ranking besides adding authoritative links?
Looking for concrete ways to continue to improve SERP results. thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340