Very seasonal website - cant seem to make any progress on Google

[pauld123]

Hi,

I have a very seasonal website selling garden furniture. I am trying to improve position on Google (so far nowhere to be seen but fully indexed) and was wondering about the seasonal nature and if that makes gaining traction with Google much harder.

What I mean is that no-one is searching for our keywords at the moment, visitor rates are virtually 0 and I can't seem to get up the google listings whatever I do. Could this be because no one is searching and clicking through? Could it be that Google thinks our low numbers are indicative of a bad site, not taking into account the seasonal nature of the business. During the season we get good traffic, good conversion and sales have been v.good.

We are competing against mature and aged sites with track record, but we are only 1 year old.

Could this be why my efforts at promotion seem to be resulting in no progress - do I have to wait until the season starts and traffic starts coming?

Thanks for any advice you can offer,

Best wishes,

Paul.

[gazzahk]

How exaclty have you been trying to improve your position?

[pauld123]

Well, white hat only, usual articles/content/link building etc. I do not expect to be No.1 for my primary keywords as these are very competitive keywords. I get top 10 results for minor keywords.

The question I have though is about the nature of very seasonal websites in general. Is it harder to gain ground through SEO when the keywords you are targeting are not really being searched for during the winter?

Any thoughts or opinions on this would be v.gratefully received.

Paul.

[joshz]

What type of link building? What kind of promotion? What are you doing to get links? Where are you looking? How are you optimizing your links?

You're not ranking because your links are crap or your competition has greater/better links.

Either way it boils down to your link profile.

[pauld123]

The question I have though is about the nature of very seasonal websites in general. Is it harder to gain ground through SEO when the keywords you are targeting are not really being searched for during the winter?

Sorry, forget about the promotion I am doing. I am not asking about that. I am asking about seasonality. Is it harder or possible or not important that the website I am trying to promote is extremely seasonal. Does that make it harder to gain traction with google when searches on the phrases being targeted are currently non-existent because it is winter.

Does the extreme seasonality make SEO harder during the off season?

Any opinions gratefully recieved.

[joshz]

Please address my questions.

[Dice79]

Seasonality will not play differently in a great way. I have seen the impact of Googles "Christmas season" signals play out in the eCom game. When Christmas approaches you may see some of the larger sites get a boost. These are jumps in very competitive areas and only effect a few positions. You have to be in the game first to even see these.

For you as Josh says your links are most likely not gaining you the juice you need. You need Better quality links.

Baby Steps first. Pick a keyword that you think you can rank for. This will most likely be a three word term, these are fairly easy. Find 100 quality sites that have to do with your topic area, then work your butt off to get on 10 of those sites. Directly use your targeted key term in the anchor text for 4, 3 for a secondary linking target to the same page, and 3 to the homepage with another keyphrase set that is similar to your target phrase. Rinse and repeat and watch your ranks climb.

SEO is not easy, it's hard. Don't look for quick and easy ways to get links. Look at the hard ways and it will pay off.

[pauld123]

Thank you Dice79, I shall keep plugging away and ignore seasonality. Normally I can just track sales or visitor numbers or action conversions or whatever I have agreed with my client, but with this seasonal site I can't 'see' any progress. It is driving me up the wall to be honest.

I will just keep going for now.

Best wishes,

Paul.