Summer SEO: Tips and Tricks for Optimizing Your Website for the Season

Intro

Summer is an exciting but difficult time for marketing as audiences begin to check out in anticipation of vacation time and long nights with friends and family.

With summer just around the corner, it’s essential that businesses begin rethinking the way they produce online content in the coming months.

Enter: Summer SEO.

Yes, it’s a thing!

Summer SEO, one of the four legs of “Seasonal SEO”, focuses on optimizing offers, campaigns, and content with the summer season (and searches) in mind.

This time-based marketing technique helps support your business by personalizing your sales and marketing approach according to the stage of life your audience is currently in.

As much as we’d all love a steady flow of sales no matter what time of year it is, the truth is, it’s essential to be proactive to meet your audience where they are — not where you want them to be.

The good news? If you’re strategic, summer can still be a lucrative time for your business.

Without further ado, let’s review four Summer SEO tips and tricks you can use to optimize your website for the coming season.

1. Research new main topics and keywords for the summer

When seasons change, the products and services your audience buys also change. To make sure you’re still gaining marketing traction during this time, it’s pivotal to put yourself in your ideal customer’s shoes.

How do their needs fluctuate during the summer? What are they searching for? What do they want to buy but haven’t purchased yet? What do they continuously invest in?

You’ll never know if you don’t conduct consumer behavior and fresh SEO research, first. To take this tip up a notch, consider also surveying your existing customers to see if they have any additional needs you can help meet this summer.

When thoroughly assessing the data, consider how you can apply these rich insights to plan new blog posts, website copy, images, specials, and PPC campaigns (if you run any).

For instance, if you conduct wellness screenings for corporate teams as well as offer supplements and medications, your SERP research and client surveys may point to a desire to get in shape for the summer.

You might discover main searches, such as “online weight loss supplement”, “weight loss medication”, or “get in shape by summer”, in your research.

In this case, you could plan on highlighting your weight loss aids, such as the Wegovy online prescription you offer, the diet plans you recommend, and any exercise equipment you may sell.

For instance, you could highlight your Wegovy offer along with your additional weight loss aids, as a banner at the top of your website. Or, you could create a separate landing page and design a new sales funnel that’s solely dedicated to your Wegovy sales.

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Whichever method you choose, make sure to naturally embed relevant keywords on-page — no keyword stuffing. You can also set up a PPC campaign and create new blog content around your latest offer.

Pro-Tip: If your target audience is in full-out vacation planning mode, ask yourself how your business can accommodate that. Brainstorm calls to action in line with your research to help you get some campaign ideas flowing.

For instance, “Taking a trip soon? Use our tool to automate your business while you’re away!” Or “Can’t wait for your big vacation? Make it a trip to remember with our latest Instagram vacation presets.”

2. If you have a brick-and-mortar store or offer delivery, don’t skip out on local SEO

Summer is a great time for brick-and-mortar stores and businesses that offer delivery services to capitalize on seasonal demand.

However, to make the most of this opportunity, it's important to optimize your website for the season using local SEO. By doing so, you can attract more local customers who are searching for deliveries in your area.

To optimize your website for local SEO, make sure to include your city and state in your page titles, meta descriptions, and other on-page elements. Refer to the keyword research you conducted earlier and integrate the specific ones that include your location.

For example, if you offer flower delivery services to hotels and corporate offices, instead of adding generic titles and keywords, such as "flower delivery services," use the more detailed ones you pulled, like “San Antonio flower delivery" or "florist in San Antonio".

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This is a simple trick you can use to help your website rank higher in local search results and attract more customers who are looking for local florists.

Additionally, you can create content that's tailored to your local audience, such as blog posts on the best flowers for summer weddings in Fort Lauderdale or popular flower arrangements for Fort Lauderdale corporate events.

3. Refresh your website images, copy, and videos to reflect a summer theme

Informed by the keywords you pulled previously, refresh your website images, copy, and videos to reflect a summer theme.

For instance, if you sell tools and machinery to manufacturing companies, you might have pulled keywords, such as “power tool sales”, “save on power tools”, and “best industrial power tool sales online”.

In this case, consider:

• Including these key terms throughout your website;
• Revamping your home page with a banner image slider to show off your most impressive summer power tool deals;
• Adding new seasonal images to highlight featured products your audience is searching for;
• Adding image logos that represent the top brands you work with.

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You could also add new videos showing your audience how to properly use your tools and update your blog with how-to posts, instructional guides, and power tool comparison listicles. Focus on popular summer home renovation projects, backyard DIY, and outdoor power tool usage to deliver the most value to your audience.

Tie in summer-related search terms like “summer project,” “outdoor renovation,” or “summer DIY.” Optimizing your content will ensure your content continues to rank throughout the season.

Don’t forget to also include optimized:

• Image titles and alt text
• Meta titles and descriptions
• Product and service descriptions

Pro Tip: If you serve a global audience, consider using an AI Writer to create multiple language versions of your site according to your most popular international customers. For instance, if you sell power tools to Spanish-speaking, French-speaking, and Italian-speaking customers, consider creating a Spanish version, a French version, and an Italian version of your website.

Simply add quick links to these pages in your website footer to make it easy for international customers to shop.

4. Plan out and highlight high-value summer savings events, sales, and specials

Give your marketing campaigns a boost by planning out and highlighting high-value summer savings events, sales, and specials.

In other words, showcase events and offers that have a high impact and are highly desired by your audience. You can do this by featuring campaigns that have a proven track record (for instance, bringing back last year’s summer specials because they were a huge success) and by looking at your audience’s bulk search history.

For instance, let’s say you sell custom jewelry for weddings and corporate events.

In this case, the majority of your audience’s searches will likely include terms related to wedding jewelry and engagement ring collections. Since summer is a time of love and celebration, it makes sense that engagement rings would be a crucial component of your revenue during this time.

By centering your website, events, sales, and specials around this key phrase, you can tap into the increasing demand for engagement rings during the summer months.

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When planning your events, sales, and specials, take a closer look at your audience’s needs.

Are they looking for information on how to design a custom engagement ring? Have they been hunting for a healthy discount? Is there a particular style of ring that’s always in demand? Are they interested in additional wedding jewelry, like diamond studs, necklaces, and bracelets?

If so, consider:

• Hosting a hybrid or remote “How to Design a Custom Engagement Ring” event
• Featuring a generous site-wide discount for a limited time, i.e., “All bands and stones are 25% off until the end of the week! Use code SummerEngagment25 to claim your discount!”
• Featuring a specialty engagement ring at a generous discount for an entire month
• Using a pop-up to encourage website visitors to sign up for your email updates in exchange for the chance to win a free set of diamond studs

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To get even more traffic, consider investing in influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, and PPC ads. Influencers and affiliates will already be planning summer-y content anyway, so if they target the same audience you do, you can give your events, sales, and specials an extra healthy boost.

When meeting with your brand ambassadors, stress the importance of drumming up user-generated content (UGC) by hosting contests and giveaways and using engagement stickers in Stories.

Be sure to highlight the UGC they collect as social proof on your website’s home page, product pages, landing pages, and ads. Save these UGC assets for future use anytime you want to build trust when publishing a marketing campaign.

Wrap up

And there you go! Today we shared four simple SEO tricks and tips you can implement to optimize your website for the summer.

Your next step? Put these insights into action. Meet with your marketing team and begin divvying out SEO research tasks, consumer behavior research tasks, and a plan to produce your new website content.

If you need a tool to inform your Summer SEO efforts, check out Ranktracker. With Ranktracker, you can research keywords, assess the competition, see what’s not working and how to pivot, and more — all from a single dashboard. Try it for free today.