How seasonal would you expect organic on a b2b site to be?
-
I have a client who has a b2b site catering to a white collar information market.
Looking back in G/A, it appears that they've never had a good organic search Summer, but have made plenty of YOY gains.This Summer is a little better than past Summers.
Personally, I have read about people who take Summer vacations. Mostly in France. This is a U.S. site and U.S. traffic catering to business executives.
I can see it in the parking lot of the downtown office building I work in... fewer cars after Memorial Day and more cars after Labor Day. How seasonal would you expect that kind of organic search traffic to be, say from April vs July?
Would prefer answers from direct B2B experience, rather than guesses. But, if a guess is all you have, I will gladly accept that!
Thanks... Darcy
-
Hi there
This is heavily dependent on the industry and searches done by users historically.
One thing you can look into is Google Trends. Put in phrases or keywords that matter to your business and see the historical performance over the years. You can get the same idea through Google Keyword Planner.
You could also interview the client as well as their customers for seaonalities and get an idea of what they are searching for during peak seasons and off seasons. There may be opportunities there to write content and grow traffic during down periods that will help you for (potentially) years to come. Here's some great tips from experts.
Hope this all helps! Good luck!
-
Organics around 15% and PPC about the same. Rough average comparing monthly totals average out compared to the summer months.
-
Hi Darcy,
B2B sites I've worked on in the past were definitely down over the summer period, particularly in countries such as France, Spain and Italy which tend to have a longer summer break. It was pretty standard to see traffic decreasing by as much as 40% compared with the trend.
One piece of insight which could be useful for you to know was that (if you're lucky enough to be working with a client in the right industry) there tend to be spikes around Novemeber/December and February/March when customers might be wanting to use up some of that leftover annual budget at the end of the calendar or financial year. It can be extremely lucrative if you can tap into that!
-
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for the message. How much of a Summer drop do you see?
Anyone else? Thanks.... Darcy
-
We have a bit of seasonality and see peaks before and after holidays and the beginning of a quarter. From the beginning of January through memorial day and September through the middle of December we have good organic traffic. Traffic drops a bit during summer. This is a typical pattern for us over the last ten years (we are B2B).
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
-
Do you think profanity in the content can harm a site's rankings?
In my early 20's I authored an ebook that provides men with natural ways to improve their ahem... "bedroom performance". I'm now in my mid 30s, and while it's not such an enthralling topic, the thing makes me 80 or so bucks a day on good days, and it actually works. I update the blog from time to time and build links to it on occasion from good sources. I've carried my SEO knowledge to a more "reputable" business, but this project is still interesting to me, because it's fully mine. I am more interested in getting it to rank and convert than anything, but following the same techniques that are working to grow the other business, this one continues to tank. Disavow bad links, prune thin content.. no difference. However, one thing I just noticed now are my search queries in the reports. When I first started blogging on this, I was real loose with my tongue, and spoke quite frankly (and dirty to various degrees). I'm much more refined and professional in how I write now. However, the queries I'm ranking for... a lot of d words, c words (in the sex sense)... sounds almost pornographic. Think Google may be seeing this, and putting me lower in rankings or in some sort of lower level category because of it? Heard anything about google penalizing for profanity? I guess in this time of authority and trust, that can hurt both of those... but I wonder if anyone's heard any actual confirmation of this or has any experience with this? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | DavidCapital0 -
Can site blocked for US visitors rank well internationally?
Because of regulatory reasons, a stock trading site needs to be blocked to United States visitors Since most of google datacenters seem to be located in the US, can this site rank well in the other countries where does business despite being blocked in the US? Do U.S. Google data centers influence only US rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | tabwebman0 -
Searching for Compelling Hard Data on why B2B Websites Should Be Responsive
I am being asked to provide hard data in support the migration to a responsive website for a large B2B website. I have searched for any case studies showing before/after comparisons - no luck. I can easily show: Current data on desktop vs mobile visitors, their bounce rate, pages per visit, etc. Google Analytics Benchmark data - really compelling stuff there! In the past year, 100K visitors have come to the site from mobile devices. GWMTs shows the client not receiving mobile impressions for important keywords, All the close competitors have gone responsive. In APAC regions, mobile is more widely used than in the USA. BUT, I can’t show that making this expensive and time-consuming transition will result in more revenue. The client is a financial services software company, with a 2-3 year sales cycle. Has anyone seen data to support this transition? Thanks everyone! Have a great long weekend.
Algorithm Updates | | RosemaryB0 -
SERP Question - Site showing up for national term over local term recently
Hey Moz, This has been happening to me with a couple of clients recently and I wanted to kick it out to the community and see if anyone else has experienced it and might be able to shed some light on why. (Disclaimer: Both clients are in the elective healthcare space)
Algorithm Updates | | Etna
Scenario: Client's site is optimized for a fairly competitive "procedural keyword + location" phrase. Historically, the site had been ranking on the first page for a while until it suddenly dropped off for that query. At the same time, the page now ranks on the first page for just the procedural term, without the location modifier (obviously much more competitive than with the location modifier). Searches on Google were set to the city in which the client was located. Not that I'm complaining, but this seems a little weird to me. Anyone have a similar situation? If so, any theories about what might have caused it? TL;DR - Site ranked on 1st page for "keyword + location modifier" historically, now ranking on 1st page for "keyword" only and not found with "keyword + location modifier" TRQd9Hu0 -
Test site is live on Google but it duplicates existing site...
Hello - my developer has just put a test site up on Google which duplicates my existing site (main url is www.mydomain.com and he's put it up on www.mydomain.com/test/ "...I’ve added /test/ to the disallowed urls in robots.txt" is how he put it. So all the site URLs are content replicated and live on Google with /test/ added so he can block them in robots. In all other ways the test site duplicates all content, etc (until I get around to making some tweaks next week, that is). Is this a bad idea or should I be OK. Last thing I want is a duplicate content or some other Google penalty just because I'm tweaking an existing website! Thanks in advance, Luke
Algorithm Updates | | McTaggart0 -
Ranking Drop After Switching Sites
I have a client who's rankings dropped after switching to out site. We know that rankings can drop a little after switching, but we are concerned that hers are still low. Any suggestions? As far as I can tell, the links to her site remained the same. Thanks Holly
Algorithm Updates | | hwade1 -
Youtube dofollow link to web site
Is there still a dofollow link back from a youtube channel to your web site? I filled in the site url in the profile, which in my understanding used to be the single dofollow link back to your web site. However, when I view the page source for the youtube channel it shows up as a nofollow link. Also, in OSE the link does not appear. Has this changed or am I just not doing this correctly?
Algorithm Updates | | uwaim20120 -
Are you seeing changes in your sites today? Panda 2.2?
I've heard rumblings of some Panda sites recovering in the last few days and wondered if the talked about Panda 2.2 has been rolled out. My own site (which actually had a significant boost after Panda) has seen a significant increase in traffic today (started about noon EST yesterday) and a nice increase in Adsense revenue as well. How are your sites doing?
Algorithm Updates | | MarieHaynes1