Changing Seasonal Titles to Get More Views?

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   Natalie Frankposted 5 years ago

   I have several articles that were written specifically for certain holidays or times of the year. However, the content doesn't have to be specific to that day. For example, I have an article with a bunch of writing prompts for Valentine's Day entitled, "10-Best-Valentines-Day-Writing-Prompts-Ever". If people search for writing prompts and this comes up they might not click on it unless it's right around Valentine's Day thinking the ideas wouldn't be applicable to other times of the year. Yet the prompts are more general. If I retitled something like 20 Best Love Related Writing Prompts Ever or Romance Related or something similar would I be more likely to get more views? Do people change their titles sometimes for this purpose? Would you then change it back for Valentine's Day when it comes around? Or would changing it even just twice a year be enough to mess with the rankings?  Is it worth it to experiment and see what happens given none of them are getting many views outside of the time they were written for anyway?

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      jansharesposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, yes, and yes, Natalie. I took "Valentine's Day" out of one of my titles and any references out of the content to make it a more general, all-year 'round hub. I can't say it increased or decreased traffic mainly because its fairly new. But I think it makes sense to experiment with the seasonal titles. I do the same for my recipe hubs around Thanksgiving.
      
      However, remember that whatever you put in the URL stays which also comes up in search (I think). For example, my hub about celebrating long term love still has Valentine's in the URL.
      
      And yes, I do put those seasonal terms back in the titles and text of the article for the holidays and take them back out.

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      Eurofileposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Maybe you could select one of your articles and experiment with it?  If you see advantages in changing the title you could try it with others.  I'm relatively new around here and more experienced Hubbers might have better ideas.

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      peachpurpleposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      I have not revamp the titles yet, but you have given me the idea, thanks.

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   Glenn Stokposted 5 years ago

   Natalie, Yes indeed! This is a very powerful method you explained. I have one hub that I need to change the title on an annual bases, although others may require seasonal changes as you had indicated.
   
   My hub about using TurboTax for tax reporting is specific to the present year. It includes five Amazon capsules for all the different TurboTax versions. But the title refers to the year in order to get organic traffic for the present tax year.
   
   So what you mentioned is very important for the purpose of getting organic traffic for the specific time period.
   
   Of course we can also write evergreen tiles that work all the time, but that doesn’t always work as well as being more specific in the title.
   
   My example I mentioned is one of my best revenue performing hubs, in season. So that’s proof that your method of changing titles, to be seasonally specific, works.
   
   Just make sure to specify a URL that does not include any specific seasonal references. As I mentioned in one of my tutorial hubs, that can only be done once before you publish.

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      Natalie Frankposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Great - thanks.

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   lobobrandonposted 5 years ago

   Hey Natalie, that's exactly what you should be doing. But, as already pointed out, the URL cannot be changed. So, if you've got Valentine in the URL you cannot get rid of it and maybe you cannot replace it with love. Having valentine in there is not that big a deal, most people would ignore the URL if the title matches what they are searching for, though some may notice it as Janshares pointed out.
   
   But, if you do not have the word love in your URL and you want to change it to rank for this term, it's possible, but a bit harder than when you would have had the word love in the URL. But after the rankbrain algorithm, it's very likely that Google associates love with Valentine and so it could be a good thing you do not have both love and valentine in your URL.
   
   It's hard to make outright statements of what would work and what would not, as you can see from the paragraph above (hopefully). But it's definitely a good thing to work on changing your titles to make them all season and change it back to Valentines, Thanksgiving, etc a month before the actual date. I'll get back to you regarding the comment I made on your hub in a bit as well.

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      Natalie Frankposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for the info and advice.  I'll take a look at the ones I want to change and see what I can do since I didn't consider this before publishing them and the URL is therefor set.

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