Seasonal Hubs' Post Dates (Opinion/Theory)

1. 77

   Garrett Mickleyposted 14 years ago

   I'm looking for other people's thoughts on when to post seasonal hubs.  This by no means a "this is how you should post hubs" or "this is how I make a bajillion in income from Hubpages".
   
   One opinion is that you post a seasonal hub during the season.  For example, a Valentine's Day hub in late January or early February, when people are searching for related terms.  This is good because of the "honeymoon period" that Google gives to new content.  That gives your hub an opportunity to get picked up quickly and spread around by others.
   
   My theory is that it's better to post it months in advance.  I believe it's fairly common knowledge that, aside from the honeymoon period, Google tends to like content that's been around a while.  If you were to post a Valentine's Day hub now, in July, it would have approximately 6 months to "mature".  This also gives plenty of time to do external SEO such as backlinking, if that's something you do.  And then those backlinks can mature.
   
   Of course, if you post during season, then you'll mature by the next season...12 months down the road.

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   1. 70

      lisabeamanposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I think that all of your reasoning is right on. Which really means that there is no right or wrong time to post a seasonal hub.
      
      Last summer when I was doing the 60 day challenge, I published 4 seasonal hubs, one for each season. What I've noticed since was that the hubs would pick up traffic during the season they were in. Once fall came around, the autumn hub picked up. Once winter came around the winter hub picked up and so on.
      
      My suggestion would be write them when you can and go ahead an publish them. Don't worry about if you're too early or too late. You can always do some social media blitz when the season rolls around to stir up some interest.

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      1. 77

         Garrett Mickleyposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         "My suggestion would be write them when you can and go ahead an publish them. Don't worry about if you're too early or too late. You can always do some social media blitz when the season rolls around to stir up some interest."
         
         That's excellent advice right there.

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   2. 85

      jm72writesposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I wrote an article on Christmas once for eHow and it was the following year that I got traffic.  I wrote it in December so that was really too late to attract attention then.  I'll probably start in September this year.  When I promote it, it won't be to early for people to want to read.

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2. 77

   daybreakposted 14 years ago

   I have tried a little of everything and sometimes success seems to be random.
   
   A couple years back I did an initial round of niche-orient Christmas gift pages on the "other" major revenue sharing site.
   
   I let them sit for the most part, but eventually traffic reached a point where it made sense to invest time and spruce them up.
   
   In the last 6 weeks leading up to Christmas 2010 I made a number of new holiday shopping pages on the same site and they did quite well.
   
   For those of us that implement a very long term strategy, I suppose anytime is a good time to build a foundation.
   
   Personally, I just prefer to build pages during the season because more information is available then and the "honeymoon" effect kicks in, at least for the first season.
   
   By the way, it has been my experience that Christmas-related traffic starts around mid-August. It begins as a trickle and increases steadily right up to the holiday. On some pages traffic even continues well into January before eventually falling off until the cycle repeats itself.

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3. 96

   CMHypnoposted 14 years ago

   Experienced hubbers like Nelle Hoxie always advised to write seasonal hubs well in advance, so that they can gain some Google love well before the event.  So get writing your Christmas hubs now.
   
   Interestingly, some of my existing Christmas hubs have been getting a bit of traffic recently.  Some folks start Christmas shopping early!

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4. 79

   CyclingFitnessposted 14 years ago

   Has anyone tried both strategies on similarly themed seasonal hubs?
   
   For example a July Published 'Christmas Gift ideas hub' and A November Published hub with extremely similar subject matter to test the theory?
   
   Having only been on here a couple of months I'd like to know what other hubbers takes on this are?
   
   I've written a number of hubs with winter focus so far which I am awaiting such a long term effect to kick in and may write similar stuff close to the time too and establish if that works well too.

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5. 62

   carpesomediemposted 14 years ago

   It used to be if you wanted to post a season article on the web that earned traffic, you wanted to post it six to eight months in advance to let it get crawled, indexed and what-not.  From there, you would tweak it with new keywords and information.  Now, you can post a holiday hub about a month to six weeks before the holiday and earn decent traffic if the keywords are just right.

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6. 0

   Marye Audetposted 14 years ago

   I usually post 3 months in advance and don't expect real traffic until a month before the holiday. The exception is Christmas which begins to get traffic in August.

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   1. 77

      Garrett Mickleyposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I need to jump on some Christmas hubs!

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7. 79

   CyclingFitnessposted 14 years ago

   It sounds a good time to start writing hubs now for Christmas and New Year- I'll add that to my list of things to do this weekend!

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