Tips For Getting Views To Seasonal And Holiday Articles Off-Season

It can be pretty hard to attract visitors to webpages about Easter in June, Valentine's Day in April, or Martin Luther King Jr. Day in September. This page explains how, even as a mediocre freelance writer, I manage to keep at least a trickle of views to my holiday and seasonal articles, tutorials, and recipes all year long.

Read on to learn how a very average writer like me keeps getting views to seasonal and holiday content all year round.

Some holiday how-to articles, DIY instructions, and recipes seem to get a small but steady trickle of views all year. Some of mine get more than a small trickle all year, including the one associated with the instruction photo above. This may not help with current articles that aren't already tutorials of some kind unless you add some kind of how-to aspect but it's something to consider for the future.

This is only speculation on my part but I think this type of content gets a trickle of year-round traffic for several reasons.

1) People may be making some things ahead of time to give as gifts or to sell. When I used to teach floral design classes, I was quite surprised by the number of students who wanted to learn how to make artificial Christmas wreaths in mid-summer.

2) Some projects aren't as tied down to a single holiday or season as you might think. Some people think of some holiday recipes as year-round comfort food recipes. A webpage about making gory decorations for Halloween might appeal to people making them for a vampire or zombie themed birthday party at any time. Instructions for making Easter centerpieces might be valuable for people making table decorations for pastel weddings in any month.

The Halloween page I took the photo above from is still getting double-digit daily views in February. Every year, it begins its rise to triple-digits at the end of August and explodes into four-digit daily views for over half of September and for the entire month of October.

Make it read like a holiday article a month or so before the holiday and make it more general afterward.

After the holiday or season is over, revamp seasonal piecess with a less holiday-specific tone. For example, I reworded the introduction on my tutorial for making bloody hand print window clings after Halloween to suggest other occasions the bloody things would be fun for like murder mystery parties or just to be weird. About six weeks before Halloween, I'll start adding Halloween elements back into it.

Change the piece's holiday or seasonal themes to something more general if possible. Holiday themes used out of season may make the content appear to be stale to readers which, in my opinion, may make them less likely to share it.

On sites with themes and backgrounds, I remove holiday themes as soon as possible after the holiday passes and then put them back around six weeks before the holiday.

Switch out seasonal or holiday specific titles for slightly less specific ones. For example, if you had an article full of recipes for Thanksgiving, you could change it to Recipes for a Holiday Feast right after Thanksgiving and then maybe just to something like Recipes for Feasting and Celebrating after Christmas.

Articles, editorials, and tutorials that are about a holiday plus something else seem to get a fairly decent trickle of traffic all year. What I mean by plus something is the addition of some kind of other, evergreen niche or a specific demographic to the mix. For example, my page titled "An Atheist on Christmas" tends to get a small sprinkling of views throughout the year with occasional spikes. My guess is that it comes up in Google searches when people search atheist topics and the odd combination sometimes piques interest and they click it. The spikes in traffic tend come from social media shares and links in atheist bloggers' posts that go viral.

I imagine "A Vegan Jew on National Bacon Day" would get views long after and long before National Bacon Day.

Some examples of niche evergreen topics you could combine with a seasonal or holiday topic might be steampunk, gluten-free living, green living, crafts for children, cruelty-free products, or accessibility issues. I think the more unexpected the combination is, the more likely people will click out of curiosity out of season.

A hint of controversy seems to help things along a bit. This is another tip that may not help out your existing content but it may be helpful to consider when creating new pieces.

What methods do you use to get search engine traffic to holiday writing all year round?

Do you have a tip for promoting articles that are out of season? For instance, how would you promote a piece about Black History Month, Easter, St Patrick's Day, or Thanksgiving in June without irritating people?