Website Traffic Seasonality & You
December 11, 2012
While Santa may bring many gifts this time of year, website traffic is not one for many industries. Before you sound the alarm, and call in the troops because your website traffic has taken a jump into the abyss, take a moment to read this.
Should you be alarmed? Let’s start at the beginning. Do you offer products or services to your clients? Are your products and services something that people tend to use around the holidays?
I, personally, handle many SEO campaigns for our Apartment and Real Estate Industry websites and I spend a LOT of time during our fourth quarter explaining why website traffic has taken a dive. This is always a great opportunity for us to pull our view waaaaayyy back and take look at what is happening in the world that may be causing traffic drops. Think from a broad perspective: Are people apartment hunting this time of year, or are they spending time joyfully stuffing their faces and exhausting their bank accounts?
Perhaps you have a website that offers house painting, or even dentistry. Would these industries be thriving during these final months of the year? If you have an electronics website or a website that sells customized dolls, there certainly should be cause for alarm if your traffic has taken a dive, starting in October.
My best advice is that if you are experiencing dips in your traffic, don’t immediately assume that something went wrong with your marketing campaign, there could be bigger factors at play. Also, learn the trends of your traffic. Compare traffic month over month and year over year to determine what patterns you see. Once you learn these, you will escape the anxiety of the peaks and valleys and probably sleep a little more soundly!