Seasonal Landing Page Best Practices

Our resident SEO Manager, Charlotte, has put together some top tips on how to maximise performance when managing seasonal landing pages.

What is a landing page?

A website landing page is a web page designed specifically to be found and promoted, capturing the attention of visitors and encouraging them to take a specific action: signing up for a newsletter, downloading a resource, or making a purchase.

A website’s homepage typically provides an overview of the entire site while a landing page is focused on a single goal or campaign.

Landing page content should be tailored to match the content or offer that brought the visitor to land on the page, ensuring a seamless and relevant user experience. Effective landing pages often include compelling headlines, concise copy, and a clear call-to-action to maximise conversions.

Landing Page Optimisation

Your landing page design can be as simple or elaborate as your branding allows, but it should always be properly optimised for maximum performance. Begin your keyword research before you even create the URL to ensure you can utilise the potential of all key SEO real estate where possible. Even if it is a brand-led campaign, doing quality keyword research can highlight potential conflicts or wins where you didn’t see them before. 

Take ‘Kevin the Carrot’ for example, synonymous with Aldi since 2016. However, a phrase that didn’t exist beforehand, Aldi takes the top spot with their Kevin The Carrot landing page in Google for searches surrounding ‘Kevin’ once again this year. This is largely thanks to excellent in-house and out-of-house marketing and proper optimisation of their landing page and website. This is no easy feat, especially considering there's another significant 'Kevin' synonymous with the festive season and it's only searched for in the few weeks before Christmas.

Here are a few best practices you can follow for seasonal landing pages.

Timeless URL 

Your URL is something that can be used year after year, but only if it doesn’t include the year you first launched it. By making your URL timeless you can utilise it again and again, enjoying all the previous years engagement and interactions to help boost your page. 

302 Redirect

When the page is not active you can set up a 302 redirect to an alternative page to tell search engines that this page is temporarily unavailable. You can then develop the page for the next campaign period and put the URL live again by removing the 302 redirect, ideally 6-8 weeks before the key date.

This is different from setting up a 301 redirect that tells search engines that the page is permanently obsolete, which can be very confusing and harmful if reversed.

Holding Text & Internal Linking

If you don’t want to tackle the technicals of setting up a redirect, you can use the URL in question to host a simple holding page with on-brand messaging to say ‘come back later’ with internal links to other relevant pages they may find useful. This way the page can build authority over time while still being a useful entity to those who land on it outside of the campaign being live.

Utilise An Existing Landing Page

Depending on the campaign, you may be able to utilise an existing landing page to highlight your campaign. For example, if you already have a page highlighting discounted products, you can update artwork and add text relating to your campaign. The plus side to this is compounding SEO juice and keeping the page fresh, however, the downside is if done too drastically, i.e. changing all elements of key SEO real estate. This can confuse search engines which will in turn decrease your visibility.

In conclusion, crafting a well-optimised seasonal landing page is both an art and a science, requiring strategic planning, thoughtful design, and ongoing optimisation. By adhering to best practices such as creating timeless URLs, utilising redirects effectively, and leveraging internal linking, you can ensure your landing pages remain both functional and impactful year after year.

Remember, keyword research and alignment with your overall campaign strategy are key to capturing and maintaining audience attention. Whether you’re creating a new page or repurposing an existing one, the goal is to provide a seamless and engaging experience that drives conversions and builds brand authority over time. With these tips in mind, your seasonal landing pages can become valuable assets that consistently deliver results.

If you're looking to improve your seasonal game with ecommerce and digital marketing, get in touch to see how our SEO, PPC and Social Media experts can help. Alternatively, check out our client portfolio to see how we have helped others.