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SEO Guide · Chapter 29 of 30
How to plan pages around a seasonal business
For cabinet shops, parks, builders and any business whose phone rings in seasons. After reading it you will be able to name your seasonal searches, set the date each page must be live, and keep the pages working year after year.
In one paragraph
Seasonal content is a page built for a search that people type in a predictable window each year, published early enough that Google has ranked it before the window opens. A page takes four to eight weeks after publishing to settle into its position, so a page for searches that peak in September needs to be live by July. The pages stay up all year and get updated, not replaced, so each year starts from the position the last one earned. This page builds a season calendar for a custom cabinet shop in Hailey and shows how to check your own seasonal searches.
What seasonal content is
Seasonal content is a page written for a search that rises and falls on a calendar. “Kitchen remodel before the holidays” is typed in August and September and almost never in February. “Garage cabinets” rises in the fall when people want the car inside before snow. “Kitchen remodel cost” rises in January when people plan the year. Each is its own search with its own page, and the page has a deadline.
The deadline comes from how Google handles a new page. After it is published, Google indexes it and then moves it around for four to eight weeks before it settles into the position it will hold. A page published the week the season starts spends the whole season settling. Add your own lead time on top: a shop that needs twelve weeks to build a kitchen cannot sell a Thanksgiving kitchen in October, so the page has to be ranking in July, when the job can still be done.
Seasonal pages are pages, not posts. A page called Kitchens Before the Holidays gets updated every June with this year’s cutoff dates and keeps the ranking it built, which is one more reason to keep one topic per page and give each season its own URL.
What missing seasonal pages look like on a cabinet shop site
A cabinet shop site has a Kitchens page, a Bathrooms page, a Closets page and a gallery. Every search lands on one of those, whatever the month. Someone typing “kitchen cabinets before Thanksgiving” in August lands on the same Kitchens page as someone typing “custom kitchen cabinets Hailey” in March, and the page says nothing about deadlines, lead times, or whether the shop can still take a job for this year. The searcher does not know that the answer is yes if they sign by August 20, so they call a shop whose page told them.
The other version is the shop that writes the seasonal page and handles it wrong. It goes up as a blog post on September 3, titled “Still time for a holiday kitchen in 2025”, ranks in November after the season is over, and is deleted in January. Four years of that produces four dead posts and no ranking.
On a shop quoting $18,000 kitchens, the fall calendar is where the year is made. A page in place in July that answers the deadline question in its first line is the difference between a booked November and a slow one.
A worked example: a season calendar for a cabinet shop in Hailey
Wood River Cabinet Company builds custom kitchens in Hailey for the Wood River Valley, at $18,000 to $30,000 for most jobs, and needs 10 to 14 weeks from final drawings to installation. Its owner listed the four searches that come in seasons, the month each one peaks, and worked backward to the date each page has to be live.
| Page | Search it answers | Searches peak | Page live by | Why that date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kitchens Before the Holidays | kitchen remodel before thanksgiving | August to September | June 15 | Eight weeks to rank, and a job must be signed by August 20 to install by November 20 |
| What a Custom Kitchen Costs in the Wood River Valley | custom kitchen cost idaho | January to March | November 1 | Planning searches start the first week of January |
| Spring Installs for Second Homes | remodel contractor sun valley spring | March to April | January 15 | Second-home owners book mud season work while the house is empty |
| Garage and Mudroom Cabinets Before Winter | garage cabinets hailey | September to October | July 15 | First snow in the valley can come in October |
Every one of these pages stays live all year. Each is updated once, a month before its live-by date, with this year’s cutoff dates and photos, and the date on the page changes only when the content does. That also keeps the page current for AI assistants, which weigh dates and freshness when they choose what to name.
Here is the opening of the old Kitchens page beside the opening of the new holiday page.
We build custom kitchens for homes throughout the Wood River Valley. Every kitchen is designed and built in our Hailey shop. Contact us for a free consultation.
To have a new kitchen installed before Thanksgiving, your drawings need to be signed off by August 20. A Wood River Cabinet Company kitchen takes 10 to 14 weeks from final drawings to the last drawer front, so most of the kitchens we install in November are measured in June and July. This page lists what has to happen in each of those weeks and what a typical $18,000 to $30,000 kitchen includes.
How to check your own seasonal searches
- Open Google Trends at trends.google.com, type your main service search, set the region to your state and the range to the past five years. The chart shows which months it rises and whether the pattern repeats.
- Open Google Search Console, Performance, and compare the last three months against the same three months a year ago. Searches that appear in one period and not the other are seasonal.
- Open your own booking calendar or job list for the last two years and mark the month each job was signed, not installed. That is when the searching happened.
- Write down each seasonal search, its peak month, and your lead time to deliver the job. Subtract the lead time and then another eight weeks. That is the page’s live-by date.
- Check whether a page on your site exists for each search by searching Google for
site:yourdomain.comfollowed by the phrase. No result means no page. - Put the live-by dates on your calendar for next year, with a reminder a month before each to update the page.
What we do about seasonal content
We build the season calendar for your business from your own job history and from what Search Console and Google Trends show for your area, and each seasonal page is written to stay live and be updated on a set date every year. Every deadline and lead time on those pages comes from you, so a searcher reads what your shop can actually do this season. You get the calendar with the live-by dates, the pages themselves, and the update done before each date without you having to remember it. Seasonal pages sit alongside the service pages that carry the year-round searches.
Questions people ask about SEO: how to plan pages around a seasonal business
When should I publish seasonal content?
Publish a seasonal page at least eight weeks before the searches begin, plus your own lead time to deliver the work. Google needs four to eight weeks after publishing to settle a new page into its position. A page for September searches from a shop with a twelve-week build should be live by mid June.
Should I delete a seasonal page after the season ends?
No, leave it live and update it before the next season. A page that stays up keeps the ranking and links it earned, and starts the next year from that position instead of from zero. Deleting and rewriting each year throws away the work.
Does Google rank seasonal pages faster the second year?
Yes, a page that stayed live and was updated holds its position into the next season, and Google shows it as searches rise without a settling period. That is the main reason to keep seasonal pages as permanent pages rather than dated posts. Update the dates and photos each year.
How far ahead does Google need a page to rank it?
Four to eight weeks is typical for a new page on an established site to settle, and longer on a new domain or for a competitive search. Google indexes a page within days but moves it around before it holds a position. Submitting the URL in Search Console speeds the indexing, not the settling.
Should seasonal content be a blog post or a page?
A page, because it will be updated and reused every year, and a post with a date in its URL or title looks old by the following season. Give it a plain URL such as /kitchens-before-the-holidays/ with no year in it. A post can support it, such as a photo story from one job, linked from the page.
This page is part of the The SEO guide for local businesses. The other guides: SEO, AEO, GEO.
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