What are the pros and cons of targeting seasonal vs evergreen keywords for your content strategy?

According to recent research published by FirstPageSage, organic search engine results still command far more attention (and clicks) than the paid ads at the top of the page. This means that organic ranking (driven by careful keyword optimisation) remains incredibly important for your overall web strategy. Indeed, time invested in seasonal and evergreen keyword research will pay dividends in the long term. You can read more here: https://firstpagesage.com/seo-blog/google-click-through-rates-ctrs-by-ranking-position/

Keyword research is a critical component of any content strategy. It helps you understand what your audience is searching for, guides your content creation process, and ensures that your content is discoverable by search engines. Effective keyword research can: Increase Traffic: By targeting the right keywords, you can attract more visitors to your site. Improve User Engagement: Understanding search intent helps you create content that meets users' needs, increasing engagement. Boost Conversions: Relevant keywords can drive qualified traffic, leading to higher conversion rates. Enhance SEO: Proper keyword usage helps improve your search engine rankings, making your content more visible.

Capitalize on High Demand Periods: Seasonal keywords can attract a surge of traffic during specific times of the year when search volume peaks. 2. Stay Relevant: Seasonal content keeps your brand relevant and top-of-mind during important events or holidays. It shows your audience that you are up-to-date and actively engaging with current trends. 3. Short-term Traffic Boosts: Targeting seasonal keywords can result in significant short-term traffic spikes. 4. Opportunities for Fresh Content: Seasonal trends provide a recurring opportunity to create fresh, relevant content each year. Example: Annual posts on “New Year’s resolution ideas” or “summer vacation tips.”

Evergreen keywords are indeed the backbone of any content strategy. Added value and topical authority are key to securing high positions with evergreen keywords. In the age of AI-generated mediocre content that will soon prevail in the Web, it is unique and useful content that search engines will prioritize over all else for evergreen keywords, and this strategy has already been reflected in the latest Google updates.

At least one more drawback of evergreen keywords in my experience is sometimes their unclear search intent. This is especially true for short- and medium-tale keywords. As a result, search engines may blend together pages with different purpose in one results page, e.g. product pages and blog posts, which dilutes the target audience and decreases the CTR.

When choosing keywords for your content strategy, remember that some evergreen terms and phrases shift context throughout the year. For instance, in higher education, "admissions" should pull up information about admissions standards or where the admissions office is most of the year. During Spring semester when high school students await acceptance letters, though, "admissions" searches - and especially those from outside of the immediate campus area - are likely to reflect students' wait for acceptance letters. Consideration for contextual shift in your content marketing and SEO strategies means a need to layer content strategy in a way that allows for flexibility and accepts and expects rankings to fluctuate throughout the year.

When deciding which keywords to target, look at the avg search volume for the past 12 months. If you only look at the current month's volume, it may give you misleading numbers.

Chasing less competitive keywords is the basic rule of thumb. But don't neglect broad keywords that are difficult to target. Usually, they are parent topics, pages for which can become pillar pages, linking together other content within one keyword cluster. Pillar pages (= content hubs) are a powerful tool for building the topic authority.