How seasonal would you expect organic on a b2b site to be?

[94501]

I have a client who has a b2b site catering to a white collar information market.

Looking back in G/A, it appears that they've never had a good organic search Summer, but have made plenty of YOY gains.This Summer is a little better than past Summers.

Personally, I have read about people who take Summer vacations. Mostly in France. This is a U.S. site and U.S. traffic catering to business executives.

I can see it in the parking lot of the downtown office building I work in... fewer cars after Memorial Day and more cars after Labor Day. How seasonal would you expect that kind of organic search traffic to be, say from April vs July?

Would prefer answers from direct B2B experience, rather than guesses. But, if a guess is all you have, I will gladly accept that!

Thanks... Darcy

[KevinBudzynski]

We have a bit of seasonality and see peaks before and after holidays and the beginning of a quarter. From the beginning of January through memorial day and September through the middle of December we have good organic traffic. Traffic drops a bit during summer. This is a typical pattern for us over the last ten years (we are B2B).

[94501]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the message. How much of a Summer drop do you see?

Anyone else? Thanks.... Darcy

[Daniel_Morgan]

Hi Darcy,

B2B sites I've worked on in the past were definitely down over the summer period, particularly in countries such as France, Spain and Italy which tend to have a longer summer break. It was pretty standard to see traffic decreasing by as much as 40% compared with the trend.

One piece of insight which could be useful for you to know was that (if you're lucky enough to be working with a client in the right industry) there tend to be spikes around Novemeber/December and February/March when customers might be wanting to use up some of that leftover annual budget at the end of the calendar or financial year. It can be extremely lucrative if you can tap into that!

[KevinBudzynski]

Organics around 15% and PPC about the same. Rough average comparing monthly totals average out compared to the summer months.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

This is heavily dependent on the industry and searches done by users historically.

One thing you can look into is Google Trends. Put in phrases or keywords that matter to your business and see the historical performance over the years. You can get the same idea through Google Keyword Planner.

You could also interview the client as well as their customers for seaonalities and get an idea of what they are searching for during peak seasons and off seasons. There may be opportunities there to write content and grow traffic during down periods that will help you for (potentially) years to come. Here's some great tips from experts.

Hope this all helps! Good luck!