February 26, 2008

SEO for Mother’s Day

Mothering Sunday falls early this year, but searches for the term ‘mothers day’ have been on the rise for a few weeks, and last week were 6% higher than the equivalent week last year. The screenshot below illustrates the results I got when searching for the term on Google UK today (Tuesday 26th February).

Wikipedia was the first organic text entry, and above it are some video and image results, plus 3 paid search links (in addition to another eight on the right hand site, out of shot). Slightly more surprising is the result below Wikipedia: a page created by Woodland’s Junior School in Kent. Amazingly, this site receives over a quarter of all traffic from the term ‘mothers day’ – more than any other site in fact, as the table below illustrates. The school received 142% more traffic from the term over the last 4 weeks than Marks & Spencer, which had to pay for 97.7% of its visits.

Whether by accident or design, the site is obviously extremely well optimized for Mother’s Day searches, and picks up a huge amount of traffic as a result – traffic that any number of retailers would give their right arm for at this time of year. As the chart below illustrates, the site is also well optimized for other seasonal terms, including a number related to Pancake Day and Easter.

This example nicely illustrates the importance of search engine optimization (SEO), particularly if you don’t want to pay through the nose for sponsored links. We’re hosting a webinar, Hitwise For SEO: Best Practice Techniques, on this very topic on Friday (29 February, 12:00). The event is open to all, so if you’re interested in finding out more, please feel free to register here.

Finally, if there’s anyone from Woodland’s Junior School reading, we’d love to hear from you in the comments box below.

Posted by Robin Goad at 04:00 PM
Posted to Education | Retail | Search | Shopping and Classifieds

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Posted by: Woodlands Junior School at March 15, 2008 09:26 PM

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