Google’s John Mueller advises that websites with rotating seasonal content should consolidate it on a single URL.
This suggestion was made during a recent Google Webmaster Central hangout when someone asked about managing seasonal content post-season.
The individual mentioned having a client who takes down Christmas content after the season and republishes it the next year.
Could this practice impact ranking and indexing? If so, what’s the best approach?
Mueller provided two potential solutions.
### Solution 1: Publish the content for a reasonable length of time
Regularly removing and republishing content prompts Google to assess the content differently, says Mueller.
If the client insists on this approach, Mueller advises keeping the content live for a “reasonable” duration.
Additionally, linking the content elsewhere on the website, especially the homepage, will help demonstrate its relevance and importance to Google.
Mueller stated:
> “I think that’s always a tricky situation if you have something that’s so seasonal that you want to remove the content afterwards.
> When you remove the content, and when you remove it from our index, then the next time we find the content again we have to think about is this content really here or is this just going to disappear again. So that’s something where I don’t know what the best approach there would be.
> I think if you can keep your Christmas content up for a reasonable amount of time, that it’s not just a matter of days we have available to actually index this content, then probably that will work.
> In general you also need to make sure that it’s clearly relevant within your website as well. So, in particular, on your homepage and elsewhere on your website, kind of link to your Christmas content.
> So it’s not just that we can find those URLs, but actually so that we see it’s something really important that you think is relevant there. And that’s something you could do for seasonal content in general.
### Solution 2: Use a single URL for all seasonal content
Another feasible approach is to use one URL for all seasonal content throughout the year.
From Google’s perspective, switching Thanksgiving content with Christmas content, followed by Easter content, is acceptable.
Mueller advocates this solution because the URL would accumulate link equity, making it clear to Google that the URL is significant and relevant.
Again, this will be effective if the content stays on the URL for a reasonable period.
Changing content on the same URL daily is not recommended.
Mueller explained:
> One thing you could also do is use one single URL and reuse that depending on the individual seasons that you want to target.
> So if you have Thanksgiving content, and then you have Christmas content, and then you have Easter content, or whatever you have, then it might make sense to have one page that’s just for seasonal activities essentially. Where you swap out the content depending on what season you’re trying to target.
> That would make it a little bit easier for us to recognize that’s actually something really important. Because that one URL would collect links over a longer period of time. It would be something that people could refer to and link to in the long run.
> That’s something that would help us to understand that this is actually pretty relevant. Even if the theme of that page changes over the course of the year, as long as you’re not changing the theme of the page day-by-day, then I think in general that would work out.”
Hear the full question and answer in the video below (starting at 32:57):
