Planning a seasonal SEO campaign starts with identifying when demand rises, checking keyword coverage and prioritising the pages that need work. This guide shows how to prepare, monitor Google and AI visibility, and report seasonal results using SEOmonitor.
We use Black Friday and Christmas as the example, and the same process works for any seasonal peak that matters to you or your clients, whether you sell products, services or experiences.
Our example campaign is NotOnTheHighStreet (NOTHS), a UK gifting marketplace available as a demo campaign in SEOmonitor. Follow the analysis on NOTHS, then repeat it with your own topics and competitors. The Organic Traffic example uses dummy data.
Before you start, confirm the campaign’s market, device and tracked AI Search model. If you plan to report on traffic and business outcomes, check the GSC and GA4 connections and conversion settings. Choose the comparison periods and keep branded and non-branded traffic separate.
Every step has two routes: the workflow in the platform, and prompts you can paste into your AI assistant through the SEOmonitor MCP connection.
Live session, 28 October: seasonal campaign analysis in SEOmonitor
Work through this guide with me on your own campaign, with time for your questions.
What you'll learn
Stage | Steps | What SEOmonitor helps you understand |
Prepare | 1 to 3 | Whether your tracking covers seasonal demand, when that demand rises, and where to investigate visibility gaps. |
Monitor | 4 | Which topics and pages are changing across Google and AI, and what needs a closer look. |
Report | 5 | How visibility changed, how that relates to demand and traffic, and what you learned for next season. |
Start with the rise in demand for your topic. Black Friday and Christmas do not share one preparation deadline, and neither do all the searches within them.
Step 1: Check that your tracking covers the season
The question: Does your campaign include the topics your audience will search for?
Review your existing keywords and groups
Look at the keywords already tracked and how they are grouped. You need to see seasonal performance separately from the rest of the campaign, then break it down into meaningful topics.
For NOTHS, that means occasion groups such as Christmas and Black Friday, alongside recipient groups such as gifts for her or for him. For your business, the useful breakdown might be by service, location, audience or campaign theme.
Check for missing topics as well as missing keywords. A small group is a reason to investigate its coverage.
In the platform:
Review the export for occasion-led keywords, such as Black Friday, Christmas, Valentine's Day or Mother's Day.
Create a CSV with those keywords, mapping each one to its occasion and its type, such as gifts for friends, for him or for her.
Add the keywords and the groups you mapped through the CSV import option that creates groups automatically.
You now have occasion groups (Christmas, Black Friday, Valentine's Day) and type groups (gifts for her, for him, for couples).
Open each type group, select all its keywords and add a matching label, so every keyword in "Gifts for him" carries a "for him" label. Labels let you cross segments later in the guide.
By the end of this step, you can answer two questions:
Do you have enough coverage of occasion-led searches?
Are those keywords categorised by type, so you can break each occasion down?
If the right keywords are not there yet, the next section shows how to find them. Get the groups in place first.
The result can look something like this:
Group your seasonal keywords so you can review the event as a whole and investigate individual topics.
With MCP:
"On NOTHS, go through all tracked keywords and find the ones tied to a seasonal occasion: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Father's Day. For each occasion, show the number of keywords and their total search volume, and flag any occasion with fewer than 20 keywords. Then assign each of these keywords a recipient type where the keyword names one: for her, for him, for couples, for friends or for kids. Return a CSV with the columns keyword, occasion and recipient, ready for the SEOmonitor CSV import."
The MCP connection reads your campaign; it does not create groups or labels. Import the CSV in the platform to create the occasion and recipient groups, then add the labels as in step 6.
Want to set up your seasonal groups together?
Join the live session on 28 October. Register here →
Research what is missing
With your tracked keywords reviewed, look for what is missing. Sometimes the gap is obvious: a big Black Friday campaign with only a couple of generic terms tracked. Other times you simply want to confirm there are no seasonal topics your site is absent from.
Use topic research and competitor research together:
Explore seasonal topics. Look for relevant variations and questions, then inspect their monthly search demand.
Compare with competitors. Find relevant searches they rank for that are missing from your tracking.
Check business fit. Keep topics that match what you offer and the audience you want to reach.
For example, a competitor's Christmas Eve boxes page gives NOTHS a topic to investigate. It belongs in the campaign only if the offering and search intent fit. Apply the same check before adding any competitor keyword to your tracking.
In the platform:
Open Keyword Explorer and research a seasonal topic, such as "black friday personalised gifts".
Switch to the Competition view and add the competitors you want to check against.
Filter on Tracking Status: Not Tracked.
Look for keywords with meaningful search volume where you or direct competitors rank. Select them and add them to the groups you created above.
You can also start from a specific competitor. Research its domain, open the Gap Analysis with Overlapping selected, and search for "black friday":
With MCP:
"On NOTHS, research the topic 'black friday personalised gifts' and its related keywords. For each keyword, show search volume, year-over-year change, whether it is already tracked in the campaign, and the Google rank of notonthehighstreet.com, boots.com, johnlewis.com, redletterdays.co.uk and buyagift.co.uk. Keep only keywords that are not tracked and where at least one of these domains ranks in the top 20, sorted by search volume."
"On NOTHS, compare buyagift.co.uk with notonthehighstreet.com on keywords containing 'black friday' that both domains rank for on Google. Show search volume, year-over-year change, both Google ranks and whether either domain appears in the AI Overview. Mark the keywords we do not track yet and highlight where buyagift ranks higher. Suggest an Occasions and a Recipients group for each untracked keyword; I'll check business fit before importing."
What you get: A full seasonal keyword set you can analyse by event and topic.
Step 2: Understand when demand rises and where you stand
The question: Which relevant topics combine seasonal demand with visibility worth investigating?
Read the demand curve before choosing a deadline
Compare monthly search demand for each topic. Identify when interest starts rising, when it peaks and how long it lasts.
Historical search volume shows the pattern. Review the year-over-year trend alongside it: last season's volume is not a forecast of the searches or visits you will receive this year.
In the UK NOTHS campaign, “secret santa gifts” rose from 14,800 monthly searches in October 2025 to 135,000 in November 2025. This topic needs attention ahead of November demand. A December-focused topic may follow a different curve.
To find those topics across a group, open your seasonal groups (here, Black Friday and Christmas) and export the search volume history from the Search Data card.
In the export, look for keywords whose demand is already growing, and prioritise optimisation for those. Here, "christmas best friend gifts" more than doubled from September to October 2025, a month before the main November rise.
With MCP:
"On NOTHS, for every keyword in the Christmas and Black Friday groups, pull monthly searches for the last 13 months. For each keyword, show the month demand starts rising, the peak month and peak searches, and the searches for September and October 2025. List the keywords where demand had already at least doubled by October 2025 against the summer months, sorted by peak searches, with year-over-year change."
The MCP connection returns 13 months of history per keyword. For a four-year view, use the platform export.
Benchmark your current performance across Google and AI
Review the same topic group across the three surfaces, and keep them separate:
Google rankings: How visible are your tracked keywords, and which pages rank?
AI Overview Tracking: Where is your brand mentioned, and which of your pages are cited as sources?
AI Search Tracking: How often is your brand mentioned in the tracked model, and which sources does it cite?
A brand appearing in an answer and a page being cited answer different questions, so read mentions and citations as two metrics.
Add competitor context
Compare the same group with your relevant competitors. The comparison shows where you lead, where another domain is stronger, and which individual keywords need investigation.
In the platform:
Open the group in Rank Tracker and switch to the Competition tab. You'll see Visibility, AI Overview mentioned and cited, and AI Search mentioned and cited for each competitor. If you track more than one LLM, the model selector switches between them.
Example scope: NOTHS UK, Christmas group. Google rankings and AI Overviews: mobile. AI Search: ChatGPT. Comparison period: 18 September to 18 October 2026.
For the Christmas group, NOTHS is ahead of most of its competitors across all three surfaces. A closer look shows two different pictures:
buyagift.co.uk: NOTHS leads clearly on Google (50% Visibility against 4.4%), but the gap in AI Search mentions is narrower. buyagift is at 27%, up 16 points since 18 September.
M&S: the largest gap. M&S leads NOTHS on Google Visibility (61% against 50%) and on AI Search mentions (60% against 48%), while NOTHS leads on AI Overviews.
The next step zooms in on gaps like these.
With MCP:
"On NOTHS, for the Christmas group on mobile from 18 September to 18 October 2026, compare notonthehighstreet.com with each direct competitor on Google Visibility, AI Overview mentioned and cited, and AI Search mentioned and cited, with the change over the period for each. For each surface, tell me which competitor is ahead of us, and which competitor gained the most."
"On NOTHS, for each group in the Occasions folder, show November and December searches against the 12-month average, mobile Visibility, AI Overview mentioned and AI Search mentioned. Sort by November searches."
What you get: A demand profile and visibility baseline for each seasonal topic, with competitor context.
Step 3: Investigate the keywords and pages behind the gaps and find opportunities
The question: What explains the gaps in the topics you want to examine?
Narrow the keyword list
Start with your group and filter on current rank 11 to 30 and higher search volume. Then review competitor ranks and the landing pages currently competing for these terms.
For this NOTHS example, we use a minimum of 5,000 monthly searches to narrow the list. Adjust that threshold to the campaign: lower-volume keywords can still be valuable when they are relevant to the offering and have clear business potential.
On 18 October 2026, “christmas wrapping paper” ranked 27th on mobile in the UK NOTHS campaign, with a reported monthly search volume of 33.1K. Meanwhile, cardfactory.co.uk ranked first with a dedicated gift wrap page. That makes the existing NOTHS page a candidate for investigation.
Tip: if the list is large, export your and your competitors' positions together with their landing pages through the Competitors' Ranks export.
With MCP:
"On NOTHS, in the Christmas group, list keywords ranking 11 to 30 on mobile with more than 5,000 monthly searches. For each, show search volume, year-over-year change, our mobile rank and ranking page, and the rank and ranking page of each direct competitor. Flag keywords where a competitor ranks in the top 10 with a page dedicated to that search."
Check whether the ranking page fits the search
For each important keyword, open its Keyword Details view (click the keyword) and compare the ranking page with the page you would expect to satisfy the query:
Intent: Does the search call for a category, a specific service, a location page or an informational guide?
Landing page: Is the intended page ranking, or is a broader page ranking for it?
Competing pages on your site: Do URLs switch or overlap in a way that warrants a cannibalisation check? Filter on cannibalisation to find every keyword in the group where it is flagged.
Seasonal relevance: Do the visible title and page content reflect the current offering or event?
In the NOTHS example, the ranking page for "christmas wrapping paper" switched several times in the last 30 days. For "christmas gift ideas for a women", the mobile ranking page alternates between the broad Christmas department page, the for-her page and a Christmas gift guide.
With MCP:
"On NOTHS, for Christmas keywords ranking 11 to 30 on mobile with more than 5,000 searches, and for every Christmas keyword that also sits in a Recipients group, show the mobile ranking page for each day of the last 30 days. Flag keywords where the ranking page switched and list the URLs involved. Separately, list recipient keywords (her, him, mum, dad, friend) where a general Christmas page ranks while a recipient page exists on the site, with search volume, mobile rank and the title of the ranking page."
Inspect what Google and AI answers surface
Compare the pages ranking well with the sources in AI answers for the same priority searches. Look for differences in page type, topic coverage and specificity.
For a recipient-specific gifting query, check whether the answer cites a dedicated recipient page or a general Christmas hub. For a service query, the equivalent question might be whether sources cover a particular service or location.
Use these observations to understand the gap. An absent mention does not, by itself, identify the cause or prescribe a fix, and a competitor citation does not prove that copying its page will produce the same result.
Read more on finding opportunities in AI Overviews and AI Search.
With MCP:
"On NOTHS, for 'christmas wrapping paper' and 'christmas gift ideas for a women', show the top 5 Google results on mobile, the sources cited in the AI Overview and the sources cited in the AI Search answer. For each result and source, give the domain and the page, and say whether it is a page dedicated to the search (a gift wrap page, a for-her page) or a broad Christmas page. Tell me whether notonthehighstreet.com is mentioned and cited in each answer."
"On NOTHS, for Christmas keywords ranking 11 to 30 on mobile, list the domains cited in the AI Overviews and AI Search answers, how many keywords each domain is cited on, and the pages cited most often. Mark the cited pages that are dedicated to a single product type or recipient."
What you get: A clearer explanation of the keywords, landing pages and AI answers behind your visibility gaps.
Summary: Turn the findings into a seasonal work plan
Before moving to monitoring, decide which findings need action and when that work should be ready.
For each priority topic, record:
The page: the existing page to review, or a potential new page if no suitable one exists.
The action: what needs investigating or improving, based on the search intent and competing pages.
The deadline: when the work should be ready, allowing time before demand starts rising.
The measure: which keywords, rankings and traffic metrics will help assess progress.
Use seasonal demand, current rankings, %clicks, AI presence, to prioritise the shortlist. Include established seasonal pages that need updating, alongside opportunities to improve weaker rankings.
For NOTHS, the “christmas wrapping paper” finding becomes a review of the existing wrapping-paper category against the pages ranking above it. Check the gap before deciding what to change.
Once changes go live, add annotations in SEOmonitor. During monitoring, use them to investigate performance around those dates, while keeping other possible causes in view.
Join us on the 28th
In our next webinar we'll run this analysis live on selected groups, from the keyword gaps to the pages AI answers cite. Register here →
Step 4: Monitor from the start of seasonal demand
The question: What changed on your priority topics, and what should you investigate?
Begin monitoring as demand builds. Waiting until Black Friday would miss earlier changes on topics such as Secret Santa gifts.
Keep changes in context
Annotate meaningful page and campaign changes so you can compare their timing with movements in visibility. An annotation helps an investigation; it does not prove that a particular edit caused a gain or loss.
Follow a movement back to the evidence
When a group changes, inspect the keywords and landing pages contributing to it, compare competitors and check relevant annotations. For AI visibility, open the available answer snapshots to see what changed in mentions or sources. To find the contributing keywords quickly, use the Visibility Trend Explainer.
For the Christmas group, mobile Visibility rose 8% from Sept 18th to Oct 18th: 33 keywords moved up and 16 moved down, with "mummy xmas presents", "christmas gift ideas" and "gifts for her this christmas" contributing most.
With MCP:
"On NOTHS, explain the change in mobile Visibility for the Christmas group from 18 September to 18 October 2026. Tell me how many keywords moved up and down, and list the keywords that contributed most to the change, with search volume, start and end rank and the ranking page. Then show AI Overview mentioned and AI Search mentioned for the group at both dates, and for any keyword where our mention changed, list the sources the answer cites now."
For a weekly check, run the same prompt against the last 7 days.
What you get: A repeatable way to investigate seasonal changes and keep stakeholders informed.
Step 5: Report visibility alongside demand and results
The question: What changed during the season, and what does it mean for the business or client?
Set up the reporting view before the season, so you know which groups, dates and metrics you will compare. Keep the scope consistent, and disclose any tracking changes that affect the comparison.
Answer these questions in your seasonal report
Reporting question | What to include |
How did demand change? | The seasonal search trend for relevant topics and the comparison period. |
How did Google visibility change? | Group Visibility, important ranking gains and losses, and the landing pages involved. |
How did AI presence change? | AI Overview and AI Search mention trends, the selected model, available history, and a few answer or source examples that explain a meaningful change. |
How did we compare with competitors? | Changes for the same topic groups and surfaces over the same period. |
What happened to traffic and outcomes? | Relevant organic traffic and, where available in your analytics, conversions, enquiries, bookings or revenue. |
What did we learn? | Topics where demand and visibility aligned, gaps that remained, and questions to revisit next season. |
AI mentions and citations describe presence in answers. They do not measure visits or conversions. Report them separately and specify the model used for AI Search.
These percentages are weighted by keyword search volume, so changes on higher-demand keywords contribute more to the group metric. They do not represent the percentage of all answers generated by a model.
With MCP:
"On NOTHS, build a seasonal report for the Christmas group from [start date] to [end date]. Include: monthly searches for the period against the same months last year; mobile Visibility at the start and end, with the largest ranking gains and losses and their landing pages; AI Overview mentioned and cited and AI Search mentioned and cited at the start and end, as separate lines; the same metrics for each direct competitor; and organic sessions, conversions and revenue for the group's keywords. Note any keywords added to or removed from the group during the period."
Use a Looker dashboard for the recurring view
Use the SEOmonitor Looker Studio reporting workflow to bring campaign metrics into a view stakeholders can revisit. Keep seasonal groups easy to find and show comparison dates clearly. Start with this dashboard and customise it further through the new Looker Connector.
Read traffic alongside demand and visibility
Compare organic traffic with the search trend and Visibility to separate seasonal demand from changes in search performance. Rising demand alongside stable Visibility can help explain traffic growth; it does not prove demand was the only cause. Investigate other changes before attributing the result.
If traffic changes while rankings remain stable, check %Clicks and the SERP features appearing on those keywords. Ads, AI Overviews and shopping results can affect the opportunity for organic clicks. Review these changes alongside search demand and rankings before explaining a traffic gain or loss.
For business outcomes, connect this analysis with the relevant measures in your analytics: sales for a retailer, enquiries for a service business, bookings for a travel campaign.
With MCP:
"On NOTHS, for the Christmas group, show weekly organic sessions alongside mobile Visibility and monthly search volume from 18 September to 18 October 2026. Point out the weeks where sessions moved while Visibility held steady, and the weeks where Visibility moved while sessions held steady."
What you get: A seasonal report that explains search presence, demand and results without treating them as the same metric.
Explore your own seasonal campaign
Choose one seasonal topic and follow it through the guide:
Check its keyword coverage.
Inspect when demand rises.
Compare Google and AI visibility against competitors.
Explore the pages behind the results.
Monitor it through the season and report on it at the end.
Use the platform views and MCP prompts to build an understanding you can carry into your monitoring and reporting.
Join us on 28 October: seasonal campaign analysis in SEOmonitor
We'll go through the process together on your campaigns. Bring your questions about seasonal analysis, AI Visibility or using MCP.