Your busiest search weeks are coming. Is your profile ready?
Quick one this week… I want to talk about something that trips up a lot of local businesses, and it’s not really about clever wording or SEO tricks. It’s timing – and the ‘seasonal search spikes’.
Searches for local businesses don’t happen at a steady drip all year round. They come in bursts. Nobody’s googling “Christmas hamper delivery Grantham” in March, but come the first week of November suddenly everyone is. Same with boiler servicing before the first proper cold snap, wedding venues in January when everyone’s just got engaged over Christmas, or “fireworks display near me” the week before Bonfire Night.
I see this pattern with almost every client I work with, whatever they do. A gardener in Radcliffe on Trent gets a wall of enquiries in March when everyone suddenly remembers their garden exists. A caterer near Newark gets buried in requests the second the Newark Christmas market dates go up online. It’s not random. It’s predictable, if you actually look for it.
Most business owners only notice the spike once it’s already happening, usually when they’re too busy doing the actual work to also sort their Google profile. By the time you’ve thought “oh I should probably post something,” half the people who searched that week have already picked someone else.
Look at your own pattern first
You probably already know roughly when your busy weeks land, even if you’ve never written it down. Think back over the last year or two. When does the phone actually start ringing? For a lot of businesses round here it lines up with something local: the Vale of Belvoir show season, harvest, half term when parents are suddenly free to sort jobs round the house, or the run-up to a bank holiday weekend when everyone wants the garden or the car sorted before visitors arrive.
If you want actual numbers rather than a guess, your Google Business Profile has a “performance” section that shows when people are searching for you and viewing your profile. It’s tucked away and most people never open it, but it’s a really useful way to spot your own pattern instead of guessing, once you know where to look.
Get ready before the spike, not during it
This is the bit that actually matters. Once you know roughly when your busy period lands, the trick is doing the prep a few weeks ahead, not scrambling once it’s already started.
A few things worth doing before your known busy weeks hit. Update your opening hours if they change for the season, including any bank holiday closures. Nothing puts someone off faster than turning up, or ringing, to find you’re shut and the listing still says open.
Swap in a couple of current photos. A summer photo sitting there in December looks a bit tired, and it quietly tells people the listing isn’t looked after.
Post something on your Google profile a few weeks before the rush starts, not once you’re already drowning in enquiries. “Taking bookings for Christmas parties now” posted in October does far more work than the same line posted on the 20th of December.
Check your services list still matches what you actually want to be pushing that season. If you do both boiler repairs and installations, but it’s October, maybe the servicing side wants to be front and centre for a few weeks.
Make sure whoever answers the phone or the enquiry form knows a spike is coming. Sounds obvious, but I’ve seen missed calls pile up during a business’s own busiest week because nobody was expecting it.
It’s a small habit, not a big project
None of this takes long once you know your pattern. Maybe twenty minutes, once or twice a year, to update hours and photos and get a post written ahead of time. I’d just set a reminder a month out from whatever your known busy period is, whether that’s Christmas, wedding season, or the week before the Southwell or Bingham events calendar picks up, and use it as your cue to get the profile looking ready rather than catching up.
I can’t promise it’ll move you up the rankings on its own. Nobody honestly can! But a profile that’s accurate and current when people are actually searching gives you a far better shot at being the one they call, rather than the listing that looks like nobody’s checked it since summer.
If you’re not sure when your own spikes land, or whether your profile would survive someone checking it mid-rush, message me and I’ll take a look for free.
