Every niche of search has a different consumer search patterns. Fashion is consumed seasonally, so the keyword search trends follow a seasonal ebb and flow. Fashion Week is seasonal, but typically the fall clothing is shown on the runway in the spring, and vice versa. Seasonality of keyword searches performed by people who want to learn about and shop for new trends is very similar.

Let’s use real keyword search data to illustrate.

The graph below shows keyword search data for “spring” fashion related keywords from June 2012 to June 2013. Google Trends graph A shows that “spring” fashion keyword searches trend up in January, and peak in April, then drastically decline.

A) spring-fashion-goole-trends-2012-2013

When looking at internal data of a high profile fashion site, this trend is clearly matched. Searchers use the topic “spring” to find fashion and accessories. Much like Fashion Week, there is a lead up to the search peak, starting in January and ending by the time spring arrives in April.

This means there is a 3-month period between January and March where fashion bloggers and e-commerce sites need to develop strong topical “spring” content to help capture this audience in search engines before the traffic starts to decline in April. And, the smaller your blog or website, the sooner you need to start.

B) spring-trends-google-analytics-2012-2013 (click for a bigger image)

From this next graph (C) showing “summer” keyword phrases, it is evident that now is the time to start gaining traffic and ranking for this topic, because the peak hits in early June and ranking will need to be established for target keywords.

C) summer-google-analytics-2012-2013 (click for a bigger image)

The Google Trends graph (D) below corroborates the internal data, showing “summer” keyword searches start around March and peak in July. For small sites, its best to start “spring” and “summer” content together in order to build stronger momentum in ranking.

D) summer-fashion-google-trends-2012-2013

Ranking for seasonal fashion keywords is competitive, much like showing a new collection on the runway. To grab consumers’ attention, your site must rank on the first page in Google. To do this, content on your site must be contextually and topically relevant, using the right keywords in the right places. More importantly, however, content must be produced at the right time in order to capture the audience, or your content just becomes a forgotten collection.

This originally appeared on OS Fashion.