Should seasonal pages stay live year-round or get unpublished?
- Published November 6, 2026
- Linked from 1 answer
- In a cluster of 51
Keep them live, on the same URL, and update them before each season. A seasonal page that stays up keeps the links it has earned and the history Google has with it, so when searches return the next year it starts from where it left off. A page that is removed after the season and published again a year later starts again with little to build on: Google has to find, crawl and index it again, and any links that pointed to it led to an error for months.
What each choice costs
| Keep live and refresh | Unpublish and republish |
|---|---|
| Same URL every year; links keep counting | Links pointed to a missing page for most of the year |
| Google keeps the page indexed and recrawls it when it changes | The page has to be discovered and indexed again before each season |
| Off-season visitors still find something useful | Off-season visitors find an error |
| One page to update | A new page to build or restore each year |
Making an off-season page useful
A page that is live all year should still make sense outside the season. State clearly when the event, sale or season happens, show what is coming next, and offer a way to be told when it opens. For a sale, the page can show last year’s dates and a sign-up for this year’s; for an event, the date, the venue and what to expect.
When a separate page per year is right
Some content is tied to one year by nature: results, reports, a list of winners. Those can be separate pages that stay up as an archive, with the main seasonal page linking to the latest. What should not change every year is the URL that searchers find for the season itself. A year in that URL forces a new page each time; whether dates in URLs are a problem for evergreen content shows the cost. Timing the yearly update is its own question: how early to publish for a seasonal term.
Before each season
- Update the dates, prices and details.
- Check that the links on the page still work.
- Link the page from your homepage or main navigation for the season.
Keep the page and change what is on it, so each season builds on the last.
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