The December Traffic Bump: How to Prep Your Blog This Year

Here we are, in the early days of winter, as the darkness descends and we all feel a little bit down. If your blog is anything like mine, you’ve probably been feeling the squeeze of seasonality in the past few months. My traffic always goes down this time of year, and I’m left feeling a bit low.

Luckily I know that something good is coming – and no, I don’t mean the holidays (though those are great for personal reasons, obviously!). The “December Traffic Bump” is right behind the holidays – that final week of December where blog traffic tends to pop up and we begin to see how good January (and the rest of the year will be. Oh, and let’s not forget that end of Q4 ad rates which increase our earnings too!

While it’s been a really, really hard year as a blogger, I’m still hopeful that the December traffic bump will happen this year; after all, it has nothing to do with Google or other algorithms – it’s all about actual search volume when people finally decide to start planning for the new year, whether that’s travel, resolutions, or some other topic your niche might cover.

As such, I still think it’s worthwhile to run through this checklist (which I’ve had for several years but have updated for December 2024/the new year 2025) and make sure you’re blog’s in tip-top shape for whatever traffic it gets.

Ready to get ready for the December Traffic Bump? Here’s what you need to do.

1. Future-Proof Your dates

Historically, it was considered good for SEO to have dates or years in your titles. While we don’t write for SEO anymore anyway, it’s also really annoying to have to update those posts every year!

That’s why this year I’m “future-proofing” my blog titles by removing dates almost entirely*. Here’s how I’m doing it.

• In the title itself, I’m switching to language like “this year” or “this summer,” etc.
• In my SEO plugin (RankMath), I’m using “(%currentyear%)” including the parentheses, to add the year dynamically to the SEO title. Then it changes automatically when the new year begins!

*I’m not removing ALL years because in some cases, I want timely content that people can also know is out of date. For example, on my London site, I have posts about the “best things to do in London in January.” That post is specific to 2025, so I don’t want the title/SEO title to update automatically, since the post will be inaccurate in 2026. You’ll have to use your own discretion given your strategy for this!

☑️ To-Do: Go through your Posts pages on WordPress or in your BOSS spreadsheet; ensure that any dates/years you have in titles are updated or future-proofed.

☑️ Bonus: Set up conditional formatting on your BOSS spreadsheet to show titles with “2024” in red and “2025” in yellow so you can keep track of how many posts you need to update next year.

2. Check Rankings for Your Top Posts

Now that you’ve done the easy task of just updating some dates/years, it’s time to dive into your top posts. There are two steps to check your rankings and ensure you’re well-placed for the coming bump.

Don’t know your top posts easily? It’s time to build a spreadsheet that will help you better understand your entire site! Check out the BOSS Spreadsheet; I built this system to manage all of my sites and loads of other bloggers use it too. It’s much more powerful and functional than Google Analytics reports.

Once you’ve built your spreadsheet and have identified your top posts, head over to Google Search Console, click Performance > + New > Page. Enter each unique permalink of your top 5-10 posts and double-check what Google is reporting for your average Position for the post. If you want to dive deeper, compare the current 3-month window over the last 3 months, and over 3 months last year if your post is over a year old.

Next, you want to double-check the actual Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for your primary keyword on each of your top posts. Open an Incognito window and google your primary keyword. Double-check where you’re showing up. If you’re not in the #1 spot, open each post above you in a new tab of that Incognito window. (You’ll need those other pages for task #3!)

☑️ To-Do: Check your average Position for your top 5-10 posts in Search Console, and check your actual ranking for the primary keyword of each of your top posts too.

3. Improve the Content on Your Top Posts

Using the posts ranking higher than you on your primary keyword for each top post, come up with a to-do list to help improve your posts. If, for example, you rank #4 for a primary keyword on one of your top posts, you’d open the pages ranking #1, #2, and #3 as part of this process.

Here’s what to look for when you look at posts ranking higher than you:

• Is the post/page title more engaging or interesting than yours? Ask ChatGPT to suggest 3-5 new titles that might be more click-worthy but still include your keyword.
• Look at their blog post structure (this is super easy if they have a table of contents; otherwise, you’ll need to scan down the page to check their headers) – do they have any sections/topics that you don’t? Add those sections if they make sense for your content.
• Look at their domain and the general authority of their site on the topic. Do they have a domain that’s more closely aligned with the topic than you? More blog posts/pages about the same topic? Consider how you can add more content/posts to support your existing top posts.

This work is the hardest part for sure – and it takes time to do this for all 5-10 of your top posts. Start working on this now so that you have a solid content plan for Q1 of 2025!

☑️ To-Do: Using posts ranking higher than you for primary keywords, improve your titles and add sections/new posts to help improve your expertise and authority in top posts.

4. Add/Optimize Affiliates in Your Top Posts

If you have affiliates in your top 5-10 posts, this is the task where you look at them again to make sure you’re making the most you can.

If you don’t have affiliates in your top 5-10 posts, now’s the time to add some! This is something I’ve definitely neglected, and am working hard to improve for my own sites in 2025.

Look at each of your top posts in turn, and consider:

1. Are the affiliates you’ve included the best fit for your brand, niche, and expertise?
2. Are you using the best affiliate program possible? (i.e. Does CJ vs ShareASale offer better terms, if a merchant is on more than one platform? Or could you use a direct affiliate program for any products vs linking to Amazon?)
3. Have you offered enough options for people to buy? I’ve found that having two options helps a lot – Booking.com and Hotels.com; Amazon and directly on the company website.

Again, this can be a time-consuming process, but optimizing your affiliate links now will help you earn even more from the increased traffic coming your way – so it’s worth it!

☑️ To-Do: Audit and optimize your affiliate links in your top posts. Then sit back and watch more money roll in!

5. Improve Your Internal Linking from Your Top Posts

We all know how important internal linking is important to SEO – these links signal the value of your content to Google. But internal linking is also important because it keeps people on your website: if they click another link, your engagement metrics improve and that can in turn improve your rankings even more!

You want your readers to find more interesting things to read on your site, so it’s up to you to ensure the links are there for them.

Look at each of your top 5-10 posts and all of the internal links you have in those posts. Ensure your top 5-10 posts all have at least three internal links – ideally at least one in the introduction.

☑️ To-Do: Audit and add links until there are at least three internal links in each of your top posts.

6. Set Up Email Forms & Funnels

Another way to capitalize on your new readers in the December Traffic Bump is by capturing their emails and getting them engaged in your email funnels. Ideally, this is something you’d roll out across your whole site so that you throw your email net as wide as possible.

When I did this for my site, I created a new column in my Blog Archive spreadsheet (built with the BOSS Course) and noted on each row which form/funnel I needed to add to each post. Sometimes, I discovered I needed a whole new form/funnel and had to build it – other times I discovered a post that didn’t have an email opt-in to an existing funnel I already had.

If you need to build new funnels, this can take time, so this first audit is a good task to do during an evening when you’ve got Netflix on in the background. You can then work on building the funnels you need over the next few weeks.

If you’re just getting started with email marketing, I have two suggestions:

1. Check out my Travel Blogger’s Email Academy (if you’re a travel blogger, of course). It’s the system I use on all of my sites and it’s really solid for growing and capitalizing on your email list no matter the size.
2. Consider using Mailerlite for your email system. There are flashier services out there, but Mailerlite is more than sufficient and the most affordable as you grow your list beyond the free tier.

☑️ To-Do: Go through your posts and ensure you have as many email capture forms rolled out as possible (and that make sense for each post!).

7. Run a Broken Link Checker

If you’ve made it this far in this post, nice work! This last task is pretty easy to start – but can take a while in phase two, so start it now.

Install the plugin Broken Link Checker and start it running now. In a week or two, you’ll get a report back of all the broken links on your site. You can then work to fix them to ensure that Google doesn’t see broken links on your site and your new readers don’t find them either.

The Broken Link Checker can affect page speed, so I recommend running it for a few weeks, a couple of times a year, then deactivating it.

☑️ To-Do: Install the Broken Link Checker plugin and use it to fix broken links across your site. Prioritize broken links in your top posts!

Don’t forget, you can grab the free spreadsheet to help you keep track of these tasks by signing up below. Make a Copy to use it as your own to-do list prepping for the December Traffic Bump:

Have any questions about the December Traffic Bump and how to get ready for it? Let me know in the comments!