COVID-19 has created a situation of pain, confusion, and uncertainty across the world. With every passing day, we get to hear about thousands of new cases. The Global lockdown has severely impacted most businesses. Now that the lockdown situation is getting relaxed in parts across the world, businesses are scrambling to make a quick recovery.
How is SEO behaving in this coronavirus atmosphere?
Most businesses have been hit hard during the pandemic, because they had to abruptly shut their business premises. However, they will need to stay consistent with their SEO efforts to still stay in contention, because this situation is temporary. Governments are pushing to get their economies back in track, which means the markets will have to eventually open.
SEO is a long-term strategy. Search engines have always lacked transparency, regarding their ranking process. Moreover, search engines keep updating or changing their algorithms regularly. What worked yesterday may no longer be applicable.
Currently, organic traffic is volatile. Even with high ranking on searches, many sectors are experiencing either steep growth or sudden decline. If your business is showing an increase in search traffic, it means that more clicks hit your page, instead of your competitors.
If you see a decrease in traffic, it means fewer clicks. Here, you might be losing out to the competition. In between this COVID-19 situation, SEO still holds a lot of relevance to online businesses. You will need to make sure that a majority of clicks come to your landing pages.
What steps to take in this COVID-19 situation?
It is a perfect time to improve your local SEO strategies. It means ranking for area-specific keywords. For example, you will focus on local keywords like ‘accident lawyer in Houston’ or ‘running shoes in Dallas’.
Such local search terms make it easy to rank, as they are less competitive. Besides, with lockdown situations and social distancing norms, the limitations of traveling can actually prove beneficial for businesses that have a strong online presence for local keywords.
With localized SEO, your business can get more exposure in specific targeted areas. You will need services of a good SEO firm like GreenerSEO that specializes in local search. Small business can visit https://greenerseo.com and request for a free quote for local SEO packages. They have a good track record of helping their clients in gaining good rankings on area specific keywords.
Stay ahead of Google trend
‘Stay home, stay safe’ has been the new norm for the last 4 to 5 months. People are at their homes, so they search for products and services online. Therefore, you will need to monitor Google Trend and look for new topics or questions that people are searching for, in your niche at this time.
If you identify the relevant trends, you can gain a good edge on your competitors by creating content surrounding those topics. In a couple of months, the sales will rise again, you will be prepared! Your content is already on the internet, and hopefully offering a solution to people’s queries. Thus, your SEO results improve, and more traffic gets attracted to your website.
Research keywords
It is a great time to reconsider keyword research. Understand the terms in your niche that gets more traffic, along with low competitive keywords. The keywords that were working efficiently for you six months ago may not matter today.
Coronavirus pandemic has changed the search habits, concerns, and needs of everyone. Take a second look! If you ignore monitoring closely, you will miss the chance to change your strategies. Your SEO service provider will identify the right keywords for creating contents that are highly relevant for today.
Write creatively
Creating engaging content is the foundation of any SEO strategy. In the past, stuffing content with keywords used to work just fine. Those contents were intended for the search engine algorithms, and not the readers. Today, the search engines are savvier, and so you need to write for offering great user experience. Write relevant and useful topics that cater to the reader’s needs.
Build your content stockpile
Prioritize your top or mid-funnel content. It is not a short-term SEO strategy, and the prospects may not convert immediately. Nevertheless, your aim should be to direct prospective customers into the funnel to display your brand for future needs. By writing a stash of great content and by being prepared in advance, you can gain an edge on your competitors.
Adapt the new content strategy
People are forced to change during situations like pandemic and recession. Making changes is hard, but in the COVID-19 situation, businesses will need to grab the situation as an opportunity. Everyone is spending significant time watching or streaming YouTube, so start developing Video content and benefit from it. You can check your previous content that resonated with the readers. Repurpose this in a video form.
Think beyond content
Marketers need to use this isolation and lockdown time wisely. Content is the king, and has always been the first line of defense in SEO. Nevertheless, the current time is right to concentrate on other comprehensive aspects of SEO including –
- Page speed
- Website updates including fresh images
- URL structure
- Easy to find your content
- Great user experience and more
You must consider outsourcing these tasks to professional marketers to help your business gain dividends post the lockdown.
Why SEO is an asset during coronavirus crisis?
SEO during a crisis will be comparatively cost-effective than other marketing alternatives. Unlike working with influencers, hosting events, or running paid ad campaigns, SEO involves putting great content and customizing some specifics that suit search engine algorithms.
If you are able to earn top rankings on search engines at this time, then it becomes easy for your company to maintain the momentum later. If you do lose ranking, getting it back with some tweaks is easy. This is the main reason why SEO has become all the more important during this COVID-19 situation. Brands that worked their ranking a few months ago are profiting from high traffic with less efforts today.
SEO depends on trust, especially during the current crisis. Users believe Google’s ranking system as their assessments of the page links are accurate. It means your brand can gain intrinsic trust in the view of customers.
With COVID-19, badly banging the business landscape, you can see how SEO is valuable in mitigating the marketing challenges. It is time to delve deep into implementing wide-ranging SEO tactics.
You can start small or upgrade your existing strategy. SEO is an ongoing learning process, but the above tips can help you progress in the right direction, and achieve the top spot on search engines.