You really need to rethink your marketing strategy since the Coronavirus pandemic began. SEO is a big part of this strategy. I know your businesses have been highly affected in terms of website traffic, sales and leads. Organic search has become a zero-sum game and your gains or losses are exactly balanced by the gains or losses of others in the SERPs. For your business to be in the best position through this time of crisis, you have to re-visit your SEO strategy for 2020 to adapt to the current situation.

Don’t you worry, what is certain is that we will recover.

Read till the end to find out what adjustments you can make for your SEO as part of your brand’s response to COVID-19’s impact.

1. Maintain your normal level of marketing investment throughout the Coronavirus pandemic.

If you cannot afford to grow right now, so be it.

If it makes sense to cut back on some paid advertising for the time being (say, for example, your employees can’t come in to serve customers so there’s no point right now in attracting them to your location), then that’s a logical decision to make.

SEO and inbound marketing are a long game, however.

You’ve invested in building your processes and workflow, ensuring data quality with consistent measurement, building an audience and customer base, and creating quality content that ranks.

What’s more, you can count on the fact that others are going to panic and underestimate the impact of an emotional decision on their 6- to the 12-month business horizon.

As their engagement drops, their publishing cadence slows, perhaps their review volume or quality falls off, and they lose traction across channels, you have the opportunity to push ahead and come out on top.

 

2. Fix and adapt to your website.

You, your digital marketing agency or your SEO team need to be on top of the current trends and users’ search intent in search engines.

A good place to start is to create a page, a blog post, or a section on your homepage notifying existing and new customers about the operation of your business during the coronavirus crisis, and what you can do to help them.

Possibly the most important part of any SEO strategy is fixing the technical side of your website. There are a lot of online tools that offer quick SEO audits but they aren’t always reliable.

You might want to consider getting some professional advice about the status of your website, and things that you need to immediately address in order to maximize your site’s potential and increase your daily impressions, organic clicks, and position on search engine results.

Given the current situation, a lot of businesses are revisiting their marketing strategies. SEO isn’t something that you want to be overlooked as it can offer both short and long term results for your business.

SEO is a rapidly growing and changing environment but with the right planning, it can help your overall marketing strategy and future proof your business.

 

3. Digitize your business.

Coronavirus’s main impact is how it affects people in their daily lives. Now that face to face interaction has stopped, a lot of people and businesses are working as normal from home.

In 2020, there is a technology that allows you to perform almost all of your business operations from anywhere in the world, especially if your business is offering digital services or is an E-Commerce business.

You might want to use this time to future proof your business against future emergency situations and consider how to best digitize your business, products, and services.

In order for your business to make this available to new customers and reach new audiences, you need to have a solid SEO strategy in place that will allow you to be visible on search engines.

You might want to consider taking care of that SEO strategy that you always neglected due to the fact that it is a long term investment.

4. Adjust your content strategy.

• Coronavirus Updates

A thing that you need to consider is creating content that will engage and inform your users during the coronavirus crisis. As we mentioned above, the key thing to do is update your website to include a new page or a section on your homepage in order to inform your users about the operation of your business. You can then create links to important products and services that you offer.

• Video

Video content is now more important than ever as more users spend time indoors and consume content from every source available. Video, as I have previously talked about in other blogs, is a good way of driving traffic and engagement to your website through social media networks. You might want to think about creating more video content and using SEO tools to have insights about content that is high in searches and optimize your video to rank for those searches.

• Blogs 

Focus on creating content that influences people and reinforces your expertise, trustworthiness, and authority. Users right now might not be on a buying mode but when the crisis passes (and it will), they will have your business in mind. Creating awareness around your business and your brand is important and can work for you both in the short and long term.

• Updated your FAQ content.

Evaluate your customer service and FAQ pages to determine if specific language should be updated or if new FAQs related to Coronavirus should be added

• Factor in Isolation and Social Distancing in Messaging.

When writing any content or producing any messaging during this time, be mindful of the overall idea of social distancing. Consider some DIY topics around your product or service so that users can direct value during a time of isolation. Be careful with the language that could be seen as a counterintuitive with COVID-19 guidelines

• Include Cleaning and Care Instructions for Products –

If your business sells any type of physical product, you should include cleaning and care instructions on the product detail page. This can help to capture search traffic as people actively search for ways to clean certain products during this period, while also helping to reinforce E-A-T signals

• Be Mindful of Potential Changes in SERPs & Google Algorithms –

Businesses and industries that are considered YMYL (Your Money, Your Life), such as healthcare and financial companies, could see significant changes in the SERPS and organic results during this time. Brands within these spaces should be mindful of this when developing content and monitoring performance

 

5. Look out for changes in Search Behaviors.

Closely monitor Google Trends, Google Search Console, and other keyword tools to understand shifts in search interest and behavior around relevant keywords/topics for your brand and industry during this time.

Try and monitor website performance to understand how users are converting during this time and update forecasting and reporting to factor in the impact of COVID-19.

Businesses, such as grocery stores and pharmacies, will likely see a large influx in search interest for their brand names, as well as their offered products/services, during this time.

You are likely to see a drop in search interest as consumers rapidly shift priorities during this period.

Your brand should closely monitor organic search sessions and conversion numbers for the foreseeable future and should plan to update forecasting, as well as historical reporting, to factor in the impact of COVID-19.

 

6. Understanding your budget for SEO Marketing.

Significant changes in economic behaviors will result in businesses being mindful of their overall performance and budgets for the next several months.

While it is currently hard for your business to predict how long COVID-19 will result in significant economic impact, you should be aware of how SEO fits into short-term and long-term marketing strategies to understand how you can effectively plan for SEO during this period.

While the short term marketing strategies may require marketing channels to react in real-time due to the impact of COVID-19, the long-term, organic nature of SEO should be considered when evaluating marketing priorities.

Evaluate paid and organic coverage for the next several months to understand how both can be balanced as part of an overall marketing strategy in response to COVID-19’s impact on your business.

Unlike most paid channels, SEO often cannot immediately shift short term priorities within an organic search.

Given the current level of economic uncertainty for many businesses and industries, the long-term nature of SEO should be considered when evaluating both paid and organic marketing priorities over the next several months.

7. Get Started Executing on Your Q4/Holiday 2020 Initiatives – Today.

Leverage the long-term nature of SEO to ensure that your website ranks well for high-volume and high-competition keywords that are expected to peak in Q4/Holiday 2020.

While your business may see short term losses in the next several months, future planning and optimizations for upcoming initiatives can ensure that your businesses are best positioned for when the economy is in an upswing.

 

If you need any help with your SEO strategy drop us a message.