Why Is SEO Your Best Bet During the Upcoming Recession?

While the COVID pandemic is ‘most certainly not over’, much of the economy is likely to take a downturn due to it. The world is teetering on a recession. Stock markets are swooning with drop. Inflation is running hot and experts are sounding the alarm about the upcoming recession.

Typically in a recession, consumers set stricter priorities and become reluctant to spend. They’re in debt with little or no savings. They tend to hold on to whatever cash they have. They cut back on credit card spending and so on. The result is that sales start to drop. Businesses are bound to reduce prices, and enact cost-cutting measures. They tighten up spending, avoid new investments and keep a close eye on their budget.

In stalled economy, SEO startups and small businesses are often hit the hardest. Reduced spending power, budget constraints, and inadequate preparedness make it impossible for them to survive. They are unable to continue operating.

The points are:

• How will small businesses survive the upcoming recession?
• What strategy should they set to grow their business?
• How will they stimulate sales during an economic downturn?
• Is it good to run a paid ad or should they go for SEO?

While the next recession allegedly seems to linger around the horizon, it is a better time to invest in search engine optimization (SEO) for your business. SEO is a unique approach – the most efficient, profitable, and affordable form of marketing products or services online. Even if the economy is at its worst, SEO is still a feasible prospect.

What is SEO?

SEO (Search engine optimization) is a set of practices designed to improve your site ranking, increase its visibility, and boost conversions.  The higher your website is ranking, the more people will see it. SEO services target organic (unpaid) traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic. The goal is to improve the quality and quantity of leads, reach your target customers, tell them about your services and offer and boost sales, thereby ROI.

ResultFirst is your trusted SEO agency, committed to offering a range of SEO services to grow your business. Our SEO services include Pay for Performance SEO, Local SEO services, Saas SEO services, and eCommerce SEO services. Learn more about our SEO services.

Why Invest in SEO during a Recession

In a recession, you need to understand customers’ behavior, put their needs under the microscope, take a scalpel rather than a cleaver to the marketing budget, and nimbly adjust strategies and product offerings. One of the great benefits of SEO is that it helps you understand people’s behavior based on keyword research, and estimate your marketing budget in advance. It lets you measure what consumers are searching for, how much they can spend, and where they can spend.  Search engine optimization helps you understand the evolving consumption patterns and let you craft your business strategies based on that. So, investment in SEO services is a winning idea.

Though your budget is tight, and you are enacting cost-cutting measures, slashing your marketing budget could be a big mistake. So, invest in digital marketing, especially SEO to remain at the top position on Google and enhance your visibility to your target customers who never stop buying necessary things even in a failed economy.

Studies have revealed that there are actually many benefits of advertising during an economic downturn. According to a report by Harvard Business Review, “When businesses invest in advertising during a recession, significantly when their competitors are scaling back, they could bolster their market share and ROI.”  So, when deciding where to spend your marketing dollars, give SEO services priority.

Here’s Why SEO Is Your Best Bet during Upcoming Recession

Flexibility Wins the Race

SEO is flexible in the sense that whatever your website presence has already, SEO can help. It’s a small term for a huge space. Customizing your SEO campaign to meet specific needs is a must and you don’t need to be stressed. If your site has just a few pages, writing new content to flesh it out will serve the purpose. In a recession, an ever-growing site clearly indicates to your potential customers that your company is alive and well and you’re ready to serve them. With regular updates, you can improve your search ranking.

Moreover, SEO services are useful for businesses of any size. While small businesses can use long-tail keywords according to their location and industry, larger companies can expand their keyword targets to reach new markets.

• SEO for Small Businesses: Being a small business, perform local SEO to appeal to audiences closest to you. The regular customer base will help you survive. For this, you need to create pages that target keywords relevant to your industry and your service area.

• SEO for Mid-sized Businesses: As a medium-sized business, you can create an SEO strategy targeting the closest regions. As you grow in certain territories, you can slowly expand it. Use the same location-based SEO approach by creating content around keywords based on two names and your industry.

• SEO for Large Businesses: Since marketing is changing, big companies have an opportunity to grow. Small businesses are not making it through a recession. It is easier for you to grab a new market filled with potential customers that cannot use local alternatives anymore. SEO specialists can recommend ways to tweak your site’s layout and wording to help it rank higher for your chosen keywords and attract people who may be browsing before buying.

SEO Drives Better Revenue

The survival of any business primarily depends on sales. And during a recession, increasing sales requires having a strong digital presence. SEO keeps your marketing campaigns up and running means you are growing sales and keeping revenue flowing. It not only improves your visibility, but also boosts sales by driving more traffic to your site, providing you with more opportunities to convert leads into customers, and giving you the tools you need to increase

Further, SEO lets you collect a wealth of data that can be used to fine tune your marketing campaigns for better results. With the correct SEO process, maximizing returns and reducing spending in unprofitable areas is possible. For example, you can narrow your marketing approach and target only local audiences instead of covering nationwide market. Plus, Search Engine Optimization can give better visibility because your competitors may have stopped their campaigns and are cutting themselves out of search results. Moving up the search results page (SREP) will be easier due to less competition.

A Cost-Effective Approach

SEO offers your business an opportunity to grow online without taking on the large budgets that are required by paid ads. It’s neither cheap nor free, but cost-effective. The main expenses lie in initially setting up a site for Google algorithms, but it will bring a long-term ROI. According to Search Engine Journal Survey in 2018, 48% of businesses said SEO offered them the highest ROI. It is a good long-term value as it gains more value over time and a well-designed website ranks in Google search results for a long-time.

Additional Read: Why SEO Is Important for B2B Business?

So, marketers that focus on SEO services during a recession have a long-term payoff that extends after the recession is over. A reputable SEO agency like ResultFirst helps businesses grab page 1 rankings that lead to better top-of-the-funnel traffic, which is actually better to improve conversions at the bottom of the funnel. Why? Because people still buy essential items and make daily purchases. In fact, they do not stop buying during the recession. With a solid SEO Key approach, you will be able to put your products or services in front of audiences in a cost-friendly way.

Transparency and Pay for Results

Cash is king during an economic downturn. A well-known SEO company can help you maintain or improve your ranking online by giving a unique SEO pricing model. Choose Pay for performance SEO and you will have to pay when you rank. No hefty service costs! Just a minor setup fee and the company will start providing services for your growth. Also known as performance-based SEO or pay-on-results SEO, Pay for performance SEO is worthwhile and gives real results faster than traditional SEO.

Also Read: Pay-for-Performance SEO vs. Retainer SEO Programs

No contract and no monthly fixed amount! Moreover, Pay for performance SEO is ideal for all businesses – small (Startups, mid-sized or large ones). It is a result-driven approach, focusing on small sets of individual keywords for higher search volume. PFP SEO specialists target only potential keywords in order to give faster and satisfactory results.  Since your budget is low and you’re not in a position to take any risk, go for a performance based SEO model.

SEO Prompts Google to Recommend Your Site

Search engines want you to practice SEO so that they know that you exist and have a quality website. Precisely speaking, when you perform SEO activities, you help search engines crawl your website and ensure that you meet all the criteria of ranking factors. Given that Google recommends your site to target users so they have a good experience while shopping online.

With proper SEO, you’re able to make Google believe that you are trustworthy and they (search engines) should recommend your site to people. Therefore, Google will rank you above your competition.

Final Thoughts

During a recession, the economy struggles, people lose work, consumers focus on saving, companies make fewer sales, and the overall economic output declines. No one is 100% sure that the next economy could be heading for a recession. But it’s vital to remain calm, be prepared, move deliberately and most importantly invest in SEO services to keep growing and boosting sales.

Highly competitive industries make it difficult for individual businesses to rank well. But, it means you must work on making your site better with the help of SEO professionals. SEO strategies like earning quality backlinks, sharing products or services on social media, optimizing content, meta description, etc. are low-cost ways to improve your website position and generate leads in the middle of a recession.

Related:Boost Your Business: The Importance of SEO and How It Works

Remember, when the economy will be on track, consumers will regain buying capacity and possibly return to their old purchasing habits. They will go back to familiar brands and products and stay with substitute products. Since you have already served them in a difficult time, they will spend with open-heart to buy your products.