Why You should not Stop SEO efforts During Coronavirus (COVID-19)

With the COVID-19 pandemic, life across the globe has experienced a sudden halt. Various oscillations of opinion encircle the market about the economic hit and the crisis. In fact, many business owners are contemplating the idea of winding up! But, human life is about sustainability and hope should not cease. While the world takes time to contain the virus, you must take a breath and analyse how to bar this storm from affecting your business.

While you stay safe inside, don’t let your business be quarantined!

Businessmen across the globe are contemplating ways to perpetuate their business. The role played by SEO has to be given a high rating now. When the consumers are online, it is a sign for companies to improvise. By shifting strategies, many of them, in fact, have sailed-off successfully. We cannot deny that there exist business models that can thrive in slowdowns as well. While tremors from this catastrophe subside, prepare, because there will be winners and losers in this new global normal.

The COVID-19 crisis is having a dramatic impact on search behaviour, consumer mobility, media consumption habits, supply chains, and budgets. These are your cues around which to shape your business model.

Business owners might have few questions regarding SEO strategy, like:

• Why should I invest in SEO when nations are in lockdown?
• My traffic and leads flow keep falling; people are not searching for me. Why should I continue?
• My sales are zero; Will I have to start SEO again when the situation is normal?
• What if the market wouldn’t turn-up even after the dust from the pandemic is settled?

Business owners must remember how crucial SEO services can be to generate organic traffic for your online assets. There is one thing they can still control: the ability to be resilient and make choices that will get them through these turbulent times. Rather than thinking about dumping off your SEO plans, you need to understand what will your business lose if SEO is discontinued:

• Long-time efforts of achieving and maintaining rankings will be void: SEO is a fantastic tool to maintain consistency of rankings & stay at the top of the page. Experts often recommend SEO because it brings the lion’s share of traffic to a website. You’ll lose the command and it’ll become harder to achieve a return on direct customer acquisition activity if SEO activity is shut. SEO activities tend to pay off in 6-12 months, which is ideal in this COVID-19 scenario. So, if you choose to stop, you lose! Think otherwise.

• Major fall in organic traffic and leads: The internet is busier than ever despite the pandemic. If you quit SEO plans, you stand a chance to lose the relevant traffic during this lockdown. Even if visitors on your site don’t make purchases, cutting visibility can skip their chances to return when things get back to normal. Cutting down SEO will make you lose potential leads.

• You might lose your new potential customer: If you stop SEO marketing due to immediate fears, you could negatively impact the ability for your business. SEO backs your visibility on the internet. You can use it to maintain top of the mind awareness which will become an asset later. Not everyone is strapped for cash, some still have that purchasing power. Local SEO will help such people find businesses that can provide help within the area that they are in. If you ignore SEO, you miss out on people and revenue that is much needed for your business in this crisis.

• Losing to competitors: By choosing to cut costs on SEO, you give a fair opportunity to your competitors to outrank you. SEO keeps you up by giving an edge over the competitors. Search Engine Optimization at the time of pandemic will give you a head start. Remember the end of the pandemic may not be near, it could take months, and during this, halting SEO can push your business a long time back!

• Lose the chance to show empathy: Businesses often use words like: ‘we understand,’ ‘we care,’ ‘valued customers’ Disappearing right away and missing SEO ops sends out a negative message to your customers about the business philosophy you follow. You may end up upsetting your customers by choosing to stay away.

Moreover, SEO practitioners should keep a keen eye on search trends and may generate a lot of learnings. Think it from a customer’s perspective. No customer would like their brand to stop putting efforts to reach them. Thus, pulling out SEO under panic would never be a good suggestion!

Why is SEO Important for you during COVID-19?

With a clear and sudden shift in the world’s mentality, reliance on the internet has never been higher. SEO comes up as a weapon that can be used to fight this prolonged crisis. Traffic generation on the website and keeping the customers hooked is all you must aim for. SEO should facilitate this seamlessly. Each industry is facing direct or indirect repercussions of COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses should refer to the 2008/2009 recession to look at what helped companies survive back then. The former was a financial crunch and the present-day crisis is generated from a virus-spread which may take time to vanish. For instance- Marketing strategies involving SEO and digital marketing saved businesses in the 2009 crisis.

This is why we intend to explain how & why SEO is best strategy to adapt to get the most out of this situation:

• Search Engine Marketing Can Produce Cash: According to a report by Backlinko, the top 3 search results account for 75 percent of all clicks. Making your business rank on the first page or specifically top 3 is undoubtedly required to thrive your business on the web. At the time of this pandemic, work on Local SEO, review your SEO Audit and make projections based on trends to develop keyword-based content. All these activities will maximize your chance of landing up into the pockets of the potential customers. Those who have cash will be able to push their business to thrive in this sluggish Use your existing database along with Search engine marketing to connect to customers and fulfil their needs. Put your brand in front of searchers, & make a cut while buying decisions are made.

• You can easily measure the performance: Take this time as an opportunity to identify the success of your business statistically. Track your Search Engine activities in the past and the present to see how effective it has been in generating sales and leads. Sit down and analyze deeply. This will help you formulate your future budgeting strategies. SEO can be used by you marketers to follow trends and then plan tactics for the next phase.

• People do more search during lock down: The crisis has given birth to scarcity of few goods right now. People tend to look more for these goods or their alternates. SEO will give you a boost to land in the common search pages where your potential customers are calling for offers like yours.

(Source: NeilPatel.com)

Traffic growth in some industries is on a boost, that means people are searching more. This increases a chance for you to stand somewhere with a SEO plan that can help your business.

• People are still looking for services: SEO can keep commerce alive despite the hard times. People need commodities and services to survive during the lockdown. Search engine marketing is the best way to reach consumers with a buying intent. It has been seen that if a search term was previously searched for 10 times/month, it has now doubled to 20 times/month. This shows a positive upward trajectory. Get an unbeatable understanding of what precise terms are being searched for. Google’s other tools in Search Console and Keyword Planner are your best options here.

• Be hopeful, normalcy will prevail: The world will witness a ‘new normal’ and things will resume as earlier. With a continuous approach, SEO will be your biggest tool when the market resettles. With figures of success during a crisis, you can win on investors and customers alike in the market. Lastly, by the time the market is normal, your SEO strategy will start paying-off in a way it never did.

Conclusion:

The crisis may be prolonged, slow and uncertain. The exit from it may sound precarious. But with the strong tactics to boost your business through this storm, you will unearth new learnings that will last forever. Be safe, stay indoors, meditate & evolve your business.

Don’t give up on marketing-it won’t give up on you.