Many companies have been hit hard by the Covid-19 crisis. While the two confinements did not spare physical businesses, e-businesses also had to take radical measures and review their marketing strategies. You should also make your SEO strategy in COVID to survive this pandemic.
Covid-19 and SEO: how to adapt your strategy?
Indeed, since the start of the pandemic in December 2020, many changes in consumption habits have been observed. Customers are adapting to their new way of life. This is reflected in the turnover of the heavily impacted sectors and in Google trends, as here with the search interest curve for the “telework” request.
Many areas have been considerably impacted by the crisis and the confinements, whether positively or negatively, as shown by the evolution of search interest for the search for “plane tickets”.
The observation is as follows: absolutely all businesses have seen their situations change because of the health crisis. The challenge they face today is to successfully turn around or maintain their business.
For this, most businesses had to resort to these solutions:
- Adapt their offer;
- Go digital;
- Develop their internet marketing strategy.
SEO is one of the flagship disciplines of digital marketing. Well mastered, it can help you boost your visibility in search engine results pages and target new customers.
To adapt your SEO strategy, you will need to analyze and understand new market trends in order to adjust your offer to new consumer needs and thus try to position yourself on these new trends.
Do not wait – Start your SEO Planning in Pandemic
Before changing anything, analyze your situation:
- Is your sector affected by the crisis?
- Has your business been affected by the crisis?
- In what proportions?
- Have your competitors been affected too?
With this information, you will have a clearer picture of the weak points of your site and the areas for improvement.
Then, focus on the evolution of Internet users’ requests. Ask yourself if your offer, as it is now, still has a place in the market despite the crisis or if adjustments are needed. The key to a successful business in these times of crisis is to find the offer that will meet the needs of Internet users. The proof with the evolution of the interest for the request “Uber eats” in 2020.
We observe that the number of searches for the meal delivery service has only changed since mid-March, the start of the first confinement. Explaining this increase is not very difficult, it is the consequence of the many difficulties or even the impossibility of restaurants to welcome customers on site. The latter had to fall back on take-out and delivery, hence the meteoric rise of this keyword. It’s up to you to find out how to adapt your offer to current demand.
Let’s move on to your competition. You would have a lot to learn from them, how do they manage the crisis and what are their solutions to get through it? This will give you a more precise idea of what means might or might not work.
Redo an SEO analysis of your site
To answer the first questions, have your site audited (or re-audited if necessary) with an SEO agency. This will allow you to pinpoint the flaws in your site, on the technical and semantic improvements that you could make and also on the pages that you would be interested in creating for your linking.
Consult your statistics on Google Analytics or Search Console, this will allow you to observe the performance of your site. Also control the loading speed of your site via PageSpeed Insights. You will be better able to understand the increase in your bounce rate or the decrease in your conversion rate and the impact this can have on your bottom line.
Not hesitating to question yourself is a quality that will help you grow your business.
Create new content for SEO
In addition to adapting and improving your existing content, you will need to create new ones. This could mean creating new pages or adding relevant content to existing pages for example. This will allow you to enrich your site and update your offer.
You and your customers are fully aware of the situation, we advise you to be as transparent as possible with your consumers in order to strengthen the relationship of trust that you have with them.
When implementing your keyword strategy, take into account the new queries related to the crisis. For example, you can create new pages dedicated to the application of barrier gestures within your company and to the various measures that have been taken.
Show your customers that you are taking responsibility in the face of the crisis and that you are taking action for their safety and that of your employees.
Create visible ads on your website to let your consumers know if you’re still open or when you plan to reopen. Also communicate about the services you offer during containment.
In short, keep them informed of your news.
Think about local SEO
Do not neglect your local SEO and update your Google My Business listing. This will let your local customers know if you are open and where they can reach you. This simple operation will allow you to kill two birds with one stone by addressing your physical customers as well as Internet users.
In your Google My Business listing, fill in the following information:
- Opening dates and times
- Your store address
- Telephone number
- A link to your website.
This is a very effective method of boosting sales for your store and driving traffic to your website. It is a valuable intermediary between you and your customers, which you can use to inform them of any change in your hours, location, or offer.
New SEO trends for 2021
These new measures to adopt seem to go without saying. However, special attention will have to be paid to them in 2021, because they will have more and more importance in the eyes of Google for SEO.
From now on, it will be highly recommended or even mandatory:
- To adapt your website to mobiles. There are more and more mobile users, far more than PC users. This is why Google expects most sites to offer a version suitable for smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.
- To optimize the content of your pages. Google will continue to promote sites offering relevant and quality content to Internet users.
- To optimize navigation. Which means, organize your pages and highlight the most relevant content. Thus, your visitors will have no problem finding the information they came for.
- Improve the loading time of your pages. By guaranteeing a minimum load time for your pages, you reduce visitor expectation and therefore your bounce rate.
- To take into account new trends in Google searches. More and more searches are being done using the voice search function, which has a considerable impact on the formulation of queries. This is a factor to take into account for sites that want to position themselves on more precise and less competitive keywords.
This year, Google will put user experience at the forefront. That is, the priority ranking factors will all be based directly or indirectly on UX. In other words, in order not to suffer penalties and satisfy the user agent Google bit, it will above all be necessary to satisfy Internet users.