Importance of SEO during COVID-19 Pandemic

During Covid-19 pandemic, most of the company can get benefits by updating SEO optimization on a website as Local SEO, Updating data in website, Updating strategies, Creating new content (Blog, Whitepaper, Infographics), Keyword Research, Backlink analysis and Competitor analysis.

Since most countries are practicing social distancing, employees are taking work from home and the internet is being used more these days. In fact, Forbes reported at the end of March that internet usage has jumped 50-70 percent.

It’s a key time for businesses to spend time on SEO, your action during this time may lead to success in future.

Why should brands think about SEO:

Throughout a pandemic, business or organization works to remain target customers and to maintain the same position over Google SERP through SEO or Content marketing.

During those days customers are buying via online, for that brands need to present for the customers. 

In France, Statista has shown that the traffic rates for online supermarkets have increased by 4%, online fashion merchants saw a 6.1% jump, and online pharmacies saw over a 15% jump since March 13, 2020.

For a couple of months, customers turnout towards online for their needs, which indicates a flourishing business ready to meet online experiences. Brand should take note much growth comes from mobile devices, smartphones or tablets and have seen incredible growth towards the market (50% High) compared to march 2019 to march 2020.

Every business or brand should focus on engaging quality content and better user experiences so that they engage customers through mobile devices or tablets. To get maximum conversion and ROI in future, websites should focus on user experience for a website. 

Important SEO Stats 2020:

1. 50% of the websites rank on first page results have HTTPS encryption.
2. The website’s rank on the first page of Google finds 30% of all clicks.
3. 75% of Google users don’t scroll beyond the first page.
4. Top 5 websites on Google’s first page get 67% of total clicks.
5. The organic results on the search engine obtain 94% more clicks than paid ads.
6. Websites on the #1 position on SERPs will drive 5% to 14. 5% more backlinks from the new sites.
7. Out of 4.33 billion internet users, 3.7 billion are smartphone users globally.
8. In 2020, almost 50% of searches will account for voice searches.
9. The blogs with videos drive 157% more organic traffic on Google.
10. The blogs having videos generate 53x more chances to rank on the first page of Google.

These SEO Statistics help marketers to set business goals and optimize a website, to drive more traffic and Conversions for business. 

Few Tips for Website Grow with SEO:

• Make sure your business avail on online
• Connect with your customers on social media during this period
• Create targeted content for new users
• Keep update on search trends
• Do monitor your website to understand customers behavior
• Right to time for maintaining relevant ads to engage customers

How to Optimize a website during Covid-19:

The Covid-19 pandemic has hit many businesses worldwide. The sudden unprecedented pandemic, many businesses are still trying to find online based on new online strategies to meet the customer demands. 

List out priorities for marketing under covid-19 circumstances.

During the period, customers as many connected digitally with their businesses and its important to step up over competitors.

Some of the companies changed the crisis towards a positive approach, marketers find extra time to work on Strategy, Growth and Optimization that’ll help your website well positioned when business goes back to normal. Here are some important things you can do to update / optimize a website during covid-19.

1. Optimize your Website Home Page:

Website homepage is a first impression for a user / business and keeps your website updated forever. 38% of users will stop engaging a website if the content or layout is unattractive! 

Homepage SEO Techniques:

1. State your company purpose
2. Use targeting keywords 
3. Create product awareness by Title tag
4. Straightforward meta description
5. Add SEO-friendly website headers
6. Practice better internal linking
7. Connect with social media
8. Create an appealing content flow
9. Create SEO friendly and simple homepage design
10. Create urgency CTA’s

Note – Keep update on Call to Action, Photos, Promotions, Whitepaper, Infographics or Recent Blogs. 

2. Check out Competitors Actions:

Keep tabs on competitors strategy and marketing to plan for your business growth. List out your competitors and check what they’re doing and how they’re doing it for business improvements.

Few things you have to keep on competitors activities;

• Product details or Services
• Marketing Strategy
• Branding and Design
• Content Updated
• Social Media Promotions

3. Update Content and Remove Old Content:

Perfect time to work on old content and time to develop content for social media promotions, email marketing, your blog, etc. 

Take time to plan a content marketing strategy for your website and improve google ranking and CTR for a website. 

If you want to generate blog topic, Here’s a hubspot tool for Blog Topic Generator

Create compelling content for customers, Great content should be as;

• Build Brand Awareness
• Establish your Competence
• Build relationship with your customers
• Add conversational keywords for SEO Optimization
• Drives traffic to your website
• Generate leads

Note – Create an editorial calendar
Create an social media calendar
Focus on creating evergreen content 

4. Keep Fresh SEO Title and Descriptions:

Meta tags are the foundation of SEO and the first thing you’ll set up while building a website. Without meta tags your website can’t reach the audience organically.

Meta tags only appear on google search for users. Create tags with the tagline of What the page exactly about and What are focus keywords for a page?

This is a great time to sort out keywords for web pages and add relevant keywords in meta tags.

Best Practice for Meta Title Tag;

• Create unique title tag for a page
• Title should be short and impressive
• Add focus keyword on title tag
• Describe about page

Best Practice for Meta Description Tag;

• Maintain ideal length of meta description tag (160 Characters)
• Summarize accurately about a page content
• Include primary keywords in description content

Note – Do research for LSI keywords for a page, include those LSI keywords in meta title tag and description tag for better rankings.

5. Local SEO Advantage:

Local SEO is very effective marketing for a business. The strategy helps to market brands, products, services and local leads.

46% of all Google searches are local. If your business isn’t optimized for local search, you could be missing out on 80% of your potential customers.

Here are the Local SEO Tips:

• Optimize for Google My Business
• Improve internal linking
• Optimize page URL, Title tags, Header, Meta Description and Page Content
• Add location pages for a website
• Create local content
• Ensure company name, address, phone number are consistent online
• Engage on social media and add photos or post in Google My Business
• Ensure website is mobile friendly
• Optimize for Bing place and apple maps listing
• Perform a citation audit
• Promote local resource

6. Optimize Your Page Speed:

A slow page speed website kills conversions.

Page speed describes page loading time. You can evaluate page speed with Google Page Speed Insights

In fact, 47% of consumers expect websites to load in two seconds or less. And 40% will abandon a page that takes three or more seconds.

A one-second delay in page load time yields:

11% fewer page views
16% decrease in customer satisfaction
7% loss in conversions

It denotes fast page speed is important, not for google ranking but to maintain website high conversion rate.

Some of Page Speed (SEO) Best Practices:

• Enable compression (if larger than 150 bytes)
• Minify CSS, Javascript, and HTML
• Reduce website redirects
• Remove render-blocking javascripts
• Enable browser caching
• Reduce server response time
• Optimize web page images size
• Minimize HTTP request
• Reduce plugins on your site
• Remove external scripts

7. Create Engaging Call to Action:

Call to action is known as CTA, is a marketing strategy for website visitors to take a desired action like subscription, buying or contact form.  70% of small businesses lack a CTA on their homepage.

Few things to consider before creating Call to Action:

• Do you want to increase subscriptions?
• To boost sales
• Redirect to another content page
• To increase campaign goals

Practices Tips While Craft Your CTA :

• Start CTA with strong action verb
• Use simple language
• Create urgency
• Use words like Free Trial or Free Webinar
• Provoke emotion or enthusiasm

Write Killer Call to Action in Just 5 Minutes

Time to Measure:

Online searches done frequently during covid-19 pandemic and check on google trends about keywords or categories which are mainly searched by customers. 

Time to measure your result, by these efforts you may notice an increase in traffic towards a website but this traffic is not converted as sales. Consider monitoring website engagement by using tools to understand user behavior and searchers and it helps to develop content for customers satisfaction. 

Final Thoughts:

Life has changed during the COVID-19 outbreak. Those days internet usage increased more even before and it’s time to focus on your SEO efforts for a website. 

Don’t step back on digital marketing strategy during pandemic. Plan a strategy before investing, do keyword research, google trends, content update, and develop an SEO strategy to improve keyword ranking and conversions. 

Feel Confident and Get Positioned for website growth post Covid-19 pandemic.