After months in lockdown, many states have opened the floodgates, allowing businesses to open and consumers to flow out of their homes in a massive deluge. Yet, other states are staying firmly shut, enacting harsh penalties for anyone who unnecessarily leaves their home, forgets their cloth masks or otherwise increases the spread of COVID-19. Largely, politicians in power are praising the former group of states, fearing lasting economic damage to a country in shutdown for months longer. Meanwhile, public health officials are all for continuing social distancing and quarantining policies.
What does this mean for the future of the country? No one can be sure — it is a tumultuous time.
But what does this mean for your SEO strategy? Read on to find out.
You Need to Pay Close Attention to Audience Attitudes
Because SEO is so closely tied to other digital marketing strategies, like social media and content marketing, you need to be aware of, and respond to, ever-shifting audience attitudes. In February and March, before most states went into lockdown, a large number of people were not at all concerned about the spreading coronavirus — but those attitudes rapidly shifted as the danger of the disease became more obvious. Just a couple months later, attitudes are shifting again as many consumer groups have grown exhausted of isolation and fearful of the economic impact of a continued shutdown. As these attitudes shift, audiences’ desires and expectations for companies will shift as well.
It is incredibly important that you know exactly how your audience is reacting to the crisis from week to week. A good way to stay abreast of consumer outlooks is to stay connected to your audience via social media, especially Twitter and Facebook. You might pose a question to your following once or twice per week and evaluate responses for a pervasive feeling. Then, you should modify your content for the next week or so to suit your audience’s needs.
You Should Be Creating More Content All the Time
Speaking of content, you should be making as much of it as you can.
Right now, audiences almost across the board are starved for entertainment; they have more time and fewer responsibilities than ever before, which means the content you create right now is likely to garner more attention than it would normally.
Even so, you shouldn’t be happy to put out any low-quality, irrelevant swill. You aren’t the only business ramping up content production, so you need to prioritize creating content that appropriately addresses audience desires, is more compelling than competing content and fits neatly into your long-term content and SEO goals. If you aren’t well-equipped to generate more content, especially during this time when you might be furloughing workers, you might consider relying on an SEO marketing agency with a content creation team on staff. Then, you can benefit from a continuous stream of high-quality content to deliver to your eager audience.
You Might Want to Drastically Alter Your Strategy
Depending on your goals prior to the crisis, you might need to drastically change the focus of your SEO strategy. For instance, if your traffic and conversions have dropped off considerably, you might need to pivot your tactics to address this shift. Then again, if you are seeing a swell in traffic, you might not worry about that and instead concentrate on optimizing your website.
Data is the key to determining whether a change to SEO strategy is necessary. Again, it is wise to work with a qualified SEO firm to gather and analyze certain metrics as well as to make your SEO strategy more agile through the coming weeks. It might be wise to survey other aspects of your larger digital marketing scheme as well — just because SEO is looking good doesn’t mean your marketing across the web is a runaway success. It is important that you continue to closely monitor the technical aspects of your SEO and marketing and investigate any changes, so you can stay on top of the changes that threaten your business success.
As the COVID crisis has developed, SEO has become among the most important business activities, and that will likely remain to be true. Even so, no one can predict with any certainty what the next few months — or few years — will bring in terms of health, economic activity or consumer behavior. The best strategy for every business is to stay alert and be able to act swiftly to address the shifting environment in the near future.
