SEO – Why Coronavirus Means You Need to Adjust Your Strategy

In the space of a few weeks, the world has moved from most businesses expecting 2020 to be a year when they can finally get on with business after the election in 2019, to Coronavirus turning everything on its head! Everything you thought in January to be true is certainly going to have changed and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is no different.

So what is going to change as a result of coronavirus and SEO in 2020?

Tweak the strategy to reflect what’s happening now

SEO isn’t an overnight fix, so trying to optimise your website for an immediate effect isn’t always going to be a decision worth taking, but coronavirus is a shock to the norm, so it needs to be considered. You should keep your strategy moving forward with your end goal in mind but just adjust around the edge to reflect the current situation.

Some of your client’s immediate needs may have changed, so you might want to consider looking at signposting your products and services that are more relevant at this time.

Some blog topics around coronavirus may provide some short term traffic – it’s not guaranteed that it would work for you. It is worth looking at trends for what people are searching for now and then adapting the strategy to be related to what is currently being searched for.

Things may not be the ‘normal’ that is used to be. Focus on the ‘new normal’

This will end at some point, and people are going to have had plenty of time on their hands – knowing at some point they can get back to doing something that resembles normal life! Once this comes, they will be ready to start getting out there and doing things, spending money and searching for your services. Plan your SEO strategy around this time – it may not be the old-normal, but it will be the new normal.

Things may start to open up slowly, so clients that used to engage with your services via a different means, may now be looking online. Having a well-optimised website is crucial to being found.

There should be a boom in search traffic once we get some certainty around the relaxing of restrictions and businesses and individuals can plan more effectively, so working hard on your SEO now will pay dividends in the coming months.

Your competitors may not be around anymore

The simple reality is that some of your competitors may not have made it out of the other side of this crisis. If you’re in a position to invest time and money into your website, then now is the time to do it.

It’s clearly important to be sensitive in your approach – businesses will have failed so you need to make sure you get the tone right with your copy.

Where to start?

Start with checking analytics and see how your users are interacting with your website – what could be improved that will benefit you in the future? Check which pages are getting a good amount of traffic, and with could be improved. Once you have this information, you can build it into your strategy

Plan – if you offer a broad range of products and services, which of these are going to be the most important for your clients when things get going again?

Update your Google My Business page – for local search, this is one of the best places to appear high in the rankings. If you have never looked it this, make sure that login and update this with relevant information. Once it’s up to date, start asking your clients for reviews as these appear in the search results when people search for your business name, and also your services.

Speak to Trident

Are you thinking that you would like to improve your SEO? We are offering a FREE audit of the SEO performance of your current website. Find out:

Where you currently rank for your main keywords.
Speed improvements that can be made for your website – to improve SEO.
We’ll compare your website against your main competitor and their ranking
We’ll show you some top-level tips to improve your SEO

If you’d like to find out more about the audit – contact us. We’d love to hear from you.