If there was ever a time to cancel or at least put your firm’s search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts on pause, it’s now, right?
Wrong!
Yes, the ongoing coronavirus outbreak has wreaked havoc with local, national and international economies, and few businesses will go unscathed. But it might be because of this suddenly precarious situation for many firms that SEO actually heightens in its importance.
Here are just a few of the ways in which, far from being a burden, a well-targeted SEO campaign could be invaluable in sustaining your brand through these tricky weeks and months.
- It enables you to emphasise with your audience
All brands say they care about their customers… but it’s during a crisis situation that we find out the extent to which this is actually true.
This should be reflected in your current SEO approach. Now isn’t the time to shove your products down the throats of your audiences, especially when they aren’t the most obviously relevant products for dealing with a pandemic.
Instead, it’s a time to show your audience that your brand understands and emphasises with their situation. Don’t be afraid to show your firm’s human side through its SEO content. In particular, if you are helping the local community in some way right now, it could be a good idea to tastefully incorporate this into your newsletters, blog posts, social media updates or videos.
- It allows you to keep your brand at the forefront
At a time when a lot of us are anxious and questioning our priorities, SEO is a tried and tested marketing tool. Remember, while many of your customers may be stuck at home, this may mean they are currently spending more time online, searching for and comparing brands, products and services.
This is of potential relevance even to brands with products that aren’t obviously useful against COVID-19. It isn’t only firms offering health supplements or hand sanitiser that should be presently optimising for search engine performance, especially given that investing in SEO now will put your business in an advantageous position once lockdown restrictions are lifted.
Coronavirus is, however, likely to have implications for how you do SEO. There might be opportunities for you to address health and safety topics in your SEO content, or to optimise for related keywords. Maybe, for example, your online bookshop, record store or fitness equipment supplier could come into its own during this time of coronavirus home-bound boredom?
But be mindful, too, of some of the ‘usual’ SEO marketing practices that may need to be suspended during this time. Humorous memes on social media, for instance, could risk a backlash even if they might have made sense during non-COVID-19 times.
- It gives you an important business lifeline
When your employees are all being forced to work from home, clients aren’t able to visit your offices and even your existing customers are holding off on doing as much business with you, is putting money into SEO a great idea?
If anything, people being online more – as we touched on above – should leave you in no doubt of the importance of SEO.
It could, in fact, be something of a lifeline for your business right now, given that all of those Internet users will probably have more time to browse the web, learning about particular products or services before committing to a purchase. They might even be inclined to spend more time reading those especially detailed blog posts or articles that they may have overlooked pre-coronavirus.
Remember that this pandemic will end, and that those brands that have put particular effort into keeping themselves relevant and useful to customers during the pandemic will have established invaluable momentum. This momentum, in turn, is likely to last months and even years after the economy has begun to return to normal. You won’t want your brand to be forced to play catch-up!
And even in the event that certain customers aren’t buying from you right now, if you’ve used SEO to keep your brand at the top of their minds, they may be especially likely to do business with you once this terrible period is over.Would you like to find out more about how Webahead Internet’s SEO and marketing packages could play a key role in supporting your brand through times both turbulent and stable? If so, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our (responsibly social distancing) team now
