Work on your SEO during the coronavirus outbreak
At the cost of sounding opportunistic, I’m getting multiple updates in my email and all over the web that digital marketing may get a boost during the coronavirus/covid-19 outbreak.
I know, marketing budgets are being slashed. Businesses are still recovering after the initial shock.
Everybody is adapting to the new reality that is going to manifest for a long time.
Social distancing has magnified the importance of the digital environment.
Although, no longer a novelty, the world had resisted fully adopting the digital and had been existing in an avoidably physical environment with people needlessly rushing to their offices and contributing to vehicular pollution.
No matter how worse the situation gets, people will need to get on their feet, even if mostly digitally.
This is going to throw up a new marketing opportunity.
The way people search is changing fast. People are looking for new ways of earning a livelihood and even carrying on their lives.
SEO can play an important role in this. This blog post titled Marketers find SEO vital to facing coronavirus challenges refers to an SEO research that has thrown up the following highlights:
- 64% respondents say that there are going to be drastic cuts in the marketing budgets.
- 86% say that meeting annual goals due to the coronavirus outbreak seem like a distant dream.
- 63% say that search engine optimization (SEO) is more important than ever.
The last point is important from the perspective of what I am writing.
Why SEO is very important in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak?
One, everyone is scrambling for whatever is left of the business opportunities.
Two, it is often very difficult for bigger organizations to adapt and adopt. This is an opportunity for smaller businesses.
Also, bigger businesses are less courageous and agile than smaller entrepreneurs.
Bigger businesses are cutting short their marketing budgets and this is also having an adverse effect on their search engine rankings.
You can use this opportunity to work on your SEO and improve your search engine rankings vis-à-vis other big and small businesses.
You can also write and publish content according to change in the paradigms.
Find out what people are looking for in the altered reality and then write and publish content accordingly.
The above-linked blog post rightly says:
Most media investments are fleeting. You buy an impression, you get an impression. You buy a click, you get a click. Your content and SEO are like bonds. You invest today. You begin to get yield today, and if you execute well, you continue to drive value for many years – without making any more investments. This is like a high-yield bond fund, not a lot of risk, and it just grows and grows and grows.
SEO, underpinned by targeted content writing, is a long-term investment that, once it starts paying, pays for a very long time.
You may like to read 10 SEO content writing tips for your small business.
I will share my own observation of the recent coronavirus-ridden times.
My traffic hasn’t reduced. In fact, there have been very small spikes.
It means, people are either exploring content writing and content marketing opportunities for themselves, or they are aware of publishing high-quality content for SEO.
Going by the effort that I put in, I would also like to go to the extent of saying that even the number of queries hasn’t gone down although, the conversion rate isn’t as good as it used to be.
It means people are realizing the importance of quality content writing vis-à-vis SEO, but they are finding it hard to make financial decisions. Which is understandable.
Anyway, this is a good time for you to work on your SEO. Multiple factors are in your favor:
- Bigger businesses are spending less on marketing and SEO.
- Many small businesses are still coming to terms with the new reality.
- Many businesses think that the situation is going to pass quickly (which is not the case) and by the time the reality dawns upon them, you can get a head start.
These are difficult times. Many businesses are being closed down. Many have already closed. People have lost their livelihoods. Lap-up every opportunity you get.