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The world has endured pandemics akin to COVID-19 before — but there are some SEO tips which can never have such a well-informed consumer base. Unlike a century ago, when the Spanish Flu tore across the world, today’s consumers have immediate and constant access to all manner of news and information, ensuring that they understand exactly how the disease is progressing and how they can stay safe from its disastrous effects.
On one hand, this helps mitigate the harm of the virus, reducing infection and death rates considerably. On the other hand, it has severely impacted not just the healthcare system but the economy at large, revolutionizing how consumers behave, how businesses function and generally what the world looks like for the foreseeable future.
Also See: SEMrush Review 2020: 10x Your Traffic
Times are uncertain, but that doesn’t mean all business needs to grind to a halt. There are many business services that remain vital during times of turbulence — and SEO is one of the most important. If you are looking for some semblance of stability in this unstable time, read on for some SEO tips to see you through:
Watch Your Tone for SEO Tips
COVID-19 isn’t the only revolutionary event to strike in 2020. Following another slew of unjust and well-publicized police executions, much of the U.S. is also embroiled in a campaign for racial justice. The effects of this social movement are easy to identify: greater emphasis on inoffensive language and a movement toward recognizing and championing the efforts of People of Color. Many brands have succumbed to this social revolution, as hordes of consumers have rallied against racist brand messages, from the mascot of Aunt Jemima syrup to employment practices of Anthropologie.
Your business needs to be incredibly careful about its verbiage now and into the future, striving to be inclusive and compassionate or else risking extreme audience backlash. It might be wise to hire professional content creators to walk this tightrope for you, especially on particularly volatile social media sites like Twitter.
Optimize Your Meta Tags
The titles and descriptions on your content do much to influence web users to click on your link in search, but web users’ taste when it comes to titles and descriptions change over time. Especially in an era when it is difficult to predict user behaviour, it is wise to optimize your title and meta description tags rather frequently. For instance, a page with the title “How to Run an AdWords Campaign” could be updated to “How to run a Google Ads Campaign in 2020 and Beyond” to attract more attention. You can change your tags almost everywhere, on the content on your website, on PPC advertisements and more. If you aren’t certain how to manage your meta tags, you should take advantage of professional SEO services.
Refresh Your Content
If content titles and descriptions require your attention, your content itself probably needs an update, too. Content that has decayed significantly — meaning content that has seen a significant drop in traffic since its publishing — can be revitalized rather easily. Consider the following simple changes:
- Replace dead or outdated links with authoritative links
- Refresh statistics or data points with current data
- Replace old images with high-quality, trendy images
- Refresh advice and recommendations with more relevant advice
- Replace or remove obsolete keywords
- Add length to your content, making it between 1,000 and 2,000 words
Restructure Your Site
If you have the time and resources, it might be a good idea to alter the structure of your website to help both web users and search engine bots navigate with greater ease. One of the strongest content structures for any website in uncertain times is the pillar cluster, which places a high-value content asset at the centre and smaller pieces of related content surrounding it. Thus, when traffic inevitably flows to your most popular blog post, web visitors will be enticed to continue engaging with your brand thanks to similar content linked in the text. Of course, optimal website structure is highly dependent on your business model, so you might want to consult with your marketers and SEOs before ripping your existing site to shreds.
Observe Your Competitors
Last but certainly not least, you need to keep an eye on your competition. Your competition isn’t necessarily the same companies you vie with for customers; in SEO, you are fighting against websites targeting the same keywords as you are. Thus, all your current market research on similar businesses in your area might not mean much — you need to research those links that show up alongside yours in search rankings.
Your competitors will probably act conservatively, just as you are, to gain as much information as possible about their evolving audience before acting. Still, you should note which methods succeed and which fail to take advantage of your competitors’ efforts in your own SEO strategy.
Surviving COVID-19 will take patience and cunning — especially in digital marketing strategy. The more effort you put into researching and reviewing your audience, your content, your competition and other aspects of your strategy, the better your outcomes will be.
