Why SEO Must Play a Bigger Role in Your Marketing Strategy During Pandemic

With the pandemic, we're entering a new reality where consumers, still wary of eating out and going into stores, are making even more purchases online. This change in consumer behavior challenges all brick-and-mortar businesses to boost invests in digital marketing and get even better results.

Now it’s essential to have a website with SEO-friendly content that brings the right traffic to your business. Not only do you need great content on your site, you also must deploy off-page SEO tactics that build awareness and authority for your business. You can start creating momentum in the right direction by following these simple steps.

1. Boost Your Local Search Presence

If you serve customers face-to-face, make sure your business is getting optimal visibility online. For example, claim your Google business listing to appear in local search. You should also claim or establish your business listing on Yelp, Bing Places, Apple Maps, and Thumbstack, to name a few. Basic information, such as address and hours, should be up to date, and be sure to post relevant local news about your business, such as its COVID policy. You should also have a process in place to obtain and respond to local reviews. Additionally, creating local-centric social media posts, blogs, and campaigns can tremendously boost engagement from customers and prospects in your surrounding area. Finally, check your mobile site to make sure it provides a great experience to consumers on the go.

2. Keep Focusing on Great Content

Content is king when it comes to growing your customer base. A site that’s well-written and features blogs, articles, how-to-guides, videos, and other content that resonate with key audiences can bring in thousands of targeted, prequalified visitors each day, who are looking to purchase your products or services.

Regularly engaging your audience with relevant content is like waving your arms and shouting, "I'm here to serve you." Your potential customers will hear you.

That’s why it helps to have an SEO content strategy. Start with keyword research. Consumers are turning to search engines to research products and services and find out who's open to serve their needs. Does your website content align with your targeted consumers' search intent? How does your content compare with that of your competitors? Do your competitors have a greater share of voice (SOV)? If so, what content strategy can you take to gain momentum, build authority and steal SOV? What can you do internally to produce a steady stream of great content?

Then start building your integrated content calendar. Smart companies use this tool to plan what they will be publishing on their website and social media accounts. It can help you succeed at content marketing. Check out this resource from the Content Marketing Institute.

One of the pillars of SEO content development is blogging, which can help build an audience and establish your business as an authority in its areas of expertise. To effectively execute your SEO copywriting for blog posts, write or curate pieces that speak to your audience, address their challenges, and move leads toward sales. Avoid keyword stuffing, because if your content sounds contrived, who’s going to stick around to do business with you?

3. Beat the Competition with Digital Ads

Digital ads, which can be deployed strategically to increase traffic, have gotten less expensive because demand for them has decreased as many big companies cut their marketing budgets. Recent research indicates that more than 60% of ad sellers online have been impacted by the pandemic, with cost per thousand (CPM) impressions decreasing by nearly one-third (27%). CPMs have declined most dramatically for open web display (-34%) and mobile app display (-33%). While advertising video-on-demand (AVOD) streaming apps and podcasting have seen declines of a little over 5%.

Your competitors may have cut their ad spending, so now may be the time to run the campaigns that can build awareness and increase your audience. Don't wait too long to get started. A resurgence in ad spending is expected toward the end of the summer, with 52% of advertisers resuming or ramping up their spending.

4. Get Higher Rankings by Following Best Practices for Technical SEO

Having a well-functioning website is a necessity for successful marketing in this new normal. A recent survey from the Interactive Advertising Bureau indicates that after the coronavirus threat wanes, more than half of consumers will hang on to their new shopping routines, whether it's grocery delivery (19% share), buying online and picking up in-store (16%), carrying-out from a restaurant (26%), or ordering restaurant delivery (22%). Businesses must prepare for this evolving online behavior, and building an effective, lead-generating, engaging website is half the game.

If your website has broken links, pages that load too slowly, or too many redirects, your SERP rankings will suffer. For example, find out why your site's page load speed is low. If a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load, visitors are likely to bounce, and your rankings will take the hit. Find and fix broken links, which lowers your sites authority because important pages are less likely to be indexed. Fix missing alt tags and broken images, title tags, and urls. Tackling these and other issues must be part of your strategy if you want to transform your website into a productive marketing asset.

Prepare for the Future of Digital Marketing

With the dramatic shifts in consumer behavior during the pandemic, marketing your business isn't going to get any easier. Stay the course and don't hesitate to reach out. We're helping clients succeed by offering a la carte services that can get them started in building the content marketing powerhouse they need to succeed.

Don’t hesitate to reach out today.