We can see it in our personal lives: human beings are online more than ever today. The COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing measures have made us work, play, and communicate from our devices at much higher rates, as many of us are choosing to stay at home as much as possible. Hopefully, it will all be over some time in the near future. Realistically, as businesses who expect to survive this period, we need to use every tool at our disposal not only to stay afloat but to stay relevant and to continue being successful.
We’ve talked about the importance of content marketing during these times, but today we’re going to focus on another critical aspect of building an online presence: SEO.
The cost of not implementing SEO
We’ll frame this as simply as possible: implementing SEO won’t guarantee organic leads, but not implementing it will guarantee you don’t have organic traffic at all.
A lot of companies shrug off optimizing their websites and online content because they feel SEO doesn’t do much. While there is some truth to their perspective (SEO isn’t a magic tactic that automatically delivers online leads), it’s flawed in thinking they can do without it. Without SEO, your website cannot be indexed by web crawlers, meaning that no one will find your business’ website organically (by searching for keywords on Google or other search engines). This means that overlooking SEO is handicapping your website and closing off a very important avenue of traffic.
Make sure your website optimization is up-to-date and that any content you are publishing from your website is also optimized for maximum organic effectiveness. Furthermore, note that SEO is not just about increasing website traffic; it’s about increasing qualified traffic.
The content you choose to publish goes hand-in-hand with SEO effectiveness
You’ve probably heard many different stories about business during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some businesses have thrived, rapidly adapting to the conditions and learning how to deliver their services and products with massive success without having to depend on physical interactions and locations. But many other business are seriously struggling, unable to find a quick path to adapt to the times and demands of a socially-distanced economy.
While it’s not exactly simple for some companies to adapt to a business model that relies on online sales and service, those that can should be doing everything in their power to enable this. From a digital marketing perspective, marketing SEO-ready content that is relevant and of interest to your target audience. To ensure your content marketing and SEO are on-point in this regard, it should follow at least one of the following suggestions:
- It’s content that is based on trending topics or keywords from Keyword Analysis.
- It’s content that is of interest to your clients, related to their industry, their business challenges, or the products they use.
- It’s content that is evergreen, meaning content that you can re-use over time without it becoming irrelevant. For example, news and event announcements are not evergreen, but a quick guide to taking advantage of a product feature will be so long as the product is in use.
Furthermore, For some perspective, right now, it’s a good idea to publish content around the COVID-19 pandemic because it is a very relevant and trending topic. However, this will pass, and COVID-19 content will eventually become irrelevant (more so that people will want to forget about it as quickly as possible). Our recommendation is to constantly be informed and be aware of trending topics in your industry. This will give you the foresight to plan ahead and produce content that will outlast trends.
SEO is about long-term gains, but you CAN influence demand generation for your SEO keywords
SEO is ultimately about long-term gains, meaning you’ll see organic traffic increase over time if you’ve got your eggs in the right basket (or keywords in the right places, if you will). Consistent content marketing and SEO fine-tuning will also help you steadily rise in rankings as you gain trust from search engines.
However, you can always do more to help your long-tail and unique SEO keywords by both consistently producing content around them and promoting that content across every digital channel you have. For example:
- Create a social media strategy that takes your SEO keywords into account for all copy it publishes.
- Associate hashtags with your keywords and other relevant terms when you publish on social media.
- Engage in link-building by sharing news or other relevant content that relates to your keywords.
- Activate Local SEO with a Google Business account and market content to clients near you.
Any of these tactics will help you edge closer to your qualified traffic and will also help your selected search terms get more impressions and earn relevance. While SEO is more of a passive tactic, there are many active tactics you can engage in to boost your strategy.
Interested in optimizing? We can do that for you at CXGS. Learn more here!
