With over a million cases of the novel coronavirus, governments around the world have taken steps to limit how people interact. This has changed how people engage with brands and do business on a massive scale. Businesses that know how to adjust to the changing marketplace will not only strengthen themselves now, but also set themselves up for success in the future.

What is the importance of SEO during a pandemic like COVID-19?

As organizations work to remain relevant for their target customers throughout this pandemic, maintaining a strong digital presence through SEO and content marketing will be one of the most important steps they take. As brick and mortar stores continue to find themselves forced to shut their doors, digital advertising and ecommerce has become more important than ever. Customers are increasingly shifting their buying activity towards online options, and brands need to be present for these consumers.

 

In France, Statista has shown that the traffic rates for online supermarkets have increased by 4%, online fashion merchants saw a 6.1% jump, and online pharmacies saw over a 15% jump since March 13, 2020.

 

Adobe found these trends to be mirrored in the United States, where the online purchase of over-the-counter medicines, food, and anti-viral protective equipment have all seen tremendous surges.

 

Consumers are turning to online markets to address their needs, which means that thriving organizations will be those ready to meet them with an excellent online experience and engaging content. Brands should also note that much of this growth has occurred on mobile devices, as smartphones and tablets have seen an incredible 50% growth in usage comparing March 2019 to March 2020.

 

Therefore, brands should focus on creating high-quality content and digital experiences that will engage customers through mobile devices. As you create this material, the BrightEdge platform can help you track mobile engagement to your content. A high-quality online experience will help you maximize your sales potential now and lay the foundation for future conversions.

Suggestions for thriving with SEO and digital marketing

Create targeted content to attract new users

 

As consumers turn to online resources to conduct their shopping, brands will want to create targeted content to attract new potential users and customers to their site. As you engage with your customers, learn more about their interests and concerns during this time of social distancing and isolation. Develop material that will allow you interest and engage them.

 

On the BrightEdge platform, you can use DataCube to research keyword trends within your industry. Find keywords that have high search volumes and low competition to help you create this targeted content.

Find The Most Valuable Keywords To Optimize

Stay on top of important trends

 

As you build your organic strategy, remember also that the rapidly changing news and social situation can result in the rapid rise and fall of many trends. Staying on top of the recent and relevant search trends can help you create a targeted content strategy that will interest your users.

 

Some interesting trends we have seen using BrightEdge Instant include an incredible rise in:

 

Searches of bread recipes

Searches about buying stocks

Searches for ‘at home workout equipment” have risen drastically. 

BrightEdge Instant can help you monitor trends and create effective material for your customers. It will help you identify the trends at the beginning of their rise allowing you to create content that will interest targeted readers and encourage them to learn more about your brand.

Help customers think of the future

 

As your customers are stuck inside, working from home, and unable to go about their typical lives, use your content to help them think about the future and begin to plan for what they will do when this pandemic ends. Help your customers find positive things to look forward to. For example, those in the travel industry might create content to inspire trip planning for six months in the future. Other brands might think to promote events to drive anticipation for the coming months.

 

If the crisis presents opportunities for your customers, let them know their options. For example, the drastic market fluctuation might present investment opportunities that those in finance might want to counsel their customers about. Consider if there are any opportunities your customers can use to help them make the most out of the poor situation.

 

In this unstable period, your content and marketing campaigns might do more to drive resources towards future demands and sales rather than current. Regardless, make sure you maintain strong, helpful relationships with your customers. 

Monitor your site to see how customer behavior is changing

 

As you create content, remember to leverage BrightEdge to monitor your site and understand how customers are engaging. You might find that some customer behaviors change in these unusual times.

 

For example, your pages created for top-of-funnel leads might see more traffic while your bottom-of-the-funnel pages receive less than your typical traffic rates. Uncovering these trends and changes can help you bolster your marketing strategies and ensure that your digital campaigns remain strong throughout the crisis.

 

Create content and campaigns that allow you to capitalize on these changing interests. Expand your funnel to engage new prospects interested in your brand by creating more than typical top-of-funnel content. Expand your perception of your buyer’s journey to allow for more long term planning throughout the funnel. You can do so by creating plans to entice customers through to their conversion in the future when more normalcy returns.

Maintaining relevant ads

 

Your PPC campaigns can help you engage customers by maintaining a strong brand presence for high-competition keywords and ensure that your brand draws attention for timely search terms.

 

Google has also taken steps to help SMBs who might struggle with their ad budget. Specifically, the search engine has announced a $340 million Google Ad credit to help SMBs maintain their business. This credit will go specifically to support current Google Ads customers who already have Adword accounts. Google hopes that this credit can help these organizations maintain their digital presence despite the upheaval in the business world.

Connect with users across multiple channels

 

To maintain a strong presence with your customers, you will also need to think about how to engage them across multiple channels, including organic, paid, and email. Your organic strategy should incorporate the targeted content discussed above to help you get your brand out in front of existing and new potential customers who engage with content online.

 

Continuing to use paid ad strategies will then help you maintain a strong presence for targeted keywords and topics that will interest your customers throughout this challenging time. Use paid to complement your organic strategy, creating ads for key demographics on social media or for important terms on Google where you might otherwise struggle to rank.

 

Finally, strengthen your relationship with past site users through email. Use segmented email lists that allow you to target different groups of potential customers based on interests, pain points, and their place in the buyer’s journey.

 

When it comes to maintaining and building your organization in the face of the rapidly changing business climate, SEO and digital marketing will remain your cornerstone. Consider the advice above and see how you can put these ideas to work to create a strong strategy for your organization. If you're a beginner and not fully aware of a solid place to start with your SEO efforts, you can discover remote learning with BrightEdge resources. Start with this guide to SEO basics: Part 1 and continue to move through, when you're ready, to Part 2 and Part 3.

 

Between 2005 and 2019 there was a 159 percent increase in remote work. As the internet has come to dominate such a large percentage of our daily lives, it has also begun to change how companies and employees interact and complete their work. It allows remote-friendly companies to seek out the best employee for the job, rather than limiting themselves to those who live within commuting distance of their building.

Marketing and SEO teams have also found themselves increasingly trying to learn how to create, run, and optimize campaigns with members working from home.

Due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, nearly all companies around the world have found themselves supporting teams working remotely. While it was a new and almost immediate transition for everyone, there may not have been a whole lot of time to prepare for the unique situation. In order to keep your business running smoothly, you need to strive to keep your team connected, implement deadlines, and use a platform that offers employees common data.

Understanding how to manage and function as a virtual team can help you work more effectively with the other members of your group, regardless of whether you are all stationed in the same city or have hundreds of miles dividing you.

Fortunately, there are a variety of strategies and techniques that these groups can use to keep marketing campaigns on track and moving forward as they adjust to this trending work model. Here are our suggestions to help our digital community thrive.

Schedule regular meetings to check-in

The easy way out is to assign tasks and wait for submissions. However, a strong team knows how to function as an entity, not just as individuals completing a checklist. Working efficiently together, even with a small or sizable team, should not change just because team members are at home.

Set up a calendar of regular meetings to keep everyone on the same page. Setting meetings will allow everyone to collaborate more easily on their projects and understand how the various pieces come together. Encouraging people to speak as a group as they work will promote collaboration.

Utilize the full value of a platform that empowers collaboration

A variety of platforms offer help to teams who work remotely or separately. For your SEO team, BrightEdge StoryBuilder enhances collaboration, making it easy for each team member to do their job well, regardless of where they work.

By using the BrightEdge platform, you can ensure that all your team members have access to common data to enhance their SEO strategy. You can also create common dashboards to bring together KPIs and other information that you want to have readily available for team members.

As you work on your SEO strategies to progress towards your SEO goals, the platform will also help you assign tasks and track work that employees have completed.

Other platforms can help you collaborate on documents, share files, and track your progress on different parts of projects. With everyone working in different locations, consider how these platforms will help you feel as though everyone is still working collaboratively.

Demo BrightEdge Storybuilder

Offer opportunities for team members to get to know one another

With people working in remote locations, you may find it challenging to create engagement amongst team members. Meetings shouldn't be spent just working on agendas but also, getting to know one another.

In-office employees have the opportunity to socialize during lunch or a coffee break. When employees work remotely, this dynamic will change and can make everyone feel more disconnected.

Small changes, however, can help to build the connection between remote employees. Encouraging individuals to turn on their video feeds during online meetings will create connections. Seeing body language, emotions, and the motivation in a voice will build on this idea. Similarly, the host of each meeting allowing for two to three minutes at the start for small talk or catching up can ensure engagement rates go up at the start of the meeting.

If the opportunity presents itself, scheduling occasional in-person meetings, whether coffee or lunch, can also encourage relationship building outside of work.

Set up guidelines for team member communication and deadlines

Though some or all of your team is works remotely, you need to ensure that projects continue to move forward. It can be easy for people in other locations to get distracted by the world happening around them.

For example, during the impromptu teleworking and COVID-19 quarantine that became global in March 2020, many people may have found themselves balancing work and life at the same time without preparation. This can easily increase stress levels and impact workflow. While many companies with remote teams can offer a degree of flexibility, setting clear expectations for your employees will play a valuable role.

For example, you might want to establish guidelines regarding response rates for emails or set a few core hours that everyone should be logged in for work. If your employees are in different time zones, work to find a few hours in the day that works for all parties to provide updates, ask questions, express frustrations, etc. Determine the guidelines that work best for your organization based on your expectations.

Establish common metrics for success

Finally, to help ensure efficiency in your team, make sure that you have common metrics that can help you measure the success for everyone in your group. Concrete deadlines, project expectations, and KPIs to help you measure how well the marketing campaigns you produce perform will help you continue to engage your customers as you did before.

Creating common metrics can also help you communicate better with your team. You will be able to clearly articulate your progress and what the other members of the team have completed.

Working remotely with a team provides each person with an increased amount of flexibility, but it also requires team members to make additional efforts to stay connected, especially the team lead. Those who want to keep their teams moving forward and continue to thrive should consider carefully how they can put these ideas to use to build a stronger remote team.

If you regularly staff contractors or you've been forced to surrender to an impromptu quarantine, managing remote employees is a whole different ball game than staffing in-house. Your managing style, communication, and scheduling may all need to change to make it work. To get a solid start, work with your team on the tips above and keep up constant communication.

As coronavirus continues to spread around the world, it has impacted how people work, socialize, and shop. In the presence of these changes, marketers want to make sure they stay abreast of the latest developments in the world of search. We encourage all members of our community to pay attention so that they can be confident that they’re creating the best possible impression with their marketing efforts and take advantage of new opportunities as they arise. Here are some interesting changes that we have seen over the past few days.

Changes from Google due to COVID-19

Intense focus on quality information

The changes we see from Google are immediately apparent when you search for anything related to COVID-19. The SERP focuses on the latest news and information from the WHO and the CDC and purposely ensures the low-quality results, such as conspiracy sites, remain off the first page of results.

Google has taken similar steps for YouTube search results, focusing on promoting top news results to ensure that users receive accurate information.

Google has also partnered with government agencies to create high-authority websites to help communicate accurate and helpful information directly to people making relevant searches.

Google’s carefully selected coronavirus SERP demonstrates the importance of high-quality information, particularly as it pertains to this disease. If your industry has been directly impacted by the closures and quarantines, make sure that any information you post related to the crisis will pass Google’s standard for high-quality relevant information.

As search continues to mature, the search engine appears to increasingly rely on authority, expertise, and trustworthiness when ranking content. We encourage our community to make sure their content meets these standards, and this shift in Google’s SERP presents a clear demonstration of their importance. As brands look to build a strong digital presence during and after the coronavirus crisis, they should continue to increase their focus on providing this level of dependability.

Adjustments in Google Ads

In addition to its efforts to steer information towards high-quality data and news, Google has also continued to uphold its ad quality guidelines. This includes making sure that people do not profit from the crisis, limiting people’s ability to create ads related to the virus or products commonly associated with the pandemic, including masks or hand sanitizer.

Google has guidelines to prevent people from ‘capitalizing on sensitive events’, and they have been enforcing this regulation during the coronavirus situation. They claim to have blocked tens of thousands of ads already since they began to enforce these rules. Brands cannot make ads that promote medical content or that might mislead customers.

-       Google’s Sundar Pichai on March 6, 2020

New schema markups for events and announcements

Structured data helps search engines better understand the content on a website so that information can be accurately portrayed in the search results. Recent updates have targeted the pandemic and the resulting need for information.

Improving communication with event attendees

In the face of the movement restrictions and to comply with social distancing, many organizations have canceled or otherwise modified their events. Schema.org has added properties to help these organizations inform people about rescheduled dates, the canceling of the event, or the movement of the event online.

If you need to update the status of an event because of the coronavirus, you should not make any changes to other properties of the event. Instead, simply update the status to make sure people can connect the updated event information to the original event. For example, if the event is canceled, you would write:

{
“@context”: “https://exampleevent.org”,
“@type”: “Event”,
“eventStatus”: “https://exampleevent.org/EventCancelled”,
“startDate”: “2020-05-25T20:00”
}

If the event will be postponed, remember not to change the start date. Most of the schema will look the same as the canceled example above, except the status:

“eventStatus”: “https://exampleevent.org/EventPostponed”,

When you have an official start date, then you will go back and update your start and end date information within the schema, letting people know it has been rescheduled.

On the other hand, if your event has moved online, you can use the markup to make it clear where users should go. The schema will read:

{
"@context": "https://exampleevent.org",
"@type": "Event",
"eventStatus": "https://exampleevent.org/EventMovedOnline",
"eventAttendanceMode": "https://exampleevent.org/OnlineEventAttendanceMode",
"location": {
  "@type":"VirtualLocation",
  "url": "https://livestream.webinar.com/"
 },
"startDate": "2020-05-25T20:00"
}

New announcement markups

Schema.org has also taken steps to promote markup designed to get more helpful information out to citizens regarding the pandemic and how it impacts local populations.

Specifically, they want relevant websites to use schema for special announcements related to the coronavirus that come from:

• Government health agencies regarding updates on the disease
• News coming from local businesses, hospitals, schools, and government offices related to the pandemic
• Announcements about risk assessments and testing centers
• Information regarding travel restrictions from government agencies, airlines, and hotels

You can find the Schema.org markup for special announcements here.

If you had planned on hosting an event or fall into one of the categories listed as having important, highly relevant information about the pandemic, take note of these markups. They will help you communicate more effectively with the general population.

Restrictions from online retailers

In addition to the limitations and guidelines from the major search engines, we have also seen other retailers take steps to navigate the times of the pandemic. Specifically, retailers like eBay have placed restrictions on the ability of sellers to list items related to the pandemic, such as masks, hand sanitizer, and wipes. Costco, in response to the large amounts of panic buying seen in the days and weeks leading up to the quarantines, has also placed limitations on the ability of people to return items, such as toilet paper and soap.

Continue to engage users online

We also recommend for our partners to remember that just because businesses are closing does not mean that consumers have stopped engaging with brands online. Although people might not have the buying power they once did, they are still interacting with each other and organizations through social media and internet searches. You'll want to be sure you're keeping up the right amount of online engagement with customers.

Whether you can offer free shipping, temporarily free subscriptions to a service, or simply commiseration and opportunities for people to keep themselves entertained while stuck at home, finding ways to help you connect with your customers will provide you with the strongest marketing strategy for right now.

As people across the country and around the world work to understand how to navigate this current health crisis and what it means for them moving forward, the world of search has experienced some changes. Understanding the changes we have seen from major search engines and retailers can help brands make the best possible decisions about their engagement with consumers and building a positive future for their brand.