In today’s world of uncertainty, people are shifting more and more towards online searches. COVID-19 has dramatically impacted the search behaviour of the netizens. Other marketing channels such as PPC have already witnessed a significant reduction in budget. In fact, Google ads have significantly lost 7% impressions in the past two months.
On the other hand, SEO has seen a significant uptick and the brands are seeing a sharp increase in organic search rankings. This increase is a great opportunity for webprenures to ramp up the impact by creating compelling content and build their brand. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, the competition has majorly lowered and it’s the right time to churn up your SEO efforts.
This post entails some best SEO hacks to be followed in this crisis that will help you stay afloat in the market.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search Engine Optimization, or, SEO is a set of rules/practices that help your website to get high ranks on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP). This ultimately drives more traffic to your website/blog and leads to more conversions. The two main components of any SEO strategy are content and the technical aspect followed.
But, don’t be fooled by any wrong claims on the internet claiming to produce the results in a single day. There is no key in SEO for overnight success. It requires dedicated time and effort to achieve results.
Yes, there is no single rule as well. Google’s Search Algorithm changes hundred times in a year. But, the core components remain the same. The parent set of every Google algorithm includes:
- High quality and engaging content
- Responsive website template
- Quick loading time
- A good number of high-quality backlinks
Why it’s important to stay on top of SEO Trends in 2020?
Amid the coronavirus outbreak, it’s important to continue your marketing efforts because:
1. SEO Keeps you Ahead of Your Competitors
Doing anything that your competitors are not doing helps you make a cut. Even if you are running slowly, you are lapping everyone who hasn’t started or is waiting for a “right time”.
2. SEO Helps you Understand your Audience
SEO helps you understand your customer’s pain points in such difficult times. Through analytics, you can grip over their buying behavior, search intent and their demographics. This way you can devise a strategy to keep your audience engaged by addressing their needs.
Use this lockdown time efficiently to build relationships with your potential customers and convert them into active ones.
3. Prepare Yourself for Success Post Lockdown
At one point or another, this tough phase will pass. If you didn’t reciprocate in this lockdown scenario, you would need to start your marketing efforts from ground zero. Putting the right SEO efforts now would drive you leaps and bounds ahead of your competitors.
Don’t let the coronavirus deter your SEO efforts. Think big! Think long term!
Here are the Latest 2020 SEO Hacks that Help You Stay on Top
1. Local SEO
Mobile searches are predominately making the local searches exceptionally prevalent. To get appreciable traffic, you need to be on the first page of SERPs. According to a CTR study conducted by the website backlinko, only 0.78% of the Google searchers move to the second SERP for results.
So, targeting local and hyper-local marketing efforts would help you grab the lion’s share of the market.
2. Off-Page SEO
Maximize your effort for off-page SEO during this lockdown period. Put effort to zero-in quality Google reviews that help you garner good online traffic. The quality and number of reviews are one of the main deciding factors towards your browsing success.
The next form of off-page SEO that you should be targeting is the building impressive social media accounts. Ensure that your account is 100% active and keeps on engaging the audience with frequent posts, business information and other activities.
Go for multiple social media accounts. This would make your business look more legitimate.
Building backlinks is the backbone of your off-page SEO strategy. Backlinks serve as a token of credibility and reliability in Google’s eyes. Social influencers play a very crucial role in building your brand power. Work upon this area along with site navigation and internal linking.
3. Long-Tail Keywords
Effective use of long-tail keywords can make or break your SEO strategy. Long-tail keywords focus on niche-specific terms. For example, rather than focusing on a broader aspect, “digital marketing company”, prefer- “Digital marketing company in Ludhiana”.
This will drive more conversion worthy traffic and offer you major leads. Look out for free online SEO tools that will help you stay on the forefront of this digital battle.
4. Mobile
The global pandemic has further triggered an influx of mobile searches and the figure is rising with each passing day. Websites with low readability, poor navigation, slow page-loading speed and whose resolution doesn’t adjust as per the device, suffer major ranking loss.
If you want to stay ahead of the curve, start using responsive templates, rich snippets, AMP web pages and use fast loading pages. This will significantly improve the user experience and reduce the bounce rate.
5. Keyword Trees
Gone are the days when you could stuff or spam the blog post or article with keywords. Google algorithms are growing smarter with every update. The bots don’t crawl for a single set of keywords, but now they focus on keywords that are used in conjunction with the main word/set.
Try to cover all those unique set of keywords and deliver a truly rich content that helps the user rather than fooling the system.
6. Featured Snippets
There are many other essential SEO elements that you need to focus such as snippets, people also ask boxes, video/image search, news and Google Maps and many more. Google has been revising its SERP display to make it more intuitive. Work on them to stay ahead in this COVID-19 outbreak.
Jump on the Bandwagon Now!
By staying on top of the latest SEO trends 2020 is your first step to boost your online search rankings. Amid these times of uncertainty, you need to make sure that your marketing budget isn’t getting wasted. Don’t let Search Engine Optimization become the bottleneck for the efforts you pot in creating your website and developing the content.
Stay tuned with us to stay updated on how to stay unprecedented in the SEO game. I would be really happy to discuss on how SEO can help you improve your business. For any doubts or queries, please feel free to email us at info@makeyouclick.com or call us at +44-7404184603
Stay home. Stay Safe!
