The Coronavirus pandemic has thrown businesses out of gear. Ever since the pandemic onset, business activities have slowed down, and many entrepreneurs struggled to keep their businesses afloat. But many business owners failed to keep their revenues somewhat over their expenditure, and they need an immediate solution to their problems.

It is under such circumstances that having a well-defined SEO strategy has become critical more than ever. 

During the pandemic, there has been a massive spurt in the consumption of online content. It does not mean the businesses have benefited from it because the COVID19 slowdown has changed consumer buying and search behaviors.

So, the apparent concern is how to optimize your SEO strategy to increase site traffic during the COVID19 slowdown. You can do the optimization by actuating the following steps:

Clean Your Website’s Navigation and User Experience

User experience plays an essential role in any SEO strategy, and to understand how you need to know how Google ranks websites on its search results pages (SERPs).

Google tries to provide users with a list of the most useful and relevant content based on several key factors. One of the factors is the overall experience visitors get while visiting your website.

There are several criteria that Google takes into account while determining the overall user experience your website provides, such as:

Loading Speed

Ideally, a website should load within three seconds to provide a good user experience. If the website takes a longer time to load, visitors are likely to leave. 

You can use Google’s Page Insights tool to determine the loading speed. The tool determines the loading speed and also suggests ways to improve it.

Google Page Speed Opportunities

How easy it is for visitors to find the information they are looking for on your website is another critical factor that Google considers for ranking your website. 

You can provide your website visitors the specific content they look for by using the topic cluster model to organize your content. The model links together the content you have published about a particular topic.

In parallel to easing your site visitors to find the information they are looking for, the model also encourages your visitors to stay longer on your website. 

In this way, Google gets to know about the quality of the content you’re publishing on your site, further improving your site’s search rankings.

Have a Schema Markup 

Schema markup is a code snippet that enables Google and other search engines to easily find and show the content you publish on your website. Simultaneously, schema markup also allows Google and other search engines to understand what your content is about in a language.

The markup is vital because Google puts a premium on the degree of relevancy of your content. The relevance depends on a user’s intent behind the search.

The good thing is that you can easily add schema markup on your website. All you need to do is go to Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper tool and select the data you want to display. Then insert the target URL, and tag the right elements within your page.

Publish COVID19 Related Content 

Do not refrain from publishing COVID19 related content on your website. When you publish content that contains topics within the COVID19 framework, you can get the opportunity to incorporate keywords that are trending on Google search results naturally. As a result, your website will rank higher on Google search results. 

However, make sure that the content you publish is relevant to your audience. It should contain helpful information about the Coronavirus and simultaneously orient the content towards your products or services.

A good trick is to publish content about inspirational stories that describe what your employees did to fend off the pandemic challenge and remained competitive. It will not only help to build your SEO strategy but also make the trust of your customers.

However, you should not take away your focus from publishing high-quality and evergreen content. In parallel to posting COVID19 related content, publish long-form of informative content with actionable tips.

And there is also a solid reason behind it. As the Coronavirus pandemic has rendered a hit on many jobs, it led many people to search for jobs or choose an alternate career path. Many people are looking for resourceful information to enrich themselves with knowledge about the skills necessary for new job roles. 

And what is more, evergreen content stays relevant to your target audience at all times, even after the pandemic gets over. As a result, it will help your website to rank higher on Google search results and drive more traffic to your website for a long time. 

Pay Attention Customers What to Know

As social gatherings are now discouraged due to the pandemic, consumers connect and discuss their tastes and preferences on social media. You can leverage the trend to benefit your business. Why not consider investing in a social listening tool? It will enable you to monitor the conversations happening around your brand and products over social media platforms. Simultaneously, it serves as a crucial research tool to refine your SEO strategy.

With the social listening tool, you can track who is asking what about your product and services. As such, you can formulate an effective strategy to address their needs and even figure out what tactics your competitors are adopting vis-a-vis your business.

When you monitor the conversations about your business offerings, you can create effective content that can address their needs. You can also include the exact phrases they used in their conversation while describing their pain points as keywords in your SEO strategy. In this way, you can provide your target audience with the right content and simultaneously improve your search rankings.

Collaborate With Micro-Influencers

It is a good idea to collaborate with some influencer marketing agency to boost traffic for your site. Micro-influencers have loyal followers who will tend to engage with the content that they publish. Partnering with others is a decent way to market yourself. If you have inspirational motivational speakers, get them to help promote your business. If you are doing something for other businesses, get their help in spreading the word for your business.

Conclusion

You should not let your business go down because the pandemic is posing many challenges. Implement the tips outlined in this article and see your business flourishing.