Michael Flaherty — May 6, 2020 
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken the online world by storm and has turned it upside down. A new normal has been created in how people are searching the internet, what devices they are using, and how they are shopping online. One of the first things you may think of scaling back on is your online marketing efforts or marketing budget, as this is normally the first thing to go once a business decides to cut costs. Although you may be thinking of lowering your budget for paid or social advertising, one thing you can scale up on is SEO and organic search. Let’s go through some things to keep in mind and focus on.
Discover How Your Audience is Searching
At ENX2 Marketing, our niche is digital marketing for law firms, and we’ve seen an uptick in searches for terms relating to COVID-19, including the one shown below from Google Trends. This is a very important tool for people and businesses to get real-time data and to see what is “trending” as the name suggests. It’s an easy way to see what people are searching for now and tailor your website’s pages to fit the user’s search intent, buying behavior, and what stage of the sales funnel they might be in. This can easily produce more exposure on Google and boost rankings, leads, and eventually cash on hand.
Businesses Turning to SEO to Drive Traffic
It’s no big secret that organic SEO efforts are free, highly beneficial, and help your site in the long run. For instance, let’s look at the actual term “Search Engine Optimization” on Google Trends. There was a dip in February nationwide, but since the COVID-19 epidemic, it’s only been trending higher and higher. Another handy section shows where the search term is trending.
New York was one of the hardest-hit states in the U.S., so it is no surprise that New York is trending at 100% for this term. More and more businesses are searching how to save money on marketing efforts, so it makes sense that one of the most impacted areas has the highest search volume. The third screencap below shows a related term “affordable seo services” that just reiterates my hypothesis.
Organic Strategy Ideas
Pandemic = Scarcity
Let’s take it back to economics class. A scarcity occurs when there is unlimited demand for a product that is limited in availability. What was scarce when this all started? Toilet paper! This term peaked around March 15-21, but has since died down since production was increased and demand was met.
If you sell a scarce product, use it to your advantage. Focus your efforts on these types of items to capitalize on organic ranking, and create useful content around these products.
Capitalize on Online Shopping
Users are shifting to online shopping more and more since this all began. Everyone is at home searching on their phones for the products they need. Ensure to focus on organic search/an online marketing campaign if you are normally a brick and mortar store. I also can’t stress this enough since it’s so important for SEO: make sure your site is mobile-friendly, since this is how Google indexes websites now.
SEO Efforts Now Will Only Help in the Long Run
These simple strategies can help your website grow now and get your name out there, or even more so if you already have great organic rankings. When this all passes, you will be in better shape than you were before!
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