COVID-19 is leaving a significant impact on our lifestyle, most importantly, on small and medium businesses (SMBs). Right now, those focusing on maintaining their digital marketing and search engine optimization efforts are reaping the benefits. For others to survive and thrive in this state of crisis, it’s integral to understand the importance of SEO more than ever.
In this article, we’ll discuss why SEO might just save your TMS practice and what you can do to comfortably navigate through these difficult times.
Let’s get started.
The State of Online Search During COVID-19
Internet usage has drastically increased during the past year, which is attributed to people being quarantined/practicing social distancing due to COVID-19.
Naturally, Google search volume has also skyrocketed – or put more simply, it has increased for pandemic related news sources, health sites, and essential (highly relevant) businesses like healthcare sites, grocery apps, home deliveries, etc.
Non-essential businesses (including all SMBs) are dwelling in a vulnerable situation. It seems as if neither the organic traffic nor the paid search traffic cares about SMBs anymore.
Even if your practice hasn’t felt the blow of the pandemic, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t continue with your SEO efforts.
In fact, businesses that have continued their search engine optimization efforts – regardless all the challenges – have fared quite well.
3 Factors Explaining the Importance of SEO Right Now
Below, we’ll explain why devising an SEO strategy is essential right now and how it can help your business grab the attention of your target audience.
- The General Population is Supporting Small Businesses
Ever since the pandemic started, small businesses have taken the highest impact and are facing financial fragility. According to PNAS, 43% of the businesses were permanently closed while the others are on the verge of declaring bankruptcy.
While the government is taking measures to support small businesses by initiating CARE programs and forgiving loans, the general public is also providing a pillar to small businesses.
Therefore, SMBs require SEO services now more than ever. Get shout-outs from influencers, and start with the basic SEO strategies and search engine marketing (SEM) tactics to gain popularity among the general population.
- The World is Turning Towards Search Engine Results to Discover Businesses
Now is a great chance for business owners and digital marketers to gain high-quality website traffic and highly qualified leads.
Good SEO for your web pages/website means high rankings in the search engine result pages (SERPS), leading you to be available on the first page of search engine’s (Google, Yahoo, Bing) organic results.
- This is Your Chance to Establish Authority with Evergreen Content
You may feel the need to incorporate trending topics in your content to aim for search engine rankings. But the truth is, it’s okay to stay relevant to your business instead and create evergreen content.
Here are the reasons for creating evergreen content:
- It will always stay relevant to your business and help people discover you even after (hopefully) the pandemic ends.
- It’s highly unlikely for you to outrank authoritative web pages created by leading brands on current affairs.
Most importantly, viral content almost always dies out.
Therefore, it’s more beneficial to gain authority via relevant and evergreen content.
What You Can Do Right Now
While SEO is timeless, now it’s more important than ever to start focusing on it. Here are some crucial elements that you can take care of while you’re on the road to achieving your business goals:
- Focus on Local SEO Efforts – create or claim your clinic’s Google My Business listing, generate listings on other platforms, and make sure your NAP (name, address, and phone numbers) is consistent throughout the web.
- Create Great Content – conduct thorough keyword research to discover long-tail keywords and new content marketing opportunities. Publish fresh content (preferably evergreen) around those topics through blogging and improve your SEO rankings on search engine results pages.
- Focus on Providing a Positive User-Experience – focus on other on-page SEO ranking factors such as site speed, security/SSL, proper redirections, schema, etc., to improve your organic search rankings.
- Invest in Off-Page SEO – quality backlinks are still the most important SEO factors. If you already haven’t, create and execute an effective link building strategy for your business.
In addition to having a solid SEO strategy, also focus on other key digital marketing areas that can help you attract potential customers/patients. These include SEO, PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, and email marketing.
Wrapping it Up
SMBs require a solid SEO strategy to get past the pandemic.
As a final piece of advice, be consistent with your efforts and don’t be hasty while waiting for SEO gains.
Don’t give in to your fears and keep working on creating a demand for your practice among your potential customers.
