5 Creative COVID-19 SEO Tips to Boost Conversions

The coronavirus (COVID-19) has had a significant impact on both society and business. Across the world, social distancing guidelines have inhibited the normal operations of businesses, causing them to forcibly adapt.

Generally speaking, many businesses have closed recently and others have adapted to these difficult times in a way that can be inconvenient to customers. Fortunately, the need for local businesses is still present.

With marketing being vital to any business’ success, SEO campaigns have to go on despite the global spread of the COVID-19 virus. During this time, it’s important to reevaluate your existing SEO strategy and make improvements.

To help you boost conversions and generate revenue to keep your business alive, here are five creative SEO tips you can utilize during the coronavirus pandemic.

1. Update Your Google My Business Profile

Your Google My Business (GMB) profile is often the gateway between you and a qualified lead. If you’re running a local business, potential customers will almost always access this portal to interact with your business.

In fact, according to BrightLocal, 49% of local businesses receive 1,000 search views every month.

With that said, you should ensure that your Google My Business profile is updated and correctly optimized to keep your customers in the loop and secure timely conversions if you’re still doing business.

The first thing you should update on your Google My Business profile is your operating hours.

A Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles by the name of Happy Family 2.0 reflected their new business hours on their GMB profile, as well as indicated that their “hours and services may differ” during this pandemic.

This isn’t the only method of updating your GMB profile.

Just take a look at how this Chinese restaurant indicated that they aren’t providing dine-in services, but are instead available for takeout and delivery orders.

One of the worst things you can do to your customers is to have them visit your business under the assumption that you are open only to be disappointed. Therefore, make the necessary changes to your GMB profile to keep both potential and paying customers informed.

2. Continue Creating Local Content

The coronavirus may cause your business to scale back on some expenses. This can even include necessary marketing expenditures. Nonetheless, you shouldn’t let this pandemic disrupt your content creation process.

You’ve likely heard it time and time again that “content is king” and that quality content is the crux of any SEO strategy. All of this is true, even in a time of crisis. That’s because people are still conducting online searches.

As a matter of fact, the COVID-19 virus has led to a 70% uptick in internet usage. As long as people are using the internet, they will need access to content. The only problem is that many businesses don’t know what to write nowadays.

The reality is that you shouldn’t use the coronavirus as a crutch, but rather take advantage of it to elevate your content strategy. For example, take a look at how this law firm used the coronavirus topic to generate a useful article for their audience.

As you can see, this isn’t a callous attempt to make light of the coronavirus for business gain. Instead, it’s a remarkable way of using an existing topic to inform your audience of how the virus can affect their lives and what they can do about it.

For this reason, you should strive to continue your local content creation efforts centered around content that’s beneficial to your audience.

3. Use Your Free Time to Guest Post

If you’re running a local business, chances are that you have a lot of free time to yourself. As many people are staying indoors, you should use your extra free time to build links for your website.

One of the best ways to build quality links is through guest posting. Guest posting involves writing articles for other authoritative websites in exchange for a link back to your own website.

During your normal business schedule, you may not have the time to brainstorm, pitch, and write a guest article. With extra time, it doesn’t take much effort to craft a brilliant guest post, especially if you are highly knowledgeable in your industry.

For example, Susan Friesan the founder of a popular marketing agency wrote a guest article for Business 2 Community discussing helpful marketing tips during the coronavirus.

Being knowledgeable about this topic, she was able to easily write a quality guest post and create a link back to the original article on her website.

If you’ve been involved in your industry for several years, you are more than qualified to churn out an excellent guest post with the help of your marketing team and a great writer or editor.

4. Spend More Time on Technical SEO

Technical SEO refers to any task that improves how search engine bots crawl and rank your website. With more time on your hands, you can have your marketing team focus on optimizing the technical aspects of your website to ensure it shows up for more searches.

This includes making your website faster, employing the use of an SSL certificate, fixing duplicate content issues, repairing broken links, and making sure your website is mobile-friendly.

The more effort you put into technical SEO, the more likely your website will rank properly. This will result in your website becoming more visible to potential customers.

5. Create Content That Answers Questions

There is a lot of uncertainty going around because of the coronavirus, so much so that a variety of COVID-19 centered queries are becoming popular search terms.

Just look at what happens when the keyword “which restaurants are open coronavirus” is searched.

Do you see how many articles that are focused on answering the waves of questions people have about available restaurants?

This presents a unique opportunity to rank for this keyword and create content that better answers these questions.

Now, take a look at what happens you can localize this keyword into the search term, “which Los Angeles restaurants are open coronavirus”.

As you can see, people are still searching for answers to which local restaurants are open in Los Angeles. You can tell because these publications are creating content around this keyword and Google is ranking it near the top of the SERPs.

By doing simple keyword research, you can discover long-tail keywords based on questions people are searching in your industry about the COVID-19 virus. Then, you can develop high-ranking content to rank for these searches above your competitors.

Give Your SEO Strategy a Boost

The COVID-19 pandemic has created uncertain times for both people and businesses. Though, this does not mean your SEO strategy has to suffer.

If you want to learn more about how you can improve your SEO strategy, give us a call at (813) 708-1286 or click here to receive a customizable quote for your business.