SEO During and After COVID-19

Any business strategy in the coming months and years requires a strong focus on search engine optimization in order to keep the best information in front of your consumers. COVID-19 has made the need for clear communication more relevant than ever. Person to person, business to business, reducing uncertainty in these months is necessary to keep the trust of partners and customers.

Search engine optimization ensures that your website is as visible and available as possible in search. This has always been important, but it is especially important now when services and availability have changed. During and after COVID-19, accurate data about your business should be updated and live on your website, first and foremost. It’s the most visible entryway to your brand and the one digital place where you own all the information. In order to make sure your customers or potential customers are getting the best data possible, you have to make sure your website is visible and easy to navigate.  The best way to do that is to consider SEO best practice with everything that you do.

Recently, almost every brand has an announcement or a webpage specifically addressing COVID-19 and how it affects their business. This information is very important to consumers, so important that this page is often placed at the top of a website’s home page, loaded before anything else. Given the importance and relevance of this page, making it very visible on-site makes sense. Increasing its visibility off-site is just as important. These pages are eligible for new COVID-19 specific structured data that can make this information available to users before they even enter your website, in the form of featured snippets in Google Search. Past that, using the best page title, meta description, and heading on these COVID-19 pages will help ensure that Google serves these pages in the search results for the most relevant searches in this time-frame.

Past the coronavirus-specific content now living on almost every site, keeping your physical store information up-to-date and accessible on each location page should be a high priority as the United States and the rest of the world moves toward a staggered re-opening. For many multi-location corporations, their stores or offices will have different set of dates and restrictions depending on which state, city, or even country each location resides in.  That is a staggering amount of information for potential customer to keep track of. To make it easier, for store owners and customers alike, the most recent information should live on the website and be updated as changes occur. It’s also important that you update the information across your business profile with Google my Business so that it matches what is on your location page.

Your website continues to be an important resource for visitors and customers to get your brand content, products and business information. During and after COVID-19, this importance is magnified and needed more than ever. To make sure that the best information possible is available for those that need it, search engine optimization makes the most relevant pieces visible and accessible. Using the SEO techniques listed above and continuing to work on the best SEO strategy for your business is key to maintaining trust and value. The best time to work on SEO is yesterday, but the second-best time is now. Don’t wait!