7 Ways COVID-19 Is Affecting Search Traffic & How SEO Can Respond



7 Ways COVID-19 Is Affecting Search Traffic & How SEO Can Respond

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” – Socrates

COVID-19 has impacted just about everything. People’s health, lifestyle, and even businesses – small and big both – have been affected and are slowly changing. Similarly, COVID-19 Is Affecting Search Traffic too. Statistics show that,

Accordingly, there is a need for SEOs to respond quickly for damage control. But, how do you achieve this? Well, to cure an illness, you first need to understand the illness well. So, to help you through, we are listing for you the different ways in which search traffic is affected by the COVID-19 emergence. And finally, we have got some tips for you to plan your SEO strategy during COVID-19.

7 Ways COVID-19 Is Affecting Search Traffic & how SEOs can respond:

As said earlier, every business and industry is impacted by COVID-19 – some positively, while some negatively. However, no matter what the impact, proper SEO measures can be taken to tackle them. 

1) The E-commerce websites:

The impact: There has been a rise in the demand for daily essentials on e-commerce websites, increasing their search traffic. Especially for products including – COVID essentials like hand sanitizers, face masks, gloves, oximeters, medicines; and Everyday essentials like groceries. 

The response: Closely monitor your search impressions and traffic data. E-commerce SEOs can thus understand which product pages are high in demand. Make sure to often crawl these product pages for any errors. Monitor the query for those product pages too. Finally, create a separate segment for all the high-demanded products to make it easy for visitors to find them.

2) The Health & Wellness websites:

The impact: Due to COVID-19, instead of physically visiting a hospital, people have resorted to online consultations from doctors. Similarly, there has been a surge in the search for information relating to coronavirus and its symptoms, natural remedies to prevent/cure cough & cold, natural antiviral foods/remedies, etc. have increased. Thus increasing search impression and traffic of the health & wellness sites.

The response: Health & wellness sites need to strive for authoritativeness and expertise. They should be able to provide trustworthy content for the users.

3) The Recipe websites:

The impact: People are at home due to the pandemic. As opposed to eating out, health-conscious people are cooking at home. This has led to an increase in the search traffic of recipe websites. People are searching for healthy recipes that can be prepared at home.

The response: Recipe websites should try to produce recipes that can be prepared with easy-to-obtain ingredients. Also, curate all the recipe content in easy-to-read and properly organized format like recipe structured data to improve how your recipes look in search results. 

4) The Restaurants:

The impact: Restaurants are either completely closed down, or open for a few hours, in or only provide take-away. There is an increase in restaurant alternatives like takeaways and curbside pickups. Similarly, there is an increasing trend towards UberEats, Zomato, Swiggy, etc. third-party delivery services.

The response: Restaurants who don’t yet provide curbside pickup offers, should start so. Indicate on Google My Business that your business is closed or mention the hours if you are open for some time. Do make use of Google posts to make your updates. Make sure to add questions & answers about the status of your restaurant during the pandemic.

5) The Travel websites:

The impact: The travel industry consists of various aspects including flights, hotels, etc. While flight and hotel bookings have been negatively impacted for sure. Otherwise, people with wanderlust are searching for information about new places that they can explore post the lockdown.

The response: Bookings are getting canceled and clients are asking for refunds. Travel businesses should hence focus on reputation management and customer support instead of customer acquisition. 

6) The Publisher Websites:

The impact: People are always searching for any news relating to the CoronaVirus and of course and how it is impacting the market. Also, people have time on their hands which has increased the consumption of published content. Thus publisher websites have been getting high search impressions and traffic

The response: SEOs should track and monitor the incoming data to understand the public interest. Also, make sure to fix any errors on the web pages by regularly crawling them. Make sure that the newest pages are crawled by the search engines. Also, monitor pages according to publish dates.

7) The Other Websites:

The impact & response: The present volatile conditions caused as an effect and after-effect of the CoronaVirus Pandemic are more or less affecting all businesses and websites. In general, make sure to monitor your website’s query data to understand what your consumers are looking for. Make sure to be empathetic towards your audiences. And remember, while you may have to cut on various of your spending, you can always continue with organic search.

Hope this helps you to keep up with the search traffic of your business. Or, you can simply hire a SEO company and they’ll help you with this.

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