In the turbulent world we currently find ourselves in, most businesses are concerned for what the future holds and needing to adapt to very different ways of working. To give us all the best chance of coming through this fighting the other side, here are some tips for maintaining presence of mind and search rankings during this time of extreme change.

PPC: In the midst of this pandemic, search demand for many products and services will naturally go down. We recommend proceeding with caution if your product or service isn’t considered a top priority for your customers right now. This is an opportunity to grow brands and position your company favourably, but seeming ignorant or uncaring could prove hugely damaging.

PPC bids in many industries are lower than they’ve ever been. This is likely due to advertisers making fewer bids and cutting their budgets. If your company is offering a product or service that does still have demand at this time, it’s an ideal opportunity to look to optimise return from your ad spend:

• Tweak PPC bids to maximise traffic.
• Consider spending more on Google ads to retain top three spots on search engines and boost industry traffic.
• Minimise campaigns that are wasting budget and not converting to their best ability anymore.

SEO: Like paid search, many keywords are seeing organic search volume drop due to a fall in overall search demand. This doesn’t mean that you should take your foot off the pedal, though. Reducing your SEO and content marketing efforts could significantly damage your organic rankings. Treat this time as an opportunity. Once search demand returns you will want to be in a position to drive even more traffic to your site than before the pandemic began. It is vital to maintain – and will be hugely beneficial to grow – your SEO campaign:

• Monitor keywords weekly for related trends for both blog post ideas as well as watching for adjustments in how people might look for information in the future.
• Continue to post relevant content keep growing your search engine presence.

Social media: With a plethora of news and simply noise right now it’s important to have a healthy mix of content to enable you to be helpful and informative, also, possibly, to provide customers with some welcome distraction. Be sure that your content strategy is continually adapted to remain relevant and mindful of the current situation:

• Let people know your key working hours and how your business is operating at the present moment in time.
• Help customers carry on their business as usual. You have adapted your ways of working to suit them.
• Utilise Instagram and Facebook Live to do Q&As or post FAQs.
• Share some caring and, possibly, more light-hearted positivity.
• Show gratitude to those who deserve it right now.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us to discuss any of the points raised. These are simply a few top-level tips, that we hope may prove of some help. Stay safe and well everyone.