Many brands are feeling the weight of the pandemic and seeing significant drops in website traffic, which means a drop in leads, conversions, and ultimately, sales.
For many of us, the term “unprecedented” has been thrown around so much in 2020 that the mere sight of the word elicits commingled feelings of rage and fatigue, but the truth is these times are unprecedented. If you’re feeling like you don’t know what to do when a global pandemic disrupts your search traffic, you’re not alone — and you’re in the right place.
Website Traffic Drops Are Happening Everywhere
The deeper repercussions of how a pandemic affects business and the economy are still being unveiled. Most brands today exist online, but that doesn’t mean an outside threat can’t destroy your content marketing strategy and search goals. What’s more, while most industries are suffering, some are suffering much more than others.
In data collected by Ubersuggest, the following industries have seen their website traffic come down by 10–20 percent:
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Advertising
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Technology
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Software
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Telecom
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Travel
On the other hand, traffic for the food and media industries is up between 20–40 percent. People are stocking up on groceries, ordering takeout, and consuming more media now than ever before. News and media sites are seeing higher engagement and have begun charging people to access their information and stories. This big jump in traffic and sales has resulted in a major lift for a few lucky industries, but most brands aren’t seeing anything like this. If you’re in food or media, consider yourself lucky!
Reassess Your SEO Strategy to Increase Traffic
Most of us are experiencing more free time during the pandemic (less time commuting while working from home, for example), and you can use this to your advantage. As you work on your SEO strategy, consider doing an SEO audit.
An SEO audit, or technical website audit, can be done alone or as part of professional SEO services, helping to determine if the structure of your website is preventing itself from attaining optimal search visibility and therefore failing to capture organic website traffic to the fullest. Findings and traffic data will offer opportunities to optimize your website.
With the help of an audit, you’ll be able to do the following:
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Optimize your website and web content
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Reinforce search rankings
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Increase your internet presence
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Rethink search intent
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Fix and remove technical issues on your website
Let’s break each of these down a bit more.
Optimize Your Website and Web Content and Reinforce Search Rankings
Using your audit findings as a guide and partnering with a professional SEO consultant, you’ll be able to improve and reinforce your content to align with SEO guidelines. This could involve rewriting your website’s content (blogs, pillar pages, news articles, product descriptions, etc.) to contain certain language and keywords to match the intent of your target audience. Rather than revamp your entire website, you can work on the foundation you’ve already built and just tweak it to match current needs. Making these improvements can be easy and effective in the long run.
Increase Your Internet Presence
Having a strong online presence has always been an important part of launching and maintaining a company, but it’s even more important now. Potential leads can’t convert if you aren’t showing that you’re still present, in operation, and active. Take the results from your SEO audit and implement improvements to your social media strategy and overall digital footprint. This might mean posting more on the social media platforms where your target audience lives, using the correct keywords to reach them, and having brand pages that are engaging.
Rethink Search Intent
Rethinking site structure is a great way to positively impact SEO and reverse a drop in website traffic. When you think about how your site is built, where to expand, what pages to add, and which search queries to meet, you’ll get a better idea of how to optimize your content marketing strategy.
Think about what your site visitors are looking for. In general, your site should be easy to navigate so visitors can:
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Discover what you do
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Why your offerings matter during this time
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How your offerings meet their needs
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How they can get the ball rolling with you
Think about where you strategically place calls to action, which landing pages will link to others, and potential blog topics to create a blueprint for rethinking search intent.
Fix and Remove Technical Issues on Your Site
When website traffic is down, check for issues that may be handicapping it. When there are broken links, out-of-date content, or media that doesn’t work, this can really turn a visitor off. They might even decide to never return. Even worse, these users may find their way to one of your competitors.
Improve conversion rates by improving any technical issues your website might have:
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Update or remove broken links
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Remove faulty media
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Update content
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Ensure that all site functionality still works, such as endless scroll, carousel images, navigation, etc.
Get a Free Content Analysis to Recapture Lost Traffic
If your website traffic has taken a hit, sometimes the best thing to do is to get the help of professional SEO services. It can help your company save money, increase traffic, and survive the COVID-19 storm.
SEO services may include:
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Improving your content marketing strategy
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Putting resources and energy into boosting your online presence
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Optimizing your website
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Becoming more active on social media
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Producing more content
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Nurturing the leads you do have through inbound marketing strategies
At First Page Strategy, we provide professional SEO services so that you can focus on connecting with your audience in meaningful ways and building out your brand’s internal mechanisms.
Recapturing traffic you’ve lost due to the global pandemic requires a deep dive into consumer data before creating a marketing campaign, and this begins with a thorough audit of all your website’s content and search signals.
