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What The Coronavirus (COVID-19) Means For SEO

Over the first quarter of 2020, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has disrupted almost every area of our lives. It has created a “new normal”, making people reorder their priorities and make changes to their daily lives. The pandemic has also caused a blow to many businesses that have to roll with the punches thrown by declining economic activities as people change their habits.

SEO plays a key role in helping businesses stay relevant in the time of coronavirus. To further protect their businesses from the effects of the ongoing pandemic, it’s best for business owners and marketers to review their current SEO strategies for the year.

Here are some SEO considerations you need to look at and how you can incorporate them into your marketing strategy in response to the impact of COVID-19.

Changing search behaviours

Consumer behaviour and search trends will largely vary at this time, both for essential and non-essential businesses. Pharmacies and grocery stores are more likely to see a surge of search queries on the products and services they offer. Oppositely, a decrease in search interests on brands, products, and services considered non-essential may be observed this time as consumers prioritize their most basic needs. 

Brands should consistently track and analyze data like organic search sessions and conversion rates, making sure to update forecasting and historical reporting to assess the impact of COVID-19 on consumer behaviour. Google Search Console, Google Trends, and your keyword tools will be your best friends during this time. Use them proactively to understand changes in search behaviour and interests based on relevant keywords and topics related to your company and industry.

Below are the important data and analytics to note:

  • Sessions and impressions may decline. But if rankings remain as is, the decrease can be a result of COVID-19’s effect on search interest.
  • Sessions and impressions may remain as is. However, a low conversion may mean that users are still interested in your products or services but are not ready to purchase yet.

Limited bandwidth and availability resources

During this pandemic, businesses may have limited development resources. Rather than implementing new features in your website, it may be best to prioritize fixing bugs that are directly affecting your site’s performance. Check to see if search engines are indexing, crawling, rendering, and ranking your website to prevent potential issues in the future.

Beefed up content strategies

It’s important for businesses to acknowledge the specific effects of COVID-19 to their industry. This way, you can create clear messaging around the disease. If your business is deemed essential or directly affected by COVID-19, you might want to make a dedicated page to capture traffic related to coronavirus and then add links to your website’s key pages.

You can also try producing a series of video content. As people become more active online, they will have plenty of time to watch videos. Consider creating relevant content to capture their attention. Study your SEO insights to gather possible topics for your video content. 

Most importantly, when developing your messaging, keep in mind the importance of social distancing. Consider making content on creating DIY projects around your product/service from which users can derive value while on home quarantine. Avoid using language that runs counter to COVID-19 safety guidelines.

Main Image Credit: Engin Akyurt | Unsplash

What You Should Know About Hiring An SEO Toronto Digital Marketing Agency

Hiring an SEO Toronto digital marketing agency to help grow your business can take a lot of research and legwork on your part. But here are some tips you should consider when looking for a good, reputable marketing firm.

The best way to get an immediate feel for whether or not an SEO Toronto digital marketing agency can benefit you is to be upfront and candid about what your business is and what its goals and objectives are. You don’t want to just be generic about this information, you want to let the marketing agency know exactly what it is you’re expecting from them.

You should discuss with them what marketing platforms they use and whether or not they can work for your business. In hiring a good digital marketing agency, you may need to adapt to some changes in how your marketing is done, but you should never hire an SEO Toronto agency who doesn’t understand your company’s direction.

Find Out About Their Communication Structure

The best way to work with an SEO Toronto digital marketing company is to have constant open lines of communication. You’ll want to know if they have a contact person or department that you can reach 24/7 in case you have concerns about how your marketing campaigns are going. You may also want a digital marketing company that does online reviews or conference meetings on a monthly or yearly basis to see if everything is performing up to standard. Never hire a company that doesn’t keep you in the loop.

Let Them Know If You Have Any Third Parties That Might Be Involved In This

If you work with a technical team whose tasks may overlap with those of a marketing team, you should discuss this with the marketing agency you plan to hire. It’s important that you don’t run into a potential conflict of interest, or conflicting jobs when working with your marketing agency. You may even want to see if the marketing agency offers any evaluation services just to make sure you have all your t’s crossed and i’s dotted.

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9 SEO secrets every business should know

The Most Effective Methods of Promoting Your Business Online On A Global Scale

Taking it International: Beginner’s Tips For Worldwide Marketing

The internet has allowed businesses to connect with patrons personally. We understand just how vast the internet can be and understand that reaching beyond the local market can be intimidating. The following are just a few tips that may help a business owner understand how to reach an international audience online.

Crossing That Cultural Divide

One of the most important aspects to consider before attempting to reach international audiences is to understand cultural divides. A company may be the most tolerant person in the world, but that does not excuse the possibility of cultural barriers, which may not be apparent. For example, disrespecting certain holidays in countries is a big red flag like China and the Quingming Festival, which usually lasts about three days.

Having a good grasp on holidays, customs, and other similar aspects of a culture is important.

Language is Also Important

Sure, installing a good translator to help other countries read content is a good idea. One bit of information to keep in mind is that English is just the 3rd most spoken language in the world, meaning that English does not take precedence at all.
This is why a translator is important.
One successful international online marketer–Neil Patel–said that traffic to his site increased by 47 percent by translating his page.
“I thought it would be a good experiment to translate NeilPatel.com into 82 different languages. Within three weeks of doing this, I saw a 47% increase in my search traffic—as you can see from the image above.”

But we also know that certain innuendo and passive cultural remarks may not play well in other countries. This is something that might be easily overlooked, but it is very important to pay attention to. For example, a company owner should pay attention to expressions used. For the most part, we encourage our customers to avoid using expressions because they may not translate well into another language or culture.

The Importance of Worldwide SEO

Another important aspect that needs to be addressed is a webpage’s SEO, which needs to be put through an international lens. One thing that may be helpful is tagging content with multilingual tags like “es,” which targets Spanish speakers. A business should also be aware of geotargeting marketing tools that allow the business owner to create multiple versions of their webpage based on a visitors region.

Do a Little Market Research

A business should also understand that their product or service must be desired in other countries before attempting to launch a campaign to attract certain regions. One question that needs to be asked is if a specific region has a good conversion rate in regards to a particular business.

Another tip that might be helpful is a business should check what their competitors are doing. Chances are high that a competitor has already checked conversion rates and is seeing some success with the regions that they are targeting. All one has to do is take a look at the source code and search for the hreflang tags that they are using.