COVID's Impact on SEO

[goodroi]

Hope you all are staying safe & healthy :)

To help all of us better weather this stressful time, let's share our insights on COVID's SEO impact.

With so many people moving to working/learning from home, the impact on speed and site performance. Plus people staying & shopping from home, how online user behavior is being impacted. Not to mention the overall domino effects as parts of the real world economy closes down & other parts are going into overdrive. On the positive side there are also new opportunities as more people work from home and potentially increase the supply of gig workers (writers, designers, researchers, etc)

What impacts have you experienced & what changes are you making to weather this storm?

[HelgaHlg]

No new leads during this month and less traffic, unfortunately.
What we did? More guest posting

[tangor]

At present it is likely things will go down, not up. Also likely is the current global shutdown will lift in a few weeks. This is not something you can change by adding more code to your site, or even more content. Patience will be required ... and pockets deep enough to ride it out. (Coronavirus)

[devoo]

One thing I know is a lot of people wish they had a work at home job right now and companies wish they had a better online presence. If this crisis lasts longer than expected, it will force some of them to finally take that leap of faith and channel more resources into their online business. That could mean more business for some of us or more competition for others.

[vivi]

it may be low traffic during the corona time but you can prepare your strategy for the long term, as we all are suffering from it . & we should care each other. by providing new stay healthy stay home .

[RedBar]

What impacts have you experienced

I have seen a business enquiry increase from local businesses who have always successfully used FB for their marketing promotions, and still doing ok even though their shops are not allowed to be open, obviously considering taking the next big step and going to a full-on ecommerce site with the notion that they will also attract enquiries / sales from outside their normal area.

I'm actually putting together a fact and reality sheet together since many naïvely believe that it's a case of "build it and they will come"!

After explaining the time required to construct a site and for it to rank naturally, they are shocked, and when they find out the CPC of Google/ Bing / etc ads to be on the first page, even with local geo-targeting as an experiment, their "instant" solution no longers seems so great.

Don't get me wrong, definitely there are some good opportunities out there, however finding that webco competent enough to provide it is altogether another thing.

The scammers will be loving it:-(

[Geekytech]

Right now, in my personal opinion it could go either way as to what the impact will be on us SEO's. Naturally, traffic will take a bit of a dip on some 'non-essential' businesses but this can be countered by trying to find a different source of traffic. I believe a lot of businesses will want to strengthen their online presence now more than ever and I think it'll be a case of adapting businesses to work around the new restrictions in place across the different countries.

[tangor]

@Geekytech ... Welcome to Webmasterworld!

If the current lockdowns in place, or proposed lockdowns go into force, the number of working people will diminish with layoffs, etc. If your biz relies on third parties for fulfillment (ie: ecommerce with mail, delivery, etc. suppliers ...) that segment might also be severely impacted.

On the other hand, this downturn is NOT permanent. Things will come back, it is just a matter of time.

[nomis5]

Gardening sector in the UK

A large increase in visitor numbers, not surprisingly. I just hope they remember my site when this virus is over and revisit.

[RedBar]

that internet activity is 50-60% greater than normal.

There were UK reports last week that Netflix was restricting access to some films such as Contagion such was the demand and then, "coincidentally", it was on FTA TV!

[seolad]

I was already lucky to be "working from home". Now I'm suddenly just "at home", due to the virus impact on our industry (sports media) .. the virus doesn't really help with finding a new job or some clients to get some money in. I hope everyone is staying safe both physically and financially..

[RedBar]

Two in one thread! Welcome to WebmasterWorld seolad!

[tangor]

Second the welcome to the new folks .... sorry it is under such trying times!

Wash your hands! ;)

[bwnbwn]

Question would you add a page letting your shoppers know how your company is safeguarding the products they are. buying off your website.
A lot dropship so is this something that should be added. Were the product is manufactured
Thoughts.

[EditorialGuy]

The coronavirus is having a huge impact on our editorial travel-planning site's traffic. I don't think SEO has anything to do with it, though. (It's a bit hard to plan a vacation when you're hunkered down at home and hoping not to die.)

[Pjman]

User Behavior on our sites has drastically changed. People are staying on the sites 30-40% longer and visiting 20-30% more pages. We changed zip to the sites. The timing is so different too. 10am-1pm was always our busiest. Now its a ghost town until 1pm and goes until 6pm.

SEO and SERP not so much.

[DorothyCarrico]

Hello everyone. Changes are very felt.
Traffic has fallen, it is sad.
Hope to get things right soon

[RedBar]

Hope to get things right soon

Good luck, it's very doubtful there is much you can do at the moment if your site meets all the essential search engine criteria, it's simply going to be time for traffic and business to return for your specific widgets and, unfortunately, many, many businesses and websites are going to inevitably die!

[hannamyluv]

What impacts have you experienced

Traffic is way up but revenue is way down. I am in a niche that has seen new focus from the media in the past few months, but advertisers are pulling those budget dollars back hard.

what changes are you making to weather this storm

We are working on moving to lead acquisition rather than advertising revenue over the next few months. Even though we are content providers, I figure that an email address or a social media follow is worth way more in the long run than showing the crappy link-bait ads that have proliferated in the past month due to the fact that better advertisers have pulled back.

We are also working on providing online classes and ebooks. We had that on the list for this year anyway, but this has made us speed up tat timetable.

[br22]

@hannamyluv

What was your ad setup like? Were you using native video, re-auctioning, interactive quiz units etc?

[hannamyluv]

Header bidding, video, Outbrain. Video has taken a big hit as of late.

[br22]

Nice, sounds like a robust setup. Yeah, we've seen video rates plunge too. Optimizing for viewability has provided the biggest boost so far - well placed sticky units and a revamp of ad placements.

[Stella Martin]

It is observed that many of the services providing firms like cleaning, manufacturing, decorating, construction and other similar services have been seriously affected and are losing traffic and thus revenue.

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld Stella Martin

We all know,(ought to) that specific sectors have been harder hit than others since they have basically been shut down therefore for many / most of these sites / businesses there is absolutely nothing they can do anyway.

Sure, people like me are still working on upgrading / improving sites yet, at the moment, this will not be noticed until lockdown and business returns to more "normal" demand levels.

As an international business we're working on the assumption that demand will not return to pre-covid levels for at least 2-3 years. If it's sooner we will be able to cope however we feel it better to err on the side of caution rather than gung ho flat out expectations.

[JediSEO]

Organic traffic for most requests has gone down heavily, but the food delivery has soared. So we use contextual advertising.

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld JediSEO.

Supermarket food delivery services in the UK, not sure about too many other countries, has exploded with some supermarkets on 3-4 week delays!

Utterly bizarre IMHO, especially where I live in the middle of nowhereville:-)

[Mark_A]

Business depends on your sector. Some of our customers still want product, while others have closed, hopefully temporarily. We are still manufacturing (technical B2B).

CPC for G-PPC seems to have reduced a bit, it seems some competitors have put their campaigns on hold.

[RedBar]

What surprises me are the companies still advertising yet have "closed" notices when going to their websites!

[Mark_A]

Yes Redbar, a way to waste money and look disconnected at the same time.

Some companies are not answering their phones and don't have a recorded message but visiting their websites they have a message which is better than what you describe.

[RedBar]

My sister's UK widget site has seen a noticeable increase in visitors since last Tuesday yet today has died again, strange!