What will Post-Pandemic SEO Agencies Look Like?

Introduction

Businesses have been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, with many small businesses having to close down as well as the mass firing of employees. SEO Agencies have also been affected by this as many firms have cut down marketing budgets among other measures to help them stay afloat. From the current situation, many lessons are to be learned about how businesses operate during such times. Hopefully, information gained both now and along the path to normalcy will reveal insight on how Post-Pandemic SEO agencies will operate.

Convincing businesses to utilize e-commerce and SEO for more sales:

The coronavirus made many businesses realize the need to be accessible online. With the enforcement of social distancing policies, self-isolation among other measures placed by many governments worldwide, retailers especially small scale has found it difficult to operate. This serves as an opportunity for SEO agencies. They need to target not only large organizations but also small and medium-sized enterprises as many may have seen the necessity of establishing an online presence. SMEs comprise the largest percentage of businesses in many economies and can, therefore, be capitalized upon.

Analyzing consumer trends:

During the pandemic, consumer trends have been drastically shifted. The current recession has forced many to invest mostly in essential products. SEO agencies will, therefore, have to be keen on market trends as the economy starts to shape up. Consumer trends need to be carefully analyzed due to the unpredictability of the state of affairs as the economy tries to stabilize. The necessity of understanding consumer trends is without a doubt very crucial for SEO as it enables agencies to capture valuable data such as search intent, search phrases, and know what the consumers are looking for in general.

Analyzing Business trends:

Despite many businesses closing down during the pandemic, there has also been a surge of businesses that have adopted e-commerce and social media to overcome the challenges brought by the pandemic. COVID-19 has sparked a great digital transformation worldwide. Facebook even launched Facebook shops to help businesses set up and manage their online stores easily. In China where the pandemic struck first, many retailers turned to Taobao Live a product of Alibaba that enables merchants to sell their products. It is likely that post-COVID-19, businesses may maintain their newly adopted mode of commerce and therefore seek solutions that will help give them a competitive edge over their competitors who most probably are also following the trend and adopting digital technology. This will provide a chance for SEO agencies to be even more aggressive in showing businesses the profitability and edge that could be gained over their competitors if they adapt SEO solutions to help them be more accessible to their client base.

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Dealing with low marketing budgets:

Many firms have reduced their marketing budgets to conserve resources. This trend might inevitably continue even after the end of the pandemic. SEO agencies will, therefore, have to offer the promise of greater returns on investment to firms they approach. To do this they could use data on business trends before, during, and after the pandemic and show the firms they desire to partner with the necessity of SEO to give them an edge over their competitors as businesses compete to attain a client base online.

Local SEO:

SEO now more than ever has the chance to prove its worth. With many local businesses adopting online solutions as discussed earlier, the market for local SEO is growing during the COVID-19 pandemic and is likely to continue growing even after. SEO companies will need to adopt some local SEO strategies to effectively promote local businesses. Some of the strategies include:

• Setting up Google My Business profiles: Local business accounts can be easily set up through the Google My Business website to enable a business to show up on local search results. This is a tried and tested solution that currently there is a huge market for SEO firms with a multitude of local businesses seeking an online presence.

• Generating local content: COVID-19 is a global pandemic with effects worldwide, however, each country is dealing with the situation differently. Due to the differences in culture, income distribution, demographics among other variables a lot is happening on the ground in many countries invisible to the world. Knowing such information could help SEO agencies better tailor their solutions to the local state of affairs to gain more traffic for local enterprises.

Adjusting the SEO strategy to the changes in search.

The pandemic has affected all businesses with some being rendered obsolete. Services have been classified into two categories, essential and non-essential. Non-essential services have taken the greatest impact as many governments have distinctively ordered their closure. This also reflects in the digital economy for when it comes to commerce, essential services are among those getting the most traffic. SEO agencies can use analytic tools such as Google trends to best determine the relevance of products and services offered by various businesses. Hopefully, post-COVID-19 will see a gradual comeback in demand for some of the non-essential services, and using analytics tools will help SEO agencies determine the right time to create content on non-essential services such as tourism that has been rendered almost obsolete.

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SEO competitiveness

SEO agencies should be more aware of their local competition due to the projection of local businesses adopting digital marketing strategies. If you search for an SEO agency In Houston, or your local area, make sure you have optimized your agency’s website. Also, you could search for Houston SEO services to see the services offered by your competitors which could vary from e-commerce SEO and Social Media Marketing among others. After all, it has been estimated that 35% of SEO traffic is obtained from local searches.