The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching consequences for everyone. Many people thought it was just a few months of closures turning into an economic landmine for everyone.

US GDP has sunk by 35% in just a few months of lockdown. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost, and businesses are closing down indefinitely or sometimes even permanently. Brick and mortar stores are the hardest hit among all the businesses.

The economic losses are incalculable.

However, small businesses in the US have no choice but to soldier on despite slim profits and extended expenses due to the pandemic. Even large multination firms like Xerox are experience plummeting profits.

Communicate the Importance of SEO to Your Customers

SEO businesses remain vital in today’s economy. Small business is shifting to online transactions. The sales volume of SMBs can be increased if marketing channels and payment methods are widened. This should be part of how SEO businesses should be presenting themselves to potential customers.

SEO is now, more than ever, essential for saving local businesses. Improving your sales copy and changing customers’ minds regarding the pandemic and SEO is vital to the survival of your business. Here are some additional benefits of SEO in the time of COVID-19.

1. SEO Can Improve Dwindling Cash Flow  

We know that businesses are closing left and right. This is a hard truth because cash flow has been dwindling for months. However, online businesses need to step up with their SEO and digital marketing strategies if they want more cash flow.

SEO can help business improve their cash flow by becoming SMB’s number one asset during the pandemic. Website optimization and SEO remain critical indicators of success.

A proper SEO agency can help businesses make sense of challenging new indicators used by search engines to rank both old and new websites. Indicators such as Google’s Web Vitals are critical for the success of newly launched websites. Core Web Vitals can also have an immense impact on search rankings because Google has been rolling out changes to its algorithm these past few months.

2. SEO Boosts Brand Awareness

The online landscape has changed so much that it’s nearly impossible to keep track of all the indicators of success on the Web. What we do know is that online branding is vital in the new normal.

Again, this is the reason why it is unwise primarily to cut back on marketing budgets and SEO, right at the moment when people are developing more mature online spending habits. 86% of online consumers believe that authenticity is key to brand trust.

People expect online businesses to work hard on their sites. These sites have to look good, they have to be searchable, and they must also provide the right mix of informational and transactional information for customers to enjoy.

3. SEO Satisfies Customers

Customer experience or CX emerged as the leading component in successful online businesses. Back in the era of Web 2.0, Web developers and site owners didn’t even think of the online experience this way.

With the advent of better technology, however, people are essentially demanding more from websites, experience-wise. SEO can help produce positive CX for site owners. SEO is not just making sites rank better on Google or Bing. SEO is the most comprehensive system for improving user experience and overall CX (customer experience).

How big of a deal is CX in 2020? Customer experience has become a top priority for different businesses in 2020 because they want to pull in more customers and retain the old ones. Also, there has been a massive shift in how customers view businesses line. Customer loyalty is no longer based wholly on the quality of the product or service.

4. SEO Improves Overall Visibility

Visibility is of paramount importance. If your customers can’t see you online, they won’t be able to help you with the cash flow situations.

Tell your customers that holding back on digital marketing and SEO spending in the new standard means their competitors that are not holding back on SEO spending will quickly gain the upper hand. A well-placed SEO strategy can easily consume more market shares, nudging out the competition.

So what do your customers need? They need an excellent SEO strategy, and their sites have to be tweaked to reflect the changing conditions because of the pandemic – and so should you.

Improve Your Branding Efforts

The right branding will support your SEO business no matter how things go with the new normal. After creating a proper strategy for communicating the importance of SEO to your customers, it’s time to review your branding strategies.

Digital branding is even more critical now than branding done in brick and mortar stores. People are attempting to do as much of their business and buying online. Therefore, your website serves as an alternative to the brick and mortar store. With this shift comes a considerable shift also in customer expectations.

How do we maximize digital branding? Let’s take a look at the most critical aspects.

Brand Colors

The color palette used in digital advertising such as banners, logos, WP themes, and the like has a significant impact on customers. Brand colors are vital for brand recognition efforts. The right combination of colors can help boost recognition by as much as 80%.

Why do brand colors work? The effect of colors has a lot to do with psychology and emotions. Colors can leave an instant imprint on people, which facilitates brand awareness and instant recall.

When designing the color palette of your website, keep in mind that you are both representing your business, and enhancing how you present the business to people. Colors are not a minor thing in branding, so it’s best to work with specialists who can really do an excellent job at it.

First Impressions

First impressions form the cornerstone of brand awareness. According to studies, it takes just one-tenth of a second for a person to unconsciously form a first impression about any person or object.

As for websites, people need just fifty milliseconds to form an opinion about any kind of website. So at that point in time, if the first impression is negative, it won’t matter how useful or efficient your website really is.

How do you know that a website is in bad condition? We’d like to take a more humorous track when it comes to websites. Generally, if a website looks aged, then it’s possible that its layout or design hasn’t been keeping up with the times. The most significant impact of an aged-looking website is that it will not hold the attention of users within the period that first impressions are made.

Here are some quick tips for a quick evaluation and revamp of your existing site:

– Check the structure of the text as well as the typography. Take a look at what other successful websites are doing and try to maintain a parallel between your site and theirs.

There is no need to copy them: just take inspiration from what they’re doing and improve upon it.

– Evaluate if your logos and banners need an upgrade. Your logo is omnipresent in all your branding materials, so it is essential to ensure that it looks fantastic on your site.

If you made the logo using simple tools and it looks watered down. As a result, there is no reason for you to maintain the logo. If it no longer works for what you envision your business to be, then have an expert designer develop a new logo for you.

– Take a good look at all the images you have used on your site pages, from the home page to pages on your resources tab. Objectively speaking, how impressed are you with the images?

Do they correspond 100% with your vision of the website, or did you mostly just make do with what was quickly available when your site was being created?

If the latter was the case, it’s essential that you revamp the site visually and invest in better-looking images. Also, don’t forget to invest in video. Video marketing is the backbone of branding nowadays.

If it was necessary a year ago, it is even more critical now with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic.

– Make an effort to make your branding as consistent as possible. This isn’t just a matter of making your site look good.

There is a 33% chance that if there is branding consistency throughout your site and throughout your social media platforms, your SEO business will make more money. Consistency in branding shows brand strength. When new customers want to know a business, they expect the same level of effort in all the platforms, not just on your leading site.

The Power of Customer Experience (CX)

We talked about how essential it is for your website to provide a holistic CX to customers in these trying times. But how relevant is customer experience? According to PWC, customer experience is hailed as the most critical factor that affects repeat customer behavior on the Web. Purchasing decisions online will always be affected by how well (or not) a customer feels after performing transactions or any activity on your site.

The customer touchpoints serve as channels to a bigger CX that people will either appreciate or not. How can you provide better CX? For starters, it is imperative that you provide a friendlier service.

Especially during the time of COVID, there should be this sense of community and care emanating from your services. Your site should also be easy to use, and people should be able to easily reach out to your business to inquire.

CX Trends for 2020

Even SEO businesses need a leg up in determining what the best direction is for the new normal. These impressive statistics and facts should lead you in the right direction.

– Excellent or positive CX has been attributed to increased customer spending across verticals.

– 86% of customers are willing to spend more of their hard-earned cash if they can get a better customer experience.

– Better CX, coupled with a product with a higher price, does not mean that customers will leave. They will actually be willing to spend more.

– Brands can charge a premium of 13% to 18% if they can drastically improve their customer experience values.

– Personalizing the experience of users can increase impulse buying among users – up to 49% in some cases.

– This year and beyond is the beginning of the era of CX. CX will overtake other factors like product values, benefits, and even pricing. Customer experience statistics are vital for the survival of businesses, especially digital marketing and SEO.

– CX has a direct impact on customer satisfaction, retention, and it also dramatically improves up-selling and cross-selling.

– CX increases exponentially when a business offers multi-channel servicing. Don’t worry: customers are reasonable, and they have different expectations when it comes to what level of service they can expect from each channel. A case in point here would be AI-driven chatbots on Facebook or on a regular site. Consumers are still aware of the limitations of chatbots, and their expectations vary from channel to channel.

– Mobile sites are at the forefront of saving businesses in the time of COVID. A startling 57% of customers say that they are not willing to recommend any business that doesn’t have a working or efficient mobile website. A similar number (50%) say that they will no longer visit a website for the same reason. 66% say that a poorly-performing website can ruin the reputation of a brand and creates a wave of negative opinions online.

Conclusion:

2020 is a year of challenges for all local businesses, but SEO businesses correctly are positioned to make gains. Digital branding is crucial to your success. Customer experience or CX will overtake all other aspects of doing business online. The higher the CX, the more people will be willing to pay a premium price for SEO.