Should I Put My SEO on Pause Because of the COVID-19 Pandemic?

The COVID-19 outbreak is affecting basically every business vertical both online and offline. Over the last few weeks, we at Webxloo were approached by many of our existing SEO customers with different variations of one burning question: “Should we stop/pause our SEO for now?”.

Being the SEO services provider with 15+ years in the industry, we have seen several major economic downturns, so we have decided to answer this question via our blog to help out the business owners that are trying to prioritize their expenses.

Don’t Stop SEO

If you are familiar with the concept, you know that SEO is a search engine optimization process and processes usually take some time. Before launching an SEO campaign for any given website, we always sit down with the owner or a manager who is assigned to this and explain to them that SEO doesn’t happen overnight but requires an undefined amount of time.

This statement is often followed by a very natural question: “When will we see the results then?”. The answer usually depends on the niche and the website itself but on average it can range from 3 to 6 months.

Now, back to the current situation where businesses want to pause their SEO-related activities because of the declining demand and slowdown in sales. Considering the specifics of SEO, the real impact of ceasing to optimize your website for search engines will be felt in 3 to 6 months when the virus will most likely subside.

SEO is an Investment

If you would like an analogy for this, consider search engine optimization as like a website workout: Being an athlete, you wouldn’t pause your training because you understand the repercussions of missed workouts that you will inevitably see in some time.

SEO is a process of consistently improving and strengthening your website by producing quality content, building backlinks, improving the user experience, page speed, and many other technical aspects that affect your organic rankings.

It makes sense to continue investing in SEO despite this temporary economic downturn especially given that many of your competitors will put it on pause. When the virus is contained and everything is back on track, those websites will see a visible organic traffic decline and to catch up they will have to resort to Paid Search and will spend maybe even more than what they were able to save by not doing SEO.

It’s a Great Time to Improve SEO

Now is a great time to invest in your organic rankings for Q3 and Q4 2020 as well as to better communicate with your audience via either your website blog or Social Media channels. Today more than ever people are consuming information online and will greatly appreciate quality content that resonates with the current situation and their interests.

Even if your business has been affected by this Pandemic, instead of pausing your SEO, leverage all your tools to connect with customers that have bought from you in the past to make sure they will be buying again when the crisis is over.

Contact us if you need our assistance as your SEO services provider. We can help to manage your content production, link building, social media, online reputation, or other SEO-related activities.