How Corona Virus COVID-19 Is Affecting the Search Traffic: How to Respond In 2020

Corona virus is turning into century’s biggest epidemic affecting the lives of thousands of people in the world. But its impact is not only limited to human lives and deaths; COVID-19 is also impacting the search engine optimization SEO metrics around the globe. Yes, this is the hottest question in the minds of global digital marketers in 2020; because people search the internet according to their behavior and needs, Corona Virus is impacting each industry in a different way.

For instance, people are forming queues outside the grocery stores in order to get them ample supply of food and daily items. But due to Corona Virus threat, many people are discouraged to leave their homes and buy food by going to a crowded place full of virus in the air. Therefore, this shift in the behavior is giving a great competitive edge to the e-Commerce sites and online stores to cater to the needs of citizens in countries where the epidemic is shortening lives of many people. Let us see the impacts of Corona Virus on the search traffic and what tactics you can adopt to respond to this situation in 2020.

1. A Huge Surge in e-Commerce Sites is going to Happen

A few websites including Moz is presenting data and statistics that reveal the growing impact of Corona Virus disease on SEO traffic. Based on what we have explored in 2020, COVID-19 seems to be offering many SEO metrics including a huge surge in e-Commerce websites. Since e-Commerce sites do more than just sell essential commodities, they delivery them to your doorstep to save you from the hassle of going to a place full of people and infection. E-Commerce sites with huge spikes in impressions and organic traffic.

For example, if you are getting short of toilet paper in your bathroom, then chances are you will not hit the departmental store to purchase them. Your preferable move will be to find an online store for different bathroom items such as hand sanitizers, soaps, toilet papers, and towels to keep the epidemic away from your home. These product searches definitely belong to the category of pandemic. These products in addition to viral medicines are likely to get short in the global market in 2020, which is why there is a huge surge in the demand of such products. Therefore, search engines are showing new queries like “buy toilet paper online near me” or “hand sanitizer near me”.

On the other hand, we have also observed a drop in the makeup items traffic in addition to the products related to traveling and luggage. That’s obvious because people are less interested in taking flights and travel using public transports these days; therefore, one thing that was in huge demand yesterday may not be as popular today. Moreover, gyms and cinema halls are also closing around the world; that helped us to observe the impressions and traffic spike related to items like “ring fit”.

On top of that, more and more women employees are demanding work from home which also increases the search volume of things like “office chairs” and “office desks”. More men and women are popping queries that relate to finding jobs online and helping them get work from home.

How to Respond to Corona Virus COVID-19 in 2020

Now comes the tricky question as how to respond to COVID-19 right now when the search queries are changing day by day? As you know that demand for certain items and commodities have risen suddenly; people need to avoid products that harm them and can cause viral infection. For professionals dealing with e-Commerce search engine optimization SEO, they might consider creating a new segment of products that are growing in demand these days. Based on your impressions and traffic data, you should watch carefully the trends that are changing and crawl those pages from error often.

A recent article in the Search Engine Journal SEJ talks about the impact of COVID-19 on SEO metrics. The author states that “Watch the query data for those pages to ensure your content reflects the most up-to-date searcher intents”.

2. Wellness and Health Sites are also Surging Up

In addition to work-from-home and e-Commerce sites, we have observed that wellness and healthcare sites are also surging up. In 2020, Google has been critical about the content that is related to sensitive issues like human health and wellness. As a result, the search engine has been holding standards of such content very high. Now as the epidemic of COVID-19 showed up, the health and wellness websites visitors are doubling these days which surges traffic and impressions dramatically. It seems like people are searching the most common phrase million times a day such as “symptoms and treatment of Corona Virus”. There is also a significant increase in the queries related to “antiviral foods” and “how to keep safe from viral infection”.

So how can you respond to that? From our expertise in SEO, the most important thing is to develop trust and authoritativeness with this type of content. People are turning to search engines more and more to answer the medical questions.

3. An Increase in Clicks of Recipe Websites is Observed

We have been able to observe an increase in the clicks and impressions of recipe websites lately; although not quite as high as the health sites, but more and more people are likely to cook from home than go out for dinner in a fancy restaurant. This may continue to decrease search for popular restaurants in your area and most of them are already operating at a reduced capacity.

How to respond to that? The Search Engine Journal recommends that using the recipe structure data to improve the way your recipes show up in the search results can help to deal with this growing trend. An increasing demand for recipes is going to change the SEO tactics for the professionals in 2020; you should consider publishing different recipes that use fewer ingredients that people can obtain easily.

4. Travel Websites Traffic

Due to social distancing in the global world and limited traveling opportunities during the surge of COVID-19, impressions and traffic related to travel website is also surging. Many people in the world are canceling their flights and re-scheduling their major international tours due to the threat of the disease. This is a complicated situation for marketers though because now more people are searching for keywords such as “cheap flights from New York to London”. This is happening because due to cancelation of hundreds of regular flights, the airline companies now will have no option but to cut down their prices in order to attract more travelers.

In the same way, hotel queries are also going negative because hot parks like Disney Land are already closed for visitors. Therefore, the travel industry is surely facing a huge impact of the disease.

More and more travel companies are now focusing on super-effective customer support and reputation management. Travel SEO can boost this effort because you can thoroughly monitor these queries to identify the shifting demand of the audience. That will improve your PR efforts and support SEO strategy.

www.seo.ae is the most reliable SEO Services provider in the UAE. We serve worldwide businesses with best Digital Marketing services including Social Media Marketing and SEO Optimization. Contact now to find out more.