The Coronavirus, more commonly known as COVID-19, has become a full-fledged pandemic—pushing everyone back into their homes for safety reasons. At the time of writing this article, there have been a total of 6,849 confirmed cases in Australia alone, with cases in Tasmania steadily rising.

From an economic standpoint, this hampers businesses due to a lack of people milling around as usual, but this provides a unique opportunity to review your online presence. Your business might have the standard Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategies relevant in the past year, but COVID-19 has impacted how Google Rankings work in today’s market.

How COVID-19 Affects Google Rankings

Much like any other digital marketing tool, SEO continues to change with the market trends. In a nutshell, SEO’s purpose is to utilise certain practices in order to make a website more “relevant” for search engine spiders to take notice—thus bringing it up in terms of “rankings.” This would result in the website’s positioning in a search engine’s results page, in which the goal is to reach the first.

Google, in particular, has very particular criteria for appearing on its search results. While these were prone to changes due to trends before, COVID-19 turned the situation into an even more unpredictable realm for SEO to work with.

Local businesses, for example, will now have to prioritise their business listings on Google My Business (GMB) in order to properly rank locally. Apart from that, the trends have over-inflated due to more people staying in while using the internet as a basic connection to the world—making the already unpredictable search trends even more volatile.

Search results for COVID-19 have pushed everything else to the background, leaving Google to prioritise news for anything related to the pandemic. While online businesses are booming, there has been a shift to more recreational DIY projects, shifting the online market to a more personal and centric viewpoint.

More than that, voice-searches have become even more abundant—changing the way keywords are used—and mobile usage has become nearly equal to desktop usage once again—pushing mobile optimisation down a notch in importance.

What This Means for SEO

Google’s basic evaluation revolves around two tenets: Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) and Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (EAT). This means that prioritisation is placed on content that involves money or health while also factoring in your own professional experience and expertise.

For a business to remain relevant, proper utilisation of SEO strategies is necessary now more than ever. Applying these basic Google evaluation points into your website is much more difficult when factoring in your locality to Hobart. To properly utilise your online presence, utilisation of digital marketing strategies akin to Hobart is your best bet.

Final Thoughts

SEO is the key to maintaining your Google Rankings, especially during this period of the pandemic. Utilising SEO services in Hobart, Tasmania is your best option to stay ahead—this way they won’t only focus their efforts on following the trend, they can utilise your localisation to full-effect.

Are you looking for a digital marketing agency in Hobart to help your business’ SEO during this COVID-19 pandemic? Connect with us today and schedule a no obligation consultation.