Top 5 Reasons You Need SEO During an Economic Downturn

The U.S. economy has been through a lot in the last couple of years. A global pandemic, a war in Ukraine, and ever-rising inflation have made many of us worry about the future. More specifically, you’re probably worried about how your business will survive through all the impending economic instability. 

Naturally, all eyes turn towards your marketing budget—what can you cut? Your eyes may turn to SEO, a strategy that is reliable, but you may have trouble attributing specific successes to it. But before you pull any triggers, you may want to reconsider the value SEO brings to the table.

Big Leap has always been a firm believer in SEO, that’s why we’ve been a trusted SEO agency for over a decade. Your business needs SEO in order to reel in substantial organic traffic and establish a commanding online presence. So read on to discover why you need to hold tight to your SEO through these trying times.

Check out the answers to our most frequently asked SEO questions:

• 10 Reasons Why Your SEO Traffic Rankings Have Dropped
• 4 Reasons My SEO Needs Content Marketing
• 20 Reasons Why Every Business Needs SEO
• 12 Hard Facts About SEO

#1 SEO Should Be the Foundation of Your Digital Marketing

A well-rounded digital marketing strategy should have good SEO at its core. It’s what helps people find the appendages of your brand, whether that be your social media channels or your product pages.

Think of it this way: your company’s different web pages and social media channels are like points on a map, but customers need a compass to know how to get to those places. SEO is that compass, guiding people to your site to meet their needs. If you take that away, people who are familiar with your brand may still stick around, but you’ll have a much harder time attracting new clientele.

#2 SEO is a Worthy Long-Term Investment

It usually takes a few months to see the results from an SEO campaign, which means strategies need to be planned very much ahead of time. Some people may be led to believe cutting SEO from the budget will allow them to put more energy into things with a quicker ROI. 

This line of thought will only get you into trouble.

SEO needs momentum to be effective. Other marketing tactics like social media or a new website design can see immediate results, as well as immediate declines when their frequency is cut back. If SEO gets cut, you’ll still see results for a little while, but eventually, the decline begins, and at that point, it’s just much harder to get the ball rolling again.

Establishing a strong SEO strategy now will enable you to generate better leads when the competition starts getting fierce again. If you neglect SEO, your Google rankings will drop and it’ll take months to get back to where you were.

If you’re just getting started with optimizing your website with keywords, here are some helpful tips for improving your search rankings.

• Listing your business in online directories, like Yelp and or Glassdoor.
• Optimizing your web content and headlines with keywords.
• Utilizing metadata (meta titles and meta descriptions).

#3 SEO Has an Excellent ROI

You’ll want to consider what will give you the most bang for your buck, or return on investment (ROI). 

A poll found that nearly 50 percent of respondents’ websites see the highest ROI from organic search. And with good reason too; the whole point of marketing is to make your website and services more visible to the world. SEO does that on search engines, which are the most trafficked websites on the entire internet (Google gets over 63,000 searches per second).

While it takes a few months for SEO practices to start showing results, you’ll see exponential growth as your site becomes more and more visible to potential customers. You’ll be able to determine your ROI from your efforts, as organic traffic to your website increases.

A few ways to improve your ROI from SEO include:

• Setting clear and manageable KPIs.
• Thinking long term for your goals (6 months to a year as opposed to 30 days).
• Creating content and websites with the user in mind.

#4 SEO is a More Genuine Approach to Marketing

People trust search engines. Year after year more people say search engines are their most trusted media. So when web pages rank high on Google, many consumers see that as Google giving its seal of approval and will trust it as a distinguished resource. 

In a way that’s true; if you find your page in the top 10 results, Google’s algorithm determined your information was valuable and relevant for the reader. But as we’ve already mentioned, you can’t get there overnight. It takes time and determination to get Google, or any situation, to trust your website enough to place it in the top rankings.

In other words, now is not the time to put your advertising spending into sign spinners or a video a handful of people find funny. Here’s what you can do to gain the trust of your customers:

• Optimize your online presence with relevant keywords.
• Create content that will be helpful for consumers.
• Try to answer the questions customers are asking.

Working to establish your credibility through a high search engine ranking will drastically improve your engagement and lead generation. 

#5 SEO Requires Constant Content and Web Page Optimization

The competition is fierce to get to Google’s first page of results, which is another reason why you need to keep your SEO budget intact.

When left unchecked, a website that was once optimized to perfection will lose its luster after just a few months. Other companies will target keywords from new search trends and conquer the rankings, and your content will fall into obscurity aka the second page of Google.

Optimized web pages and content need to be updated regularly by:

• Rooting out broken links.
• Updating out-of-date information.
• Adding newly relevant keywords and terms.

Putting SEO on hold during a recession will mean a lot more work for your company on the other side of it as you update your keywords and spend the next few months climbing back up the search rankings to where you once were.

Make SEO An Essential Part of Your Business

Do you want to constantly try to entice people to come to your website and buy your service? Or do you want the people to come to you? The answer is simple. Sticking with a solid  SEO strategy now is the best way to ensure your business can hit the ground running once the economy starts to open up again. 

Our experts at Big Leap offer SEO services that can help any business achieve the online presence they’re hoping for. Contact Big Leap today to discover how we can help your business be better prepared and come out on top even during this recession.