Riley Hope on COVID and search habits

In Part one Riley Hope and I talked about her SEO career, how she wrote her thesis on ethics in SEO, and we talked about automotive SEO. In the second part we talk about it Women in SEO and more in the automotive space and search results. In part three, we talk about how COVID has changed search behavior.

COVID & search behavior

Riley said we all saw an increase in internet use, leading to searches for mental health, depression, anxiety, sleep problems, dealing with children who are at home and online purchases, curbside pickup and more general business done online. She said some of the dealers would drop off cars at your home, which was great. However, some small companies have not been able to adapt as quickly as some larger companies. This resulted in larger companies like Walmart, Target, and Amazon benefiting more — and letting smaller companies down.

Riley’s Masters was in “Social Enterprise” and involved studying the impact of COVID on small businesses and using SEO to help these small businesses recover. I gave some examples of my personal experiences and Riley explained how things have changed right after COVID compared to months after. Many companies offered digital-based services, like online car sales, and didn’t do everything face-to-face.

We then discussed how marketing needed to change to be more sensitive to the mental health changes of COVID. Companies had to change their commercials to adapt to the new world. As well as talking about commercials, we also talked about how online reviews are being beaten by disgruntled customers who don’t want to wear masks or other issues.

Strategies for small businesses during COVID:

Many small businesses were unaware of Google Search Console, Google My Business (now Google Business Profiles), Google Analytics and so on. Also, many of these companies don’t have websites, they might be on Instagram but nowhere to take these customers. Most of these small businesses don’t know anything about SEO, they don’t have a CRM set up and they have a really unprofessional website. Google has attempted to release features designed to help businesses thrive and generate revenue during the pandemic.

Small businesses should use what they can, such as e.g. social media. Small businesses don’t have a large staff to do everything. So just do what you can with the resources you have and you will learn as you go and continue to grow from there. Make sure you are consistent in everything you do.

Find out more about Riley Hope at RileyHope.com or follow Riley on Twitter @reillyhope13.

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forum discussion below youtube.