Moreover, if you haven’t felt the impact yet, it doesn’t necessarily mean that things are going smoothly for you (some businesses are still good at demand generation, but cannot convert this demand into paying customers). So, has your business suffered from COVID-19?
Definitely, if you are in travel & hospitality, retail, real estate, advertising, or non-profits, you have already experienced all the difficulties there could be: personnel cut, revenue loss, market volatility — the list could go on and on. What about the marketing metrics impacted by coronavirus? One of the most important metrics to track here is your organic traffic since the decrease in this area is usually the harbinger of the upcoming decrease in leads and an empty sales pipeline.
Coronavirus SEO Impact – Organic Traffic Decline by Industry
For some businesses, the coronavirus SEO impact has been pretty severe, as the loss of organic (free) traffic during crisis times means  close to no business for them. Let’s have a quick look at the most impacted industries within the last 3 months.
- Advertising
- Agriculture
- Construction
- Ecommerce
- Education
- Energy
- Insurance
- Manufacturing
- Non-profits
- Real estate
- Retail
- Software
- Technology
- Telecom
- Transportation
- Travel
This means that if your company is in one of these industries, you have most probably had a first-hand experience of the coronavirus SEO impact and have seen your organic traffic numbers go down by a lot. So, is there anything you can do about this or should you just wait it out?
Our advice would be to start working on the traffic recovering strategy immediately. You could either generate content for those users that are planning their future activities or explore related topics. For example, travel sites could still generate demand by sharing content for those planning their trips for the next year (post-coronavirus), or dive into related content trying to answer the questions people ask about travels & coronavirus – like, is it safe flying during the coronavirus pandemic? Sharing educational content about foreign cultures and traditions as well as scheduling virtual tours is also a good option.
Coronavirus SEO Impact – Organic Traffic Growth by Industry
But it’s not all of the industries that suffered a loss. For some, the coronavirus related traffic changes brought an immediate advantage. Here are the industries that benefited the most:
- Finance
- Food
- Healthcare
- Media
If you’re among those lucky ones, though — don’t rest on your laurels. Even though we’ll still feel the effect of the coronavirus SEO impact for a couple of months at least, now is your best chance to capitalize on an unexpected traffic spike and turn it into a long-term traffic growth trend for your company. How can you do this? Find a couple of ideas below.
