Recession SEO

Coping with an economic downturn in business has two aspects in preparing:

1. Make sure you are in good shape now. If there are things you know you need to do to stabilize your business, get them done. Those in better shape will more likely weather the storm without serious consequence.
2. Watch for changes in your stats, and be ready to react if you experience a downturn for two months in a row that is not due to typical seasonal changes.

SEO is first, about common sense. Doing what gets the biggest results for the least amount of effort, first. Recession does not change that rule. Nor does it change the fact that you optimize for people first – in fact, it makes that issue even more important.

As competition for customers gets more aggressive, you can expect your competitors to pay more attention to the finer points. This means it will be harder for you to maintain a position.  You may have to utilize ethical back door tactics more than before, or you may need to move to the next level of SEO sooner.

You can also expect more of your competitors to resort to “negative seo”. This is when they do things to HARM your site, rather than doing things to elevate their own. You cannot pinpoint who is doing it, nor can you prove that they have harmed you, so if this happens, there may be no recourse. Until Google decides to protect site owners against this kind of tactic, the possibility will be there.

The one thing you must NOT do, is panic, or get desperate. Desperate people make foolish decisions, and SEO is a field where there are all sorts of invitations to make those unwise decisions! Do not make any attempt to manipulate search engines. Your goal is to increase the accuracy of  the indexing – through honorable tactics.

Be willing to put in some work building a reputation, and be patient in allowing your business to build momentum. Those factors are part of every business, but during economic hard times, it may be harder to gain that momentum – so watch your stats for TRENDS. You should see gradual increases if you are marketing and optimizing properly. If your results plateau, then it is time to reassess.

Remember that the end goal is not just TRAFFIC, it is HIGH QUALITY traffic, that delivers paying customers. Anyone who tells you that SEO does not affect site conversions does not understand how to do it properly – Good SEO takes customer conversion into account, and seeks to target visitors who want what you have, and to create good copy which appeals to people first.

It is inevitable that the web world will become more aggressive in the coming months, even without the high likelihood that we are heading for economic hardship. Smart business owners will get their websites in shape now, and then watch their stats for signs of change, so they can catch and adjust early when it may be relatively inexpensive to do so.