The whole world is witnessing the severe impact of COVID-19 that has deteriorated almost every aspect of our lifestyle and livelihood. SEO and organic search results aren’t also untouched from this. Several changes can be noticed in the SERP in these two months of COVID-19 outbreak. Several businesses and industries have been badly affected by this pandemic as there are fewer or no buyers and neither are adequate searchers on the internet. COVID-19 outbreak indeed has turned a large number of users’ queries into more specific searches, and this is the reason some industries have a huge surge in organic traffic and some have a massive fall.

It is simple logic if there is a high demand for a product/service in accordance with the situations; there will be more traffic on that website. This is exactly what is happening in the current situation. In the COVID-19 outbreak, some industries such as travel industries and real estate have been hit hard. Due to nationwide lockdown and global travel restriction, travel websites ranks have declined by -44% that is in fact a huge fall. 

Whereas, as the growing demand for sanitizer, health & fitness, beauty, gym, products, face masks, and more, websites comprising related queries are in huge demand. Moreover, as people are staying at home, there is a huge traffic surge in news websites, corona updates, entertainment, online education, and more.  According to the report, the search traffic for news websites has risen by +34 % including WHO (World Health Organization) updates and news.

How COVID-19 Has Impacted On SEO?

Specific searches, low traffic, and Google Updates in Coronavirus pandemic, somewhere at any point or others, have also impacted search engine optimization. Due to the pandemic, a large number of users have directed towards COVID-19 or related searches that are affecting other websites. As a result of low traffic, search engines are taking more time to fetch and index the site content. Google reads the website content more quickly if it is manually fetched and crawled or if the website gains high traffic and gets so many social sharings.

Amid COVID-19 pandemic, the SEO world is also witnessing the recent Google updates that are altering websites’ ranking unexpectedly but pleasantly for those who deserve to get appreciation. Though Google has mentioned several factors for website ranking, it is rewarding those quality websites that have not been yet rewarded. Google is updating the rank of quality websites while lowering down the websites which are on the top search results.

Is COVID-19 Pandemic Right Time to Work on Your Website Ranking?

No doubt, Coronavirus has worsened the business profitability. It is obvious that if there is no business or no users, there is less significance of higher ranking. However, if you have a startup website or your website is not ranking, you have a golden chance to leave your competitors behind and stay at the frontline in the upcoming time. Noting that, most of your competitors are sitting idle or having less work and waiting for an end to this pandemic. And since organic ranking needs more time and you have enough time in this lockdown period, it is a good time to start. Google can give a preference to your website over your competitors if your website meets its ranking factors and you keep the ball rolling as much as required.

COVID-19 has been noted as the biggest trend in Google search history.  People are desperately searching for all related news and information. These sudden hikes in the searches can benefit your websites if there is a match of queries related to coronavirus like Best SEO in the quarantine period or best movies to watch during the lockdown. No matter in which domain your website belongs to, if your site content matches COVID-19 queries, there can be more traffic. Thus, this can help your website gain a significant position in very less time as Google gives priority to the websites having higher traffic.