9 SEO Experts on 2020’s Impact and SEO Priorities for 2021, Part 2

Working at Wellspring Digital with an SEO OG, Karl Hindle, has given me access to some of the smartest people in SEO. I’ve been able to interview a few of them already, namely Lily Ray, Duane Forrester, Jim Hedger, and Tim Capper. And more are on their way.

2020 was a year of upheaval, to put it mildly. Marketing your business has become even more challenging in these turbulent times, and SEO is not any different.

So, I thought I would ask some of my favorite SEOs, including many friends of Wellspring Digital, their thoughts on SEO in 2020 and what’s in store for SEO in 2021. I asked these SEOs only two questions…

1. In what significant ways has the global pandemic changed SEO?
2. What should be the top SEO priorities for marketers in 2021?

The SEO Experts

So, who did I ask?

1. Lily Ray, Director of SEO for Path Interactive
2. Duane Forrester, VP of Industry Insights at Yext
3. David Harry, Owner, and Sifu at SEO Training Dojo
4. Doc Sheldon, Founder/Owner at Intrinsic Value SEO
5. Omi Sido, Senior Technical SEO at Canon Europe
6. Jim Hedger, Owner of Digital Always Media and Co-Host of Webcology
7. Dave Davies, Owner of Beanstalk Internet Marketing and Co-Host of Webcology
8. Barry Schwartz, President of RustyBrick, Inc., and Editor at Search Engine Roundtable
9. Tim Capper, SEO Director at Online Ownership and GMB Expert

These SEOs gave me quite a bit of information to work with, so I will be doing this in segments as a three-part series. Next up we have the three-letter name power trio of Jim Hedger, Doc Sheldon, and Omi Sido.

The COVID-19 Pandemic’s Impact on SEO

The first question I asked these three was “In what significant ways has the global pandemic changed SEO?” We’ll start with Jim…

Jim Hedger on the Pandemic’s SEO Impact

We are at one of the most challenging crossroads in human history and there are several real-world forces that will affect how the digital environment evolves over the coming year, along with extraordinary breakthroughs in one extraordinary technology.

Let’s deal with the largest of the real-world influences first as we can only note them because they’re very difficult to predict and our society does not have a consensus on how to handle them.

COVID19’s Impact on “Normal”

First came the plague. COVID19 has changed pretty much everything about our society except our assumption there is a normal we can go back to. There isn’t. Normal was swept away in March of 2020 when the world went into varying degrees of shut-down to try to prevent the spread of COVID19.

What will emerge in 2022 is anybody’s guess but it will be a long time before a generation of entrepreneurs recovers the capital lost during the shutdowns. Think of all the storefront businesses, the restaurants and bakeries and bars and retail stores that used to be your Main Street.

So many of them have been forced out of business we won’t realize what we’ve lost until the world slowly starts to reopen and we try to rediscover our personal normal, only to find many of our normal things simply aren’t there anymore.

COVID19’s Impact on Small Business

Small business will always be the primary driver of our economy but how small business gets conducted is changing. For a short period in May 2020, eCommerce platform Shopify Inc displaced the Royal Bank as Canada’s most valuable business.

As small businesses around the world raced to place their wares online where people could see them, the Montreal-based software company best known for its in-store point of sales products became a global giant.

Even though small businesses are competing with an even larger e-tail giant in Amazon, many local merchants left standing are there because they were able to find ways to use the Web to sell their products and services.

They’re also there because many real-world communities are actively looking for ways to support the small businesses that help make up their neighbourhoods.

COVID19’s Impact on SEO and Google My Business

For SEOs, this marks an excellent opportunity to push local businesses. Google My Business is the best way to get a local business noticed for being local.

Google and other search engines are going to continue to discover the vast majority of content on their own but increasingly they need help to identify and extract information from our client’s web properties. Google My Business gives a dozen or more ways of expressing important information about local businesses.

Even though people aren’t venturing out to shop like they did in previous years, they still want to purchase from local merchants. This goes double for local restaurants.

While most take-out operations use a consolidated delivery service like Uber Eats or Skip-the-Dishes, web-users often discover local food options via Google or other search tools before moving their purchase actions to the third-party order/delivery service. Be sure your clients are as visible as possible and providing as much data as possible.

9 SEO Experts on 2020’s Impact and SEO Priorities for 2021, Part 1
https://www.business2community.com/seo/9-seo-experts-on-2020s-impact-and-seo-priorities-for-2021-part-1-02382601

Read more: www.business2community.com