13 Ways Businesses Can Use SEO & Marketing to Combat Coronavirus Impact by Miranda Miller #479

Hi, and welcome to the SEO podcast, Unknown Seekers of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, one of the owners here at eWebResults. My name is Matt Bertram, your leads ninja. Leads ninja. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast. This is podcast number 479. I could be wrong about that. I'm just, that's the number that was given to me. So it's 479. We are broadcasting live here from Houston, Texas. We are safe from the coronavirus. We want to share that with you. Right now. Right now, we are safe. Right now. Yes. And we hope you guys are safe as well. We do. Please remember, Matt and I, we are your results rebels. You know, I've got a couple things. We're going to talk about an article. 13 ways businesses can use SEO and marketing to combat coronavirus impact. I think that's very timely. Yeah, for sure. And we're going to dump into that. We're actually going to break it into two podcasts because 13 is a lot. Yeah. And it's a lot of good content. So we will jump into that here shortly. We would ask that if you're in a position to, and given the current situation, you probably are in a position to shiko us. Share, like, or follow. Because you're probably next to a digital appliance with easy access, and you probably have another digital appliance next to you, and you might be watching another digital appliance. Share it if you think it's valuable. Yeah. Right? Only if you think it's valuable. Only if you think it's valuable. Share it. We're not asking you to do something you're uncomfortable with. We're just asking you to share it if it makes sense for you. I like that. We appreciate that. Yeah. And after that, I'm just going to jump right into this article. This article is by Miranda Miller. So patiff to Miranda Miller. One fascinating thing about this, we pulled this hot off the press, and we printed it because this is the article that we wanted to talk about,

and then by the time we printed it, I actually needed to look up the author because when you print it, sometimes the author doesn't come through, so we want to know the author, and the name of the article had already changed. Yeah. Optimization. Optimizing on the fly. So this is from Search Engine Journal. Again, Miranda Miller, patiff to you. And again, 13 ways businesses can use SEO and marketing to combat coronavirus impact. You should, at this point, so this is everyone out there, at this point, should be taking the safety precautions recommended by the World Health Organization. Who? Who? Yes, that's the acronym for the World Health Organization. That could be a final joke. It was very little. Oh, no jokes when it comes to the World Health Organization. Yeah, no jokes. So these are some pretty amazing things that are happening. In Italy, one of the hardest-hitting areas to date, the government negotiated with the banks to suspend mortgage payments. So there's a lot of things that are going to happen. Like, we're kind of sitting in this isolated world, wondering what's going to happen. Universal income. And a lot of things are going to happen. They're going to wipe away student debt. All student debt's gone. Universal income. Like, you just, you know. The data's pretty clear. Universal income would just be- I mean, let's just add another trillion dollars to the top. Detrimental to everything that happens in a motivated society. In Canada, this is actually where Miranda lives, the waiting period for unemployment benefits has been eliminated. Obviously, a lot of people are going to get laid off at this time. For self-employed individuals and small business owners, it's going to be harder to find this kind of help. So how can you survive the economic impact of COVID-19 and the social distancing required? Keep calm and optimize on. Keep calm and optimize on. I mean, and this resonated with us because we're an SEO shop. So optimizing is really important. And we think of that in terms of optimizing first

positions. But even when we're running PPC campaigns, where ongoing optimization is occurring. Optimize your company. It's just optimize, optimize everything. Optimize. It's kind of like real estate, right? Location, location, location. Optimize, optimize, optimize. Oh, I like this. I'm seeing some alarming accounts from marketing and SEO friends of clients pulling their contracts and shutting down marketing operations until further notice. And this is in bold. This is a knee-jerk reaction. And it's setting your business up for long-term uphill struggle to recover from- You're going to unwind all the stuff that you did. Like, you can't- Google does not like that. Yeah. Like, if we're talking about SEO, Google does not like that. The people who stay the course are going to end up on top. It's just like if you just stayed in the stock market from 2009, right? Yeah. Yeah. Just like that. Just like that. But what is certain is that we will recover. Like, we know this is going to happen. It's going to end. And then where are you going to be when we recover, right? That's what this kind of article is about. You should shut down. You should stop if you can't make it. Yeah. If you're not going to make it, actually shut down yesterday. Yeah. Right? Like, just shut it down and figure out what plan B is. But if you're planning on making it, then, you know, you've got to keep marketing. You've got to pivot. You've got to reposition yourself for sure. So, it's very much a living, breathing, competitive space. And if you're not actively moving ahead, then you are going to be falling behind. When you talk about budgeting, maybe budgeting should shift. And maybe it shifts naturally, right? So, one of the numbers that's kind of mentioned here. Yeah. You've got some numbers you want to talk about? Yeah. Go ahead. Bring it up. You skipped this. Yeah. You know, when we're talking about SEO, organic search is a zero-sum game. Your gains or losses are exactly balanced by the gains or losses of

others in the SERPs. Yep. We understand that paid search or social are a live auction, but tend to not think of organic this way. That's the sense I read. It is very much a living, breathing, competitive space. And if you're not actually moving ahead, you're falling behind. Like, I felt like that. That whole piece reinforced it. Yeah. You know. It's good. Like, she knows how to write. Yeah. That's good. Well, this next piece, I love it, too. Yeah. So, if budgeting and marketing, if you're doing anywhere between $1 million to $5 million in sales per year, you should be spending 7% to 8% of gross revenue on advertising and marketing. This is according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. And she talks about, I've worked with high-growth companies budgeting 10% to 12%, but for maintenance, 7% is a bare minimum. I'm going to tell you, it's interesting. That's high growth. There's a- Gallery furniture? Gallery furniture. Incredibly famous individual in the city of Houston. I'm supposed to be speaking on the same stage with him in June, but I don't know if that's happening to me. That may or may not happen in June. Yeah. He goes by the moniker Mattress Mac, and he sells furniture, and he sells a ton of furniture. I think back in the early 2000, it was $23 million of furniture a year out of one location, right? He's an incredibly good marketer and drives a really good business. He spends 15% of his gross on marketing. I mean, that's the number I think of. Yeah. Right? That's the number I always think of, like, reinvest 15% of gross. Yeah. Right? But, you know, small business, still 7 or 8. I don't even think businesses, like, very few businesses even spend that. Yeah. I think so. They should be spending at least the... And marketing is your growth driver to new business, right? Yep. Yeah. So this means that for... So if the target's the 7% for about every $100,000 in gross revenue that you have, you should be spending

about $7,000 of marketing. It is, and this is also highlighted, it is critical that you maintain at least this level of marketing investment throughout the coronavirus pandemic. And, like, that's what we will be doing. Both of my companies will actually be doing that same track. So if it makes sense to cut back on some paid advertisements for the time being, maybe that makes sense. I'm going to be honest. I think that because there's going to be a reduction, because people are going to be pulling out, that you might not actually have to make adjustments. There'll be natural adjustments. It's an auction environment. If people are pulling out of the auction, then the auction pricing is going to go down. You might find the right number actually happens organically. Yeah. Like, there's a quote out there that's, buy, like, this stock market, buy when there's, you know, in the streets. Right. Okay. And basically, you know, that's pretty rough terminology. Yeah. But I think you do want to press the advantage. Okay? Like, I think that there's an opportunity, if you're positioned well, to press the advantage and to really come out strong. Now, if you can't service the business right now. Right. Right. It doesn't necessarily make sense to ramp up your marketing budget. Yeah. Right. That would not make sense. You know, you might want to trim it back. You might want to move it to other areas. You want to stay top of mind. But really, you want a business that can operate in this environment because this could be prolonged. So, you need to be thinking about business strategy on how to pivot to do that. And then, if you come up with a new strategy, how are you going to let people know about it? Yeah. Marketing. Yeah. Right? So, marketing is incredibly important to anything that we're going to do. And SEO marketing is a long game. Yeah. Right? It's really the long game. And so, it goes back to if you plan on being here on the other side

of it, then SEO is something that you want to continue. I mean, like I said in the past, like right now is the time to redo your digital presence. Like, I think right now is a perfect time to rebuild your website if you don't have a lot of time. Like, in normal circumstances. Yep. Because there's a lot of back and forth input with whoever you're having build your site. And if you're working from home, you might have a lot more of that quiet time to actually get the things done. And that's what this podcast and this article is about. It's like, okay, so let's kind of regroup and say, what can we do? Because we know you really only have a big successful business when you're doing marketing properly. If you've got quiet time, the thing to do is focus on marketing. That's it. Good strategy. Yep. So, number one, interview employees and customers. So, you can use Zoom and Google Hangouts. So, you may think, oh, I'm not going to be in touch with my customers. Well, take this opportunity because a lot of your customers are going to be at home. Also, take this opportunity to have phone calls with them. Take this opportunity to have Zoom calls. We always recommend. Yeah, the interaction. You want to see the body language. You want to connect with them. You know, we do that with our customers currently. Yeah. And a lot of our employees are working remotely. We're a digital marketing agency. So, we've got that capability. And since we have the capability, almost everybody's working from home. You know, we've braved the streets to come here and present a podcast to you. That's just how we are. But get in contact with your employees. Like, do Zoom conferences with your employees to understand how they're feeling and what's going on in their life. So, reconnect with them. Number two, do a mini audit of your content assets, right? So, maybe getting very specific, let's talk. Did I miss something? No, it got cut

off, the two. So, I went one to three. Oh, that's weird. Yeah. So, yeah. Maybe create. Again, let's get specific about things that you could do that are actually really valuable for from an SEO perspective. Create a new Google Sheet or Excel sheet and keep track of all the content that you have. The web pages, the emails that you've got going out, blog posts, white papers, e-books. By the way, send out an email that talks about the coronavirus and its impact or lack of impact that it's going to have on your business and your ability to service your customers. Like, do that. Well, all these things you're talking about are something I like to call digital assets, right? And there's a lot of businesses right now that are slowly moving online, which they should probably be quickly moving online, that have no digital assets. So, we have to start from a fundamental content audit level and figure out what do they need in the customer journey? What do they currently have? And then start building these components. But these, just like brick-and-mortar assets, these are digital assets that you're going to use and, you know, your website is like your digital house or your digital office building or your digital showroom. And so, you should be investing in these things. They do take maintenance to keep up. But you should be thinking about what to do. Like, and you should have a list of all those, right? I mean, websites are actually, based on their traffic, worth some money. Yep. Maybe a list of also your e-books, your presentations, highlighted videos, right? So, maybe now is the time to kind of sit down and create some time in your own office space, home office space, and create some videos that are of immense value for your business. Infographics and articles you publish. Like, put all those assets together. I promise you, just making a list of those assets are going to make you think of ideas of how you could interplay those assets together or

utilize those assets better just by putting a list together. Like, if you get really ambitious, you can track articles others have published about your business too, right? So, you're kind of tracking what's online about your business and those are our assets. We track roundup posts. Yeah. Like, right? So, those are pretty good. These may all be opportunities for you. So, updating with fresh content, optimizing with new CTAs and keywords, adding internal links to new products or services, and re-promoting when business picks up again, right? So, that's the focus is where you're going to land when things pick up again. Next, and you might not be doing this, is actually plan webinars. So, want to answer frequently asked questions about small engine repair, introduce new team members or products to your customer base, inspire seasonal bookings for later in this year. Like, those are ideas. Think about what kind of webinar could you put out there that would be of value to your customers or the people who hang out with your customers, right? So, that you can have some connection into those particular markets. I mean, you should be doing webinars anyway. They're great. We've started to get into doing them. In this current climate, you should be absolutely moving in that direction pretty quickly. There's a lot of people with questions out there. Yep. And they're looking to you, if they're a customer or a prospective counselor, to answer them for you. And this could be a really great opportunity to connect with them. Yep. Absolutely. It's interesting, he's got a screen here of a webinar that was, let's see, was moderated by Lauren Baker. Remember, we had Lauren Baker on our podcast. So, cool to see him getting out there still. Of course, he is, you know, the founder of Search Engine Journal, so he's way out there. Number four, again, this is 13 ways businesses can use SEO and marketing to combat coronavirus impact. Number four is clean up your administrative mess. Like, we all have an administrative mess. Oh, look at

this. Webinars, 91% of professionals say webinars are their favorite content format for learning. Oh, because you can interact with them. Yeah. I love data. Yeah. Clean up your administrative messes, right? Yeah. So, when I first saw this, I was like, well, I don't know how that's SEO. But, you know, write some posts that you've been meaning to get to, right? Like, that's important. Get those webinars started. Get that podcast started or get that new podcast posted. Info products. Yeah. Books. Like, get some books. We had a book call today. Yeah. We had a book call today. So, get that administrative stuff, that stuff that's just been kind of lingering. Now, you've got some time in that home office. Let's get that stuff done. Yeah. Now, now's the time to focus on that if you have additional time. Yep. Whereas you didn't normally. Next, take aim at different types of searches, right? So, really, so this is SERPs, search engine result pages. Now that you may have a bit of time and space to dig deeper, you can plot your domination, I love this, of zero, of position zero. Oh, yeah. What's position zero? That's a video carousel, paragraphs, snippets, and more. Oh, yeah. And they've got a good reference to an article that you can, like, 10 ways to get multiple organic page one listings. And then number six, this will be the last one for this podcast. We'll do the rest of them in the next podcast. Get recording videos. Videos are great, SEO fodder. Videos are great. Have we been saying that? Videos, sir, are great. Sir, videos are great. Where are you reading from? Ma'am, videos are great. When you're making these videos, also think of the same things that you're going to do when you're thinking about publishing a blog post. Like, go target long tail keywords. Trigger featured snippets. Appear in relevant YouTube searches. Those are the things, like, as you're creating, planning the content. Have coronavirus Q&A. Yeah. On your website. On our website. In video format. Explain questions

that people have. Yeah. I mean, the biggest question that I was hearing or that I was having is, like, on e-commerce, like, does the coronavirus stay on packages? On packages, yeah. Like, and they said, well, we don't really know. Maybe, like, an hour or two if you feel comfortable wiping it down. So don't use Amazon one hour? Which wasn't even a thing, like, four months ago or six months ago. I am incredibly impressed with Amazon. I feel like I should buy stock in them with everything that's going on. But, like, I order stuff and it's, like, there the next morning. It's like magic. Like, I didn't even forget that I ordered it and it's, like, already there. I was like, I just ordered it. And it's Christmas every day. Yeah. It's really nice. It's crazy when you're, like, doing stuff on a Sunday or something. Yeah. And it shows up that Monday and you're like, how is that even possible? Yeah. Like, how is that on my porch right now? Yeah. And I can tell you it's impacted. So my other business, My Vital C, we actually ship products to people and it's totally jaded their experience. We will literally, like, somebody will place an order at 7 p.m. on a Friday. And if it's not there at 9 a.m. on Monday, they're like, hey, what's wrong with you guys? You got to get your act together. And, like, we're not Amazon. Like, we don't work over the weekend. No, I do know that I used to, when I was buying, I was like, if it's not Amazon Prime, I'm not buying it. Not buying it. Like, right? And, like, yes, when we were shipping our T-shirts, we don't have any other T-shirts on them. Oh, they took two weeks. Oh, my gosh. They took two weeks and we were like, where are these? We've forgotten we ordered them for the wrong reason. We were spoiled. Like, this microwave society we live in. I'm like, everybody needs it now. Microwave. Oh, I can't clap or

we're going to hurt people's ears. Sorry. Delivery. Embed the video in blog posts. So when you make this video, include the transcript. Take screenshots and use them in images for your social media. It's true. Take five to ten quotes from the video. Transcribe them. Put them alongside in your Instagram account. That's one of the things we're doing. Yeah. Reuse the quotes and media releases in upcoming blog posts. I like it. So there's lots of really valuable things that you can do while you've got this extra time. And again, this is about combating the coronavirus's impact to your business. So this is going to wrap up this particular podcast. And, you know, we just want to kind of wrap it up as we usually do and say, if you're looking to grow your business with the largest, simplest marketing tool on the planet. The internet. Call eWebResults for increased revenue in your business. 713-592-6724. If you have a referral, that's somebody who's interested in digital marketing. And we're doing a lot of consultations right now. We've actually offered to all of our clients a free one-hour consultation to talk about how to pivot your business to best take advantage, to turn this kind of bad, dire, dark cloud into a silver lining. So if you're interested in that kind of strategy session, do go to our website, eWebResults.com, and reach out to us. So one of the things that we've done as well is on bestseopodcast.com, we were doing 30-minute consultations. That volume has actually been increasing. We're getting a lot of requests right now. And with people working from home, we've decided to do video audits. Yeah. Okay. So just the demand coming in for consultating and requests, you know, if you put your questions in there, we can highlight and answer those. But we are now moving kind of to a video audit format and then, you know, paid one-on-one based on really demand. But, you know. You'll get a lot of value. You'll still get a ton of value. It's just we can't.

The volume's too high. The volume's too high. We've had to limit it with three different employees to, you know, scale back their time to work on existing accounts. And so I just want to let everybody know that that change to video audits. But we will have an option for the paid consulting. It's, again, just a supply and demand thing. But just send us your questions and we'll make sure to get those covered in the video audit for you. And I'll ask you to leave a review if you can. It's nice and simple. Ewebresults.com slash G+. That's the G in the plus sign. What about Facebook? They can go to Facebook.com slash Ewebresults. That'll also take you and you can leave a review on Facebook. And how do you feel about Yelp? Yelp is all right. Yeah. Some Trustpilot. Yeah. There's others. Some Clutch. By the way, when you make those reviews, please make those reviews. Five stars. You can even leave comments on our YouTube videos. So all of our podcasts are posted up on YouTube. Yeah. We're cycling through that. We've been using that as kind of a repository. I can really, like, this might be some of the time to do some, you know, YouTube SEO, clean some stuff up. Yeah. Yeah. Please remember we were filmed live here from 13105 Northwest Freeway, Houston, Texas. Oh, Suite 500, Houston 500-515. It's 515? Yeah. They changed it. It's on the wall. Well, we also have two Herculite glass doors. Oh, that's so awesome. They're beautiful. Yeah. You should just come by to see the doors. Like, they're beautiful. Yeah, I mean, there's very few people here. We might have it locked, but it comes through the doors. You can see the doors and through them, as it turns out, because they're made of glass. Yeah, so visit us or arrange an appointment with us. Just make sure it's less than 10 people. And we're filmed here in Houston, Texas. You guys have made us the most popular SEO podcast on iTunes. Thank you. We

really appreciate you. Please like us and share us and follow us and all that good stuff. Until the next podcast, my name is Chris Burris. My name is Matt Bertram. Bye-bye for now. Are we good? Are we going to have to repeat the first part again this time? You're all good. We're recording. We're actually recording. We're recording. We're recording. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Everything's on. Everything's on. Do we have the thumbs up? We have the thumbs up. Oh, oh.