Year 2020 has showed the world that everything can change very promptly. With SEO it is not different, new trends and understandings appear continuously and rapidly.
It is important to realize that search intent and demand are shifting.
For prosperous SEO strategy it is crucial to understand the searcher intent behind the search in order to build a page that answers the searchers inquiry.
The COVID-19 pandemic changed not only our normal day-to-day life but also our search intent. People were searching more locally e.g., ‘’open now’’, ‘’near me’’ as result of the lockdowns.
What business should not forget about is optimizing their business to be easily found as you can still direct the customer to your page and include information about reopening and such, when the business is open again.
The search volume and interest in a given inquiry can either erupt or vanish overnight. Using Google Trends, it can be seen that during the beginning of the pandemic, toilet paper was searched for intensively and on the other hand, interest in search of movie tickets experienced fall.
The businesses can protect against shifting search intent or drop in search volume by monitoring closely the searcher behaviour and by adapting appropriately. This can be done by classifying the possible shifts in searcher intent and by monitoring closely target SERPs and how they are developing.
When you start seeing that more pages are ranking that offer a different intent than your page, your business should adjust the page otherwise you risk suffering by losing rankings.
Therefore, the Fact to understand about SEO in 2021 is to never get too cosy and that being open to adjusting is crucial for online businesses.