Five SEO Strategies You Can Use When Sales Are Down

Businesses sometimes experience occasional sales slumps. Whether it’s caused by seasonal changes or unexpected economic trends, you need to find the source of the problem in order to fix it.

One reason your sales might be falling: your SEO marketing efforts are outdated. Here are some quick optimization recommendations that could put a stop to your steady drop in sales.

1. Analyze Your Current Strategy

If you’re experiencing declining sales, start out by going over your most recent sales and SEO strategies. What has worked out for you in the past and what hasn’t? What haven’t you tried yet and what is starting to show signs of becoming outdated?

Holding quarterly meetings can be beneficial to analyzing the methods you have been using, as well as what seems to be working for your competitors. Investigating and brainstorming different solutions and new ideas with your team members is a great way to start making up for lost revenue.

2. Create and Update Your Buyer Persona Profiles

If you haven’t created buyer persona profiles for your best potential customers yet, or if it’s been several years since you’ve updated them, then it’s time to consider pinpointing your perfect audience. Take some time to evaluate your current marketing techniques, and determine what it is your ideal customers are looking for on the web.

3. Leverage Your Online Content

When potential clients discover you through search engines, they are generally looking for answers to certain questions they have. This is what we in the industry typically refer to as the “awareness stage,” in which a person is exploring possible solutions and scenarios to help solve their problem.

If the content on your website is relevant to their search, the chances of you being discovered are much more likely. This is why it’s important to be as precise as possible when researching and utilizing the right keywords for your site and your services.

4. Drive More Traffic to Your Website

If you are not using effective keywords and applying them properly, it will be very difficult to drive new leads to your website. Once you have found the perfect keywords, however, you want to make sure that they are being applied effectively. Are they listed in the titles and meta descriptions? What about the page content and URL? Does it mention the keyword in the heading and body enough times, and in a natural manner? Do the images contain relevant alt tags? Search engines work on a complex system that allows them to find relevant resources based on the keywords entered for search. The algorithms are constantly changing, so it is absolutely critical to stay current and adhere to search engines’ guidelines if you want to get on your potential leads’ radars.

5. Weighing Your Long- and Short-Term Options

While optimizing your SEO campaign, you must also understand that it may take several months before you can expect to see any quantitative results. Once you have analyzed, updated and corrected all of the necessary data, you have to be patient and wait for it all to take effect. I suggest you prioritize your long-term solutions first, which will give them time to mature while you work on your short-term ones.

For more immediate responses, you could look into screenprint marketing options, or TV and radio ads. You could also advertise on social media for quicker responses. During your research, you should find out which social media websites your new leads are most likely be found on, then create business or brand pages on each of them. Share a post about a special that you may be offering for the month, then ask your friends and family to share it. Actions like this can spread like wildfire, but you want to be careful not to overdo it. Posting too often can seem spammy, which may deter potential customers from looking into using your services. It’s all about finding that perfect balance.

You can’t prevent fluctuations in the marketplace or changes in technology. But by being prepared, you can deflect some of the negative effects of a slump and improve your overall bottom line.