Marketers are scrambling to adjust their SEO strategies to account for the
COVID-19 pandemic.
That’s why it’s important to explore its impact on search interest trends and organic performance in retail.
As more users stay home and avoid public places, we understand that there is a shift in online behavior.
We have examined these initial behavioral shifts in the age of COVID-19 to better understand the retail landscape.
Our initial findings show that there are two categories of retail sites experiencing opposite organic impacts:
Retail sites that carry essential goods have experienced positive organic traffic growth.
Retail sites that carry non-essential items have experienced organic traffic declines.
Additionally, essential retail sites are seeing accelerated growth in clicks two weeks after the initial data collection, while the rate at which non-essential retail sites are losing traffic is slowing.
Methodology
We chose to examine retail clients because their bottom line is being directly and instantly impacted by the lack of consumers visiting their brick-and-mortar stores.
We examined:
53 Merkle retail client properties.
Broke each retailer into either essential and non-essential for a pandemic.
Examples of essential retailers: grocers, drugstores, general big-box merchandisers.
Examples of non-essential retailers: apparel, home goods, specialty big-box merchandisers.
Results
The Novel Coronavirus (a.k.a., COVID-19) has had a mixed impact on organic performance across retail clients.
There were two primary retail categories that arose as having opposite performance impacts:
Essential retail (e.g., grocery stores)
Non-essential retail (e.g., clothing stores)
Non-essential retail sites are seeing negative week-over-week (W/W) and year-over-year (Y/Y) organic click changes, while essential retail sites are seeing positive changes, as seen in the chart below:
Essential retailers are gaining organic traffic at an accelerated rate each week.
Non-essential retailers are losing organic traffic at a slower rate.
Analysis
Why are we seeing these changes in search performance across essential and non-essential retail sites?
There are many reasons – including changes in user search behavior.
For example, the lack of travel during this year’s spring break has influenced pre-travel searches and merchandise purchases like spring break attire.
Additionally, the growing concern of the coronavirus has likely disrupted users’ typical search patterns and redirected their attention away from more traditional retail searches to more timely searches that reflect their concerns.
This overall shift in search interest has likely contributed to the drop in organic performance of non-essential retail sites.
Also, users are trending positively toward essential searches over non-essential searches as they pivot their search interests to adjust to the necessary COVID-19 lifestyle changes.
however, according to Andrew Lipsman, a principal analyst at eMarketer, users’ “household needs don’t simply go away and may even increase, with many looking to stockpile resources.”
As the concern about COVID-19 rises, we expect users to be more concerned with stocking up on essential items in the coming weeks.
The future of retail in the coming weeks will be constantly changing, and we expect organic performance to reflect this uncertainty.
Results
The Novel Coronavirus (a.k.a., COVID-19) has had a mixed impact on organic performance across retail clients.
Essential retail (e.g., grocery stores)
Non-essential retail (e.g., clothing stores)
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