This is a business in the travel industry. Most travel businesses were hit hard during the pandemic, but this business was completely shut down due to government restrictions. When the pandemic started, neither of us knew how long the shutdown would last, but we considered that the worst-case scenario would be longer than a year, which unfortunately turned out to be true.
Despite the forecast, this client decided to keep the SEO program running. The goal was to maintain and improve rankings while their competitors did nothing, so that they would be in the best position possible when the industry returned. With no new revenue coming in for more than a year, and having to pay employees with reserves, it was a tough period. But it paid off in the long run. Many of their competitors lost rankings and some of their top competitors went out of business, even after the industry recovered. We believe this was because they did nothing during the shutdowns and lost much of their rankings.
We, on the other hand, maintained rankings for nearly all of our #1-5 positions and even pushed many of our keywords into to the top #1-2 positions. We’ve made a full recovery and are now doing even better than the year before the pandemic started.