What’s the purpose of Google Medic Update?
Google constantly updates the algorithm that powers Google search. It happens daily. But one particular change, known as the Medic Update, caused a massive stir in the SEO community and affected thousands of websites in the health and fitness niches (to name a few). Nobody outside of Google (and possibly inside the search engine giant) knows what the algorithm changes were designed to do. We can only speculate, test, and analyze. But some industries saw considerable differences in their search traffic.
This Google update, dubbed the Medic Update by the SEO community, affected predominantly medical and financial businesses. The basis for the drop in rankings is linked to the Expertise, Authority, and Trust (EAT) guidelines that Google says determine the quality of a website.
This update is interesting to us because the updates seem to have affected health-related websites more than other niches. A few large, well-known health sites seem to have received penalties. Traffic numbers from Google search to their websites have plummeted. But their sites saw their traffic increase. Google keeps quiet about any changes. But companies that monitor the traffic and rankings of significant sites have shown big changes in search engine traffic.
How do Google Medic update factors affect the ranking in search?
The factors that influence the ranking of YMYL’s (Your Money or Your Life) websites in search results apply to search engine optimization on all sites. Google calls these aspects “Website Quality” (WQ). Google’s WQ relies on Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (EAT) as an indicator. Let’s take a look at each one concerning medical websites.
Expertise: Medical advice should be written or developed by individuals or groups who have the appropriate expertise in medicine or certification.
Authoritativeness: There should be evidence of medical expertise or authority on the primary content on the site (MC) and third websites of third parties.
Trustworthiness Google declares that this is “adequate information about the Web site or the creator of the MC to serve the purpose of the page.”
It may sound daunting, but it’s a part of what we do to improve the performance of all websites. It does highlight the importance of this component of SEO is.
What is the best way to optimize it for E-A-T?
Here are a few most important steps you can implement to make your website more effective for the EAT.
Make sure to enhance your company’s profile page and the bios of individual authors’ pages with information about the author’s credentials and knowledge.
Customer reviews and testimonials about your products and services. Encourage user reviews on the internet.
We establish your company’s authority through additional platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other credible websites.
Add contact details on every page, and at least, you should have a complete “Contact Us” page with a phone or email address, and physical address. Also, it’s imperative to establish an “About Us” page that lists employees and their qualifications, degrees, or certifications. Some employees may not be interested in displaying their work status and this can hinder a business’ trust factor. If you have employees who are not eager to list themselves please tell them that Google applies weight to individual social profiles, especially Linkedin because it’s is a business focussed social site. By employees keeping records of their personally employment they will essentially be adding value to their personal social accounts. Value for employees means higher ranking for business’. For instance, if you have employees who receive favorable press coverage from well-known outlets and get featured in popular publications with high authority it will translate to higher rankings for you. Employees should reward these workers with special privileges or pay for setting up these accounts and monitoring them.
Intent Theory of Query
Mirroring your site’s content to searcher’s intent is essential for every SEO campaign. This means that even you have a great website EAT, however, if your content does not reflect your visitors’ search preferences, you could be struggling to rank and consequently lose website visits.
The answer is to do the best you can to make sure that your funnel page’s content matches what the user might ask or expect to receive a response to their question.
Content Theory
The longer and more organized the page’s content (relative to your competitor’s similar pages), the higher chance you can expect in the rankings. The goal is to answer questions or give information on your medical services. Therefore, competitive research using this content theory must be considered part of an SEO campaign.
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