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Google are notoriously oblique about their algorithm updates and have a standard statement when releasing updates, often saying that they are doing it to support pages that are under supported. They released an update in August which has been nicknamed ‘The Medic Update’ because the sites that have been mainly impacted are health, medical, fitness and lifestyle sites.
I’ve spoken to a few clinics and several medical SEO agencies about this and everyone single one has told me their SERPS (search engine results positioning) has been affected which pages that were previously in top three or five positions being relegated off the front page. Why is this important? Because SEO brings you traffic which brings you conversions and paying clients. This is a big deal!
I chatted to a Google algorithm update expert about this and her belief is that this update is another quality improvement so trying to match search results with the users intentions, Google have added a concept of ‘beneficial purpose’ to the quality rating guidelines - so this not only looks at the quality of the content on the page (no keyword stuffing, quality information etc) but also looks at whether or not the page has beneficial purpose or use being on the site and evaluates if people would consider the page useful and if they would come back again - they look at what the site visitors gains from being on your site, the concept of ‘page purpose’. So for example, if i am searching for ‘cost of lip fillers’ I am now less likely to see pages that don’t cover off the answer to this question in a quality fashion, it will show me pages that match my search query AND my search intent.
Photo by Edho Pratama on Unsplash
What does this mean for clinics?
Many clinics are seeing previously highly trafficked pages decreasing in positioning, resulting in lower numbers of enquiries online.
If you’re seeing your positioning for previously highly ranked pages decreasing you need to do some investigation across your site
What should I do to fix this?
Google will never give you a step by step guide to getting to number one or one page one, BUT they do give hints. The biggest hint they’ve given us on this update is the addition of the ‘Quality Rater Guidelines’ which stress the importance of Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust (E.A.T).
If you want to find out how you can specifically improve your site and address any declining traffic I am offering a completely free website review and recommendations package (worth £250) to the first three UK clinics who contact me. This will include a brief overview of your sites performance (I will need access to your Google Analytics for this) and at least five recommendations of changes you can make to help address any impacts of this update.