It’s been a few weeks since Google’s latest core algorithm update was rolled out on August 1st and it seems to overwhelmingly affect medical and health sites.
Google classified it as a “broad core algorithm update” which was not necessarily about punishing medical, health, and fitness sites, but about rewarding pages with content geared towards user intent. Although coined the “medic update” by renowned SEO writer Barry Schwartz, it also affects e-commerce, business, and finance sites.
What We Know
Google claimed they made a broad core algorithm update, but other than that, they’ve been hush on the subject. All we do know is that since it's a core algorithm update, it affects sites around the world in every language. Commercial sites like eBay were also given a boost in rankings. The search engine giant usually makes these updates several times per year and that there’s “no fix” for pages that have dropped in rank. All Google (and TechWyse) suggests is to continue to focus on creating great content that covers as much information as possible on a topic.
From what we and other leading SEOs can tell is that it’s meant to show better results for the intent of a user’s search query in their buyer's journey. Google also has teams of “search quality raters” that manually study sites and provide a score for each based on their manual. This manual was also recently updated.
What You Can Do
This means you need to optimize service pages that have dropped in rank by adding more subheadings and paragraphs. A simple solution to building out content is to cover the “who, what, when, where, why, and how” of the focus keyword assigned to the page. This is also a sign that you need to utilize latent semantic indexing (LSI) on your pages, adding images optimized with alt text, adding examples and lists, and adding more internal links.
For example, if you have a physiotherapy site and your best performing page is acupuncture, then go beyond briefly explaining your service. Add information on types of acupuncture, examples of acupuncture, the history of acupuncture, and anything else that would be relevant to a user search query by adding keywords that are “in the arena” of the target keyword. This will create a high authority page that users will naturally link to because of how much research (by adding internal and external links) you put into the content.
For blogs, pay attention to who’s the author. If you’re a medical site, a blog post by a doctor that has a bio explaining their expertise and have written other blogs on the topic will be measurably more effective in influencing keyword rankings.
TechWyse is a leading digital marketing agency based in Toronto, Canada. If you would like to learn how you’re company could be generating more leads online, call TechWyse today at 866.208.3095 or contact us here.
