Google Medic Update

When considering your online strategy and Search Engine Optimisation services, you always need to be considering search engine algorithms. Google updates its algorithms regularly, which is why it is essential to stay on top of these updates, as they may affect your business, your search engine rankings and how you optimise your business content as a whole.

One crucial example of this, and one substantial recent update Google proceeded with, was the Google Medic Update back in August 2018. This is a prime example of how Google’s changing nature can affect the rankings of many websites, while the content itself does not change or has already been optimised.

What was the Google Medic Update?

The Medic Update 2018 was one of the largest ever incorporated by Google, and its primary focus was those results related to health, medical websites and fitness services. This Google medic update was intended to improve the quality of results – as Google actively strives for regularly – and therefore intend for more related and high-quality business results to show up in the realm of health and fitness especially.

Google had referenced it as a more global, general update, yet there was a clear focus on the medical and health business sites. That being said, it is essential to note that any category of business may have been affected by the update, despite the moniker of Medic Update correctly being applied.

You may have seen your website rankings affected at the time during the August 2018 update and may not have fully understood the reasons why. It’s therefore highly likely that your website traffic may have been affected as a result of the Google Medic Update.

Who Did the Google Health Update Impact?

According to Google, this broad update could have impacted any business category or business niche. Still, based on data and findings by SEO services, it appears that a huge focus has been on medical and health websites.

This update severely impacted high-quality websites which had worked hard to optimise their content according to Google expectations, leaving many businesses frustrated and the work of an SEO expert unfulfilled.

With the impact of the medic update Google in mind, it’s more important than ever that your website content and online business content is kept on track and continuously managed by SEO experts. When updates like these happen, all you can do in response is ensure that your content is once again engaging, optimised and the best it can be, and that’s where the best content writing services can be a huge boon for your business.

Money and Life Events Pages

Despite the significant focus on health and medical websites, it appears that this update has also had an effect on those websites related to money and life events. These websites are the type to discuss lifestyle issues, general health, finance advice and more. These websites are also known as Your Money or Your Life pages (or YMYL) which are defined by Google as websites which may be misrepresented or what Google would label as low quality.

Therefore, as you can see, regardless of the health and medical field focus, other sites have easily been affected by this update, too.

Is There a Fix to the Google Medic Update?

There is no direct fix for the repercussions following this update. All businesses can do now is strive for improved and high-quality content to ensure that it’s always top priority and still picked up by Google. To achieve this in the best possible way, you can employ a search engine marketing agency to provide content writing services, b2b SEO strategy and more, to ensure your business website is fully functioning, engaging and optimising keywords and phrases in the best possible way.

Google’s evident focus with the Medic Update was to primarily provide a boost to those pages which initially were under-performing, rather than changing anything regarding the top-performing pages. Unfortunately, what this meant was that more pages were being bumped up to compete with top-performing pages, with the result that all engaging and high-quality, optimised content was still applicable, but now working under a completely different algorithm.

How Businesses Can Recover from the Google Medic Update

Google’s main advice following the update has been to focus on building great content. Which, naturally, is excellent advice, and which can be achieved even further through SEO content writing services. Nevertheless, it doesn’t provide much healing for those businesses severely impacted by the update.

Moving forward as a business, your focus should always be on optimising your content to be noticed and respected by Google’s latest algorithms.

Operating under the face of Google’s policy of E.A.T, wherein Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness are essential, your business website should, therefore, be trying to create a more expert reputation in everything it delivers.

Creating Even Better Content

Climbing higher in the search engine rankings of Google is always about trust and authority – and this hasn’t changed since the Google Medic Update of 2018. Therefore clarifying your content following this update is still about being the most authoritative and trustworthy you can be in your category of business.

How to Build Greater Trust

You need to express as much expertise and credentials as you can on your business website, and with any online content, you provide. If you have relevant business qualifications, awards and more, then be sure to always speak about them on your website and display relevant credential listings.

Furthermore, consumer reviews and testimonials will always work in your favour, both with climbing the Google rankings and showing website visitors that your business service can be trusted. Therefore, if you’re not working hard to gain reviews, or else not publicly displaying any positive reviews on your website, this should be rectified.

Also, use all relevant authority platforms to your advantage. Make sure you have a presence on social media to bolster your reputation.

Be open and transparent with all your information, providing as much contact information in particular as you can. Clear and concise contact information will only serve to breed trust.

Our tailored SEO service is always ready to help you build trust and display your expertise in the best way.

You can also look to find opportunities with other authoritative websites, such as writing a guest post to promote your business name. Networking with other authoritative businesses will always be an advantage. As a b2b SEO agency, we know how to connect best with other businesses and how to help you achieve your goals.

Understanding the Query Intent Theory

Google’s Medic Update appeared to be focused on the intent of the search query. This means that more priority may be given to those pages which better answer a specific query, exactly the way it is worded as an individual types it.

In light of this, it is a good idea to better tailor all website content to a specific search query. For this, you need to think about how a searcher would actually word and ask their specific question, and how your keywords and content can best serve to answer a question written in this manner.

While it may seem a challenging prospect to understand how exactly a consumer might decide to word a question, you can pick up on trends and popular search terms through SEO research. A dedicated SEO agency can help you with optimising your content to make it better suited to specific search terms.

Think About Quantity As Well As Quality

Your content is always going to need to be high-quality and authoritative, but that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be as lengthy and substantial as possible. While it is essential to avoid overcomplicating pages and having wordy and extensive pages of writing which website visitors could easily become bored with, it is also essential to make sure that as much detail and essential information is included as possible.

Longer and more substantial content can be seen as more detailed and relevant to a query question posed to Google, which means it may have more of a chance compared to short pieces of content – even if those short pieces contain all relevant information.

Content writing services can help you to focus on appropriate writing styles, quantity and engaging topics.

Using an SEO Specialist to Tackle Updates

Employing the services of search engine and content experts like Click Intelligence is hugely beneficial when updates like this occur. SEO experts will be able to investigate how updates have impacted rankings and how your content needs to be changed to align with this.

Contact Click Intelligence

If your business has been affected by the Google Medic Update and you’re looking to build your content back up to optimum level, or if you’re unsure how the Medic Update has directly impacted your business and website content, we can help. As an SEO specialist agency, we understand what it takes to arrive back exactly where you should be within the search rankings following this update.

Our SEO b2b services and more are ready to provide whatever you need to build your content back up.