How to Recover from Google’s Medic Update #1

Was your medical / healthcare website affected by Google’s Medic update? In this 4 part series, I’m going to cover the main things you can start doing NOW to regain some of your losses. (Read Part 2, Part 3 or Part 4 here)

So what was the Google Medic Update? To summarize, it was one of Google’s many core algorithm updates but it had a skewed affect on health / medical related websites. It wasn’t targeted towards those types of sites but it affected them more so than others come to find out. Many reports, such as SEMrush’s Sensor, have shown that the category effected the most were YMYL websites or “Your Money Your Life” related. Here’s a snippet of how Google explains YMYL means:

What can you do to fix your medical / healthcare site that was affected? First off, you have to make sure you were affected by Medic. If you see that you have a medium to large drop in your website traffic / rankings around the first part of August 2018 AND your website is focused around health / medical, there’s a good chance that your site was hit.  In this series, I’m going to cover 4 main things that you can start doing to recover. Starting with #1…..

#1 of 4: Start Optimizing Your Website Content & Link Profile for Expertise, Authority and Trust.

Google literally calls the rating guideline they use to look at your website pages EAT. EAT stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness & Trustworthiness.

In my experience working with medical websites affected by Medic, many of them are talking about services that can dramatically affect ones life. I’m talking surgeries, in depth medical procedures, advice, etc. Because Google wants to deliver the best and most accurate data for their searchers, content like what I mentioned is ripe for the disruption. In order for you to have the T in EAT, you need to have:

• Tons of Positive Online Reviews
• Lots of Authority in Your Niche (On and Offline)
• A Linked Profile that Supports What You Do

Here are 6 simple steps to start your Medic recovery: 

1: If giving advice on surgery, procedures, etc, make sure that you have the most accurate information on that particular topic. Lengthy pages are fine too. If it takes 2000+ words and video to explain, take the extra time to do so.

2: Make sure that your “About Us” page is accessible and has info on your staff and who the major stakeholders are. If any of those people are authors on your site, make sure there are links to the sections of any content they may have written.

3: Start generating a consistent stream of good reviews online.

4: Generate backlinks to your URL from reputable sources. Not sure how? You may need to hire an Medical SEO agency that understands how this works.

5: Make sure you have a blog, updated often, with a bio about the author on each post.

6: Make sure to update your site pages, add new ones and interlink them often.

7: Need disclaimers? Make sure your site has them in the appropriate spots.

Follow these steps and you should be on your way to recovering from Google’s Medic update.