Written by Aaron Rains November 10th 2018

If you reading this article chance is your website has been negatively impacting by Google’s August 1st, 2018 Medical update and you wonder how to recover organic traffic. To start Google’s update has flipped the Medical Financial and Lawfirms online industry upside down. Google’s new algorithm is affecting thin content websites in these industries that can affect people decision making. What do I mean by this? Does your website content inform and answer the search intent of their search query?

How to recover from Google’s Medic Update:

Sitewide Check List

  • Display Real Company Details?
    • Make sure your website contact info is updated and your location is correct. Double check your local listing is all set up correctly and accurately. I personally recommend Moz local.
  • Have an About page with real people?
    • Make sure your About page is updated and has over 1,000 words. Google new update is about ETA’s signals which identify authority. Your bio pages should link to recent article mentions, awards or any PR. Link to Education Institutions where you attended. Link to all social sites and make sure your Linkedin bio update. I can’t stress this enough your bio is super important. Make sure you link to your new bio page from all major pages throughout your website. The same goes for Meet The Team pages.
  • Have a Privacy Policy page?
    • Make sure your privacy policy updates and provide accurate information. It might be best to link to the law firm that has helped with your policy.
  • Have client testimonials displayed?
    • Display testimonials throughout the website and link to where visitors can leave a testimonial or read more. If you are using a third party tool link to your main page where all testimonials are stored.
  • Have awards won displayed?
    • Show off all awards and mentions. Don’t just add an image about it but write a quick snippet about it and link to where they can read more about the award.
  • Have links from suitable authorities?
    • Work on getting quality links and not quantity. If your using an agency or private link company stop it. Before proceeding have an SEO consultant check your backlink Profile and ask to see all new links in the last 6 months. Check their spam score using tools like SEM Rush, Moz, and Kerboo. Link to a punch of low-quality domains is a sign to Google that your not an authoritative website. I highly recommend you read this article by one the best backlink profile consultants Michael Cottam. He explains how to find spammy links affect your rankings.
  • Have links between your strongest related articles?
    • If you have backlinks from High Domains link to them and share them on your social platforms.
  • Have unnecessary thin pages?
    • Go through your pages and Identify thin pages. Check their work count and make them better by adding more content. You might want to consolidate pages in one larger article page. Shoot for over 1,000 to 1,500 words. Remember your job as Medical Expert, Lawfirm or Financial advisors is to inform people helping people make an important decision that can affect their lives. Become the expert with quality content, not keywords.

 CONTENT CHECKS –  Is your content.

  • Written by an expert?
    • Is your content written by an expert in your industry? If you have an agency or higher a writer to help with content and blogging. Start writing the content in the first person the “doctor, lawyer or Advisors” is writing the content.
  • Reviewed and approved by an expert?
    • Make sure that you as the expert or professional reviews all content before publishing. The content as to be accurate and helpful.
  • Written with a strong purpose?
    • Don’t write content to simply add a new blog post or page based on a keyword. Write content based on the search intent. Spend the time researching and link to other resources that offer answers to the problems and is supported by multimedia outlets.
  • Approved by an editor for grammatical errors?
    • Check for grammatical errors. Google in the past has mention Grammer is important but especially when you are writing content that can affect decision making.

 AUTHOR CHECKS – Do you…

  • Have an expertise in one primary subject area?
    • Start to identify questions and problem people are facing in your industry and become the expert. Try focusing on certain subjects.
  • Have a bio.
    • Add bio pages about who is the writer the content and link to it. Who is the person writing your content? Mention your experience and qualifications in your biography. Have a link to your biography page on the content page. Have a short bio summary on the content where a profile page isn’t available.  Link to your related websites or social media? Link to your published content on other authority websites.

Get back the basic Follow Google SEO  Guidelines

Spend the time and read through Google’s guidelines so you have an understanding of how you should properly structure your website, write content, link building and a dozen other issues that can affect your website. Or you can contact me an Expert in SEO for over 12 years helping clients achieve higher ranking by following best practices.