Google Medic Update: What Have We Learned 5 Months Later
If you are unfamiliar with the Google Medic Update that hit August 1, 2018, and then had a follow up on Sept 27th, 2018, you probably weren’t affected by it (lucky you!). But for those sites that were, it had a drastic and stressful impact on traffic, sales and your hair line. I personally had one client (two websites) that were hit by the Medic Update on both August 1st and Sept 27th. The name “Medic” was given to it because it mainly effected medical, fitness and health related websites, though the law and money industries were hit as well, just not as badly.
What Did Google Say About It?
Nothing really. They didn’t give too much in-depth information about this update. All they mainly said was to keep an eye on Google’s Quality Guidelines. Now experts from around the industry dove into those guidelines and what came out of it was E.A.T.
What is E.A.T?
Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness. This is what Google wants from you and your website. Seems straight forward enough right? Well there are tons of different things that can effect this. How long you have been in business, what customers say about you, what information you provide on your website, who is saying what is on your website and much more. You really just need to show Google you are a legitimate business and not putting your customer’s health or money in jeopardy. Now you may be a living saint, but if Google doesn’t see that in your website, it’s not going to matter.
How Can You Improve Your E.A.T?
Now it’s going to be different for each business and each industry, but here are a few common things you can do.
Cite sources if you are making claims. This can help show that you are giving information that is real and not just marketing talk.
Have a great About Us page. You want to show Google you are a real company and not shipping out medical supplies out of a tent in your parent’s backyard.
Show all contact information. Phone numbers, emails, live chat, online form. The more the better.
Talk about yourself if you are doing the writing. Show why you are an expert at this topic. Not an expert? Find one and hire them. Let them do the writing and show that this person is making these claims and knows what they are talking about.
Get reviews from 3rd parties. Whether it is Shopper Approved, Trust Pilot, Google My Business, the BBB. You want to have plenty of reviews from real customers online.
Make sure your site is HTTPS. This shows your entire site is secure.
Get great back links. See about getting some back links from important sites. Doing this is a whole other conversion though and is time consuming, but important.
Add badges. Are you part of your community’s Chamber of Commerce. Show it! Did your company win an award? Show it! You need to stop being modest and brag about yourself and your business.
Remove private registration from your domain’s registrar. Now I am not positive about this one, but it goes look shady if you are hiding this.
Now there are a lot of other things to check as well, but they are some common and no-so-hard ways of improving your E.A.T. score with Google.
Who Has Recovered?
No one from what I have read! I have been working on the two client sites for sometime now, and only noticed a slight recovery from one of them. Now with these two, I am actually not even sure the above ideas were the reason for them getting hit. We had did a huge migration from Magento to Shopify Plus back in May, and had several issues arise that couldn’t definitely look shady and against E.A.T. Recommendation…never migrate two similar sites at the same time! Anyway, I have put in a lot of the fixes (just finished in December 2018), so if any recovery is possible, I am hoping to see it soon, but will definitely keep everyone updated.
What Should You Do?
Well you can take some of my advice from above or you can contact me and I would love to help!