In 2018 Google released a very important update where they started looking at whether somebody that is giving advice on the internet has the authority or the qualification in which to do so one of the areas that they particularly looked at was that of health care and well-being and a lot of websites were affected in the following article I will give you some information about this update and also some advice on what you can do for your own website in order to avoid losing traffic because you are a Healthcare or a Wellbeing professional

First of all what is the ‘medic update’?   The medic update was part of a broad update which was issued by Google for their search engine at the end of July in 2018.  

Google now focuses strongly on “E-A-T” which stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.

It’s expected that a publisher can demonstrate on their website that they are the experts in their chosen subject and have authority within their circles and are worthy of being trusted by potential clients, peers and reviewers.

They are saying that advice should be “written by people or organisations with appropriate accreditation or medical expertise it should also be produced in a professional style and edited reviewed and updated regularly”.

Google is looking to provide factual health and medical information that does not have the potential to cause harm for its users.  

Content should not “ Potentially impact the future happiness health financial stability or safety [of users]”

This meant that a lot of websites in the Medical or E-Commerce sector had reduced visibility to some of their services or products if they were unable to show that they had such Expertise Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.

Adapted from article on Exposure Ninja, click for more

This meant that people Giving such advice would be preferably Verified by government institution Medical Association relevant charity their peer reviewers or a nationally recognised qualification.   The more of that the better.

Google will also look as always with every sector whether the content quality quality matches the EAT and/or the user’s Intent.

They will also take into account the quality as a whole across the entire website whether the content is accessible and easy to use on a mobile phone, whether it can be navigated with ease,  loads quickly and is original content.

One of the best ways to get a quick idea of whether your website holds up these standards is to ask other people’s opinion of it never trust your own judgement because you will suffer from something called the Curse of knowledge which in marketing circles is well-known it means you can’t undo what you already know so therefore you can’t think in the mind of newcomers to your website.

And last but not least Google will also take into account whether there any errors in your health of your web site whether there’s broken links if it’s running slowly if you have internal links where the other people are linking to your website from quality websites and whether you have a security certificate (SSL).

So here are my top 10 tips for making sure your website is following these rules

1. Have your author displayed Make sure it has a suitable BIO with a description of your qualification and authoritativeness.
2. Make sure that whoever writes articles on your site has suitable credentials in order to give the advice they give, especially if it’s you.
3. Link to a profile of the author, with more detailed information about their qualifications, where they were gained and other relevant info to show they have “EAT”.
4. Make sure the author’s profile also has outbound social network links, particularly for LinkedIn, so that Google can quickly check whether they are who they say they are.  This includes you on your own website.
5. Try and get the content reviewed, and have the name of the reviewer displayed on the content, preferably by a peer with higher qualifications.
6. Make sure that the credentials of the reviewer are also available on your website.
7. Link to the profile of your reviewer on your The content.
8. If you have a reviewer profile make sure they to have social networks links leading away from their profile
9. Ensure the reviewer also shows their  “E.A.T.”

Is also excellent practice for you to make it easy for your users to verify you on your about page your contact details your privacy policies disclaimers articles blogs and sales pages.  Every time you create some content for your website make sure that you back it up with links outbound to your credibility.

Think of every link on your website like an academic citation Google might broaden its checks to elsewhere on the web and it will also look at your natural language processing and writing stars too sure that you’re not copying other people who are more qualified.

I do hope this helps, a lot of people are unaware of this update and I think if you’re a therapist or somebody who’s working therapeutically it’s essential that you know this information.  

If you would like more information on the topic or you’re not sure what to do please feel free to give me a shout my email address is claire@easywebsiteclub.com