Over the years, Google has been rolling out updates that are geared toward improving site’s ranking and quality content creation. In the recent past, on the first two days of August 2018 to be precise, another broad core algorithm update was implemented. Popularly known as Google Medic Update 2018, there was quite a lot of buzz around it. Some popular sites are deemed to have lost, while others won, which is somewhat logical because at the end of the day it’s a zero-sum game! Let’s delve into this topic and unravel the mysteries of Google Medic Update 2018.
What is Google Medic Update 2018?
As previously stated, Google has been launching several updates quite often to improve the site’s ranking. Although Google did not call it ”Medic Update”, most prolific writers like Barry Schwartz called it that. The very first iteration of this update hit websites in July 2018 and it continued to roll out over several weeks. The mother of it all was at the beginning of August 2018. What followed were several days of heavy ranking flux, which can be confirmed easily in chat streams across many websites.
While Google has not said anything in particular about the update, not much is known as at this time. However, it is important to note that the update did not target medical sites only. Yes, many websites in other niches were affected as well, such as insurance, e-commerce, finance, entertainment, business-to-business, deal sites, and so on and so forth. But the most interesting thing is that many of the e-commerce sites that sell medical or health-related stuff were heavily hit by the update. This perhaps explains why many SEO experts decide to call it “Google Medic Update”.
What happened during the update?
Now you know why it was nicknamed the “Medic Update”, so what happened during and after this major update? With the recent update, Google changed the implication of its algorithm’s core ranking dynamics. In other words, it altered the overall framework with which a website’s content is ranked in its search results. Notably, a big number of sites saw momentous changes in visibility index, with medical industry websites being affected the most. While some SEO experts urge that the update was envisioned to show superior outcomes for the intent of a user’s search inquiry in their customer’s journey, others were of the opinion that its purpose was to bring more supremacy to websites with higher authority.
How do you know if your website was affected?
You may be wondering if your website was affected by the Google Medic Update, and so are many other website owners! It is simple and straightforward to discern this; just look at any slight changes in your Google ranking and carry out the modest math of comparing them to their positions before the beginning of August. If ranking changed immensely, either positively or negatively, then your site has been affected by the update.
So, what can you do?
Prior to the update, Google made it clear that there will be no specific fix for the “Medic Update”. This statement alone may have left many people who have had their sites affected and lost ranking feeling hopeless. However, there is some good news at the end of the tunnel! Health-based websites struggling with poor ranking because of the update should focus on high quality and organic content. They also need an emphasis on achieving EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) standards. Optimize those service pages that dropped in rank by typically adding more paragraphs and subheadings. Improve content creation by learning how to focus on keywords. Experts advise exploiting Latent Semantic Indexing (or LSI) on pages, adding images, examples and lists, and even adding more internal links. Yes, to implement all these can be a little bit problematic, but you can always hire an SEO agency if you feel your website was hit by the Google Medic update.
