What is Google medic update and what does it mean to your website?

Every business is looking for the tones of traffic from Google organic search, well who doesn’t want more traffic?  If you get more traffic to your business website, you can convert them into quality leads or sales. So the competition to get a higher ranking in SERP is very high, people are trying to trick and tweak to push their website for better search results page ranking.

Right from the beginning, Google focusing on only one thing in all their SEO algorithm updates which is E.A.T. As a user, it makes more sense to see the search results from an expert in that field, who has authoritativeness and trustworthy, rather than getting results from random websites or blog pages.

All the Google algorithm updates are focusing on the relevancy of the search results and contents. So the E.A.T becomes an analyzing parameter for all contents to rank higher in the search engine's results page.

What is Google's E.A.T?

E.A.T is an acronym for Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. It received more recognition recently because SEO experts determine that Google emphasis more on these aspects in their ranking algorithm.

These are the essential quality of any content, per Google’s Quality Rater Guideline. Google quality evaluators score a page or content based on Quality Rater Guidelines, which again emphasizes more on E.A.T.  In fact, the results of a manual review will not have a direct impact on page ranking. However, the data shared by the quality evaluators will be used to develop efficient ranking algorithms.

On August 1st, 2018, Google confirmed that they released a broad core algorithm update. Google’s Danny Sullivan reiterated that Good content means a good ranking. All these indicate that the new algorithm emphasis more on E.A.T. Let us understand the Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness in detail.

E.A.T is directly related to YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) websites. If you are in any one of these areas in business financial, Legal, Medical, e-commerce then your business website comes under this category. You must pay serious attention to the E.A.T guidelines because this is a big deal for YMYL sites.

Google is getting better at figuring out, which websites are serving people’s needs. Most of the Google algorithm updates somehow tied back to its Quality Rater Guidelines, which is 160 pages long. But going through the Quality Rater Guidelines will surely help you to understand the SEO requirements for quality content writing.

E.A.T is one of the bigger ranking factors of Google than backlinks in my opinion. Let us understand them one by one,

Expertise

The term expertise stresses the author's knowledge and experience in the industry or field of content. For example, if the blog post is all about financial planning and investment advice then the content should be from a specialist in that field. Likewise, health updates or tips should be from a person who is a practitioner in this domain. At the same time, people can share their life events, experiences related to these topics will still be considered for the quality ranking, because that this the experience of people.

Authoritativeness

Expertise impacted by the authoritativeness, to prove to Google that you are an expert in the field of your work you should have online recognition. I think that is the only way Google can measure your authoritativeness. For example, a mention from the reputed online forum, council or conference publishes, etc.

Trustworthiness

Businesses can build trust by online reputation management, by providing well-researched content and useful information to the visitors. Every customer online review matters for your business per E.A.T if you have negative reviews, it will affect your ranking.

You may get a question, doesn't that open for a negative SEO opportunity. Well, as long you maintain the online reputation it will not affect you severely. For example responding to all the negative reviews, engaging with customers, building positive vibe will help you to skyrocket your search engine ranking.

What is Google medic update?

On August 1st Google confirmed through their Official tweets account Google's public liaison of search (@searchliaison) that Google released a core algorithm update, since then most of the YMYL business websites reporting a drop in their organic traffic, particularly medic industry websites, health product e-commerce stores have seen a significant impact.

Though the August 1st broad core Google algorithm update looks to be impacting the sites that are directly affecting user happiness such as health, financial stability, or safety, this update coined medic update as most of the impacts reported from fitness, healthcare business websites.

What Google medic update means to your website?

In the quality rater's guideline, Google broadly talks about the purpose of the website, user benefit, content distinguish, to rank the website quality.

If you go through the quality rater's guidelines, it emphasizes more on the high-quality main content of the website. Google rank the pages based on the E.A.T guidelines. In my view, the YMYL page guidelines and related algorithm update are the beginning in terms of improving their algorithm to provide a relevant, accurate search result to users by Google.

If you are the YMYL business website category, you would have already impact either positively or negatively. In case you see a drop in your organic traffic, you can follow the below recovery tips,

• Ensure you are producing quality content with well-researched reports and providing in-depth knowledge to the user.
• Incorporate authors profile in every blog or article page.
• Even if your author is an expert in the domain, ensure to get some online mentions or references to improve expertise score.
• In case you have outsourced your content writing, get an expert in the field to facts to check your content and mention his/her profile in the blog post.
• The online reputation of your blog or website plays an important role in authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
• In case you have negative reviews or comments online, respond back to your customers and build a reputation for your website.
• Ensure to improve the user experience of your website, like increasing loading speed, minimizing redirects, avoiding popups, etc.

If you are not a YMYL business website, be prepared for the upcoming Google algorithm updates. Incorporate all the Specification provided in Google Raters Guideline. Use the above-mentioned points to improve your website E.A.T.

Conclusion

E.A.T is very simple and straight, to get a high search engine ranking all you need to do is, be genuine in terms of creating content. Your content should meet the visitor's expectation, not the algorithm's. High-quality well-researched content with the right intention from authoritative sources will get you high in the SERP. I do not believe the short cuts, tricks, and tactics workarounds in E.A.T will not help you in the long run.