The August “Medic” Update
What Happened and Who Was Impacted?
A lot of sites were left in distress after the most recent Google search engine update, dubbed the medic update. This update was a broad core algorithm update and had a widespread effect. Like all major updates it was rolled out over the course of several days. There was large scale impact in all verticals, but the health and wellness sector was most gravely affected.
Many sites were hit due to poor content management and link building strategies. But even sites that ticked off all the SEO boxes were still hurt by the medic update, like one of ours. It became clear that our rankings were compromised not because we had done something wrong, but rather because other sites had been undervalued for the good content and link building they were generating.
The setback we were faced with was for a client of ours in the health and wellness sector. It wasn't major but their keyword rankings still decreased by 10%-15%. Six weeks have passed now since the update and we are once again back to where we were and climbing on a weekly basis. One of the biggest improvements we have experienced is the consistency within rankings. Post medic update our average position has been a lot less prone to fluctuation and is proving to be steadily climbing. Before the update we found that our ranking could greatly increase or decrease on a daily basis.
From the photo below you can see how one of our clients rankings were affected.
How to Respond to The Medic Update
When these core algorithm updates happen there isn't much we can do in the moment to change negative changes. There are however things you can do to boost your future ranking. Make sure your home page is content-rich and has a defined keyword strategy. You should aim to have at least 500 words of static text on your home page. Your home page should also have links to all your core inner pages. On your core inner pages aim to have at least 400 words of static text. With each core inner page being keyword specific, for example a page for each one of your services. Your footer needs to include your address and contact information. This information needs to be consistent across the board, as inconsistency can harm your rankings.
If all this has been done we need to make changes to arguably the most important section of website (in regards to SEO), the blog. Each and every image within blog posts needs to contain an appropriate alt tag. A good way to go about alt attributes is to write it as if you'd have to explain an image to a blind person. The blog section needs to have social media share buttons and have a comment section to encourage engagement. Include authors name and a bit of info about them to make them appear more personable or credible depending on the type of blog your writing for.
Beefing up your blog section and individual blog posts is a great way to boost your rankings. Go through your old blog posts and add new links to newer content and add new images and videos that might be more relevant and watch your rankings soar!
Some other helpful tips:
Write/re-write meta descriptions for all the top ranking pages
submit site map to Google
Add rich card structured
Delete/change duplicate content
disavow links from toxic domains
We hope this helps, if you were effected by the update and need help getting back on track please reach out to us and we'd be happy to provide a free site audit.