Machine Learning and AI have changed everything about The Internet. The new Helpful Content algorithm update from Google is another example of this.

Google has created this new so-called Helpful update using Machine Learning and Artificial intelligence to better understand the content on a page similar to the way a human would. As a result, it can tell if the content on a website is actually helpful to a human user or if it was written solely to pull in search engine rankings and traffic.

What Was The 2023 Helpful Content Update Like?

The Google September 2023 Helpful Content Update significantly impacted the SEO community, showcasing less volatility compared to previous updates. Despite reduced volatility indicated by various tracking tools, the SEO industry observed notable ranking changes. This update seemed to affect more heavily SEO-optimized sites rather than average websites. Different industries experienced varied effects, displaying a spectrum of winners and losers. This update appeared to have more of a substantial impact on the SEO industry compared to the general website owner landscape.

How Does The Google Helpful Content Update Work?

As the algorithm processes websites, it uses a large number of unpublished criteria to determine the following specific items about the website it is reviewing:

1. Is the content written to answer a real question or guide an actual human to a factually correct result?
2. Is the content unique to the website it is on and not just aggregated from a number of sources?
3. Is the website hosting this content an authority – or – is it reputable?
4. Is the content low in quality or simply written to gather search engine rankings?

Content that is not written to directly answer a question or guide a user to the actual information they are seeking may receive a negative impact within Google search results.

Who Does The Helpful Content Update Impact?

While the Helpful Content Update may impact all websites across the web, the most likely candidates to be negatively impacted by the Helpful Content Update are the following types of websites:

• Aggregate Review sites for Products or Places: Sites that have minimal unique content and are simply a gathering of information will likely not fare well following the Helpful Content update in 2023.
• Websites That Simply Exist For Search Traffic: If someone has created a website simply to answer questions on the web and therefore gain a large number of search engine rankings so they can promote advertising, they are likely to get their rankings impacted by the algorithm update.
• Film/Media Sites That Provide Content For Searches They Cannot Answer: Large video game news sites, movie rumor sites, and more that frequently post articles without knowing the answer or actually providing the answer will likely be negatively impacted by the Helpful Content algorithm update.

What Will The Helpful Content Update Do To Websites?

Quite simply, the Helpful Content Update will likely negatively impact the rankings of the websites it reviews and finds not to be trustworthy or as helpful to answering a search query.

And that is also where the Helpful Content Update is unique compared to previous content updates on Google that penalize individual pages of content, as opposed to an entire website. Because of that domain level impact, penalties suffered as a result of the Helpful Content Update are going to more closely resemble other famously named updates like Panda or Medic.

Will the Helpful Content Update Hurt My Entire Website Or Just A Page?

While previous Google algorithm updates frequently only targeted specific pieces of content or pages within a site, it appears the Helpful Content Update will impact the ENTIRE website if it finds content on the domain to be unhelpful.

To combat this potentially devastating scenario, webmasters need to begin creating content on their websites that is unique, has authority, and is something they know well enough to be considered an expert.

I Have Done SEO – Will The Helpful Content Update Hurt My Website?

If you have followed proper SEO best practices, have built up your site’s authority within Google by offering unique, technically and factually sound information, and have properly stated who you are and why you are an expert on your subject – it is unlikely you will be impacted as much as websites that simply have pushed out spammy content with no real authority.

To learn more about how to build authority on your website, check out this clip below from our agency President, Justin Seibert.

What Do I Need To Do To Rank After The 2023 Helpful Content Update?

If you have been hit by the Helpful Content Update there is likely only one solution to regain your traffic and rankings you had prior to the algorithm update:

Build Authority.

The best way to rank your website and avoid all future algorithm updates is to become an expert in the eyes of Google. Below are three ways to future-proof your content from algorithm updates like this.

1. Begin writing content that answers search engine queries from users that is factually and technically sound and comes with an interesting viewpoint.
2. Your content needs to be 100% unique and not just a rehash of someone else’s material.
3. Your content also needs to explicitly state why you are considered a reliable source, including information on:
   1. who wrote the content on the site
   2. whether it has been peer-reviewed or approved in any way, and
   3. the credentials of the people who work on the website

Have You Been Hit By This Algorithm Update?

If your website has been hit by the Helpful Content Update and you have followed these steps – we would love to hear from you and understand your experience.

Please reach out so we can help diagnose your situation.

The post What Is The Google Helpful Content Update? appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

That said, there are several options for getting performance grades on how fast your website content gets delivered to your visitors. You may use something like GTMetrix, YSlow, or Uptrends – and we can’t blame you for that.

However, one thing that can’t be debated is that Google recently included page speed in its updated focus on core web vitals, and that was for a good reason:

if your page is slow, people won’t want to visit it.

Considering that’s exactly the opposite of what we want as SEO professionals, we use a couple of important tools to speed. We wanted to know and maybe you want to know, too: which is better, PageSpeed Insights vs Pingdom?

One Good Tool Is Good, More Is Better

We use both tools as part of our SEO site audit processes. The most common implementation is to use Google’s insights tool as the default with the backup use of Pingdom if a page doesn’t have a lot of traffic. Both have their benefits.

Google PageSpeed Insights

If there’s an official tool by Google, we’re going to use it. After all, their search engine is the one we want to rank for.

And we don’t need to cite data here to prove that it’s the top search engine in the world—okay, fine, here you go: according to statista.com, Google has 86% of the search engine market share.

Google’s tools are always going to give us the most accurate data as it relates to metrics that are important to Google. If the metrics matter to Google, then that means the metrics are important to us. Contentful paints, input delays, layout shifts, all of them.

As long as it has so much of the search volume, supplying a gargantuan share of the organic traffic on the internet, then we would be silly to ignore it.

Pingdom Page Speed Test

You might be wondering why we would use anything other than Google PageSpeed Insights, if the results we get from it are so valuable. We don’t do anything without data, and that’s where Pingdom helps us—it provides good data, sure, but it also has a bonus feature that Google doesn’t: transparency.

The primary measurement of page speed is called ping time, which is another term for latency, or how long it takes for the data to go from your device to the page you’re visiting, and then back to your device.

We don’t know the actual source of Google’s site speed measurements, whereas Pingdom, on the other hand, tells us exactly where its servers are.

That’s good because, even in this age of fast-as-light data transfers, distance still matters. A page that is hosted in a location thousands of miles from a person visiting it is prone to higher latency, or ping time. After all, we haven’t invented a technology that can move faster than light.

Not only does Pingdom tell you where the servers are, it lets you choose which server to use in your latency tests. That’s something Google doesn’t offer, and it can be really useful when your website’s traffic tends to come from one specific place. You can also use Pingdom to find out whether the site speed differences you might be seeing are geographic.

Pingdom, of course, is just one of a “comprehensive set of turnkey infrastructure integrations” from Solarwinds. Without getting too promotional for this solution, Pingdom also has additional products to do transaction monitoring, alerting, and more.

Pingdom’s Onload Time vs. Google Page Speed’s Time to Interactive

Onload Time (a Pingdom page speed metric) factors in that some elements on the page may not load before the browser requests it—like a JavaScript-based image carousel. While things like browser caching and lazy loading of images are great, this setup can create a false sense of security for marketers because Pingdom will often report faster page load times than what a user actually experiences.

This is especially true on sites with high mobile device usage and sites with a global reach to areas reliant on 3G or slower connections for internet access.

Time to Interactive (Google’s metric) is the amount of time it takes the page to fully load every element and function. You have more extreme timings in these reports, but you also have a more honest look at how long it can take for a user to gain access to the complete site experience on a device.

Instead of Google’s Time to Interactive metric, a better comparison for Pingdom’s Onload Time metric is Google’s Speed Index metric.

Here’s a comparison of those two for a random page on the internet.

1. Pingdom Load Time: 3.69 seconds
2. Google PageSpeed Mobile Page Speed Index: 16.2 seconds
3. Google PageSpeed Desktop Speed Index: 5 seconds

Clearly, the desktop results from both Google and Pingdom are much closer to each other. But we’re also seeing a pretty wide gap between the desktop experience and the mobile experience.

How does that happen?

Emulation

The leading theory, and one that seems to match the data, is that Pingdom likely uses a real world browser simulation to do its speed testing and page evaluation. While Google Page Speed uses an emulated browser in situations where there is no field data or lab data collected in Google Chrome.

That emulation can cause a discrepancy that is important to keep in mind.

The Conclusion: Which One is Better?

The answer… is both! We told you from the top: we use Google Page Speed Insights most of the time, and Pingdom page speed is great for filling in the cracks that can appear.

Of course, there are other options out there in the market for page speed testing. We would be short sighted to not acknowledge tools like GTMetrix, YSlow, Uptrends, and a variety of other proprietary and open source solutions.

As with so many measurements, you’re almost always better off relying on more than one source for your web performance data.

Of course, neither of these free to use tools are a replacement for getting real user insights in real time. But both can be a great place to start if you want some easy pointers on improving page performance and the timings of delivery for your site.

To get more information on the topic of website speed, we have multiple resources for you to check out.

• Are Your Site Pages Up To (Google) Speed?
• Core Web Vitals Update: It’s Coming (Eventually)
• How To Tell If Your Website Load Times Are Hurting Your Business
• How To Crush Your Unminified JavaScript And CSS Issues In Site Audits

Or, if you’d rather just speak to someone about how to make your mobile and desktop pages faster, you’re welcome to contact us today for a free consultation.

Not quite ready to speak to us? No problem, you may want to start out by learning more about our status as a Google Premier Partner and what that means for you.

The post Which Site Speed Tool is Better? Google PageSpeed Insights vs Pingdom (Updated 2022) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Since then, digital marketers near and far have treated his comments as the gospel of the impact of social media on SEO. Whether in digital marketing trade publications or forums, Cutts’ sentiment/clarification has served as the go-to source for clarity.

But did he tell the truth? Or did we fail to interpret him correctly?

First, watch and listen to what Cutt’s says in the now-infamous video, “Are pages from social media sites ranked differently?”.

He seems honest enough, right?

Yet discord remains because other evidence counters Cutts’ denial that social media activity has an impact on SEO. In 2018, a Hootsuite experiment determined that successful social media campaigns encourage higher search result rankings. The experiment displayed a solid trendline favoring increased SEO rankings on social media posts with higher social engagement. Even now, in 2020, the number of social media platforms is higher than ever.

The confusion over the SEO and social media relationship stymies SEO optimizers. The fact is, social media labor is hardly a trivial endeavor. It’s work (and lots of it). It’s another wing of your digital marketing business that requires energy, focus, and possibly financing.

Who wants to spend more money and more brainpower on a mere promise of improved search exposure?

Well, maybe we are looking at this wrong.

Let’s break that down.

The Impact of Social Media on SEO

It’s important to understand from the outset that although Google’s communications over its ranking factors feel more affable these days, they still remain dutifully protective over the machine’s nucleus.

Hence, no matter how friendly Google’s outreach seems, it remains an Exacto knife slicing precisely at definitive, purposeful lines that conceal information that might lead to search marketing fraud.

In other words, listen to Google execs and consider the provided nuggets, but keep the salt on hand.

Let’s consider the exact exchange between Cutts and a digital marketer named Ryan from Michigan.

“Are Facebook and Twitter signals part of the ranking algorithm? How much do they matter?”

First, Cutts notes that Facebook and Twitter both are crawlable web properties in equal capacity with the rest of the web. This implies that a link on Facebook could be a prompt to index a page. Clearly, using Google Console and appropriate site map application, a marketer can prompt a crawl by Google’s bots.

What Cutts means is that Facebook is no different than any other website. If you are linked on a website that gets crawled by Google bot, chances are, your link will experience a crawl.

So that’s definitely not saying that Facebook or social media fuel any added SEO benefits.

Maybe there’s more to the story

So what then did Cutts say in his answer that’s now become controversial marketing lore?

“But as far as doing any special work to say that you have this many followers on Twitter or this many likes on Facebook, to the best of my knowledge, we don’t currently have any signals like that in our web search ranking algorithm.

Let me talk a little bit about why not.

We have to crawl the web in order to find pages on those two web properties. And um, we’ve had at least one experience where we were blocked from crawling for about a month and a half. And so the idea of doing a lot of special engineering work to try to extract some data from web pages when we might get blocked from being able to crawl those web pages in the future is something where the engineers would be a little bit leary about doing that.

It’s also tricky because Google crawls the web and as we crawl the web, we are sampling the web at finite periods of time…we’re crawling and fetching a particular web page. And so if we’re fetching a particular web page we know what it said at one point in time but something on that page could change. Someone could change the relationship status or someone could block a follower. So, it would be a little unfortunate if we tried to extract some data from the pages that we crawled and we, later on, found out, that for example, a wife had blocked an abusive husband or something like that and just because we happened to crawl it at the exact moment when those two profiles were linked, we started to return pages we’d crawled.

So, because we are sampling an imperfect web, we have to worry a lot about identity when identity is already hard.”

Breaking Down Cutts’ Social Media and SEO Relationship

At first read (or listen), it sure feels as though Cutts drives home an ironclad SEO principle that Google does not algorithmically consider social signals in rankings.

It feels this way because it’s exactly what he said.

But when we consider anecdotal evidence and the Hootsuite research cited early, things seem murky.

They aren’t murky at all.

What Cutts stated and what evidence reveals aren’t mutually exclusive.

Cutts explicitly states that Google’s algorithm doesn’t leverage social signals for ranking purposes. Social signals are LIKEs, follows, comments, etc. He reasons that doing so exposes users to privacy risks and opens Google’s search ranking algorithm to unreliable data. Cutts mentions that a social network blocked Google’s bots (or so he implies).

He’s not wrong

In 2019, Apple blocked Google from running it’s internal iOS. This caused disruptions for Google, which Apple accused of being in violation of TOS. The debate of who’s right between two tech giants aside, the block is case and point for Cutts’ perceived concerns.

From all this, we can surmise that Cutts may well be telling the truth on the point that Google algorithms don’t consider social engagements, which are typically proprietary of the social network.

But does that also mean that social media doesn’t help SEO?

According to the fallout headlines that followed Cutts’ 2014 video, you’d certainly think so.

Here’s an article from the highly-followed SEO Roundtable published in 2016, two years following Cutts’ social media/SEO clarifications.

The headline accurately reflects Cutts’ statements over the matter, but it doesn’t tell the entire story.

No, Google algorithm doesn’t consider social media engagement when it ranks a website page.

That’s fair.

But the question is, does social media success influence search rankings?

Let’s explore.

Social Media and SEO: We’re Missing The Forest For The Trees

Here’s the argument in live-action:

“Well, when a link I post on Facebook gets tons of shares, that article always seems to rank higher on Google.”

“That can’t be true, Matt Cutts says social media doesn’t influence SEO.”

“OK, I guess I’m just lucky a lot.”

Now’s not the time to buy a lottery ticket, unless you were already planning to do so. You probably aren’t ‘lucky’ if you’re highly shared or liked content performs better in Google search, it’s most likely just part of the web’s funnel of broad success.

Let’s use email newsletters as an example. Newsletter marketing is one of the most powerful ways to reach consumers.

Newsletter marketing compliments SEO because it promotes the sharing of content, which in turn, is the very core of backlink building.

Social Media Helps Promote SEO Backlinks

In SEO, you need high-quality, reader-worthy content. And you need high-authority backlinks. It’s a quandary, to say the least. You can pay top dollar for content, but good luck on the backlinks.

The idea is that powerful content synergistically promotes backlinks. If your article is the source or authority on a subject or offering thought leadership, other site owners may link to it. This is a natural SEO trigger for ranking, no one argues that. When quality content is backlinked from quality websites, you’ll likely rank higher in Google.

Let’s approach this in a common-sense way.

If you post your article, “Build a Garden That Provides Year-Round Food.” That article garners 5,500 shares in the first two days on Facebook.

That’s a viral article.

Two things happen in this scenario

1. The article is exposed to web users at a high pace.
2. The article is likely considered an authority, or high-quality, or worth sharing. When you combine both points 1 and 2, we realize that a great article is being seen by a massive audience. If it’s great, those who are exposed to it are more likely to share it. If it’s good and seen by lots of people, it’s likely to be shared even more.

It’s a perfect sharing storm. The increase in eyeballs accumulates more shares. That’s a data-driven synergy playing out. More shares = more exposure = more backlinks.

How do we define a ‘share?’

If an article is shared 5,000 times, wouldn’t it be safe to assume that it was also shared on blogs?

An SEO strategy doesn’t have to include social media, but the two platforms work rather harmoniously together, including in the reverse.

Let’s say your article ranks in the top spot of a meaningful keyword. You get 2,000 hits per day from that one ranking alone. If you have social media sharing, that can give people the opportunity to consistently share your page across their personal networks. This adds to the traffic bucket, but it also helps fuel more backlinks.

So Yes, Social Media Influences SEO Rankings

When we avoid sweeping interpretations of Matt Cutts’ 2014 statements regarding social media influences on SEO, we understand that aspects of the social media/SEO relationship certainly help encourage improved rankings. The Internet’s original interpretation of Cutts’ synopsis soured SEO marketers’ perspective on the social media space. But evidence and common sense certainly provide solid reasoning to include social media in a comprehensive SEO strategy.

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

The post What is the Social Media Impact on SEO? Decoding Matt Cutts’ 2014 Response (Updated August 2020) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

About Google Discover

Even when you aren’t searching, Google says you are. That probably feels a touch unsettling given the current data privacy environment stoking the flames of Congress, but we can get that all cleared up (not DOJ privacy investigations, rather, Google Discover).

Google Discover is a Google content feed found on Android devices. It was originally called Google Feed.

It supplies users with relevant content through an app. You notice the use of “content feed,” not “news feed,” to distinguish that the platform supports more than just trending news. That’s relevant because many people assume that Discover is just for news. Evergreen content is content that doesn’t need to be new, rather, it lives on as useful beyond the date it’s produced.

Google Discover – The New Big Thing For Publishers?

Many site owners curiously report mysterious googleapis.com referrals, that’s actually Google Discover traffic. Wait, this MIGHT be Discover traffic (more on that later).

Maybe you think you are getting Google Discover traffic. Maybe you know you are. This might be the reason you searched for how to SEO for that platform. Because your googleapis.com referrals have you stymied, you’re now looking for a way to improve and evolve your site’s content accordingly.

We can get to all of that, but first, let’s get to the brass tacks.

What Is Google Discover?

The Google Discover example above nicely illustrates the concept. While it began as a service running on Google’s Android platform, they have since rolled it out to iOS devices running the Google application.

So, why is Discover “search without searching?”

That’s because users of this platform don’t search, the content is instead recommended to them based on browser history, AI learning, and marked interests. So you don’t search on Discover, rather you discover content preselected for your taste.

There are roughly 800 million people “discovering” search to date.

Make no mistake about it, publishers need to get to know Discover from Google. It’s here to stay.

And if you don’t, you’ll be missing out.

How Can You Optimize Your Site For Google Discover SEO

Now the meat and potatoes – how do you optimize your site for Google Discover.

The introduction of Discover into SEO isn’t dramatic, but it’s relevant to strategy. As a base strategy, nothing should change in your current traditional SEO strategy.

The same way you optimize for search query traffic is the same way your content will get “Discovered.” If your content has trouble ranking in traditional Google search, it is likely to have trouble ranking in Discover.

So then what’s left?

Google Discover SEO Checklist

Here’s a simple to remember Google Discover SEO optimization checklist (you can scroll to the illustration if you prefer prettier checklists).

Create Useful Content – Does your content engage? Is it timely? If it isn’t timely, is it an evergreen piece that engages? Would someone want to share your content? Straight up, your content needs to connect with users. People should find your content interesting and shareable. If they don’t, it isn’t likely that Discover will determine it to be a relatable piece for a specific user set. Remember, Discover isn’t a top listing of content, rather, it list content on a per user basis.

Create Trending or Evergreen Content – Your content marketing strategy can be one, or both, of these two content types. However, trending content remains the ruler of the roost. Discover is doing its best to not pigeon hole its algorithm to just trending news. However, a good idea is to create evergreen content that’s supported by relevant trending news.

Who Wrote Your Content? – If your answer is a fake author or a nameless author, you’re probably doomed with Discover. Much like a traditional search, Google aims to foster an environment of trust between search and user. Anonymous authors signal untrustworthy content.

How Interactive Is Your Content? – Are people sharing and commenting and liking your content? Google needs to get signals from users regarding which content they like, and don’t like. High-quality content tends to engage users, which often results in more sharing and liking. You might consider boosting Facebook posts to help increase user engagement. Additionally, leverage email marketing as a way to increase content engagement.

How Engaging Are Your Images? – In October 2020, Google sent out an email to site owners through Google Search Console with the suggestion that they produce “high quality, compelling images” that are at least 1200 pixels wide (or larger). For sites with visual content smaller than 1200px wide eligible for presentation in Google Discover, their images will only appear in thumbnail mode if they do not make this change. Site owners interested in enabling larger image previews need to add the “max image preview” robots meta tag to their header coding.

Here’s a Google Discover Infographic that’s easy to remember.

In the end, promote your content.

Google Discover vs. Google News

Some site owners jump to the conclusion that Discover is the highway fast track to getting into Google News. At first glance, this seems like a reasonable conclusion. At second glance, it feels like fake news.

The answer is somewhere in between.

Google Discover’s content optimization instructions, located here, cite that “your pages are eligible to appear in Discover cards simply if they are indexed by Google and meet Google News content policies.”

The verbiage leads many to believe that if they are getting Discover traffic, they are eligible for Google News. Although this seems to imply such, the fact is, there is no supporting evidence of this connection. In fact, we’ve known a number of sites experiencing Discover traffic that got denied by Google News.

So we aren’t sure what to make of things. Maybe it’s best to view Google Discover as a step towards Google News, rather than a confirmation.

Discover CTR Is Higher Than Traditional Search

In terms of what to expect from Google Discover search stats, you likely can expect the CTR to be more inflated. You might expect three times higher CTRs. This, of course, depends on your content. But overall, CTRs seem to be higher on Discover than they are on traditional Google search.

Do you have questions about whether PPC or SEO is right for you? Check out this video:

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

The post Google Discover SEO Optimization (A Complete Marketing Guide) [Updated 2020] appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

The Google knowledge panel gets clicks and attention – it’s usually the first thing you see when you search for a business, brand, or noteworthy person online.

If you work for a brand that has an unclaimed knowledge panel created by Google, or you represent a public figure with an unclaimed Knowledge Panel, you really have two options:

1. Cross your fingers and hope Google showcases the information you want.
2. Claim it and cut to the chase by telling Google what the web needs to know.

After all, if Google can find you and has collected enough data about you to create a knowledge panel, potential clients and customers are reading it to learn about you, too.

Often before they’ve ever visited your website or social media accounts.

Below, we break down everything you need to know about Google knowledge panels. Whether you are a brand or public figure, you will learn how to claim your panel and optimize it to put your best presentation forward on the web’s go-to destination for discovery.

What Is The Google Knowledge Panel?

You might not know what it’s called, but you’ve definitely used it. When you search for something on Google, you often see a block of text to the right of the regular search results. On mobile, the panel appears part way down the list of results.

If you were searching for information about, say, a little company called Microsoft, you would see a panel of information telling you what Google thinks you’re looking for. Since Microsoft is a large, well-known brand, you’ll see a whole lot of helpful information pulled from a mysterious database called the Knowledge Graph.

There can be only one

If you asked around, through Google or your SEO-minded friends and colleagues, you would have heard that there are two kinds of Google Knowledge Panels, one for local business and one for a brand. While this was the case, it is no longer true. 

There is only one kind of knowledge panel: the brand panel. Google provides a service for local businesses called Google My Business, which displays to searchers as a panel-like block next to the search results. You can do so many different things as a local business that simply does not apply to brands or people that Google has siloed them into two completely different concepts. While they might look the same, they most definitely aren’t. We will feature the Google Business Profile in a future blog post, but until then, read on about this valuable digital asset.

We’re going to focus on the only official knowledge panel type, which focuses on people, places, and things.

Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” and this is exemplified in the Knowledge Graph, which is where Google keeps all of the information it collects – and it collects a lot.

Only Google knows exactly what’s in the Knowledge Graph, but it’s possible to help it along and get some of that knowledge working for you.

But before we get to that, how do you know if you have one? Easy, just do a Google search for your name or your brand. If you don’t have a knowledge panel, there are steps you can take to get one, but none of them are guaranteed.

How Do I Get A Google Knowledge Panel?

First Things First: Guide To Claiming a Knowledge Panel

This is a vital, time-saving tip for claiming a knowledge panel: verified owner status in Google Search Console through an email address on the domain name associated with the panel.

Assuming you have this level of access with an account that matches the website associated with the brand or person you’re claiming, all you have to do is:

1. Click the “Claim this knowledge panel” button under your knowledge panel
2. When the Google Search Console verification screen loads, click “Confirm”
3. You will then be redirected to the Google search engine results page to suggest edits to your listing.

How do you know you’re a verified owner in Google Search Console?

The process to determine if you are a verified owner of a Google Search Console is pretty straightforward.

1. Login to Google Search Console
2. Click “Settings” on the bottom left of the screen
3. Review the Property Settings. You should see a green checkmark and the statement “You are a verified owner” immediately to the left of the checkmark.

If you currently only have “Delegated Owner” status or lower (“Full” or “Restricted” access), then Google will provide you with a variety of options to elevate your access level to verified. While we prefer the option of verification through Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager because it’s the easiest method, Google may only present you with HTML tag or DNS verification methods. Consult with your webmaster to determine which option is best for your organization for increasing your access level.

As of this writing, verified owners in Google Search Console with an email account on a company domain are the only users able to take this step of claiming a panel.

Are you an agency professional who represents a company or celebrity, media personality, or other public figure? Unless you have an email account on the same website domain as the one Google associates with the panel you are trying to claim, you will need to follow the steps below for verifying your identity.

Once the panel is claimed, you will have the ability to add other delegated owners who do not have a direct affiliation with your company, like agency representation (screenshot below). You can also continue to claim and gain access to knowledge panels for suggesting edits that may be loosely affiliated with your company.

How do I claim a knowledge panel without a Google Search Console account?

Step 1: Make sure you have a Google Account. It’s free and you’ll need one to get the most out of what Google can offer.

Step 2: Click the Get Verified link: https://posts.google.com/claim/?mid=/g/1hcp5gdf2

Step 3: Select either “I represent another person, organization or entity (sports team, musical group, film, etc.) that is not myself” or “I am a person with a knowledge panel”

Step 4: Fill the form out to the best of your knowledge and with the most up-to-date information you have available.

What information will I need to verify myself in Google Knowledge Panel?

Google wants to know that you are you, or that you are a legitimate representative of your organization. This is as important for you as it is for Google – they want to have the most correct information, and you want to be able to have a say in what Google displays about you.

In support of that, you’ll need to prove to Google that you are who you say you are. You will need to provide a name, even if you are claiming the knowledge panel for your business. You will also submit web pages that belong to you or your company. Your company’s homepage is a good start. Google also accepts social media profiles.

The way Google wants you to prove you have access to those social accounts and web page edits is surprisingly low-tech – you log in to those accounts and take screenshots of your successful sign-in. You can attach those screenshots to the verification form. You will also need to provide an official document that reassures Google that you are the right person to claim the knowledge panel. This “business verification” can take the form of any official document that outlines your role in promoting the company, from a document of incorporation with your name on it to an official social media partnership agreement, also with your name on it.

The last item that you’ll need is a photo of you holding some form of photo ID, with any sensitive information covered up or blacked out. Your driver’s license should be fine, but you can also use a passport or other government-issued ID card.

Once this process is complete, it may take a few days for Google to let you know, via your Google Account’s email address, that you have access. Congratulations!

Okay, I have my knowledge panel. What can I do with it?

This is where the real fun begins! You are now free to supply Google – and anybody searching for you or your company – the most accurate data possible. This is your opportunity to contextualize the parts of your business that are most valuable to people searching for you. These are your future or current customers, searching for your company or your name – they already know who you are, now they want to know what you can do for them.

Stuff to Check

Is the name of your business within Google Knowledge Panel correct?

This might seem like a simple one, but it’s important enough to warrant a mention straight at the top. Is the name spelled correctly? Even if you tend to use a common initialism or acronym for your brand, you’ll want to spell it out for this listing.

If this is a person’s knowledge panel, you’ll want to include the correct suffixes. They earned that MD or Ph.D., so why not put it next to their name?

Are those social media profies in your Google Knowledge Panel right?

Google’s Knowledge Graph will pull what it thinks are your brand’s social media profiles, but you can edit that block to make sure the correct ones are being displayed. This is a great opportunity to focus audience attention exactly where you want them to see your most recent social media updates.

Add A Website Button To Google Knowledge Panel

This is possibly the most important element on this page, and the one you absolutely need to make sure is correct – users will click that button to visit your page. That’s what Google’s all about, after all.

If you found this article helpful, you might want to check out one of these helpful posts on getting the most out of Google Search Console for your SEO efforts.

Other Articles About Google Knowledge Panel

• How and Why to Link Google Search Console in Google Ads
• Set Your Course In Google Search Console With International Targeting
• What are Core Web Vitals and What Should I Do About Them?

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

The post How To Claim Your Google Knowledge Panel appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

What is Google BERT?

BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers and acts as Google’s AI center for natural language processing. Like RankBrain, BERT utilizes machine learning to better understand queries from a contextual standpoint. However, BERT takes Google’s natural understanding of language to the next level.

Google can already understand synonyms, misspellings and common phrases. Now, with BERT, Google is able to understand language nuances and idiosyncrasies in order to return even more relevant search results. BERT builds on RankBrain and the two work together to create a powerful AI capable of understanding language and context at near-human levels.

How BERT Will Impact the SERPs

Google’s announcement indicated that BERT will be applied on a query-by-query basis, affecting one in ten search queries on average. This still represents a massive number of results, which means businesses should be prepared to see significant shifts in rankings over the coming weeks.

BERT will impact both organic results and featured snippets, altering current rankings to better fit with contextual relevance and user intent. Google was kind enough to present us with a few examples of how users will see the change. In the sample below, BERT is able to understand how the word “to” interacts with the other keywords in the query, and presents information specifically on coming to America, rather than information on travel in either direction.

What does this mean? For searchers, it means less scrolling, bouncing, and follow up searches before they find the content they really want.

For businesses producing content, it means pieces with a highly targeted angle on a topic have a great chance to come up in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) for the most relevant keywords, especially for long-tail keyword phrases.

Google BERT and International SEO

BERT also brings Google’s understanding of language across language barriers. With BERT, the search engine is able to take its discoveries about the context in one language and apply them to other languages– for example, taking what it’s learned about prepositions in English, and applying that to conjugations in Italian or French.

We asked Adam Roth, our Director of Growth & Analysis, for his input on this development. “This is important because it will enable Google to better comprehend the semantics of long-tail searches.”

Roth, who studied machine learning and natural language processing for 5+ years as a research assistant for Carnegie Mellon and Pitt, has worked on advanced analytics projects for organizations like the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs prior to joining the team at DOM.

“Previously, this information was separated due to the language barrier and inconsistencies in entity – entity identity across databases. In essence: this update will make Google much smarter,” he added.

While Google has, in the past, been hampered by a lack of algorithmic understanding of international languages, BERT will help close the language divide, ensuring the best results for searchers across the world.

What You Can Do

For website owners and editors, BERT is the line in the sand between the old way of doing SEO, focusing only on keywords, and more natural, big-picture SEO techniques that put an emphasis on linguistic nuance and content quality.

“From an on-page SEO and keyword optimization perspective, we’ve seen great results for clients in visibility and traffic growth when we apply conversational phrases like ‘near me’ to location-based pages or ‘what is’ to blog posts and articles,” said Jonathan Bentz, one of our Senior Digital Marketing Strategists.

“Previous to the BERT update, we would have put less emphasis on prepositions and small language nuances. While we will use these phrases strategically, reducing their emphasis won’t be a best practice for us moving forward.”

While Google (as usual) states that there’s nothing you can do to “win” after this update, what we’re seeing is huge growth for clients who use prepositions, conversational phrases and cultural vernacular.

When looking at your website’s Titles, Meta Descriptions, Image Alternative Texts, and page copy, now is the time to take into account how your keyphrases interact with one another. Consider the intent behind the content of each page: the questions you answer, the information you serve, and the interactive abilities of each URL. Then, imagine the user intent behind your target keywords, and take time to look at the impact of each word in the keyphrase, to better understand the intent behind the query string as a whole.

Remember, as Google becomes more adept at understanding language, the user experience becomes more about conversation than simple question-and-answer.

The end result? Despite, or perhaps because of AI, the future of search is more human than ever.

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

The post The Google BERT Update: Context is More Important than Ever appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

While the algorithm update’s name is far from clever, the announcement marks a change in the way Google handles search algorithm updates. Every few months, Google performs core updates to its search algorithm. But typically these core updates are discovered by site owners monitoring their rankings and traffic. In this case, Google got ahead of site owner speculation by announcing the change 24 hours prior.

Tomorrow, we are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. It is called the June 2019 Core Update. Our guidance about such updates remains as we’ve covered before. Please see this tweet for more about that:https://t.co/tmfQkhdjPL

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) June 2, 2019

Danny Sullivan, Google’s public search liaison, said that Google’s altered PR approach to this core update does not signify a more robust change.

Nothing special or particular “big.” It’s the usual type of core updates that we regularly do. We just wanted to be more proactive. Rather than people scratching their heads after-the-fact and asking “hmm?,” we thought it would be good to just let folks know before it rolled out.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) June 2, 2019

As for the exact time, the June 2019 Core Update will trigger, that remains unknown. What I can say is that DOM’s search traffic is experiencing a soft bump this morning. Such information won’t be meaningful until we can detect a sustained traffic trend in either direction. But so far, so good.

This past March, a similar core quality adjustment was also made, so this is the second round of major Google updates in 2019.

We can’t speculate on what June 2019 Core Update’s impacts will be, however, we can safely surmise it will continue to reward strong content marketing efforts. Google search ranking still relies heavily on authoritative backlinks and informative content.

Aside from today’s June 2019 Core Update, Google is also embroiled in a potential DOJ anti-trust case. The effort to reel in Google’s alleged monopoly could result in a bipartisan investigation. Google has a history of quelling government concerns over its business practices, mainly by making preemptive changes.  The magnitude of an anti-trust investigation into Google, Amazon, and Apple, could have resounding effects across consumer and digital marketing platforms.

Interested in learning more about recent Google algorithm updates? Check out this helpful guide to the Google Page Experience Update from our friends at 10web.io.

If you believe your site’s rankings or traffic were negatively impacted by the results of this algorithm update, please learn more about our professional SEO services.

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

The post Google’s ‘June 2019 Core Update’ Just Started (Here’s What We Know So Far) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

The Seattle-based company, RealSelf, allows consumers to search and vet cosmetic surgeons and medical professionals for potential procedures. The company recently received a $40-million-dollar influx of investment cash.

But according to RealSelf CEO, Tom Seery, Google’s now infamous “medic update” allegedly took a toll on the company’s website traffic.

“Like many companies, you grow ahead of your growth and that growth just hasn’t been showing up at the rate we thought it would,” RealSelf CEO Tom Seery told GeekWire.

Seery’s delivery of somber news in the form of layoffs is likely one of his toughest career moments.

RealSelf strives to compete in a hub market that disrupts typical channels of consumer discovery of products and services. This means that the company relies heavily on search traffic.

While Seery isn’t quoted as explicitly mentioning the Google Medic update, he strongly alludes to it when citing his ongoing discussions with Google regarding the matter.

“We understand the underlying factors quite well,” Seery said. “We are having a conversation with Google specifically because we are in the healthcare category and there are underlying issues that are unique to the subject matter.”

So What Happened?

RealSelf.com experienced a massive drop in organic traffic and ranking visibility following the August Medic update.

You can see from the below SEMrush one-year timeline that the drop occurred in early August, right in line with the Google algorithm change.

This downfall was the consequence of a 50% drop in major keyword visibility from July to September.

Why Did It Happen?

As with most Google algorithm updates, there are no exact clarifications from the source itself. In other words, Google isn’t going to tell us anything definite. Rather, they offer up their typical canned responses that encourage site owners to create (or keep creating) great content.

While it might be Google’s stock answer and it might frustrate some site owners, that answer is wholeheartedly right. 

Google Medic is likely a response to specific content verticals that seem to influence important life matters. For example, financial sites give financial advice. If people take poor quality financial advice, they might lose money. People taking rogue health advice could negatively impact their well-being.

Google probably wants to reduce its liability in such matters and also encourage higher-trust content production. 

The case of RealSelf, however, is a complicated beast.

The website hardly proposes any cures. It does not diagnose or prescribe. RealSelf is a bridge from consumer to medical professional, much like Uber is from consumer to driver. 

But potentially, Google didn’t make such a distinction about RealSelf’s business model when it drastically lowered rankings. This is likely a point of contention between Google and Seery in his ongoing communications over the matter.

RealSelf’s board of directors, while impressively featuring Uber’s COO, Barney Harford, and Expedia’s Co-founder, Rich Barton, lacks a sense of medical authority. In other words, there don’t seem to be doctors anywhere on the bio page. 

Is Google really diving that deep?

Possibly. But all the same, given that RealSelf’s business model doesn’t purport to offer advice or cures, one might think a reversal may be in order.

Google Medic – Are You Seeing A Traffic Decline? Here’s What You Can Do.

Last August, Google updated its algorithm in a way that seemed to harshly affect a large swath of health, financial, and fitness websites. Google never denied or confirmed that the update targeted specific verticals, but SEO industry audits seem to confirm the bias.

Google Medic seems to be part of an overall RankBrain philosophy that places intense scrutiny on authorship and content trust/legitimacy, with a particular emphasis on sites that create content that is influential over critical parts of people’s lives. For example, financial websites could steer a person’s investment decisions, so Google might favor content produced by recognizable, respected financial advisors.

The RealSelf layoffs serve as a real-world example of the cold reality for SEOs. Sites are being scrutinized more than ever regarding authorship. It’s important to be aware of the current RankBrain climate.

The future of search results probably resides in trust authorship. Who writes your content is going to matter more than ever, even if your site exists outside health or finance verticals.

To ensure your content marketing creation is on the right path, here’re some digestible pointers:

• Use authors who are experts in the field
• Place author bios on your site
• Include all of your contributors on the author bios page
• Prominently list academic degrees and subject expertise credentials
• Cite sources
• Don’t create lackluster content

In the end, RealSelf CEO Tom Seery was forced to deliver the most somber news of his career when he announced layoffs. But RealSelf, as a business model, is hardly going anywhere. The site is likely to overcome this current SEO adversity and thrive in the future. 

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

Want to check out more of our actionable ideas to grow confidently online in the medical and health industry? Check out some of these blog posts below.

• 12 Addiction Treatment Marketing Tactics To Kickstart Rehab Growth
• Google Medic: How to SEO Proof Your Site in the Trust Authority Era
• How To Optimize Your Hospital for Local Search
• 30+ ‘Best Month Ever’s’ for an Eating Disorder Treatment Center
• How do People Find Answers to Health Related Questions?
• Healthcare Marketing Research & Survey Results

The post Major Cosmetic Procedure Review Site Slashes Staff By 14% Following Google Medic Update appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

For a number of site owners, the medic update is a continuing work in progress as well as a thorn in their sides.

In other words, the Google medic update was and continues to be an algorithmic monster that many site owners and operators continue to battle.

This article will explore what Google Medic is, why it affected the sites it affected (both good and bad), and what a site owner can and should do to both preserve and increase site traffic from a general RankBrain perspective.

Google Medic Update: An ‘Unhealthy’ Explanation

While many websites were affected (both adversely and positively), health sites seemed to take it on the chin the hardest.

Hence, we are calling it the “medic” update.

But what did it all REALLY mean? And is all lost for those websites that seemed to lose most of their traffic? Where are we now?

Let’s get started with the basics.

Google Medic: What You Need To Know To Start

The SEO business is a funny thing (at least, sometimes). Many SEO companies tend to stake their marketing and sales claims in a “reading the Google tea leaves” pitch.

It’s a sales play. But it’s also a bit of an industry infection.

No one (well, almost no one) possesses privileged Google search algorithm information.

So, whenever Google updates its search algorithm robustly or expansively, the first place we should all go is to Google themselves.

Ah, I love the smell of common sense in the morning!

On the same morning that many health sites were in a full-fledged state of panic, Google’s official public liaison Twitter account was, well, “liaisoning” away.

Google’s statement served to verify to the SEO community of what it already suspected or understood. A fresh new Google search algorithmic update was live, and it was a beast; or as Google described it, a “broad core algorithmic update.”

Google also let all site owners know that there is “no fix,” per se, except for a continued (or renewed – I’ll get to that in a bit) effort to create excellent content.

You know when you come down with a bad cold, and the doctor tells you to drink lots of water? That’s Google’s “no fix except create great content” line in a nutshell. It sounds awful to hear when you are down, but it’s probably the truest words you’ll ever hear.

OK, hold up for a second.

Didn’t Google just tell us what the issue is?

Kind of.

Sort of.

OK, not really at all.

Let’s take a breath.

I’m going to clear up the confusion regarding how we approach the Google Medic update shortly.

But first, let’s look at who and what took the brunt of this update’s thrashing.

YMYL – How Google Medic Sought To Protect Us

“Your Money, Your Life”

What matters more to a person than their money and their lives? And what type of content verticals are most conducive to influencing these things?

Google Medic’s main algorithmic purpose was to figure this out and diminish exposure of “less trustworthy” results. It seems they found that health sites and financial sites are critical to our modern well-being. So they prioritized them.

Try to cure your cold by eating raw chicken meat or invest your retirement money into a get rich quick pyramid scheme, and your life will probably turn out worse than before. Google wants to prevent this by eliminating less reliable search results that could detrimentally affect YMYL.

It isn’t all consumer protectionism at play, either.

Google also sought to reduce liability for itself.

“Google told me to eat raw chicken, so I did!”

Yuck. For everyone. Maybe even for Google.

Google expressed in an official statement that “Google Medic” is a broad sweeping update.

It perhaps is.

But yeah, it really isn’t.

Statistically speaking, it is clear and evident that Google Medic harshly affected health sites and some financial sites above and beyond any other niche. In fact, it isn’t even close.

One of the most notable examples of Google Medic’s colossal adverse effects in the health sector is Dr. Axe.

If you’ve ever searched anything related to holistic or alternative health, you’ve surely found Dr. Axe’s URLs in your Google Search results.

Let’s have a closer look via my super fancy graph that will explain everything.

OK, it might be a slight exaggeration to imply through dramatic illustration Dr. Axe is THAT down in the dumps, but it is also difficult to ignore the substantial losses his site experienced after Google Medic wiped nearly 70% of his Google organic traffic in a matter of a month and a half.

And the situation is even worse for Dr. Axe.

The damage continued into January of this year. SEMRush stats show Axe’s site now at 1.8 million in monthly organic sessions.

It is possible that Google Medic hasn’t shown its bottom, yet.

I’m going to discuss why Dr. Axe is still feeling the Google Medic side effects a bit below; however, for now, let’s stay on course with the caveat that we understand the Google Medic Update to be a continuing algorithmic enhancement to Google Search.

More Than Axe Got Ax’d

Google Medic’s lashing of health sites didn’t stop at Dr. Axe’s website. Websites such as Mercola, LiveStrong.com, SeriousEats.com, Pillsbury.com (yep, seriously), and MensHealth all experienced similar catastrophic drops in Google organic traffic.

This doesn’t account for all the smaller alternative health websites that lost most of their traffic. It is easier, for our purposes, to focus on larger properties.

Some Financial Sites Went Google Bankrupt, Also

Although the brunt of Google Medic’s hammering bruised and battered the health industry, the financial sector also took its share of hard hits.

Much like your health, your finances most certainly affect your life.

Century21, one of the longest-standing real estate agencies in the world, saw half of its traffic vanish since August 1st. Much in the same way as Dr. Axe’s fall from Google grace, Century21 took an initial hard hit and then continued a steady decline after that.

Not every health site and indeed not every financial site are cast into dystopian SERPS following Google Medic.

In fact, some are thriving in a post-Medic world. And it’s important to understand why this is the case.

The Strange Case Of Healthline.com

If you’ve ever searched any health-related topics, then you’ve most likely seen HealthLine.com appear in your search results.

Founded by Dr. James Norman in 1999, HealthLine is now one of the web’s most visible, successful online properties.

HealthLine owns Livestrong (mentioned earlier as a site harshly affected by Google Medic) and Drugs.com (somewhat positively affected).

HealthLine is as YMYL as any website online today.

But for some reason, HealthLine thrived where others held on for dear life.

So why did HealthLine experience a boost in SEO while Dr. Axe suffered a collapse?

The answer is alive and well inside Google’s perception of trust authority.

As Google gets better and better at determining content trustworthiness and legitimacy, a dramatic reshuffle in the SERPs is an ultimate consequence.

For Google, they not only want to put the most legitimate content at the top of the rankings but they also likely want to lower their corporate liability.

Dr. Axe, while extremely popular, is not a medical doctor.

He is, by his own website admission, a certified doctor of natural medicine, doctor of chiropractic and clinical nutritionist. While that’s impressive in its own right, it isn’t the same as having a valid medical degree.

Additionally, Dr. Axe, over the years, gained a reputation in an alternative health space that has often been at odds with Google and Facebook (more on that below).

In 2018, Facebook took aim at “fake news” websites when it deleted a series of large-sized Pages in the alternative health sector.

Google’s Medic update is potentially a similar, though softer, culling of websites the company doesn’t feel are of the highest trustworthiness.

HealthLine is a repository of health articles authored by medical doctors and certified nutritionists. Dr. Axe is a health site authored by a chiropractor.

I’m not saying it’s right, nor that it benefits the consumer (more on that later); I’m simply conveying my interpretation of the facts.

So what does the strange case of HealthLine.com show us?

Authorship Legitimacy Matters…Probably a Whole Lot

The disparity in between Dr. Axe’s Medic results and HealthLine.com’s Medic results show us that Google is especially concerned with health content being validated by verifiable, credentialed authors.

Dr. Axe’s content is well-written, well-sourced, and beautifully laid out on both the desktop and mobile browsers. Probably more so than HealthLine’s content.

Additionally, Dr. Axe’s site boasts a slew of powerful, authority-driven website backlinks, such as HuffPo.

But the authorship on Axe’s site may leave some to be desired.

But what’s more?

(And there is more)

The Marketing Voice

Dr. Axe is successful because he markets a number of products under his valuable brand. In fact, Axe runs an entire store full with natural illness cure solutions.

Here’s one I found in rotation of a recent post.

Upon refresh of the same article page, the “essential oils training” seminar is replaced by an “advanced strategies to heal leaky gut” webinar.

And, according to the ad, “space is limited.”

In contrast, HealthLine’s articles possess Google AdSense ads but do not attempt to funnel the consumer to any products.

So what do we make of this?

Let’s start with a more scientific and less-anecdotal approach.

We need to answer the question – how does Google feel about natural cures or product marketing?

We can’t do this in the organic realm for the obvious reasons, but we can do it with Google’s AdSense platform which has iron-clad policies in place.

Adsense has an entire policy page for healthcare and medicines. Pharmaceutical companies are one of AdSense’s biggest buyers. As well, they are one of AdSense’s most heavily policed.

Pharmaceutical companies must abide by strict advertising restrictions.

When we go further down the line, we note the Adsense policy subsection “Unapproved substances.”

And there, we get a deeper insight into how Google, from a general standpoint, may approach natural medicines.

Five lines from that section stand out:

Herbal and dietary supplements with active pharmaceutical or dangerous ingredients

False or misleading health claims, including claims implying that a product is as effective as prescription drugs or controlled substances

Non-government approved products that are marketed in a way that implies that they’re safe or effective for use in preventing, curing, or treating a particular disease or ailment

Products that have been subject to any government or regulatory action or warning

Products with names that are confusingly similar to an unapproved pharmaceutical or supplement or controlled substance

Every one of those points could pertain to Axe’s store in some facet.

Axe does run some AdSense ads, but it is likely his ad campaigns are scrutinized deeply before acceptance.

If we consider all of this, we might determine that Axe’s store, which he displays throughout his content, influenced his organic downswing.

And this same logic flies when it comes to financial sites. In March of 2018, AdSense banned cryptocurrency advertisers.

This maintains our assumed hypothesis that Google, as a company, is concerned with preventing people from being fleeced financially.

For the record, cryptocurrency websites have experienced a downswing, but that’s likely due to a growing public disinterest.

So What’s The Big Difference Between Axe and Healthline?

Healthline articles do not push a product. Axe’s articles heavily push products.

Healthline feels like a resource that is legitimately attempting to help us. Axe’s content feels like a marketing funnel.

If Google looked at Axe’s site, which is likely, then his site’s optics were indeed to his detriment.

In this way, we determine that Google’s Rankbrain potentially attempts to establish legitimacy based on the deployment of affiliate links.

So what now?

I’m glad you asked.

Google Medic And The Great Content Fire

For the past decade, site owners and SEO pundits have observed an obvious realization in Google’s pursuit to advance its search engine quality.

It wants spectacular content.

In February of 2011, the Google Panda update infamously changed the way site owners and SEO experts approach SEO. Yes, technical, on-page SEO remained extremely imperative to success, but thin, lackluster content would be penalized.

Panda changed the way we look at “keyword stuffing” and duplicated content.

It created “content awareness.”

Google’s Hummingbird update in 2013 drove the “if your content is crud, you won’t be seen” point home.

So What Does Any Of This Have To Do With Google Medic?

Two things, most notably.

1. Poor content will continually be ushered out with every Google update.
2. Um, we might not know what “poor content” is.

Wait, what?

In traditional terms, site owners achieving “great content” resulted in the following process:

1. Determine important/profitable keywords.
2. Create a content idea based on this keyword.
3. Deploy headers featuring longer tail strings from that keyword.
4. Determine the best articles that rank for this term, calculate word length.
5. Beat that word length.

What does ALL OF THAT come down to?

Longer articles.

This prompted a slew of sites to begin “extending content.” It also prompted loads of new content that breached word counts of competitive articles.

The longer articles most definitely helped ramp up some content quality (enter the sound of Google patting itself on the back now). However, it is clear that just being longer isn’t always being better (men everywhere cheer loudly).

Just increasing length of articles won’t cut it in the Rankbrain world.

Rankbrain is Google’s artificial intelligence that seeks to boost SERP quality by determining the quality of content through a number of reliable statistical factors. Google Medic is Rankbrain’s aficionado in the most critical matters (health, finances).

In other words, Google Medic is an extra layer of intelligence that’s seeking to help Google lower corporate liability and increase consumer safety in their SERPs.

”But I’m Not a Holistic, Alternative Health, Coconut Oil Loving Site…”

There is little doubt that financial and health sites are at the heart of Google Medic’s scrutiny. We’ve proven this statistically. We’ve created a relationship between AdSense policy and potential Google philosophy. We’ve looked at real web examples that support our claims.

So we’ve proven that non-health and non-financial websites are in the clear.

No, really, we haven’t at all.

Google Medic Could Expand Its Reach…

No one from Google is saying that Google Medic sought to temper the reach of health sites. We’ve extracted that conclusion from the data.

In the same respect, no one from Google is going to confirm that certain niches are more protected by RankBrain’s algorithm than others.

A movie review website isn’t life or death stuff. If you end up seeing another Nicolas Cage movie because a review site gave it five pretty pickles, well, that’s on you. While your eyes may burn and singe during the movie experience, you’ll live.

That doesn’t mean, however, that RankBrain won’t expand its concept of what niches are important to the livelihood of web surfers. It also does not mean that RankBrain won’t start deploying similar quality checks to all niches just to improve its SERPs.

That said, let’s tie all we’ve learned together.

RankBrain And Medic Guide To Survive

This is where we tie RankBrain as a core capacity to its internal update, Google Medic, the enforcer (think Swayze from Roadhouse – The Roadhouse is RankBrain, Medic is Dalton).

Stop Thinking Long, Start Thinking Time

The knee-jerk reaction to “increase content length” based on our competitors’ content length needs to take a pause. Content length is only one metric to consider.

The important factor is “time on site.” Google Analytics’ Time On Site metric can tell us if people are spending good time on our site.

Improving time on site can be done via the following (notice, it isn’t just content length):

1. Content length (clearly, it can help)
2. Hooks: strategically placing hooks in your text that alert the reader of more exciting content ahead. I will talk more about this later! Do you see what I did there?
3. Video content: watching videos takes time.
4. Page breaks: Indent, don’t slaughter a page with super long paragraphs.
5. Use images to break up concepts, ideas.

Get Legit With Your Authors

Wait, doesn’t this ONLY apply to health sites?

Not in the slightest.

Your content’s authorship matters now more than ever. It is possible that it matters MORE to health sites, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t critical to all sites.

In 2014, Google ended their Google Authorship program. The Google Authorship program allowed web authors to relate and interlink all of their work around the web. You signed up for the program and then used an authorship tag wherever you wrote. You could build a reputation as an author. Your author profile image and description could be parsed into rich snippets.

The authorship program only lasted for three years. Some naturally assumed that Google gave up on caring about web authors.

But that isn’t likely true.

Google’s John Mueller publicly stated that Google was somewhat displeased with the way authorship displayed on mobile and desktop search results.

Google also noted that the snippets did not inspire more clicks.

But those two criticisms hardly amount to an aborted philosophy, which is all we in the SEO space should care about in the end.

Google Authorship was created to deploy an algorithm that observed trust in authors and ranked more trusted authors’ content creations higher.

Google did not abandon the philosophy, just the way they achieve it.

The Google Authorship program proves that Google has long been concerned with author validity. The RankBrain AI search algorithm helps to eliminate a need for authorship tags in determining trusted authors. Google Medic is RankBrain’s internal update that makes sure that all the web’s most critical content has an extra layer of trusted author protection.

But today, there is no need for Google to attempt to validate content authors laboriously. Many writers use LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

You can create a nifty author box that features the author’s bio, social accounts, and image.

Market With Caution

Sites which market affiliate programs or offers of any sort almost always profit more than sites which utilize ads as their main source of income.

That’s not any secret.

This isn’t the place I tell site owners to dump their offers.

No way, no how.

But, if possible, there might be ways to soften the marketing of affiliate links in general.

In places where it is possible, it never hurts to try lead generation plus onboarding process on your content pages.

Relax, I will explain.

Rather than have a big offer that clearly Google’s AI can detect, maybe try capturing the email or phone number of the surfer and then utilizing a triggered email response.

This gets the offer into the surfer’s inbox, which converts higher than on-page affiliate offers most of the time.

It gets the affiliate offer off the page and lowers chances Google may consider your content biased. Depending on the affiliate offer or type of product, many newsletter software services offer amazing automation capacity. You can run entire newsletter onboarding events with both.

Understandably, this isn’t always a possibility. But it never hurts to consider other potential ways to sell products and reduce SEO risks.

Could Google Medic Collapse?

I told you I’d get here. Now, here we are.

Is it possible that Google Medic will reverse its trend?

It is possible because Medic could prompt a number of users to dig deeper in the search results for content that is more in line with how they live.

Some people love Dr. Axe and other holistic driven sites. They may not find establishment content to their liking.

Most likely, Google’s RankBrain will simply adjust cases that were hit hard through its natural AI structure.

Medic is probably here to stay, but RankBrain is constantly learning and correcting and imposing.

The Final Thought

Google’s Medic update targeted health and financial sites. YMYL, or “your money, your life,” seems to be the driving determiner of which sites are affected the most.

A site’s content could be improved by utilizing trusted authors with real Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook accounts. Reeling in heavy marketing of product offers might help remove the appearance of bias in the content; thereby, increasing trust.

If your site creates content in the financial or health sectors, you need to be extremely careful with ensuring trust throughout your entire site.

Want to check out more of our actionable ideas to grow confidently online in the medical and health industry? Check out some of these blog posts below.

• 12 Addiction Treatment Marketing Tactics To Kickstart Rehab Growth
• How To Optimize Your Hospital for Local Search
• 30+ ‘Best Month Ever’s’ for an Eating Disorder Treatment Center
• How do People Find Answers to Health Related Questions?
• Healthcare Marketing Research & Survey Results

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

The post Google Medic: How to SEO Proof Your Site in the Trust Authority Era appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

As guest lecturers go you can’t get much [fill in the blank].

The main objective was to try and get the class to understand on-page ranking factors in relation to a given keyword. In essence, the basics of keyword placement in SERPs and its correlation to items on the page (both front end and code) such as the H1 tag, content and meta tags.

There’s always been a bit of debate as to whether SEO can be taught, or more importantly, whether it can be certified. One point being, results speak for themselves through implementation, and another being the rate at which search engines make changes can render certain information outdated pretty swiftly.

Also, the process of SEO is backwards engineering, analysis and testing of Google’s algorithm. It’s one thing saying keywords in the title tag are important, but another trying to dictate how important. The wrap-up of the lesson was to get the students to rank the following on page factors based on looking at the top ranking site for a given keyword:

On-Page (Keyword-Specific) Ranking Factors

1. Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag
2. Keyword Use as the First Word(s) of the Title Tag
3. Keyword Use in the Root Domain Name (e.g. keyword.com)
4. Keyword Use Anywhere in the H1 Headline Tag
5. Keyword Use as the First Word(s) in the H1 Tag
6. Keyword Use in the First 50-100 Words in HTML on the Page
7. Keyword Use in the Page Name URL (e.g. site.org/folder/keyword.html)
8. Keyword Use in the Meta Description Tag
9. Keyword Use in the Meta Keywords Tag

The above ranking factors were taken from SEOmoz and are explained as:

The following ranking factors were rated by our panel of 72 SEO experts. Their feedback is aggregated and averaged into the percentage scores. For each, we’ve calculated the degree to which the experts felt this factor was important for achieving high rankings as well as the degree of variance in opinion, estimated using the standard deviation of the contributors’ answers. Thus, factors that are high in importance and low in contention are those where experts agree the most that the factor is critical to rankings.

There are plenty more SEO factors, both on-page, off-page and otherwise at SEOmoz. The above were selected purely for an hour-long class.

One thing I mentioned was Google being secretive about their formulas and algorithm; that some things were more closely guarded than Coke’s secret ingredient or the key to the Jonas Bros’ collective chastity belt key.

However, Matt Cutts, Google’s own public face and head of their spam Search Quality team, has written a very interesting blog post claiming how open and transparent Google are and always have been when it comes to such things, and how they’ve always tried to educate whenever possible.

As Matt says:

One of the most widely-discussed parts of Google’s scoring has always been PageRank. That “secret ingredient” is hardly a secret. Here it is. That early paper not only gave the formula for PageRank, but mentioned many of the other signals in Google’s ranking, including anchor text, the location of words within documents, the relative proximity of query words in a document, the size and type of fonts used, the raw HTML of each page, and capitalization of words. Google has continued to publish literally hundreds of research papers over the years. Those papers reveal many of the “secret formulas” for how Google works and document essential infrastructure that Google uses.

The post continues claiming interesting point after interesting point and then we get to the end:

At the same time, we don’t think it’s unreasonable for any business to have some trade secrets, not least because we don’t want to help spammers and crackers game our system. If people who are trying to game search rankings knew every single detail about how we rank sites, it would be easier for them to ‘spam’ our results with pages that are not relevant and are frustrating to users — including porn and malware sites.

Ultimately, criticizing Google for its “secret formula” is an easy claim to make, but it just isn’t true. Google has worked day after day for years to be open, to educate publishers about how we rank sites, and to answer questions from both publishers and our users. So if that’s how people choose to define “secret,” then ours must be the worst kept secret in the world of search.

It looks like we might have to get a host of SEO experts together to see if they can agree on how transparent Google is when it comes to its ranking algorithms.

75%, 43.3% or Pi?

Not wishing to be a pedant, but partial transparency is an oxymoron.

Imagine some other worldly being turning up in a shiny UFO one evening. They whisk you off for a ride round the cosmos, hand you some blueprints (but not all of them) and lay out the vast majority of parts on your lawn for you to have a stab at building your own interstellar craft. You’ve seen what it does, and you’ve got some of the bits and bobs and certain instructions, but without the full caboodle you’re going nowhere.

You’re going to need some pretty smart mechanics (or be fairly smart yourself) to backwards engineer some of the gaps and test that it works before you make it to Pluto, or even Costco.

But, if they came from Planet Ikea…….

(Caveat: This isn’t a dig at Matt Cutts. While I don’t know the fella, he’s somebody I have a bit of respect for. If you ever required a near perfect example of a public liaison between corporate and customer, then Matt is it.)

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Partner Agency before you reach out.

The post SEOs who can, do. SEOs who can’t, teach. appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.