With its latest search algorithm updates, i.e., Google’s Medic Update (August 1) and Google Birthday Update (September 27), the search engine giant has reiterated its mission and vision to evolve as a highly trustworthy and authoritative platform.
Google’s objective is clear – to help users find the most relevant and reliable information from authoritative sites or authors, who have a sound grasp on their subjects. However, the updates have shaken the ground for many website owners and their SEO teams. Drop in organic traffic, SEO ranking, number of leads and conversions has become an area of deep concern.
#1. Countdown for low-quality, unreliable and half-baked information has started
How do you see Google’s Medic Update? This is nothing but an extension of YMYL (Your Money Your Life) policies that the search giant released in 2013. This is a commendable Google Update to wipe out low quality, unreliable and half-baked information from the Web and connect users with the right helpful information.
Considering people’s reliance on Google, this is a must! Kids rely on Google to complete their home works; buyers make their purchase-decisions online; investors take clues from finance related blog posts to invest in the right investment plan or fund and, people often follow fitness posts or watch YouTube videos to stay fit, learn new recipes and so on. Hence, it becomes a responsibility of the world’s leading search platform to do justice with the trust of users.
What to Do: Google’s Medic Update sets three attributes of quality content – effective, authoritative and trustworthiness, which has earned the acronym, EAT. Hence, it’s important you make your users to eat healthy content.
#2. Influencer marketing is here to stay
With social signals – followers, engagement or action – becoming decisive in search engine ranking, none can discard the importance of influencers.
Content written and marketed by subject matter experts or people having an authority over the topic shared is most likely to rank better in Google’s search results than their counterparts. Hence, social media influencers are to stay in demand in 2019. However, individuals or businesses having health and medical sites along with YMYL (Your Money Your Life) sites (finance, eCommerce, parenting, real-estate, etc.) are in dire need of getting their marketing endeavor pushed by influencers.
What to Do: Find influencers having the audience that you are targeting at. You may take help of content marketing tools like Buzz Sumo to find active influencers in your niche. Take note of their social health: fan following and engagement before you enter into any agreement. Make sure you give a detailed description of your product/service to your influencer marketer before they share or advertise it on their channels.
#3. Take Privacy Seriously
Pages that solicit personal information, such as personal identification numbers, bank account numbers, drivers license numbers, etc., which could be used for identity theft are on radar. eCommerce and finance related websites have suffered a lot due to the recent updates.
What to Do: Apply all sorts of data safety measures like secure hosting, SSL protection, Internet security protection, website update, and so on to make your website immune against Internet vulnerabilities. Adopt a standard privacy policy and service terms and make those available to your users anytime through your website. Also, provide contact information to your users so that they can get in touch with you to seek clarification or raise a complaint if the need arises.
#4. Be Transparent & Authentic
Users are directly or indirectly dealing with people not the brick-and-mortar building. These updates have significantly affected websites having little or no information about their people. Make your About Us or corporate pages talk about your expertise as well as people how are blessed with it. Your business communications people should also find their face on blogs, whitepapers, case-studies, or on other pages. Their profile should read about their expertise in what they communicate.
What to Do: A few businesses tend to hide their people fearing employee attrition or other factors, which should not be the case. Integrating your corporate pages and other marketing pages with profiles of people will help you sound authentic.
Author Bio:
Partho Mondal is Founder and CEO of Wisitech, a digital marketing services provider. He is passionate about exploring the search engine dynamics and digital marketing trends and adopting the healthy practices that help businesses achieve their goals in a highly competitive and emerging economy.