Google Has Updated Again – Here’s How It Affects Your Dental Practice
Google’s Updated Again – Here’s How It Affects You
‘Google has released a new update to their search algorithm’ – the phrase that turns the stomach of any digital marketer or business owner worldwide.
Every few years, Google rolls out upgrades to their search engine to improve the experience for searches. When this happens, some people get caught on the wrong side of an update; and being on the wrong side of an update could mean disappearing off the face of the web. What would that do to your business? It’s safe to say that it wouldn’t turn you into a billionaire.
How will you know if you’re going to get caught out?
Well, you don’t.
For Google, that would be the equivalent of the Police telling suspects that they’re going to be arrested tomorrow. Instead, Google operates with the hammer of justice smacking an unsuspecting website to the bottom of search results pages, deep in the void of the internet.
It’s most likely that you’ll never know if you’re next on Google’s chopping block. Your marketing agency however, will know.
How?
Google, Bing, Yandex, whatever search engine you’re optimising for, they don’t shoot down respectable businesses for no reason. They penalise people they think are manipulating the system. These people are known as Black Hat SEOs or Black Hat Businesses. You may be one and you don’t even realise it. Is your Dental Marketing Agency making you algo-proof? Now is a good time to ask. Everyone at Dental Design is, that’s why we’ve never had a client with a Manual Action penalty in over 20 years of business.
What’s the New Update?
The new Google update is the Helpful Content Update that began rolling out in late 2022. It’s now complete and websites that have operated in the dark side of SEO marketing have been punished.
How do you avoid it?
The easy way is to stick with Dental Design, but more broadly, here’s how:
1.Content is King
Search Engines are where users go to find answers to questions or problems they have. They best way for a search engine to match a website with a user is to decide how helpful the content on the website is to satisfy the users query.
For instance, check your Invisalign page – one of the most competitive Search Results Pages in Dental Marketing. How extensive is the content? Does it answer different types of questions about Invisalign – the cost, how long it does for instance?
If it does, you’re answering multiple user queries and therefore, you’re more likely to rank higher in Google.
If you’re writing a blog, great! Keep at it.
2. User First
This one is a little harder to quantify. However, it’s there.
Ultimately, if a website provides a poor user experience, Google will stop showing it to users.
If the website is difficult to navigate, too hard to read, too slow to load, it doesn’t matter how good your content is, people won’t read it.
The best way to combat this is custom-build websites. Page builders and outsourced shared hosting come with tonnes of bloat and slow page speed. These are all issues that become outside of your control.
That’s why all our websites are custom-built in house. That way, no matter what happens in the tech sphere or what fancy new page builder comes out, we’ll always be ahead of the game. That’s because Google wants clean, slim, and unique websites. Due to this, nothing will ever beat custom-built websites – simple as.
3. White Hat SEO
Okay, understandably this one may be very difficult to keep your eye on without your marketing glasses on. There are signs but they’re may be some things that look Black Hat that actually aren’t.
👉 Thousands and thousands of links from websites that you’ve never heard of or would ever visit
👉 Your service page mentions the primary keyword loads and loads and loads
These two are the obvious red flags, but there’s some technical ones that you won’t notice without an SEO deep dive.
If nothing here rings a bell, don’t sweat it. You’re all set.
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