Google’s March Algorithm Update – Did it Help or Hurt Your Site?
Have you noticed a change in your websites traffic or leads for better or worse? It’s possible Google’s algorithm update in March impacted your website.
Google’s latest algorithm update continues to place emphasis on demonstrating Expertise, Authority and Trust (E-A-T) across your web materials. Their August 2018 algorithm update deemed Medic also focused heavily on E-A-T factors. And for sites deemed YMYL (your money or your life), E-A-T is becoming increasingly more important in order to achieve high organic rankings.
Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) Sites
According to Google, YMYL sites are ones that include content that can affect someone’s health, happiness, safety or financial stability. Google demands high quality rating standards for YMYL pages because bad information could hurt people physically, financially or emotionally.
For local businesses this would include businesses in medical / health, finance and legal with medical/health sites impacted the most. While all businesses need to focus on E-A-T factors, sites that fall into YMYL will suffer the most if they do not make this a major focus.
What is E-A-T and Why It Matters
E-A-T stands for expertise, authority and trust. Google uses this shorthand in its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelineswhich are what people use to manually review pages for Google use. These are the 3 most important characteristics for Google to deem your content high-quality. They reflect Google’s initiative to provide more credible content in the search results especially for sites classified as YMYL. In order to rank high in organic search results, you must meet the requirements for a good E-A-T rating.
How to Reover Lost Rankings and Improve Your E-A-T Rating
There are over 200 factors Google uses in its algorithm making SEO extremely complicated. Not to mention the fact that its constantly evolving as Google rolls out hundreds of updates each year.
They make it complicated and update it often to ensure that they are providing users with the best experience possible. This keeps users coming back to Google which allows them to monetize through ads.
So, how do you influence Google to rank your site higher?
Click here to learn about 10 tactics to help positively influence your E-A-T and organic ranking.