SEO Resilience: Thriving Through Google Algorithm Updates

In this next episode of OUTCOMES, Bill Gadless engages with emagine SEO Strategist, Heather Cumens, in a deep dive into the realm of SEO, particularly focusing on the resilience needed to thrive through Google's ever-evolving algorithm updates.

Dive into a detailed discussion around algorithm updates and their implications on digital marketing in the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors. Heather elucidates the intricacies of how algorithm changes impact SEO strategies, website rankings, and consequently, the traffic driven to your site. The conversation spans from the mysterious aura surrounding SEO, the criticality of adapting to algorithm updates, to the dynamics of Google's relationship with the SEO industry.

Heather sheds light on an often overlooked, yet powerful SEO tool - Schema, which is instrumental in structured data and enhancing Google's understanding of your webpage content. The episode further explores the recent trends in algorithm updates, emphasizing speed, content quality, user intent, and the reduction of spam or poor search results.

A noteworthy part of the conversation veers into the domain of AI-generated content, reflecting on the recently updated Google's quality rater guidelines which subtly endorse the use of AI in content creation, yet underscore the imperativeness of human oversight for ensuring accuracy, especially in the healthcare domain where misinformation could have severe repercussions.

Join Bill and Heather as they unravel the complexities of SEO, offering invaluable insights for healthcare and pharma digital marketers looking to navigate the choppy waters of algorithm updates, and harness the potential of SEO and AI in propelling their digital marketing efforts to new heights.

Key Takeaways:

- Understanding Google Algorithm updates and their impact on SEO strategies in healthcare and pharmaceutical digital marketing.

- The importance of Schema in structured data and enhancing your site's visibility.

- Trends in Google's algorithm updates and how to stay ahead.
Insight into Google's stance on AI-generated content and the balance between AI and human oversight for ensuring content accuracy.

Thank you for listening to OUTCOMES. Please find more healthcare and biopharma marketing thought leadership in the Insights section of our website and follow us on LinkedIn!

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to outcomes, the healthcare and biopharma marketing podcast, where marketing leaders discuss the most effective strategies for the health sectors coming from a digital first. AI powered perspective. Hello everyone. And welcome to our next episode here of our outcomes podcast. Uh, today I have here with me Heather Cummins. She is an SEO strategist at. Imagine and imagine health. And we are going to continue talking about one of my favorite topics. Um, ironically, one of my favorite topics, because it's one that I can't claim to, um, ever understand all that well, even though I've been in it for 20 plus years. Um, I always, I always say when I'm talking about SEO that even today it is the topic of all the things that we do and all the digital marketing. Various strategies and tactics. I think it's the one that has always had the most mystique, um, is the most misunderstood is possibly the most complex. Uh, and, and I think that's been true. Over the 20 plus years that I've been around it and it continues to be because it's never the same I mean, I think it practically changes every day and that's one of one of the things that we're you know Really what today's topic is about we're gonna talk about uh algorithm updates and changes that affect Everything you do, SEO, um, how you approach it, your, your, your rankings, the traffic that you're going to drive to your site, how Google views the quality of your website and, and all that stuff. So that's why we have Heather here. Hi, Heather. Hey, thanks for having me today, Bill. Of course. So let's, let's jump right in and, and let you do some of the talking here. Um, first, you know, just give me a general overview of, you know, what is an algorithm update? Well, you know, you really hit the nail on the head with your intro about, uh, the mystique and the mystery around SEO, because Google does change its algorithm on a daily basis. They're constantly checking things in search to see what will better fit user intent. What will, you know, really change their business. To be better, um, suited to the end consumer, the in search consumer. So Google algorithm update is simply a change to the ranking factors in Google that affect your site's rankings. So those changes can be something small, um, like maybe the way that the search results show, um, or it could be just a movement, slight movements up and down within the rankings of a website. site, all of that could be algorithmically generated or driven, but it's really just a change to the way that Google views search intent, search rankings, um, all of those different aspects of the website. And how do you know about them? Like, do you, does Google release information on these? Do we just learn of them as like an industry sharing information or you through your own clients? Like how are the various ways you, you learn about these changes? All of those, so, you know, the, there are really kind of 3 different aspects of Google algorithms. You've got your core algorithm updates, which are typically announced and Google has a search dashboard where they give a status update that tells how long the algorithm's been rolling out and gives just really. Very basic information about the fact that there is an update, like, ongoing, and they actually do announce some of the other algorithm changes that they make. For instance, in September, they announced a new helpful content update, which is really a large update. That's going to affect a variety of. How helpful the content on your website is. Um, and so that one was announced as well. And so some of them are announced. Google alerts the industry as a whole via the search dashboard that there's drastic change happening. Um, but a lot of them are unannounced and so Google really makes changes, like I said on pretty much a daily basis where they're just testing out different, um, you know, things Nuances to the algorithm to help with, um, search compatibility, search, result processing, all of that. And so a lot of those aren't announced. Um, we have some tools that we use a strategist, of course, that are like volatility rankers that examine websites across a variety of industries and really kind of give us alerts when there's high volatility in either certain industries or within like, you know, kind of Internet. Search as a whole. And that can be indicative too, of the fact that there's an algorithm change going on. So really kind of all of the above you have to be alert on a daily basis. Um, you know, I do weekly checks for my rankings, for all of my websites, really looking at some of the, the keywords that my clients are hyper focused on and really kind of keeping, you know, weekly and daily tabs on those as we, so that we can react to any changes within the search results very quickly. So, yeah. So one of the things I've always wondered, Heather, and this is just to get your opinion on this. I've always wondered how Google views SEO and the SEO industry as opposed to again, just letting companies develop quality content and not having a bunch of experts and professionals like yourself doing some of the technical things and advising on the back end. You know, do they, are Google and SEO industry allies or does Google wish that you didn't exist and you would just let companies have quality content out there and not be trying to manipulate their rankings per se? You know, that, that's a tough question. I'd say there's probably a mixed, uh, emotions on both sides of the SEO and Google, uh, you know, relationship there, right? Um, there are definitely some love hate. Factors on both sides. Um, you know, I think for Google, yeah, they, they want to provide quality to search users. That's really what their business model is based on. That's really how they drive their ad revenue. That's really how they get more people to use Google as a search engine. And so if we do things from like a black hat SEO perspective that are, um, outside of the realm of guidelines that Google gives us. Then they definitely frowned very heavily on that. Um, and really that goes back to our core topic of algorithm updates because those are some of the practices that google just Absolutely smacks our hands on in these algorithm updates. Those are the sites that um, typically tank After a core algorithm update if they're hit by one of those type of practices that they haven't Or shouldn't have been doing according to google Um now on the flip side of that I think if we are providing Helpful content schema that helps Google to understand what entities are on our page. If we're doing some of these things that Google really asks us to do within their guidelines, then I think that that we're actually an asset to their business because we're helping them. To give users better search intent, better quality results. And so, you know, we've talked about before in healthcare that the healthcare market in general is moving more towards like a patient centric type of focus. And so Google to me has the same user centric type of focus. Is that they want to answer your healthcare questions. They want to be able to meet you exactly where you are on your customer journey and quickly and easily give you the information that you were looking for. So as an SEO strategist and as a white hat SEO practitioner, maybe I should clarify that is that for our clients, we only use white hat. White hat techniques that are approved by Google. Um, and so in that realm, then I am kind of an asset to Google and that I am giving them additional information. Um, I am providing them with key on page data that helps them understand what my page is about. Um, and I'm not trying to scam them about the content that I have. You know what I mean? That's what they're looking for with all of these algorithm updates, whether it be a hopeful content update, whether it be something related to eat our experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. All of those types of things are things that we as SEOs can work to enhance for clients, but we also. So our giving Google information that is pertinent to the client's website and that will eventually help the user to understand whether our client is, is authoritative enough to deliver content within their space. And what I mean by that is we work with so many different like biopharmaceutical, um, Drug development type of companies, people, companies that are putting on clinical trials. And so, as a healthcare consumer, you want to know that that company is above board that they vetted the content that they're putting out there that it's been reviewed by subject matter experts that. That what they are saying to you as a health care consumer is valid, um, that it's authoritative and that it's correct. And so really, those two align really well for me as a strategist in that, you know. I don't some of the time. I don't know how Google views us. I think we may be, um, you know, flies that irritate them at times. Right? Some of the things that we do. But at the same time, our strategies really should align with Google in providing that content. So. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I, I know how they viewed me because I was one of those guys who thought I was brilliant and it wasn't Google back then it was Alta Vista, Lycos, Excite, Ask Jeeves, HotBot. Um, I could go on Yahoo and, uh, we're talking the late nineties where I thought I was brilliant putting, um, White text on a white background and, uh, and, and stuffing, you know, 300 keywords in the, in the meta tags. And, uh, that didn't go so well. We've all been guilty of it, right? It worked. The funny thing is it worked back then. For a while. Yeah. But then, you know, once you get your hand slapped from a couple of those incidents, then, you know, you fall more into kind of alignment with following the guidelines, especially for our enterprise clients, but I'm with you. Yeah, I, I was, I was a black text on a black background. I'm not a girl personally, but yeah. Oh, things have changed. Um, Heather, you used the word, and we don't have to delve into a whole lesson on this, but because you said it, Um, what does, what is schema? Okay, so schema is code that goes behind the, um, the website behind. It's in the HTML code of the website. And what it does is it helps Google to understand the entities that are on your page. So, for example, if I have a clinical trial patient, or clinical trial website, and I'm trying to tell Google what it is. do. Then some of my entities would be the therapeutic area that we treat, um, the new drug that we're offering as a treatment option, some of the signs and symptoms for that disease. All of that can go into the schema code of the website and of course the content on the page. Um, you know, going back to that black text on black background, you can't hide things in the code of the website in schema, but anything that's on the page is eligible to be put into schema. And so schema is really that programming language that helps clarify to Google exactly what those therapeutic areas are. Um, so a lot of times with. Schema will link things like Wikipedia data to the entities so that we're very clear about the fact that this therapeutic area is for um, heart disease and that that is the area that we're treating with this new drug. These are the features of that drug, et cetera. So it's really just another way to clarify to Google what your website is about. And it's an acceptable practice by Google. It is acceptable. It's encouraged and it's underutilized. And so that's, it's actually one of my favorite topics. Um, I, yeah, it kind of reveals what a nerd I am, I think, because it is a coding language. It is very detailed. Um, but it's one of those ways that I feel like is very white hat. It's encouraged by Google and it's one of those underutilized tools that a lot of SEO strategists haven't taken the time to learn, or maybe it's a little confusing at first, you know what I mean? Um, and so really fleshing out all of those different entities, nesting that schema within the website, within the webpage, within that therapeutic area. So building like this hierarchy. Of all these entities that you're associated with is just really one of those ways that we can get an increase in organic traffic, um, uh, really providing Google with the information that it seeks out. So, yeah, great. Thank you. I, I think so few people. Even know what it is or because it's not only underutilized, it's under talked about. I mean, I belong to a lot of, uh, online communities and a lot of newsletters and I, I digest a lot of content and it, it, it's barely ever even referenced when I see people talking about SEO and such. So, I mean, that's a future episode, I think in itself. So Heather, what, what would be some of the major trends that you're observing in terms of algorithm updates? Yeah, if we examine algorithm updates over the past, let's say, 10 years, just to kind of really look at those high level, you know, issues that Google, uh, kind of comes back to each time. The things that I always see are they prioritize speed. Um, they really emphasize content quality. So you can see that through helpful content updates and EAT updates user intent that we talked about earlier. That's a huge focus for a lot of algorithm updates, enhancements to search appearance, simply changing the way that the search results either appear or interact with users is a big 1 that we've seen in recent updates and then reducing spam or poor search results is huge as well. And so if you, if you think back kind of historically through all of those for speed updates, one of the big ones was, was called mobile again. And so what happened there is that mobile sites were prioritized for indexing and sites that didn't have mobile versions of the site were then penalized in search results. And so that's a trend that has continued with, like, core. Core web vitals with some of the speed indexing updates that we've seen. And so speed is something that Google is, is very interested in delivering to users. And mainly because you think about being on a mobile device, you thinking about being on like a poor wifi network, users need that content to come in quickly at small, um, data sizes. And you know, that really enhances the search experience for users. Um, another big 1 that we've seen, um, that we're actually really kind of in the middle of right now is a content update for hopeful content. And this really, to me, corresponds with our eat updates, our experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. And so all of this. For me really surrounds two questions. Do you have the authority to deliver content in your topic area? And is your content helpful? Does it add to the conversation that is happening on the Internet about your topic area? Are you adding in new content? Or are you simply regurgitating things? That have already been said. And so just like you and I bill are interested in people who have insightful comments, who have new things to say when we're conversing with them, the same is true for Google. They're looking for people who are adding interesting information to the conversation. And so, you know, infographics, new statistics, um, new research in our therapeutic areas are all really great ideas for our healthcare clients. To add to their websites and to their content, because it really gets at that helpful, useful, pertinent, you know, information being added to the conversation. And then I think one of the other trends that I mentioned that user intent. Again, Google is hyper focused on delivering to the user what they're searching for. So you think about in the pandemic, we went through a period where masks could have meant like Halloween masks. It could have been like a face covering for work that you need, um, like a welder's mask. All of these would have been in the search results pretty prolifically, maybe peppered throughout. Um, you know, definitely kind of a surge for Halloween masks. October timeframe, et cetera. But in, during the pandemic, so let's say maybe may 2020 and beyond, right. The only like search result that was coming up was a face covering that was supposed to prevent disease. Right. And so that was a huge change in that user intent that Google had to hyper focus on because users wanted that. Face mask, as opposed to any other type of mask. And that's one of the interesting things about some of these, um, Google algorithm updates is everything. Everything that Google does results in both winners and losers. So one, one thing that I'm dealing with right now for one of my clients is that they have several different vaccine offerings that they have available. So anything from like that childhood. Um, like trio of vaccines to RSV vaccines, all of these different vaccines, but because of the pandemic, because of where we are at in human history, COVID vaccines have replaced a lot of that search volume around that generic term of vaccines. And so what happens is that while COVID vaccines were this huge winner in that search intent algorithm change, um, other vaccines really dropped in the result. So we have to go in, we have to edit our keyword strategy, really examine, you know, how we can hyper focus in on different types of vaccines, as opposed to that kind of neutral, all encompassing keyword. And that's what happens with a lot of these algorithm updates is that, you know, you have these winners and losers, you have to constantly edit your strategy in order to react to those. So. So if, if, if someone just searches for vaccine and most of the results are COVID centric, it's not just because the internet's been flooded with more content around that. It's also, you're saying if I'm understanding right, that Google's algorithm is reflective of what it knows are more current. Trends and user intent. Correct? Correct. Yeah. So, you know, any current news items, um, trends within consumer behavior, all of that can factor in, um, and be represented within the algorithm. Cause again, the goal for Google is to provide valid search results. And so If they decide that the term vaccine is really, you know, oriented towards the COVID vaccine, then those sites will come up in rankings and other sites will come down. Right. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Combined with the fact that I'm probably right in assuming that they also are flooded with content around the things that are more current. So it's a mix of the algorithm reflecting it and there's just, there's going to be a heck of a lot more content In Google about COVID vaccine versus the flu vaccine or RS or RSV and, and other vaccines. Um, the, the, the other thing I want to touch upon Heather, and I think it's, you know, I think this is a little bit of a speculative conversation. Um, it's obviously the hottest topic around, but with regard to AI and, you know, Again, I realize it's just what we think at this point in terms of how Google's algorithm will view AI generated content. I think, you know, there's been a lot of debate and some people have even posted some results and things they've observed so far. Um, and some people say that, Oh, Google will penalize stuff that they know is a chat GPT generated completely. I think the other side of this is I've always said, well. As long as it's quality content, does Google really care who wrote it? What generated it, where it came from, as long as it's real, as long as it's true. I'm sure the answer is going to be some mix of those things, but I did want to just quickly get your perspective on anything that you either know so far, or you've seen so far, or where just in your opinion, where that's going to go. Well, um, it's so relevant because we've just rolled out the September, um, helpful content update from Google. And so the biggest change, or the most notable change that we saw in that is that they actually changed their quality, their Google quality radar, um, guidelines for helpful content. And so the old verbiage used to read, um, something that was along the lines of helpful content written by people. For people, but as of September, 2023, that same phrase ology now reads helpful content created for people in search results. So Google actually removed the verbiage of by people from their helpful content guidelines. That's fascinating. No, I mean, that kind of says it all right. They are not out to get your AI generated content, however, they are out to get your content that is bad. They're out to get content that you haven't reviewed, that you haven't embedded, that you don't have a search. Um, uh, Subject matter experts reviewing. They are, they've always been against that kind of content. They've always been against content that you simply spin up as a slight variation of something else. Um, you've always had to say like, this is a duplicate, um, of this content with your canonical versions of things. And so all of that is in alignment with the same status that Google has taken for a number of years. So no, I'm. I'm not scared of AI generated content. I don't think our clients should be. It is a great tool for both productivity and for cutting down that initial first draft writing time. And I think it should be used as such. I do think people are making a mistake. Um, and don't have a subject matter expert review it that that's definitely a mistake, I think, but that is against every helpful content guideline that we've been given because it's humanized it a little bit with tone, I think, as well. Yeah. Well, I think everybody wants to speak within their brand, right? And so to me, that's just good marketing that you would, you know, take those articles and like you're saying, emphasize your tone of voice, your brand within it as well. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's, it's great news and I wasn't, I wasn't aware of that, um, update. Obviously you're much closer to it than me, but I think that's fascinating news. It's just, it's in line with what we would preach anyway, outside of, outside of SEO and Google's opinion of content at the end of the day, especially in our industry, healthcare, biopharma, you can't be inaccurate, the risk is too high, maybe if you're a manufacturer of widgets, you can be inaccurate with your content when you're making drugs. And you're doing things that are going in people's bodies. You, you've got to ensure accuracy for other reasons, far beyond how Google's going to like your content. And so it's just completely in line. Make sure, you know, it's human oversight. It's it's leverage AI as an assistant, as a force multiplier, as a way to do more things faster, but make sure it's right and. I mean, that's, that's the, that's best practice anyway. And, and it seems to be from what you're saying that at this point, at least Google's on the same page, which is great. Well, and just another interesting statistic that I recently read is that chat is inaccurate about 30 percent of the time. So, to me, you know, you should be finding some mistakes and what's generated. Um, and it's really important to check for that. So, yeah. Yeah, there's been out there and kind of the chat GPT zeitgeist. It appears to be that it's gotten less accurate over the past several months. I don't know why and I don't know if that's true, but that seems to be the general conversation is that people are observing the accuracy has gotten worse for some reason. So, um, so we'll see. I mean, we're not an expert on what goes on. In that whole algorithm, you know, that's a different conversation. So Heather, this has been great. I really appreciate all your insights and I look forward to having, uh, many future conversations on here with you. So thanks so much. Appreciate it. So it was fun. All right, Heather, have a good one.