Have your Google rankings dropped significantly without any explanation or reason as to what went wrong? After putting so much effort and time into your website, experiencing a drop in rankings like this can be devastating.
If the same has happened to your dental website, don’t worry because you’re not alone. Our team at Dental Marketing Co. is here to guide you through this and help you reclaim those lost rankings.
Think of Google as a machine, constantly tinkering with its algorithms to improve performance. Part of this tinkering includes Google Updates, which re-evaluates rankings in the search engine based on the new metrics and standards that have been enforced.
These Google updates can be major algorithmic changes or minor tweaks and are of two types: core updates and spam updates.
This month, Google decided to shake things up with not just one but two updates – a core update and a spam update simultaneously. If you’ve lost rankings of your dental website around this time, these updates could be the reason behind it.
Google’s core updates are the major updates that have the potential to shake up search engine rankings significantly. Think of them like your annual spring clean. These updates are their way of improving the users’ search experience and providing more relevant, helpful, and trustworthy content across industries and user intent.
The March 2024 core update is the latest in a series of algorithm changes to improve search results’ relevance and quality. Accordingly, this update focuses on weeding out low-quality and unoriginal content along with content geared more towards search engines than actual people from search results, targeting a 40% reduction in low-quality content that clutters search results.
Spam updates, on the other hand, are minor updates that target spammy practices like keyword stuffing to keep searches clean and fair. While Google’s automated systems are designed to detect search spam, these spam updates are improvements made to change how they work.
The March 2024 spam update targets three web-spam practices that violate Google’s webmaster guidelines. These include scaled content abuse, site reputation abuse and expired domain abuse, all of which are implemented to preserve the authenticity of search outcomes.
When it comes to content and search rankings, Google has always held a clear stance about what it wants to see in the content it ranks. Accordingly, your dental website should have original, high-quality content that genuinely serves its users.
So, what this means is that Google doesn’t want low-quality, unhelpful and unoriginal content published with the sole purpose of manipulating search engines.
If your dental website’s content falls short of Google’s content policies and standards, you might encounter a few bumps in the road with these updates.
Here are a couple of signs you are likely to see when that happens:
Don’t worry because there are ways to figure out if your dental website has been hit by these Google updates. You can start by looking up your website on Google by typing “site:website.com”. If your dental website doesn’t appear in the search results, it’s time for us to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
You could also use Google Search Console to see if you’ve lost rankings or received spam alerts in the Checking Security & Manual Actions section.
If the rankings of your dental website have dropped following a Google update, here are some steps you can take to reclaim lost rankings.
The fundamental basis for ranking on Google’s search results is to provide informed and well-researched content that is useful to the user. The first thing to do is to tackle any and all pages that aren’t pulling their weight, like pages that:
After identifying these pages, look at Search Performance on Google Search Console to find pages that didn’t rank or bring in meaningful traffic and delete them. And if you’ve been using AI to create aimed at driving traffic, consider pruning them as well.
If you are implementing black-hat SEO, you may want to reconsider doing so with Google’s core update. Here are a few black-hat techniques that can cause your dental website’s rankings to drop:
Purchasing and repurposing expired domains to boost search rankings with low-quality content is now seen as spam. So, if your content isn’t relevant to the old domain or you are abusing the site’s authority by pushing out low-quality content, it’s time for a fresh start.
Last but not least, let’s give those backlinks a little cleanup.
If you have unnatural links from low-authority, irrelevant websites, doing a backlink audit and cleanup is a good idea to reclaim the lost rankings of your dental website.
What you can do is identify toxic or spammy backlinks by heading to the Top Linking Sites tab in the Google Search Console. After that, you can disavow the links that appear to be spammy and submit a request for review.
At Dental Marketing Co., we understand that as a busy dentist, you’ve got your hands full of appointments and patients. As a result, you may not have the time to keep up with Google’s updates and tinker with your SEO strategy.
That’s where we come in. We understand that Google’s updates play a crucial role in shaping search engine rankings and the visibility of your dental website. That is why we make it our mission to always stay one step ahead. We will help you improve and maintain your website’s rankings and remain resilient to algorithm updates by adhering to Google’s content policies, staying ahead of these updates and prioritising high-quality content and user experience.
Ready to reclaim lost rankings and restore traffic to your dental website? Contact us at Dental Marketing Co., where we understand Google updates and how to maintain rankings for dentists.