To say that 2020 has been a year of change would be a dramatic understatement. Like everything this year, SEO has continued to change and evolve.
As we near the end of 2020, it’s time to note some of the ways physician SEO has changed this year and how that prepares us looking forward to 2021.
Google Is Indexing Less Content
In May, Google rolled out a significant core update. Since then, they are indexing fewer sites.
The intent behind this was not to have their resources tied up with low-quality sites and content.
The real-life impact is that this favors the physician websites that have more domain authority established (i.e., they have been doing this a long time), so it can create challenges for newer physician websites to rank.
However, our 2020 experience has informed us that the key to still succeeding if you have a newer site is creating consistent content.
Pay Attention to Freshness Indicators
This year we’ve seen new content appearing in the SERPs. A key part of this seems to be when physicians update some of their legacy content.
In the eyes of Google, when you update some of your older posts and pages, that you are investing in your website by keeping content up to date. This seems to be especially true in healthcare.
Send Google Indexing and Crawling Signals
For now, Google has disabled the “Request Indexing” feature inside of Search Console. By most accounts, this is a bug and expected to be a temporary change. I certainly hope so.
However, this means that the “blocking and tackling” of physician SEO is more important than ever.
Sending Google the correct indexing and crawling signals is important because you want to inform Google about your site structure, not let them create their own version of it.
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Looking ahead, I believe 2021 is going to be an excellent year for physician SEO for those who focus on consistent content creation.
There will be plenty of opportunities for those who are serious about digital marketing to separate from the competition.