2023 Google Algorithm Updates: A Guide for Veterinary Practices

In 2023, Google made some impactful changes to its search algorithm that can impact how potential clients find your veterinary practice online. These updates can catch unprepared websites off guard, but you can navigate these changes successfully with the right strategies. Let's explore these updates and how they affect your veterinary website's performance.

March 2023 Broad Core Update:

On the 15th of March, Google rolled out its Broad Core Update. This update is intended to improve how Google evaluates all content types across the board by prioritizing helpful content. This essentially means that veterinary practice websites containing high-quality content that provides a great user experience will be ranked higher in organic search results.

Ensuring your website content adheres to EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness) guidelines is, therefore, more important than ever.

What To Do Now:

1. Update your existing content - If you notice a dramatic drop in organic performance, ask our team to investigate the issue and identify which pages have been most affected by this update. We can then work together to refresh the content by adding updated and relevant information – improving the quality of these pages.
2. Adhere to EEAT Guidelines - Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness has to become the prevailing theme when publishing and editing content on your site. For more information on how you can implement these guidelines, check out our blog on how to improve your website's EEAT.
3. Perform an SEO Audit - If this update has affected your site’s rankings, ask our team to perform a deep SEO audit to identify any issues involving duplicate content, broken links, missing meta tags, and any other problematic factors that might be hindering your website rankings.
4. Tailor your content to your audience - Google now favors content created for real people looking for answers instead of search engines looking for keywords. To ensure your content is focused on a human experience, be sure to make it easy to read while including reliable sources and references and overall easy to navigate.

April 2023 Review Update:

The review update was rolled out on the 12th of April, and may or may not impact your veterinary website. Despite what the name suggests, this update does not affect user-generated reviews, such as those you find on your business profile. Instead, it is intended to ensure that “review content” is of the best quality. However, the importance of generating and responding to reviews should not be underestimated, as it ties in with the “Experience and Expertise” that Google finds so valuable.

If there are any pages on your website that explore the efficiency or quality of a particular product or service, it is crucial to ensure that content is optimized fully to mitigate the ranking challenges this update holds.

What To Do Now:

1. If you have any existing content that essentially “reviews” a particular product or service, ensure the content is well-informed and written by someone with real experience making use of the product or service.
2. Visual examples of a product or service you are reviewing are very valuable. For instance, if you want to highlight why Bravecto is more or less effective than Frontline as a preventive medication, making a video that showcases both products is advised.
3. Review content should always highlight both the pros and cons of a particular product or service, comprehensively backed up by evidence, data from authoritative sources, and past experiences.

August 2023 Broad Core Update:

The August Broad Core Update was the second update of its type in 2023. This update, much like its March predecessor, focuses on improving search results to prioritize content users will find most helpful. This change may cause pages that were considered “under-rewarded” in the past to do much better, but it can also have the opposite effect.

The emphasis on EEAT is, once again, pivotal in maintaining healthy organic traffic following this update. While it is not definitively proven, it is believed that the August update has a more significant impact on the veterinary industry than did the March update, as this industry falls into the health and medical sector.

What To Do Now:

1. The guidelines listed under the March Broad Core Update apply to the August update. Essentially, highlighting Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness is the only and most effective way to guarantee organic growth. This has led to a catchy phrase here at GeniusVets: “EEAT or Die.”
2. Add unique content - If your website can provide users with information they can’t find anywhere else, Google will undoubtedly see it as a signal that you should be ranking at the very top of search results. It isn’t always feasible to take hours out of your week to create original content, but GeniusVets provides a simple solution. Taking as little as 30 minutes of your time to create video content using our Service Page content scripts will ensure your site contains unique, original content not found anywhere else that offers answers to the most frequently asked questions related to pet care.

September 2023 Helpful Content Update:

This update was rolled out on the 14th of September and aims to improve Google’s ability to distinguish good and helpful content from content that does not hold much value to the public. The gist of this update is that Google is loosening up on AI-generated content and utilizing certain “signals” to identify helpful content.

Essentially, if machine-generated content is deemed to be more helpful than human-generated content, it will be ranked higher. This update is a 180-degree turn from Google's previous statement that implied content generated “by people for people” will always be of more value. The new statement is as follows:

“Google Search’s helpful content system generates a signal used by our automated ranking systems to better ensure people see original, helpful content created for people in search results.”

What To Do Now:

1. Assess your content and ensure it yields a positive response to the questions: Google’s algorithm will evaluate your content. These content and quality questions are outlined in this Google Help Document.
2. Ensure a great user experience: This guideline involves ensuring your website is SEO-friendly on desktop and mobile devices. On the back end, GeniusVets goes to great lengths to ensure our pages are optimized for user experience and contain all the sought-after features Google favors. A great experience further includes making it easy for users to navigate your site and access valuable and reliable references on your site or a trustworthy external site.
3. Demonstrate EEAT: Your content should clearly reflect our expertise and extensive knowledge on any topic you explore. In essence, visitors should feel satisfied after reading your content, having found all the answers they were looking for and trusting it wholeheartedly as it came from expert sources.

October 2023 Spam Update:

The Spam Update was rolled out on the 4th of October and focuses on Google’s ability to detect spam. Lucky for you, this update will not affect your organic performance because your website does not contain “spammy” content.

Content that is considered stolen, repetitive, and of low quality is deemed spam content. We all know those websites that are so saturated with ads and broken links that you want to leave as soon as you can. Well, Google will start penalizing such websites and reducing their prevalence in your search results.

October 2023 Core Update:

Once again, this update is aimed at improving Google’s ability to identify high-quality content, and once again, EEAT is the hallmark of staying on top of organic performance following this update.

If you have carefully read, understood, and implemented our guidelines on improving your site’s EEAT, this and the previous updates of this nature will only help you moving forward, because Google will better recognize the outstanding quality of your website.

In Closing

In light of these updates, as a veterinary practice owner, your focus should be on maintaining a high-quality website with informative and user-friendly content. Ensure your website demonstrates your experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness in the veterinary field to continue to rank well in search results.

If you need further guidance on navigating these algorithm updates successfully and optimizing your veterinary practice's online presence, reach out to us, and we’ll walk you through everything you need to know and do to continue on the path to success. We can help you unlock untapped opportunities and ensure your organic search presence remains at the top of its game.