2021年11月22日
Why won't Google trust our website?
About Medicine Direct and what we have done:
- Launched our website in September 2018
- Launched our first viral campaign Fruit of your loins - February 2019
- Our new and improved website was launched in October 2020
- Throughout 2020 and 2021 we launched a number of campaigns that received national coverage
- Early 2021, we analysed every community pharmacy in the UK as the vaccination program was rolled out among community pharmacies - It gained national coverage and featured in every regional publication.
- January 2021 UK Sti check - Received national coverage
- Throughout 2021 our medical professionals Hussain Abdeh and Sonia Khan have featured in hundreds of the worlds biggest websites giving medical advice.
- Our 2021 coverage is showcased on our website here - In the news (not up to date)
- April 2021 - September 2021 - we improved the content across every product page on our website focussing on quality and clinical accuracy. We also removed all pointless and low quality pages that were receiving no traffic.
- November 2021 - Our biggest campaign "The fake tan shortage" was covered by every national publication in the UK and Ireland and was a huge talking point on social media. We even got it trending in google as seen below:
November 2021 - The core update as with every core update we have faced, has taken away our traffic and halved our impressions.
To date, we have never faced a core algorithm update that has improved our website. Why?
We undoubtedly have some of the most recognised and respected medical professionals that have featured in some of the biggest websites in the world, they regularly provide medical advice to some of the worlds biggest publications and often get their own work and research featured in those publications.
The content on our website is written by medical professional and is backed up by evidence based prescribing guidelines.
We reference all sources and clinical studies throughout our content. It is accurate, professionally written and to a high standard.
We are constantly seeing new online pharmacies, with no recognised medical professionals, with no way near the same number of features, publications or mentions in some of the worlds biggest websites that we have, outrank us within months.
Our keywords and traffic has not grown since 2019 despite huge campaigns and improvements made sitewide.
The latest data available to us in search console is showing impressions and clicks at their lowest point in 16 months, as that's as far as the data allows us to go.
This issue was raised with John Mueller at Google during SEO Office Hours, he recommended that we emailed him with our issues, to date I have not heard back from him.
Where do we go from here and how can we escalate this?
Let me know your thoughts/feedback
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2021年11月22日
My first thought was that the logo looked a little self made... Not a big deal, but if you are selling pharmaceuticals everything you can do to inspire trust is important IMO.
Next, I saw a picture of a banana advertising ED meds. I get the joke, but again, my first impression was not, “Ah, this is a trustworthy site that I want to buy cystitis meds from."
Next, the page on cystitis itself mixes informational and transactional intent. As someone who might want to buy cystitis treatment, I don't need to be taught what cystitis is. I'd go to Mayo clinic or another big authoritative health site for that info. I'm not sure what user would want to land on this page.
Then I see two products to treat cystitis, with no scientific references or really, any information to help me understand and trust why I should buy this medicine or whether it's even safe or recommended for everyone.
If recommend reading this blog post from Google, especially the parts that talk about offering content that is substantially better than competitors.
2021年11月24日
Personally, I do not like the inclusion of comparisons with other providers
Unfortunately this is the only way for me to highlight inconsistencies in google, by comparing our website to other competitors. I have raised this issue multiple times in multiple threads and have raised this multiple times to John Mueller, to no avail.
No business owner can sit back and watch as new competitors that do not meet the criteria set out in googles own official documentation (with the exception of mypharmay.co.uk), can outrank them in a highly competitive field with ease, and within months.
Please suggest an alternative approach, because I can guarantee your alternative has already been attempted to no avail.
Would you like that every time I answered a post that I question how you were "building trust with our website and medical professionals (particularly backlinks)".
I've asked you for your feedback, so please go ahead.
Do you think that some, incorrectly, that I was insinuating that you were attempting to manipulate traffic because of "backlinks" and that in some way your complaints of not being treated fairly was due to "backlinks". NOTE: My use of bold was to clear up that this is incorrect ... I hope!
Can you elaborate on this point as it doesn't make sense.
2021年11月24日
- You can raise comparisons if you want, your choice ... but I know that I and many others won't unpick another site here so easily. It's just not fair
- If you have an issue with John Mueller not responding then take that up directly with him - his contact details are more than available out there. Let me know if he starts making comments on other sites that you offer as comparisons - I would love to hear them!!
- If you think a site is using tactics to manipulate rankings then report them using standard channels but being honest trying to take competitors with such approaches is not going to work unless there is something obvious. IMHO, Google won't jump for one competitor's concern unless there is something major found.
- "I've asked you for your feedback, so please go ahead" - now, now let's not get pushy. You talked a lot about how you're pushing your authority yet I raised so many broken links especially an author's link - does this seem like an authoritative or quality flag? Have you fixed those links yet? Your content from what I have seen is mainly generic descriptions so why would Google put you high up? As Marie indicated you are trying to compete on certain parts that you have no hope to compete on (e.g., against trusted sources) so I dare say your strategy is most likely wrong and you are chasing traffic that will never exist for you? In all our talk, you haven't shown us an actual specific figure in terms of a drop, or is it just that your expectations are greater than what you can achieve? Perhaps you can give some real data? What pages are performing? what are not? what keywords are working? What are not? Forget the competitor's assumptions you are talking about as they are just distractions. But even with seeing that data I personally I think that the only problem is that your expectations far outweigh the reality of the traffic that your site is capable of attracting. Yes, you provide factual information on meds etc but nothing that would move over any line IMHO. Harsh reality ... yes. But get out of the box, stop blaming Google, stop wasting your time looking competitors and moaning about them. Wake up, smell the roses and look differently at things. For me, you are looking into a hole and are bound to find something to hold on to. Whereas, I say ... get away from the whole and look at how you can do something different. As clearly what your doing is not getting the love or else you expect to much from your lover.
- As for the links, you mentioned backlinks so how do we know that you have been not building backlinks and are now suffering as a result?
2021年11月24日
2021年11月24日
- If you think a site is using tactics to manipulate rankings then report them using standard channels but being honest trying to take competitors with such approaches is not going to work unless there is something obvious. IMHO, Google won't jump for one competitor's concern unless there is something major found.
I've not once mentioned that a site is using any tactics to manipulate their rankings. I was highlighting the fact that there are inconsistencies in how google values and doesn't value a website, particularly in a YMYL sector that displays no examples of EAT and one that does.
- You talked a lot about how you're pushing your authority yet I raised so many broken links especially an author's link - does this seem like an authoritative or quality flag?
Noted on the broken links, we are working on a fix.
With regards to the broken author links, this relates to 9 pages in total, across the whole website. Mainly our press releases, not affecting any product or category page.
- Your content from what I have seen is mainly generic descriptions so why would Google put you high up?
Please elaborate as to how the content is generic? In what way is the content generic, we medically research all products on the website, linking to evidence based clinical research to back up the claims of the content.
We provide evidence based dosage and prescribing guidelines, ingredients, warnings, side effects and drug interactions on every page. It's easy to sit there and tell me it's generic content, but how is it? Please back up your claim.
- As Marie indicated you are trying to compete on certain parts that you have no hope to compete on (e.g., against trusted sources) so I dare say your strategy is most likely wrong and you are chasing traffic that will never exist for you?
Confusing google with transactional and informational content is a page level issue, not side wide. Granted that our informational content should not rank as high as the likes of healthline or webmd, that goes without saying, but this does not hinder the overall performance of the website.
- Yes, you provide factual information on meds etc but nothing that would move over any line IMHO
What else other than unique, factual and clinically accurate content would you like me to include on a medical website? Please give me something of value, again it's easy to say the above, but the solution that you are suggesting?
Maybe a story about how my grandma used to make her own naproxen tablets at the start of the main content like the majority of recipe pages? This is a medical website, it literally needs to be factual and clinically correct.
- Forget the competitor's assumptions you are talking about as they are just distractions.
- But get out of the box, stop blaming Google, stop wasting your time looking competitors and moaning about them. Wake up, smell the roses and look differently at things. For me, you are looking into a hole and are bound to find something to hold on to.
I really don't waste time looking at competitors, in the last year I have launched a new website, overhauled content on every product page, and launched a number of high profile and successful PR campaigns. Your assumption that I waste time looking at competitors websites couldn't be further from the truth.
As most business owners, when our business is hit with a core algorithm update, we look at what websites may have benefitted to try and find common ground. It's competitor analysis, it has to be done in any business. What I will do and have done, is call out inconsistencies like the points raised in the previous message.
最終編集: 2021年11月24日
2021年11月24日
Show us your data and we can get down to details.
2021年11月24日
Great idea ... shows you’re listening and taking things seriously
2021年11月24日
No, the other 13 threads I have started in this forum would show I'm taking things seriously.
2021年11月24日
I see John did indicate that you haven’t done anything wrong.
John Mueller, Google's senior webmaster analyst tell me that it "doesn't mean that i am doing something wrong"
Personally, I think Optimist answered this way back in September
And especially when he said
If it were me, I'd lower expectations from SEO for a bit and focus on building brand awareness.
How has this graph changed much?
I equally think that this will not change for you for a while - clearly, the initial dip was a rebalancing of the site to maybe where it should reside - sort of what John could have meant by saying "doesn't mean that i am doing something wrong"
2021年11月24日
I don't understand why after 12 months of significant improvements both on page and off, I should change my SEO expectations of not getting nailed by an algorithm update?
How much lower can I go with my expectations?
I'm not after a golden ticket to the top of the search results here, I'm asking for a level playing field which does not restrict our growth regardless of site wide quality changes and significant improvements.
I recognise that there are many competitors that are years ahead of me, that I will likely never catch. But on the other hand, there are also competitors that we should be ranking above for certain products and keywords, I think that goes without saying.
I have my own goals for the business of where I want it to be in 5 years time, but to start, we need to be rewarded for the work we have put in to improve the quality of the website, instead; it seems to be going completely unnoticed.
John Mueller openly mentions that site wide quality improvements will likely see big increases after a core update. We are completely static after doing this.
I equally think that this will not change for you for a while
For what reason? Since the thread you have quoted from was published we have since overhauled site wide content and had a viral PR campaign across the UK and Ireland?
How has this graph changed much?
It is very much the same, despite a lot of very high authority backlinks and site wide quality improvements.
最終編集: 2021年11月24日
2021年11月24日
| There is a fundamental flaw with how google is treating and downgrading our website,
I have seen a couple of websites that I felt were unfairly suppressed. I don't think that's common though. And my guess is that this is not what is happening for you. I should say though that I've only spent a few minutes looking at your site. This is the limitation of the Google help forums...we're all just volunteers spending a bit of time here and there helping out.
For a thorough site review, my team and I spend a couple of weeks trying to find issues that perhaps could be seen as low quality. We can pick at things and take guesses here in the help forums but you won't get solid answers. My bet is that there are many things that could be found to improve upon to possibly shift Google's assessment to say, "Yes, not only does this site have a level of EAT to make us proud and trustworthy of ranking it", and also, "This page is better for searchers than other ones we could offer." If you can truly crack both of those, you can probably rank well.
My best advice would be not to focus on what competitors are doing, or looking for a hidden penalty (unless you have been building links like crazy perhaps rather than earning them, but even then it takes a an awful lot of link building to suppress a site) and truly try making the pages better for users than their other options. I feel like Google's algorithms are saying, "This site is ok, and there are some elements of EAT present, but there's no compelling reason to rank them #1." If you can crack that compelling reason, minimize trust issues (like making sure you reference every medical recommendation, not recommending products that are contrary to scientific consensus, etc.), and get more truly authoritative mentions from sites Google trusts as medical authorities, this is the key to improving.
With all of this said, there could be so many things holding you back.
This is the limitation of the Google help forums. For general "Why am I not ranking well" questions, you'll get many opinions, but we're all just volunteers just giving our thoughts without actually spending much time digging in.
最終編集: 2021年11月24日
2021年12月15日
What I find strange is our Google Analytics shows that our traffic was 10% up yesterday, whereas transactions/conversions were at 25% of our usual lowest daily amounts.
People may state buying patterns and trends, however our daily sales are consistently between X and X, the volume of orders we received yesterday was 75% down from our lowest daily estimate all of which were repeat/returning customers.
Yesterday was our lowest day on conversions since our website launch day.
Its not unusual for us to have an exceptionally quiet morning, with zero/little orders, however in most cases we see a recovery in the evening (when the guys at google feel like turning on the traffic tap again) with a flurry of sales which bumps us back up to our daily estimates.
Likewise, we can have a busy morning and an exceptionally quiet evening which again keeps us within our X and X daily sales estimates.
However on this occasion there has been no recovery and this is now the second day on the run where our conversions are non existent.
I can literally count on one hand the volume of conversions we have had in a 48 hour period.
We are only receiving orders from existing/repeat customers.
All 3rd party software tools (Ahrefs and SEMrush) show a decent spike in traffic and keywords, however it is far far from the truth.
Impressions in Google Search are still very low and show no signs of improving, you could even say they are still declining week on week.
As mentioned earlier our traffic appears to be up, and our keywords all seem the same, I cannot see a visible decline in ranking anywhere.
What am I missing here? This points to the "limbo" state that John Muller mentioned a few weeks ago in SEO office hours
Everyone in this thread has given me valid points, that make genuine sense, however when you compare our website against some newer competitors, it doesn't make sense. Particularly when some of them do not back up or provide any clinical evidence of the medical claims they are making on their pages.
Our website is quite clearly getting viewed/evaluated/scrutinised much more than others.
最終編集: 2021年12月15日