Relevant, specific, and well-written content has always been a major SEO focus, but with recent Google Search Algorithm Core Updates, the push towards EAT (expertise, authority, and trustworthiness) signals is revealing a significant opportunity in leveraging content written by actual experts.
It’s no secret that our industry has borne the burden of a year’s worth of YMYL algorithm shifts dedicated to improving the quality of “your money or your life” websites (read more about this on a related HDMZ post: Big Picture SEO Changes for Healthcare and Life Science). HDMZ believes this rising tide has the potential to significantly improve the quality, relevance, and impact of digital content on a variety of audiences, especially patients, caregivers, and healthcare providers.
Thus, we have a unique opportunity to boost visibility of impactful websites by featuring content written by individuals who truly know their stuff. Although not technically listed as a ranking factor, Google has acknowledged the importance of actual expert-written content. According to John Mueller:
"…it makes sense for them to work with experts and to put together some real expert content where it's clear to anyone who's reading those pages that actually this information is correct and it's trustworthy, it's something that an expert has written or an expert has reviewed and accordingly it it's essentially something that anyone can take and forward to their friends…"
Here are a few tips to make the most of this important opportunity:
- Identify experts at various levels: don’t just limit yourself to the leadership team or board of directors. Identify someone who could write well about a meaningful topic, and support them until the content is published. Are they super busy? Have a team draft the content and have the expert give a final pass (ghostwriting is fine here, as long as you’re maximizing the expert’s voice and maintaining specificity and impact).
- Think outside the box: work with advocates, physicians, or other KOLs in the field. Can’t nail anyone down to sit and write a few paragraphs? Set up an interview and transcribe their answers (with permission) into written web content.
- Don’t neglect the details: create author profiles for the expert contributors, including headshots, profiles, and links to authoritative, reputable, and impactful offsite profiles, publications or credentials. Ensure the profile and author notations maximize Schema.org markup (for author, affiliation, credential, or other key trustworthiness signals that will help Google crawlers recognize expertise, authority, and trustworthiness).
- Maximize credit where credit’s due: for some experts, it may not work to set up an “author” profile on your website. Instead, identify the expert in the content (“in collaboration with…”) with links to strong, authoritative profiles (on other websites) that identify them as knowledgeable, with years in the field, and impactful influence on your website audience.
- Drive content by top user intent: use experts who can speak the language for each audience segment, answer top questions, provide resources, or define a perspective that each visitor group is seeking.
HDMZ’s public relations team works closely with our digital and SEO teams, and we’d love to lend a hand to amplify your expert content and boost your website visibility. Drop us a line!
