The Power of Headings!
I happened to be in Google Analytics and saw someone from a Bing Search spent 20 minutes on my latest post on my health site today. I was curious what kind of traffic I was getting from Bing so I went to Bing Webmaster Tools and looked around. I saw there are a ton of keywords which were ranking highly that I was not targeting specifically. Most of these are variations on my keywords which is to be expected.
I did some searches on Bing as well and discovered I am ranking at #2 for many of the headings in that post!
This is pretty impressive in a health field which can be dominated by medical sites as well as tons of alternative health sites. I am beyond thrilled with this result! Not surprisingly, Google is not as rewarding in this niche and I am much further down the rankings.
I am getting a trickle of traffic from Google, Quora, Bing etc. on this site even though it is tiny and I only have a handful of posts. I get a few sales from it as well. I get much more traffic on my pet site but considering the amount of content on this site I think my results are fantastic. This shows that quality content about a topic that you are familiar in, using the best keywords you can find and practicing good SEO methods like using headings, will make you successful.
If you use good headings they can work as an additional keywords for your post. I only have 10 posts on this site!!
Of course I clearly stated I am not a doctor and cannot give medical advice etc. etc. in the post and linked to other medical sites to support my reviews of these natural supplements as well.
Onward and Upward!
Jessica
Recent Comments
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Good Morning Jessica,
That sounds very positive. I am slightly worried that quite a few things I write about on healthy will not be liked by Google anymore. I will still sail my course and hope for the best.
Have a great weekend, Taetske
Yes. However, Google's decision to downgrade our ranking for such posts could just be Bing's gain. Bing and other search engines can step in and feature those posts and hopefully gain many of Google's former users. I am certainly less inclined to use Google now knowing they are filtering out "alternative" health sites.
Yes, I understand Jessica. I just hope there still will be people who do like these type of posts. I do not like to live in a dictatura.
Hasta Pronto, Taetske
Yes. I think there are people who want this information. In the U.S. many people are just now starting to understand the massive conspiracies in our health care industry. Doctors are only trained in pharmaceuticals. They don't even know how the body uses many vitamins and minerals. They simply are not taught about it in medical school. This is not my opinion. I have talked to doctors who tell me this themselves.
There is a shift occurring I believe where more people are looking for their own answers as they see pharmaceuticals simply not working. More and more people are getting cancer, more and more are addicted to pain medication. More and more are getting auto-immune diseases. Clearly our medications are not working to solve all our problems.
On the other hand, if we were not part of WA we might not know that Google is planning this massive censorship of health information. That is the danger. What if people just keep searching on Google and don't know the information they need is being blocked?
Yes, I agree, one sees an awakening as healthcare (sick care/ big business) is so much better but the population is only getting sicker.
I put this down to our lifestyle, turning away from nature, man-made foods, GMOs, pesticides, pollution, heavy metals, EMF and the list goes on.
Find the root cause of the problem instead of trying to patch it up with a pill.
By the way, this weekend there is an encore of the 5G Summit. The thought behind it being global control and we think we get more speed, bs.
In Holland at the same time in 5 neighboring farms with many cows these animals got panicked as close by there was a 5G experiment. Bees get lost, it is a mess.
Alll the best, Taetske
Bees are at least 80-100 million years old. Now in one generation or two we could wipe them out with pesticides and this 5G abomination!!!
My site has a lot of information about alternative oral health options. I was not aware of Google planning to “ban” this type of information. Do you have more information about this? Has it already begun?
Thanks
Michelle
It started a year ago in August 2018 when Google put out the "Medic" update to it's algorithm. It was a big topic around here at that time.
Google has announced that it wants to protect consumers and make sure that sites in the health, financial and a few other fields are giving accurate information. Therefore they will be looking more carefully at sites in those niches. They want to see authority in the field (a doctor or drug company running a health site) etc. This might sound ok on the surface but the result is any "alternative" health site (or financial etc) site run by regular people will be penalized by being ranked much lower in the search results.
This results in big companies getting top rankings so the pharmaceutical companies etc. with all the money and influence will keep all the top search results and the rest of us will get drowned out. It will become harder and harder to find any "alternative" (natural, nutrition, herbal etc) posts.
Google has announced they are introducing these changes slowly so as not to scare away the public. They will not implement these changes right away. If they slowly make these changes over a number of years many people might not even notice a change! I think I have already seen a change however since my posts used to rank higher on Google and now they are usually lower on Google and much higher on Bing.
We should not give up though. Hopefully, Google will shoot itself in the foot on this and people will start using Bing and other search engines in order to find what they are really looking for! Our posts can still rank well, just on a different search engine.
There are ways you can mitigate some of the changes by adding as much information on your About Me page as possible. Do you have a relevant degree or training? Have you run a business in the niche, had a job in the niche? You can also link to other sites that meet Google's desired qualifications (if you can find one that pleases Google and also gives the advice you are trying to share). There are probably good posts and trainings here on WA regarding the Medic Update. I recall seeing some last year.
Jessica
I appreciate you explaining this all to me. A bit discouraged to hear this but I will continue to plug along.
Michelle
No problem Michelle. We never know what Google will do next but I believe there is demand so our sites will find a home online one way or the other.
Jessica
Being alert on what clicks on the website and what not is important. Honesty and transparency is a major factor and a plus point in blogging with a decent content and keywords that drive traffic - this is the way to go. Congratulations.
Great achievement. I wish that people would pay more attention to well-being sites. With numbers in obesity and lack of nutrients where can we go?
Yes, that is why Google's choice to penalize our sites is so tragic. The information available online regarding nutrition could quite literally save people's lives.
I hope Bing and Yahoo take advantage of the great interest in these topics and continue to rank these posts highly. Google's dismissal of "alternative" health sites could be a huge gain for the smaller search engines! I wondered if that would happen when I first head about Google's plans to stop ranking us and so far it seems to be happening. Bing certainly has no problem with my content!
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Great advice! Thanks for sharing Jessica.
We are Blessed.
Mark