We’ve been taking a look at the results some of our Snippetron Early Adopters have been achieving and in particular how YMYL SEO is impacted.
Our review was conducted during the bumpy period of January when Google rolled out the first Core Update for 2020.
YMYL SEO Case Study – Local Dentist Website
In 2018, the SEO world first discovered that Google intended treating a segment of website content differently to the rest of the web.
YMYL content is is considered to be any information that, if presented inaccurately, untruthfully, or deceptively, could impact the reader’s happiness, health, safety, or financial stability. So there is still confusion when it comes to some business categories and whether they are in or out.
YMYL Google Updates & Website SEO
To see if Snippetron was helpful to a YMYL website during the recent Google Core Update in January 2020, we started by reviewing how a local dentist website had been affected in the past.
First we had a look at the Organic Keyword trends over the last 2 years for the website to see what exactly Google had been doing to the website in general.
It was clear to see that the website had indeed suffered whenever Google rolled out algorithm changes that impacted YMYL content. The notorious “Medic” update of August 2018, the “June 2019 Core Update” and “BERT” in December 2019.
Reviewing Google Analytics Results
Snippetron was installed on the website in late December 2019.
We started by looking at the Google Analytics traffic overview report comparing January 2020 to January 2019.
Disappointingly, the website continues to suffer from the YMYL related algorithm changes rolled out by Google. With the number of users, sessions and page views all lower.
Slowly Recovering SEO Positioning
Given the results we found in Google Analytics, we were surprised to find that the long-term prospects for the website are looking good.
From the Snippetron bot results we can see that the website has well written content that produces valuable Schema markup for rich snippets, which is contributing to the steady recovery.
The Organic Keywords Trend for the website in January 2020 shows a steady increase in the number of keywords that the website is being indexed for – from 319 to 428 keywords.
As with many YMYL websites, there is a lot of terminology that is pretty specific that this business wants to be recognised for. In the case of this website (for a local dentist) all the treatments and problems that people experience with their teeth needs to be explained.
Being findable for all of the treatment services that this dentist provides is vital for them to being found and attracting new patients to their clinic.
SEO Results Continue Improving
At the time of writing the number of indexed keywords for this website has continued to increase – as at 12 February 2020 it is now 475.
This improvement has been achieved with zero content changes or new content added to the website.
Traffic continues to lag behind the 2019 traffic volumes reported in Google Analytics.
Even though the website owner has indicated that they are investing heavily in social media activities on Facebook and Instagram to increase brand awareness and website traffic.
On closer review of the Google Analytics we discovered that this website has had a significant change in the way in which people view it.
In 2019 the majority of visitors were using a “Desktop” or “Tablet”. In 2020 60% of visitors are now using a “Mobile”. On the back of this discovery, we have suggested that the website owner consider updating the website to a more responsive design.
With nothing but Snippetron for SEO on this website, the steady rate of recovery on this YMYL website shows that structured data has serious benefit.