Have you noticed a lag in your website’s traffic over the last month or so? Has your Google search ranking plummeted seemingly out of nowhere?

There’s a reason for that: Google just rolled out the biggest update to organic ranking that they’ve done in over a decade! The update was rolled out over nine days, causing some people to see problems at different times. And, in typical Google fashion, they gave no warnings about it, and we are noticing the changes now.

The update was targeted at geographical locations of businesses, and makes location matter significantly more in rankings. Some of our clients in big cities saw a harder hit to their rankings and a resulting drop in traffic because Google is allowing less competition per area.

Keywords affected the most were those that weren’t related to location. An example of an affected set of keywords is “physical therapy”, and a less impacted set of keywords would be “physical therapy near me”

Now, you might be wondering, why would Google make such a big change? It’s simple, it’s all about the money. If it’s harder to rank organically, it forces some companies to pay for Google ads so that they can appear on the first page or within the first three results.

The same thing happened with Facebook a few years back. Business listings on Facebook used to get hundreds or even thousands of engagements initially. Once Facebook realized they could charge for ads, engagements on businesses dropped to only 10-15, unless you spent money on their advertising feature.

While it might be tempting to purchase Google ads to some people who aren’t as well versed in Google SEO, they’re forgetting that only 15% of people click on the Google ads in searches. That leaves 85% of the population out of the market on Google searches.

That’s why we’re encouraging our clients not to bite, not to purchase Google ads, and use this as an opportunity to tap into the 85% of people with organic SEO. Our team is hard at work researching the changes that Google made and ensuring that our SEO program clients have the best chance at ranking high in their local areas.

After speaking with several people about the changes, it’s clear that our clients were already largely unaffected by the Google update when compared to other businesses. If you’re struggling with getting your PT business to rank, reach out to us at https://ptwebsitesecrets.com/strategy today and see how we can help improve your SEO drastically.

*~* SUBSCRIBE

New Podcasts Every Monday

Unique Listeners: 75

Plays: 10,095

*~* CONNECT WITH CHRISTINE

Facebook: https://bit.ly/christinewalker

LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/christine-linkedin

Instagram: @thechristinewalker

*~* TODAY'S PODCAST

All about lead generation, marketing, marketing resources, PT website, women owned business, cash based physical therapy, build a website, how to build a website, SEO, SEO rankings, website SEO, search engine optimization, Google my business, Google maps, Google search, traffic, increased traffic, website traffic, Google update, Google changes, organic SEO, Google ads