When it comes to writing content, there are certain niches where you have to take particular care. For example, if you want to post health niche content, you need to make sure that the information you’re sharing is accurate. There are a couple of reasons for this, but the main one is that no one wants inexperienced people sharing any old rubbish when it comes to medical information. Obviously, there are a lot of ethical problems with spreading misinformation. You wouldn’t want to be the victim of this if you were looking for information for an urgent medical concern. There are a lot of lines people are willing to cross when it comes to making a profit but spreading medical misinformation shouldn’t be one of them.
However, from a purely business-focused lens, it is essential that your health niche content is accurate due to Google’s especially strict guidelines when it comes to healthcare websites. If your website shares content that is inaccurate, you will get penalised. So, why does this happen and what is the solution if you’re not a medical expert but want to delve into the healthcare niche?
Google takes the spread of medical information seriously. According to their guidelines, any medical information or advice must be reviewed and be from a trusted source. It is common sense that you wouldn’t want people dishing out medical tips and advice without the appropriate qualifications. The potential consequences of medical misinformation spreading from a website are a lot more severe than misinformation being spread about other niches. This is where Google E-A-T and SQEG come in.
If you’re already an SEO or working in the digital marketing industry, you will hopefully be familiar with Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. If you’re not familiar, the SQEG is basically an official insight into what many SEO experts already knew; that Google values high-quality content that caters directly to the needs of users. It takes the form of a large list that third-party evaluators use to manually assess the quality of search results. The document offers a lot of insight, particularly when it comes to the expectations of health websites.
Google state that because “low-quality [health] pages could negatively affect a person’s health and safety” there is a high page quality rating standard. So, Google expects websites within the health and medical niche to demonstrate high levels of “expertise, authority and trustworthiness,” otherwise known as E-A-T. What this all means is that you need high quality and accuracy when it comes to health niche content. Real experts need to write the content; it’s not good enough to do a quick search and spin the content, or use AI Content.
The bottom line is, if you’re not a medical expert, don’t write content that offers medical advice. It is as simple as that. You won’t be able to fool Google or a manual evaluator with your spun content. As demonstrated, they take medical content seriously because it does affect the health and safety of others. If you’re writing any old stuff and calling it health advice, at the very least it won’t rank and stay up there. It is not worth the risk. Does that mean you can’t have a website targeting the healthcare niche? No. There are options available.
The best solution is to hire an expert copywriter. By expert copywriter, I don’t mean someone who is really good at writing and bullshitting their way through a medical blog. No, I mean an actual medical expert to write the content. However, not everyone has easy access to a medical expert. So, if you’re the average person looking to break into the health niche ethically, but you don’t have a convenient close doctor friend; what do you do?
The good news is, there are services out there like Copy.Health that does the hard work for you. They hire writers with the proper credentials to be able to write healthcare and medical content with authority and accuracy. This is good for a number of reasons; not only does it mean that your current audience will have accurate information, but it also means that your website will not be affected by any future Google updates like they would be if you had some random writing your content.
Copy.Health will also make you custom infographics, help you with topic research, help you with reviewing content and they can even optimise and publish the content for you. I’ve done a small video review of their site, which you can view above. They currently have a waiting list, so if you’re wanting to branch out into the medical niche, they are definitely worth a visit sooner rather than later. Copy.Health isn’t the only service offering health niche content, but they are trustworthy and offer a bunch of additional services that make them stand out from the rest.
Whether you opt to use Copy.Health for your medical content or you make friends with a medical professional, take extra care to ensure that any health content your website posts is accurate.
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