Medical / Health Content Authority - Content Mix Question

[Eric_Lifescript]

Greetings, I have an interesting challenge for you. Well, I suppose "interesting" is an understatement, but here goes.

Our company is a women's health site. However, over the years our content mix has grown to nearly 50/50 between unique health / medical content and general lifestyle/DIY/well being content (non-health). Basically, there is a "great divide" between health and non-health content.

As you can imagine, this has put a serious damper on gaining ground with our medical / health organic traffic. It's my understanding that Google does not see us as an authority site with regard to medical / health content since we "have two faces" in the eyes of Google.

My recommendation is to create a new domain and separate the content entirely so that one domain is focused exclusively on health / medical while the other focuses on general lifestyle/DIY/well being. Because health / medical pages undergo an additional level of scrutiny per Google - YMYL pages - it seems to me the only way to make serious ground in this hyper-competitive vertical is to be laser targeted with our health/medical content. I see no other way.

Am I thinking clearly here, or have I totally gone insane? Thanks in advance for any reply.

Kind regards,

Eric

[Toddfoster]

Hi Eric,

Interesting question is right! I did some consulting for a pharma client recently who was having this exact same problem. They had a divergence of domain authority because they were attempting to appeal to 2 different markets (i.e. 2 different sets of keywords - one for patients and one for providers) using the same domain. Their original answer was to create a subdomain which could be ranked separately so they could appeal to their patients and their providers simultaneously, but that split their link juice too much and they lost out both ways. This is when they contacted me.

My suggestion was to create a site architecture that reflected the needs of the 2 groups that were approaching the site. In other words, creating 2 funnels, 1 each for patients and for providers. Since we instituted that change 3 months back, we hit 1st page and continue to improve. That would be my suggestion here:

Build out 2 niche lines using site structure for health vs. non-health to create relevance in the eyes of Google - that should be enough to take care of the issue you're outlining here. Let me know if there's anything I'm missing here.

Cheers,

Rob

[Eric_Lifescript]

Thanks Rob,

I think the "content divide" is even more severe for us, since we don't have the patients vs providers issue. All content is consumer-facing.

We truly have two radically different buckets of content. For example, copd symptoms vs. how to get rid of ants, or living with atrial fibrillation vs. aries daily horoscope, or ways to lower your blood pressure vs. how to deal with a difficult coworker. These topics are incongrous to me, and I don't see a way to keep them on same domain. Feel free to disagree!

• Eric

[Toddfoster]

Hey Eric,

No, you're right. If that's the degree to which your content is diverging, it may be necessary to have 2 completely separate domains. One set does not have anything to do with the other, and that will absolutely affect relevance and compatibility when it comes to linking practices.

You could go with a subdomain structure and diverge your link profiles - it would have much the same effect as going with 2 separate domains. That being said, it makes life really difficult if you are moving domains or redirecting in the future, so a subdomain structure is pretty permanent and not ideal if most links are coming back to your Home Page.

You could attempt a social media bridge for both sites, but that may be a bit beyond what you are trying to accomplish here. I think you have the right of it based on the facts presented.

Here's wishing you the best of luck on the shift!

Best,

Rob

[Eric_Lifescript]

Thanks Rob! I appreciate your feedback!

[EGOL]

I like Robert's ideas about making a site structure that segregates the topics by folder and by internal linking.

My sites have very diverse topics and they rank well.  I believe that it is more about the vigor of your publishing efforts, the quality of your content, and how well your visitors engage it.