Writing Carefully About Health and Safety

The page that says too much

A services page warns that a problem in your home endangers your family's health. A blog post lists symptoms it may cause. A banner promises the work is guaranteed for life, and that insurance will pay.

Each sentence was written to persuade, often by somebody outside the business, and none was checked by anyone qualified to say whether it is true.

These are the claims readers rely on most, about their health, their safety and their money, and the ones that weigh most with search engines, the law and a customer who later feels misled.

Last week's broad update from Google, which some in the search industry have started calling the Medic update, moved many health sites. The care these pages need predates any update.

Claims that need the most care

• Health effects, such as what a substance, product or condition does to people.
• Safety, such as whether something is safe for children, pets or a home.
• Performance, such as how long a repair lasts or how well a product works.
• Money, such as savings, payback periods or what insurance will cover.
• Absolutes, such as permanent, guaranteed, non-toxic or completely safe.

The last is the easiest to find and fix. Search your own site for those words; each one is a promise somebody may one day ask you to prove.

Say who wrote it

Every page that gives advice should carry a name, and the name should belong to somebody qualified to give it.

For a trade, that may be the owner or a senior technician, with a line on their training, certifications and years doing the work.

For anything medical, it should be a registered health professional, or the page should not give medical advice at all.

Link each name to a short biography, and show the date the page was last reviewed. A reader then knows who stands behind it.

Describe the work, not the outcome

Most risky claims can be rewritten as a description of the work, which is more honest and often more convincing.

"Cut your heating bills in half" promises a result nobody can know in advance. "Double glazing loses less heat than single glass; what you save depends on the house" describes the job and its limits.

Where a guarantee is genuine, state its terms exactly: what it covers, for how long, and what would void it. A specific, limited guarantee is believable in a way a lifetime promise is not.

Link to proper sources

Where a page states a fact about health or safety, link to where it comes from: a public health authority, a standards body, a manufacturer's safety data sheet, a building code.

That lets the reader check, and it moves the claim from your mouth to a source qualified to make it.

For health effects in particular, link to official guidance rather than summarising it. Summaries drift, and guidance gets updated. Avoid sources that sell the product, or merely repeat the claim.

What the law expects

Under Canada's Competition Act, a business may not tell the public anything false or misleading in a way that matters, and the pages of a website count.

The Act also expects claims about how well a product or service performs to rest on adequate and proper testing, done before the claim is made, and the business making the claim has to show it.

Health products and some services carry further rules of their own. None of this is legal advice: where a claim matters, have somebody qualified check it before it goes on the page.

A worked example

A mould remediation company with three crews had a website written in a hurry when it started out, partly adapted from American sites in the same trade.

Its services page called black mould toxic and listed illnesses it was said to cause. The banner promised permanent removal, guaranteed, and said most insurance policies covered the work.

Nobody at the company had written or checked any of it. The owner reread it after a customer quoted the insurance line back to him during a dispute with her insurer.

The rewrite describes what the crews do: inspection, moisture readings, containment, removal of affected materials, and a follow-up visit. Each page names the senior technician who wrote it, with his training.

Health questions now link to public health guidance on mould in homes, with a suggestion to ask a doctor about symptoms.

The insurance line now says coverage depends on the policy and the cause, and the guarantee states its real terms, including that it depends on the moisture source being fixed.

Money claims count too

Claims about money mislead as easily as claims about health. "Pays for itself in three years" rests on prices, use and assumptions the reader never sees.

Where a figure matters, show how it was worked out, or describe the range honestly. Where it depends on the customer's situation, say so and offer to work it out with them.

A price quoted from a low figure should say what that figure includes, and free should mean free, with any condition stated beside it.

Review on a schedule

Health and safety guidance changes, products are reformulated, and good practice improves. A page that was accurate three years ago may not be now.

Give each of these pages an owner and a review date, once a year at least, and show the date on the page.

Retire pages nobody at the business can stand behind any more. A missing page costs less than a wrong one.

The counter-case

Not every business writes about health or safety, and a page of opening hours needs no byline.

Some subjects are plainly low risk: care instructions, how to book, what to expect on the day. Whoever knows the work can write and check those.

And a business with nobody qualified to write about health should not try; linking to proper guidance is the honest alternative.

Wherever a page touches health, safety or money: name the author, describe rather than promise, and link to sources.

This month

1. List pages that mention health, safety or money.
2. Search for absolutes such as guaranteed or permanent.
3. Name a qualified author for each page.
4. Rewrite promises as descriptions of the work.
5. Link factual claims to proper sources.
6. Have important claims checked by somebody qualified.
7. Set a review date for each page.

Step three changes the rest. A page that a named, qualified person has to sign tends to lose its exaggerations on the way, because few people will put their name to a claim they cannot support.

Why this matters in search right now is covered in the August core update and health sites.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.