Site/Page Quality
The quality of a website is important when search engines are determining the ranking of pages. Ensuring your website provides high quality, useful and informative content is also essential for a positive user experience. Within our Hangout Notes we cover insights from Google around how they determine a quality website, with recommendations for ensuring your site provides quality content for users.
Site Quality Doesn’t Impact Whether Sitelinks Shown in SERPs
Google will display sitelinks in search results when it makes sense for the query a user is searching for. It isn’t determined by the quality of a website.
No Need to Optimize Websites Specifically for Quality Raters
You don’t need to specifically optimize sites to be accessible for Google Quality Raters because they won’t be reviewing individual sites. The Quality Raters are simply given a list of SERPs with and without an algorithm change, and they then decide which set of results is better.
Don’t Focus on tf-idf to Optimize Pages as Search Algorithms Are Much More Complex Now
John recommends not focusing on tf-idf because it is a very old metric and algorithms have evolved a lot since then. Using tf-idf to squeeze words into your pages is unlikely to be useful and is a short-sighted approach.
Google Does Not Use Domain Authority in its Search Algorithms
Google does not use Domain Authority to rank pages in its search results, as it is a third-party metric.
Displaying Expertise on a Topic Plays a Role in Rankings
There is no quick fix for improving a site or author’s expertise on a subject, however, this is a factor that feeds into rankings. It takes time to build a presence as an authority on a topic.
Rewrite Low-quality Pages or Combine Them With Other Relevant Pages
Google’s quality team avoids telling website owners to delete pages, and instead promotes the idea of rewriting low-quality pages or combining them with and redirecting them to relevant, higher-quality pages.
Avoid Using Traffic Metrics Alone for Determining Page Quality
Traffic alone isn’t a true indication of the quality of a page’s content, so make sure you use a combination of different metrics during analysis before removing pages from your site.
Sharing the Same Server or Owner as a Problematic Website Isn’t an Issue
The only instance when other sites will be impacted by a problematic site is if there are obvious interlinking and efforts to manipulate rankings between them. If two sites only share the same server or owner it isn’t a problem.
Speed is a Minor Ranking Factor Compared to Content Quality or Relevance
Improving site speed alone probably won’t change rankings or visibility for a website because it is a very small factor compared to the relevance and quality of a page’s content with regards to rankings.
Follow Quality Guidelines But Focus on UX
John recommends using the Webmaster Quality Guidelines as a guide for content quality, but suggests not focusing too much on what Google is doing from an algorithmic standpoint. Instead focus on making and optimizing sites that provide good user experiences.