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.
Quality Rater Guidelines & EAT Don’t Directly Impact Rankings
EAT and the Quality Rater Guidelines show where Google is heading in the future for providing better content to users, but they don’t directly impact Google’s algorithms.
Treat Tag Pages Like Any Other Page & Only Noindex Low Quality Ones
John recommends treating tag pages like any other page on your site and to differentiate between useful tag pages and low quality tag pages by noindexing the low-quality ones.
Homepages That Don’t Rank Well Might be Over-optimised
Instances where a homepage doesn’t rank well can sometimes be due to over-optimisation, with Google detecting keyword stuffing in the content.
Number of Noindexed Pages Has No Effect on Rankings or Site Quality
Having a lot of noindexed pages doesn’t affect rankings or how Google perceives a site’s quality. For example, many sites need to noindex private content that requires a user to log in to access.
When splitting a category page into two separate pages, John recommends redirecting the old URL to one of the new pages and then updating internal linking normally within your website’s structure. There is no specific markup which can tell Google that a page has been split into two separate pages.
Sites looking to recover after Google’s core algorithm update on August 1st should focus on making their pages more relevant for searchers. It takes time for Google to understand how individual pages and whole sites are relevant and the impact of changes that have been made.
Google May Consider Merging Information From Quality Rater & Webmaster Guidelines
John said that Google may consider merging information from the Quality Rater Guidelines with their Webmaster Guidelines in the future.
Google Will Only Use Structured Data For Trustworthy, High Quality Sites
Structured data needs to be correctly implemented from a technical perspective and needs to be applied to relevant content, but to display it in search Google also has to judge the site as high quality and trustworthy.
Sites Spinning Your Content Can Outrank You if Your Site is Low Quality
When sites scrape and spin the content of others, in the instances where these sites manage to outrank the original site, the original site is usually low quality too. This is where the algorithms can get confused.
Copyright Violations & Duplicate Content Affect How Google Assesses the Rest of Your Site
If the majority of your content is flagged for something like DMCA copyright violations, Google may decide that the rest of your content isn’t high enough quality to show to users either.
Blog Content Helps Establish Focus and Context of a Business
Blogs can help businesses have better presence online giving users and search engines more context about what they do and a better understanding of its focus.