Google SEO Site Quality Guidelines for Ranking Websites

Google uses human quality raters to evaluate webpages and websites everyday in order to improve the overall quality of Google search results. For all SEO and internet marketing professionals these ‘Quality Raters Guidelines’ are vital because they provide an insight into how Google defines high and low quality pages. Many individuals have attempted to decode and understand the complex procedures employed by Google when determining the major qualities of a website thereby classifying them on the basis of ranks. However a few simple analyses of common SEO ideologies have been able to assist in developing simple guidelines for these complex procedures. Google’s quality rating guidelines cover a range of aspects, including many more technical features of search engine optimization (SEO) which includes:

  • The relevance of the content within the webpage in reference to what was being looked for within the search engine.
  • The quality of the content itself, to determine how effectively the content of the webpage relates to and answers the keywords and queries on search engines.

1. Relevance and Quality

When particular keywords or searches are done on Google, its algorithms such as Panda, Penguin etc.. analyze billions of webpages/websites to determine which of them are the best ranked pages based on over 200 factors. This is why Google immediately begins to list the particular webpages in terms of rank, in which the first link provided is the most relevant, then the second and so on and so forth, until a second and third or however many pages are provided as links.  But due to the fact that this is automated, the initial links provided are not always the most ideal. With this idea in mind the second classifying factor; quality comes in to play.

The concept of quality simply means to ensure that the users and questioners are provided with exactly what they are looking for and in the order in which they want it. This concept assists in providing users with the best and most useful content possible such that the users are not searching endlessly through countless webpages. Where the relevance procedure may have been automatic, this particular procedure is implemented through the assistance of Google’s “quality evaluators”  that simply take on the role of a simple user and type queries into the search bar then systematically rate the list of the webpage links provided.

These two elements emphasize the importance of maintaining the quality of your content. The information provided by you within your webpage needs to be well refined and expertly written with completely accurate and well researched facts. In addition to this, an overall appearance of a webpage itself needs to be well planned and thought out as well as being able reflect an air of professionalism. It is imperative that you provide clean and quick information that doesn’t beat around the bush, such that the relevance level of your content is boosted significantly in as little time as possible. A simple tip is to write less in which you attempt to include as many hard core facts as possible with minimal words. This idea has indicated to increase the relevance and quality of the content within webpages in recent cases.
google-site-quality-infographics

2. Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness

Google has also disclosed that the expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness level has a part to play in determining a sites content quality. So make sure to check and double check all the facts listed as well as ensure that each of the principles or concepts included within the content is one hundred percent accurate and is sourced from reliable locations.

Google used these criteria to ensure that if someone lands on your page, they must believe on trustworthiness and authoritativeness of your content which in turns give them full confidence to share that information in their social circles.  In this context, all websites or pages that deal with the ‘Your Money Your Life’ (YMYL), are subject to much higher quality guidelines.

3. Responsiveness and Mobile Friendliness

Google’s rating guidelines now focus on mobile search experiences too. Any page on your site must be easy to use and navigate on mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, iPhones and iPads. If your website or webpage does not scale on access devices, it reduces the usability of that page or website and thus the page drops from the usability evaluation entirely. Such classification may entirely remove the page from SERP on Google. So your website must be mobile-friendly and highly responsive.

4. Quality Backlinks

Every link that is pointing to you website is constantly evaluated and assigned a certain quality score b y Google Webmasters. So when Google evaluates your backlink profile, it’s actually looking at the sum total of quality links pointing towards your website and then determines your overall link quality score. But if your website has hundreds of backlinks that are not relevant to the subject of your website or your business, and your competitor has a mere fraction of links from sites that are relevant and high in quality and authority rankings, Google would surpass you in the scoring easily.

Check your backlinks report in your webmaster account frequently and use both manual and Link disavow options to manage the poor backlinks coming to your website.

To summarize, only high quality and relevant backlinks from high quality sources in the field are best ways to go.

5. User feedback

Be sure to have an up to date ‘About Us’ page as well as ‘Contact Us’ page that will enable you to develop consumer relationship with your visitors.  Customers usually love if you will reveal more information about you business to them and an option for to directly contact you.  A little bit of showcasing your achievements, industry standards and awards is always good for raising the trustworthiness and authority of your website.

Google guidelines are extensive and the document can be found here.

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