Last week following coverage of a leaked version of Google’s Search Quality Rater’s Guidelines, for the first time ever Google made to the decision to make the guidelines available to all.
Search Quality Raters are people used by Google to assess the quality of the search results and for experiments, but don’t have a direct impact on the rankings of the websites they rate.
While the guidelines don’t guarantee a number ranking position, they do offer the insight into what Google views as quality (and not-so) and the types of pages that Google wants at the top of their search results.
The document, which you can download here is quite significant bedtime reading at 160 pages long, giving hundreds of examples of search results and pages with explanations of why the example is good, bad or somewhere in between.
Here’s some of the key takeaways that SEO’s, Business Owners and Webmasters can take away from the Guide.
Your Money or Your Life Pages (YMYL)
The concept of “Your Money or Your Life” pages was revealed last year in a leaked copy of the guidelines. These are types of pages that Google holds to the highest standards as they can impact a person’s happiness, health or wealth.
Financial Transaction & Shopping
Financial Transaction websites are those that allow you to pay bills, do Online Banking and transferring money. Online stores also fall under the YMYL ratings, so if a rater wouldn’t feel comfortable ordering from or submitting personal information to it, it wouldn’t be rated highly.
Financial Information Pages
Google considers financial information pages to be those covering “investments, taxes, retirement planning, home purchase, paying for college, buying insurance, etc.”
Medical Information Pages
As well as pages covering standard medical conditions, pharmaceuticals & niche health sites about specific diseases or conditions. it also applies to topics such as nutrition
Legal Pages
Google considers all types of legal information pages including topics such as immigration, child custody, divorce, and even creating a well.
Other
These are pages where having the wrong information can negatively impact the searcher’s happiness, health, or wealth. For example topics including child adoption and car safety information.
Expertise / Authoritativeness / Trustworthiness (EAT)
This sums up what you should look to establish with your website, especially if it falls into the YML category.
Expertise
Displaying expertise on your website is important, whether it’s coming from you or contributors. You also want to show why you have that expertise, such as your experience or relevant education.
If you don’t hold that expertise it may be the time to consider hiring contributors who do. Or perhaps you could add author bios and about me/us pages to display the expertise that you may not already be doing.
Authoritativeness
This is linked to expertise but from the website perspective, it can be based on the expertise of the writers, or quality of a community such as a forum.
Someone can be an authority with less formal expertise. For example great and detailed reviews, experiences shared on forums or blogs and even life experience are taken into consideration.
Trustworthiness
Is a website one you feel you can trust? Or is it a bit dubious looking or would you have trouble believing the information?
Page Design, Advertising & Supplementary Content
Despite us reaching the end of 2015 there are still websites that look like something out of 2003!
Google wants websites to offer a great experience for a user and for the main content to be focus of the page. To achieve this the content should be as high up as possible – so don’t let your content be pushed down by ads, and they should be something that can be ignored by users who aren’t interested in them. Google wants a clear separation between advertising and the content, so don’t try and disguise ads as your content!
Also you need to be aware of the type of advertising that your website displays. The guide does ask raters to refresh the page a few times when advertising is present (for example if a rouge advert slips through a network and appears). Any pornographic ad content is automatically rated as low quality.
It’s worth noting that Google is aware that there are some ugly websites out that are user-friendly and meet visitors’ needs and even includes some examples of pages with positive ratings in the Guidelines.
Supplementary content should be considered as an additional support to a page. For example including images and video content, or displaying top tips or quick facts in a sidebar – basically anything that could be seen as helpful to the visitor.
Suggested additional content such as “related articles” are also mentioned, but keep in mind that suggested article add networks are not considered helpful.
About Us & Reputation
Information about the website itself needs to be present such as an “About Us” and “Contact Us” page so visitors can easily find out more and contact you.
Information about the website itself is seen as imperative if it falls into the YMYL category.
Google asks raters to consider the reputation of the site or author and asks them to do reputation research by looking at Wikipedia and “other informational sources”.
If you’re giving advice on financial or medical topics make sure you’re easy to find online. If you don’t have a Wikipedia page, professional membership or similar sites to showcasing your background and professional reputation is the way to go.
Popularity, User Engagement & User Reviews are also taken into consideration in areas where the above isn’t possible.
What Google Considers Low Quality Pages
Google gives an insight into what it considers low-quality, answering yes to any of these will usually result in the lowest ratings.
· Not Mobile Friendly
· Quality of content is low
· An unsatisfying amount of main content for the purpose of the page.
· The author of the page or website doesn’t have enough expertise for the topic of the page, and/or the website is not trustworthy or authoritative enough for the topic.
· The website has a negative reputation.
· Supplementary content is distracting or unhelpful
The first bullet point jumps out the most! For years now Google has been pushing the importance of websites being mobile friendly, if yours isn’t then you need to fix it!!
Sneaky Redirects
Doorway pages (where you’re redirected through multiple URLs) which often has nothing to do with the original link clicked are considered sneaky redirects.
Google considers a link to affiliate programs as “sneaky redirects” in the Quality Rater’s Guidelines. While there isn’t necessarily anything bad about having say one affiliate link on the page, bombarding visitors affiliate links can be.
Spammy, Keyword Stuffed & Copied Content
There’s a wide variety of things that Google asks raters to look for, as well as wanting them to consider other things that signal low quality content in their eyes!
Examples of the more obvious include auto-generated, spun and gibberish content. Keyword stuffing is often associated with keyword repetition so heavy that the content is unreadable. Google also includes overusing keywords to the point where it is a little bit annoying as stuffing.
Google gives instructions for raters on finding content copied or scraped from elsewhere via searches and the Wayback Machine. Google also asks raters to consider if the content adds value or not.
Abandoned & Dated Content
If a website doesn’t moderate blog comments, or their forums and the pages are full of links to untrustworthy sources it will give untrustworthy signals. If a website hasn’t been updated for a long time, it could be seen as abandoned and therefore as low quality.
There’s been trend lately where webmasters change the dates on content to make it appear more recent than it really is, even if they don’t change anything on the page. In contrast, others add updated dates to their content when they do a refresh or check, even when the publish date remains the same. Google now takes this into account and asks raters to check the Wayback Machine if there are any questions about the content date.
There’s been a recent trend lately where webmasters change dates on some of content to make it appear more recent than it is, even if they don’t change anything on the page in an attempt to “trick” Google. Google asks raters to check the Wayback Machine if there are any questions about the content date.
Overall
The biggest takeaway from this guide is the mobile friendly signal. Your website needs to be fully responsive and mobile friendly otherwise it is likely to be outranked by one that is in the search results.
Your website should highlight your Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness at all times. Make sure information is available about you, your business and your team. It’s also important to showcase how trustworthy you are.
There is no reason for a legitimate business to be copying or publishing spun content, if you have been…stop it! Also don’t go overboard with advertising, especially at the expense of your content and in turn the user experience of your website.
While making these changes won’t directly translate into higher rankings, making sure your website is seen favourably with these guidelines means that your website & its content will the type that Google wants to serve higher in the search results.
