Google's advice for better rankings

Google's WebmasterCentral blog had a post on it the other day to help guide webmasters into building better sites and getting better rankings in the wake of their Panda algorithm update.

Of course, the first thing they say is pretty stock standard:

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Our advice for publishers continues to be to focus on delivering the best possible user experience on your websites and not to focus too much on what they think are Google’s current ranking algorithms or signals.

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But what I found interesting was their suggested questions to assess your site's quality, listing the following questions as important:

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- Would you trust the information presented in this article?
- Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
- Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
- Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
- Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
- Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
- Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
- Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
- How much quality control is done on content?
- Does the article describe both sides of a story?
- Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
- Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
- Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
- For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
- Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
- Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
- Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
- Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
- Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
- Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
- Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
- Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
- Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

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You can read the full blog post at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...h-quality.html

I thought this was quite good advice, without actually giving structured SEO rules and tricks. If you honestly follow quality content guidelines you should do well in long-term rankings.

What do you think? Were you severely affected by the Panda update, and will you be assessing your sites against this criteria?

"Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?"

Especially porn sites often have poor spelling and grammar on tour pages....

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Originally Posted by asiaboy

"Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?"

Especially porn sites often have poor spelling and grammar on tour pages....

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Thats because some webmasters think it's ok to have dyslexia and not use spelling checkers, others think that optimizing for a misspelled word is good, others just don't know better.

When I write text content I ALWAYS check for spelling and grammar - I also tell my partnered webmasters to do so as well.

IMHO 'correctness' is supposed to be looked at in a way of what an average person would expect to find when reading a certain piece of text.

Papers, articles and most importantly everything you publish in a scientific, business or "corparate" environment should always be as proper as one can craft it.

Sometimes a few spelling or grammar mistakes make text content more real, though - read postings of people looking for sex, for example. A properly formed, grammar and spelling mistakes free sentence would be very suspect here; also people tend to use simple, short words with few syllables and not lengthy, complex words which are crafted into a phrase with lots of correct interpunctuation what include semicolon, commas or even dashes.

I again voice my opinion: text is text - and it's al relative ;-)

Thanks for posting this Luke, I read this the other day and have been thinking about what I believe each aspect means, so I'll add my initial thoughts to each one.
These are only my opinions of course, but they are built on common sense and what I know about their methods. Most people probably already know what each aspect means to them and their site, but you never know, it might be useful to some.

- Would you trust the information presented in this article?
IMO this is a standard statement. They can't tell through crawling whether others would trust your words and opinions. It's basically saying "we want you to research and make your content as accurate as possible, though we have no way of really knowing"

- Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
Word count. A five-hundred word article on the subject will do far better, especially if it contains expected words related to the subject. It's possible that they are checking the content for words they would expect to find all over the site and related to that subject.

- Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
I think they are suggesting that spun articles on the same subject being added to increase exposure is no longer a valid way to go. All content has to be seen as unique and original.

- Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
For retail, they are looking for T&C's, possibly key phrases relating to SSL and return policy etc.

- Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
Could they really devalue content for spelling errors? While I find it hard to believe, they actually could. Stylistic errors could include page alignment, spaces used incorrectly (for example to overcome style problems). I don't see how they could assess factual errors, so that last point has to be designed to simply encourage higher quality.

- Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
This could suggest feedback. Including a voting mechanism and supporting discussion in comments might be what they are seeking here. They could also be checking the language of the site, what keywords are found, and then seeing how they evolve or are included in content. Is your latest post in context?

- Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
This is the standard duplicate content they have been focusing on. But it also suggests that they are seeking specific formatting in text. It might be wise to start including bullet and numbered lists etc. That is the only way they could be able to see "analysis" without Human review of content.

- Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
Basically, does your page have more information than your competition, especially using the already mentioned aspects such as original content, formating, word count etc? If you run a search on the keyword you intend to focus on for an article, does the first result include formating errors or is it only 200 words long? In that case, write a 500 word article on that subject and include bullet points and images, ask for feedback and write responses yourself if you have to.

- How much quality control is done on content?
Has content been edited after publication, or notes added when articles have changed? If you go into an article after it has been published to change something worthy of noting, have you added a date and time of the last change and the reason, or added a note of correction? This primarily applies to text heavy sites IMO.

- Does the article describe both sides of a story?
Another attempt to ensure writers do what Google wants, without them actually being able to tell.


- Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
This could again be down to sharing, linking, commenting and the social cloud built around your site. They could be viewing comment levels in relation to text heavy posts such as those seen as reports or analysis. For example, a site review with bullet points and expected words within might gain some points, but if it is linked to and has ten comments the value might be seen by Google as significantly increased.

- Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
This is focusing on the article sites. It's another attempt to control quality without being able to do so in an automated system. They are basically saying that user-submitted content, or sites involving a lot of authors should be editing and checking for quality before publication.

- Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
This could be language, spelling and grammar related. Is there a lot of repetition or cop/paste? They cannot really devalue on spelling and grammar, but by suggesting this in the list they have already increased quality through mere suggestion.

- For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
The only way they could control this is if they had an existing library of guaranteed accurate content to compare your work to. They could very well be doing this, and it would be a step in the right direction.

- Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
Another attempt to drive you into brand building without actually being able to monitor or value a site based on it, IMO. They are suggesting that you need to be consistently good, and work for the position you want rather than going for the easy short-term plan.

- Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
Are expected words used and is the content long enough to cover everything? Adding a 200 word article on penis enlargement might not be viewed as comprehensive, but a 1000 word article would, especially using the guidelines laid out already such as bullet points, quotes, links to other resources...

- Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
Again, there is no real way for them to automate this process, so I believe this is attempting to encourage more attention without being able to monitor for it.

- Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
More of the social cloud and sharing. They're looking for ways to be able to share it, this could include words at the bottom of content such as "Share this on Facebook and Twitter", with people actually doing so. Add the facility, and share it yourself if needed.

- Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
Goes without saying that pages packed with ads will not be valued highly. It might be wise to limit ads to just a couple, and maybe add such content to another page away from the main subject matter of the site.

- Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
Again, without being able to automate this level of quality control I believe this is an attempt to encourage improved quality.

- Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
Basically, is your site packed with 100 word posts and nothing substantial? I would recommend writing more per post and include site reviews, preferably linked to from every relevant post too.

- Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
This could relate to stylistic changes and words used. For instance, many WordPress themes are used by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, so it would be wise to change things where possible. Altering the usual "Leave a Comment" in your theme to "Have an Opinion?" could be something they are looking at. Changing this makes your site slightly different to the many others using that theme, and it's requesting interaction rather than demanding it. Asking questions of your audience rather than making demands could be something Google is looking at. Where possible, I would replace hard text which places demands on the reader with questions. "Share this!" becomes "Like to Share?" and "Vote Now!" becomes "How do you rate this post?"

- Would users complain when they see pages from this site?
This is another move to get you to create content that doesn't offend, while not being able to automate monitoring of it themselves. It's simply suggesting that you shouldn't be abusive or offensive, while they can't actually stop you or do much about it considering the level of content they deal with daily.

These are my opinions base on what I know. Of course, Google is always secretive and nothing is set in stone, but most of their suggestions are based on what an automated system could do. When you cannot see a way for a computer to analyze the code and text content, I would disregard their statements.

Thanks for sharing that Conran. I found that very insightful (is that a word?). It will be a good help for us here, as we launching major revision of our SEO strategy. For example, I'd never even thought about the Wordpress themes!

one thing I have learned over the last few years of dealing with Google and I have done quite well with them is to take EVERYTHING they say with a grain of salt.

Remember their Mantra and then do what you think is best.

" Google gives the cleanest and most comprehensive results of all SE's" or something like that.

Now search your phrases and see who is listed where.

If they are TELLING you how to get better listings, how can they then be the most accurate, cleanest etc etc. yadda yadda.

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Originally Posted by asiaboy

Thanks for sharing that Conran. I found that very insightful (is that a word?). It will be a good help for us here, as we launching major revision of our SEO strategy. For example, I'd never even thought about the Wordpress themes!

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You're very welcome.
I think a lot of people neglect the aspect of the theme. Google is ideally looking for completely original sites from start to finish, but designed well. Of course, we can't all pay to have a brand new theme designed to our specification, so these themes appear all over the world. Unless Google knows how to filter out the standard coding of these themes (which is unlikely) they are seeing the most popular ones millions of times over, so it could be seen as just another way that your site is being lost in a sea of common content.

I don't think massive changes need to be made, but I am certainly looking at hiring someone experienced to go into each of my blogs and remove any unnecessary code, change standard text and adapt the theme just enough to be different to all the others out there.

It might not matter to Google, but changing some of the basic text will definitely help to stand out from the crowd IMO.

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Originally Posted by PornGuy

one thing I have learned over the last few years of dealing with Google and I have done quite well with them is to take EVERYTHING they say with a grain of salt.

Remember their Mantra and then do what you think is best.

" Google gives the cleanest and most comprehensive results of all SE's" or something like that.

Now search your phrases and see who is listed where.

If they are TELLING you how to get better listings, how can they then be the most accurate, cleanest etc etc. yadda yadda.

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I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

They can tell you what they value in a site and what they view as important points to consider, they're not telling you how to improve your rank, they're telling you what they believe you need to do to improve the value and importance of your site. The improved position is a byproduct of providing good content to your visitors.

Their ambition is to provide the best results for any search, so they are telling us how we can make sure that our pages are suitable for those results. All they want us to do is to provide good quality.

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Originally Posted by DEVELISH

Thats because some webmasters think it's ok to have dyslexia and not use spelling checkers, others think that optimizing for a misspelled word is good, others just don't know better.

When I write text content I ALWAYS check for spelling and grammar - I also tell my partnered webmasters to do so as well.

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Good - you won't be competing with me on commonly misspelled terms... :)

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Originally Posted by rawTOP

Good - you won't be competing with me on commonly misspelled terms... :)

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Have to agree with this. It's surprising what level of traffic an error can get you.

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Originally Posted by rawTOP

Good - you won't be competing with me on commonly misspelled terms... :)

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I said "text" not keywords ;-) And I do also have misspelled text where I think it is appropriate to have. On my main sites all text is properly formed, spelled and checked. My landing pages are as proper as one would expect them to be when you'd look at them. My Dating-landingpages are... lets say... real enough for the average John Doe ;-9

But no, no competition here, since I do 90% german traffic and about just 10% english language we do not compete anywhere language wise :-)