There is a lot of empirical information about how to rank well in Google search results such as:
- Correct use of meta tags; use of keywords in the website text; ratio of content (words) to code on the page; number of back links to the site etc etc. This is the usual "bill of goods" you get from most SEOs (including myself).
So it was really interesting to see Amit Singhal, Google’s head of search, recently publish the following list of "qualitative" search ranking factors. Google took this step in response to criticism about its recent "Panda" algorithm update which was designed to reduce the success of websites that simply "game" the ranking factors to get on top of search results, regardless of the actual quality of their content. (So called "Content Farms", palgiaristic and just low quality sites). I think most of us would say "Good riddance" to the over-predominance of these sites in search results (perhaps they could now do something about the proliferation of worthless agency directories and just promote the higher quality sites referenced within them!)
But because a number of legitimate sites also came a cropper in the search results when the Panda upgrade was released in February - Google made it very clear what it deems "good content" - as even legitimate sites have a duty to keep their information up to date and demonstrate continuous thought-leadership and uniqueness. This list of qualitative factors also implies a much more semantic, lexically intelligent and socially validated set of ranking criteria from Google that SEOs should now recognise are a big departure from their traditional "bill of goods" - and frankly also puts the onus back on the client to have compelling proposition in the first place, rather than rely on the SEO to tweak and nudge the technical content.
So here is the list (slightly edited for sense or purposes of observation):
• Would you trust the information presented on this page?
• Is this information written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or does it appear more shallow in nature (e.g. absense of examples, over-reliance on other peoples opinions etc.)
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant information on the same or similar topics with slightly different word variations?
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
• Does this page have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
• Are the topics on the site driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site look like it is just generating content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the page 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 appears to have been performed on the content?
• Does an 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 appear to hold all the relevant information in one place?
• Is the page edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• If this was 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 site provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does a page contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond the obvious?
• Is this the sort of page you'd want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend? (There's a big clue!)
• Does the page have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
• Would you expect to see this page in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
• Is the content 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?
Amit Singhal went on to say that low-quality content on some parts of a website could also impact the whole site’s rankings, and thus an exercise of removing low quality pages, of merging or improving the content of "shallow" pages into more useful pages, or of moving low quality pages to a different domain could also help the rankings of your higher-quality content.
The above list provides a great insight into some of the departures Google has made from its traditional ranking factors. Without making this post too long, here are some of my observations:
a) Social accreditation (by referrals from Social networking sites) and "shares" between people using facilities such as Wibiya or "Add this", Facebook "likes" etc are now becoming mainstream within the ranking crieteria.
b) Whilst of late, language quality scoring (such as the "Flesch readability scale") has been known to have crept in to ranking factors, this would seem to indicate its rise in predominance and sophistication.
c) The amount of cross-referencing of an individual site's content with known authoritative sources such as encyclopedias, educational establishments and such like can now be presumed.
d) Cross referencing of a site's content against existing other text within Google's database (to check for plagiraism) can now be assumed to have been hardened. (I have written many times: copied content is BAD).
e) Sites that have an imbalance of advertisements to content may be assumed to be disadvantaged.
f) The importance of domain-wide content is becoming clearer - and not just the importance of individual pages on a site.
g) Does the site possess the correct regulatory disclaimers and adherence to regulatory requirements? (This is my interpretation of "would you be happy giving your credit card information to this site"?) See a previous article I wrote about website legal minima in one of my old newsletters (you will have to click the "Read more" link in the attached to see the whole article). The point being that small businesses are notoriously bad (or ignorant) of their legal obligations to their web content as much as customers are insufficiently savvy in spotting dodgy sites. We know Google looks for disclaimer information on sites supporting financial transactions and my presumption is it has widened and hardened this scope.
h) The requirement to promote yourself, your business and your website outside of the website itself (in order to bolster reputation) remains at the core of Google's reputational scoring of a site.
I'll stop there - but I hope you will agree - really interesting!
0 comments:
Post a Comment