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.
Websites are Responsible for User Generated Content Quality
If you allow users to add content to a website, you are responsible for any content quality issues. You can use solutions like canonicals and noindex.
User-generated Content May Cause SERP Fluctuations
Sites with user-generated content may see SERP fluctuations as the algorithms may change how it judges content quality.
Google Measures Site Quality Separately for Each Section of a Site
Google has moved to understanding sections of a site, and measuring quality for each section.
Affiliate Based Sites Require Unique Content
Affiliate links do not affect a site’s quality, but Google requires you to have some unique value.
Fonts Don’t Affect Page Quality
The font used for text doesn’t affect page quality, even Comic Sans.
Google Doesn’t Care About 404 Page Quality
Google doesn’t care how good your 404 page is or what content you include.
Relevancy and Quality Varies by Search Query
Google varies the importance of relevancy versus quality depending on the search query.
Use Site: to Test Rich Snippets
The Rich Snippet testing tool only checks the syntax is valid. Use Site: to check how your rich snippets will be displayed and confirm they conform to the policy requirements and meet the quality criteria.
New Content Inherits a Domain Quality Score
Google doesn’t have a domain authority score, but new content for any site Google falls back to a general quailty rating until they can establish specific information.
Pages with Significant Ads Above the Fold May Drop in Rankings
Google may lower rankings for pages if ads cover a significant part of the page above the fold.