Quality. With Google, it is always about quality. Low quality pages can hurt your visitor experience and SEO ranking. Google wants to show the best, most reliable and helpful web pages every time someone enters a search query. When someone clicks on a link in the search results, Google wants them to find what they’re looking for. Such a page may receive a high quality score from Google. If a web page is deemed to be of “high quality” it is far more likely to appear nearer the top than one of “low quality.”
Often Google must sift through thousands, if not millions, of pages to determine which page offers the most “value” to the searcher. What does Google deem as ‘high quality”? Some of the factors are spelling and grammar, general readability, relevance to the topic and other factors less obvious to the rest of us.
Low quality pages can reflect negatively on the site as a whole. In terms of SEO, low quality pages can be valueless. It pays to ensure that your individual pages avoid low quality rankings. Each page you have could be an SEO opportunity and a potential source of traffic.
Attributes of a high-quality page:
Here are a few things to consider when building your page
- Unique content– Refrain from copying large swathes of text from other pages on your website. This is doubly true about copying parts of pages from other websites on the internet. Besides a possible violation of copyright laws, your page is sure to be deemed low quality.
- Links to the page– Links from external sources are a high metric of a high-quality page. It shows that the page offers enough value to be referenced by another website.
- Links from trustworthy websites– The higher the quality of the page that is linking to you, the more valuable the link. For example, a link from forbes.com would be a much more trustworthy source than a small independent blog.
- Does the page solve a problem?– Google tries to determine if the searcher’s query was answered by your page.
Other Quality factors Google looks for:
- Well written content –Google’s technology is very sophisticated at reading the structure and readability of content on web pages.
- Accessibility –Does your page work just as well on Internet Explorer as it does on Chrome? Does the page resolve itself well on mobiles and tablets?
- Load time – Does the page load in a reasonable amount of time? E.g. less than 2-3 seconds.
- Good amount of content– Low quality or “thin” pages are often determined by lack of content, a good rule of thumb is to always aim for a minimum of 300-400 words per page.
- Internal links– Links from other pages on your website show the page is important and helps to distribute page authority.
Reviewing Your Site for Page Quality
Here is a breakdown of steps to take when reviewing the quality of your web pages.
- Does the page have backlinks? Does the page have any internal links from other pages on your website? Does the page have any external links?
- Does the page have any social activity? Shares on Facebook, Twitter etc.
- Review content on page. Is there at least 200 words of content? Is the content structured well with headings?
- Is it obvious what you are offering? Can a potential visitor find an answer to their question quickly?
When optimizing your website always be wary of Google’s standards in regards to page quality. Also remember that the trustworthiness of a page is not just determined on your website, but externally too.
Having links and marketing activity pointing to your page is a surefire way to drive up perceived quality.
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