Google Search Quality Guide

Most people have heard of Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines, but not many have actually followed through and read the entire 168-page document, and who could blame them?

Of course, you know how influential Google is in the world of search engines, and yes, you know that finding out their criteria for ranking websites is crucial. However, do you really have time to explore every single element of their algorithms and then improve your website accordingly?

Most businesses would answer no. Fortunately, this is exactly why we have created the below beginner’s guide to Google Search Quality so that you can enjoy all the benefits of knowing about Google search criteria without having to do any of the leg work.

Sounds to be good to be true?

By the time you have finished reading the below guide (in around 7 minutes), you will know:

• What Search Quality Raters are
• What is covered in Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines
• How to improve the search quality of your website
• How Google identifies low-quality pages

What are Search Quality Raters?

In the words of Google, the Search Quality Raters Guidelines are designed to make search results better. Dedicated to improving their user experience, Google seeks out feedback from third-party Search Quality Raters to help them understand what changes they can implement to make search more useful.

There are Search Quality Raters all over the world, and they are highly trained in Google’s extensive guidelines. Although Google states that their Search Quality Raters do not impact how their search results are ranked, they do use their responses to evaluate changes. This means that neither a positive or a negative rating by a Search Quality Rater will directly impact your site’s ranking. Instead, their findings influence the rankings of every single site everywhere.

All sounds good, doesn’t it? Improve the user experience and make search engines more effective for all. Unless, of course, you are a business that is struggling to get ahead of their competitors on SERPs. But don’t worry if this is the case for you; all you need to do is keep reading to discover how you can make the guidelines work in your favour.

What is covered in Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines?

Google’s Search Quality Raters Guideline are like a looking glass into Google’s algorithms, offering incredible insight into what Google views as quality and the types of pages that they want to serve at the top of their search results pages.

Although we are not saying that these guidelines are the secret to a successful SEO strategy, they will most definitely help you to make improvements to your site that should result in higher rankings on SERPs.

Take a look below at the most important elements of the guidelines that all SEOs and webmasters need to know if they want to improve the search quality of their sites.

Your Money or Your Life Pages (YMYL)

YMYL pages are held in the greatest esteem by Google as these types of pages can greatly impact a person’s life. While anyone can create a web page about treating a health problem or advising on benefits, Google wants to make sure that the pages they recommend to their users are as high quality as possible.

Or, to put it another way, low-quality pages on money and life issues that could potentially have a detrimental effect on the user’s happiness, health or wealth, will not be ranked well by Google.

If your site deals with any serious issues such as these, you need to make sure that your content is of the highest quality, as Google will hold your site to a higher standard than it would for a sporting site or a recipe site.

Webpages that fall into YMYL include:

• All shopping and financial transaction pages
• Financial information pages
• Medical information pages
• Legal pages
• Other pages such as child adoption, car safety, finding a job, etc

E-A-T aka Expertise/Authoritativeness/Trustworthiness

Arguably the most talked about section of the Google Search Quality Raters Guidelines, E-A-T is what the Quality Raters predominantly use to help them evaluate websites.

It is worth noting that E-A-T is not part of the algorithm, but that doesn’t make it any less important. In a nutshell, E-A-T refers to what you may like to think of as a website’s overall value and looks to answer three main questions:

• Does the site lack expertise?
• Does it lack authoritativeness?
• Does it lack trustworthiness?

All of the above are elements of a webpage that Quality Raters are asked to consider when it comes to the quality of a website or webpage, and this is especially true for sites that fall into the YMYL category.

So, what does this mean for your website and its SEO?

To put it simply, you need to make a point of either demonstrating how your site already has a high E-A-T value or, if you have a low E-A-T value, you need to find ways to increase it.

There are several ways that you can improve E-A-T for SEO, including these:

• Audit your brand. Ask your customer base for feedback about your business and carry out an audit of your most important pages, such as your homepage and your about page. Are you clearly demonstrating your company values? Are you promoting any accreditations? Do you come across as trustworthy?
• Audit your existing content. What does your content say about you and your business? Is it relevant to your target audience? Does it match search intent? Does it include high-quality backlinks?
• Build a framework for content creation. Ensure any new content is created with E-A-T in mind. Do not just create content to improve your rankings; instead, always consider customer needs.

Page Design

Google asks Quality Raters to consider the focus on each web page. For example, is the main content in the centre of the page? Do users have to scroll down to see the article? Are there lots of ads above the foldAbove the fold refers to the visible portion of a webpage. Above the fold content is what a user sees without scrolling and has a greater chance of being read or clicked. that push the content lower down the page?

All of these key elements make up the page design of a web page, and all are taken into consideration by Quality Raters when evaluating a website.

There is one caveat, though. Your website does not need to be aesthetically pleasing to get a good rating. It can be ugly as sin, but as long as it is user-friendly and meets the needs of the site visitors, it can still achieve a positive rating.

Supplementary Content

If you are not entirely sure what supplementary content is, then you are not alone. One of the aspects of the guidelines that webmasters struggle with the most, supplementary content includes elements such as sidebar tips, related article suggestions, and images.

Although you may be concerned that adding this type of content to your web pages will require advanced technical capabilities, it is actually fairly easy to add supplementary content to your site.

If you have a WordPress site, there are plenty of plug-ins that allow you to add suggested content but be careful that you only add content that is helpful to the user. You don’t want to bombard them with suggested article ad networks that do not offer them any real value.

If you are not sure if something counts as supplementary content or not, think of it this way. If it isn’t the main article on the page or some form of advertising, then it’s secondary content.

Advertising

You probably already know that Google will be looking for ads that are placed above the fold, but they will also examine other aspects of ad placement that could affect the user experience.

For example, are you attempting to blend your ads into the content? If yes, you should know that Google does not look favourably on this as they believe that ads should be present for users who want to interact with them, but they should be able to be easily ignored if so desired.

Another bugbear for Google when it comes to ad placement is there not being a clear enough definition between your content and your ads. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you need a big red arrow saying “Ad here”, but it does mean that you need to make sure that there is a clear distinction between the article and the ad so that a user doesn’t click on an advertisement by mistake.

Reputation

Another aspect of websites that Google asks their Quality Raters to consider is their reputation. They actively direct their Quality Raters to Wikipedia and other information sources to carry out reputation research for more formal topics such as giving medical or financial advice. This means that it can be a good idea to make sure you have your online reputation listed on sites such as these so that you can showcase your background and professional reputation.

Where this type of professional reputation isn’t available, Google will look to other factors to determine reputation, such as user reviews, user engagement, and the popularity of a web page.

Know & Know Simple Queries

Two more recently added elements to the Google Search Quality Guidelines, “Know Queries” and “Know Simple Queries” are the driving force behind featured snippets.

Know Simple Queries are the type of searches that can be answered using only one or two sentences, making them ideal for Google’s featured snippets. These also refer to queries where there is a single answer that most people would agree on, such as “how old do you have to be to learn to drive in the UK?”.

Know Queries refer to all the other online queries that are either complex to answer or have many possible answers. For example, “how old is Boris Johnson” would be a Know Simple Query, whereas “is Boris Johnson a good prime minister” would be a Know Query.

Needs Met

Another fairly new addition, Needs Met looks at how well a search result meets the needs of a searcher. Ratings for this element of search quality range from “fully meets” to “fails to meet”. It is important to know that any website that is not mobile-friendly will automatically get a “fails to meet” rating.

To improve your Needs Met rating, make sure you look carefully at search intent and plan your content accordingly.

How Does Google Identify Low Search Quality Pages?

If you are concerned that your site is being considered low quality by Quality Raters, Google has shared the elements that Quality Raters should look for to determine a low search quality site.

These are:

1. Low quality content. Content that does not provide value to the user will equate to a low search quality rating.
2. Thin content. If the content is too short or does not supply sufficient information based on the article title, it will not be rated well.
3. The author is not an expert. The more expertise the author has on the topic of the page, the higher its rating is.
4. The website has a bad reputation. An overwhelming amount of negative reviews will do your SEO efforts no favours.
5. Obtrusive ads. Autoplay video ads or super flashy animated ads can distract from a webpage’s content and should, therefore, be avoided.

Other practices that Google does not look favourably upon include:

• Sneaky redirectsA redirect is a web page that loads in place of another web page. – such as linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. to affiliate programs on your site
• Spammy main content – such as autogenerated content
• Keyword stuffingKeyword stuffing is a technique that attempts to give pages higher rankings in search engine result pages by inserting the same keywords over and over again. – too many, unnaturally placed keywords
• Copied content – Google favours originality
• Spam-heavy forums – you need to monitor the comments section on your blogs
• Scam sites or phishing pages
• Sites that are not mobile-friendly

Conclusion

Hopefully, you now have a better idea of how Google Search Quality Raters operate and what they look for when rating websites. Although the above is only really skimming the surface of Google’s search quality criteria, it is a good place to start if you want to improve your rankings and provide your target audience with a better user experience.

If you would like more help with improving your search rating or any other aspect of SEO, such as the creation of high-quality, optimised content, get in touch with our knowledgable and experienced team here.

We are ready and waiting to take your site to the top (of Google!).