Google’s Search Quality Rater’s Guidelines have provided every SEO-based company with incredible insight regarding what Google deems to be great or not. There are many criteria to many types of pages, but one thing remains key in everything: low quality webpages will get shunned.

Guidelines Are Out!

So, what makes a webpage unworthy of being displayed on Google’s front pages? There are a couple of errors that you can avoid when creating your website and the first and most important one is

Having no E-A-T on the matter.

What does this mean? Well, E-A-T is short for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, which means that Google’s principle is pretty straightforward – if you have a visible experience on the subject, you’re good. Google won’t send private detectives to see if you have a university degree in this or that, rather, they look at your content and whether it is detailed enough. If what you wrote makes sense and can be easily understood, with sensible information that supports your claims, you have nothing to worry about.

Not to be confused with eating.

Your main content does not live up to standards 

Again, quality. Main content is what your webpage is all about, so any content centred around it should be top-notch. Blabbering on at length about the weather and pink unicorns when you’re supposed to give important info on the hows and whys of SEO marketing or social media marketing is a huge no-no. Similarly, you can be faced with a problem if you have

An unsatisfying amount of content on the main subject

Quality over quantity is an important saying that usually applies in most parts of life. But when you read Google’s Search Quality Rater’s Guidelines, it becomes obvious that you can, in fact, elaborate on things that require it. So, if you’re explaining a very complicated notion in astrophysics (or something less horrifyingly complicated,) go ahead, elaborate!

Poorly designed and maintained pages…

…won’t get you anywhere, either. If your page has a lot of ads that are distracting, too, you won’t get any plus points for sure. Anything that is too in your readers’ face and anything that draws attention away from the main content will be penalized, so to speak. If your website contains a lot of links that are broken or pages that aren’t properly designed, you shouldn’t expect to be on the first few pages in the search results, either. Also, make sure to update your website frequently, with consistency, especially if your purpose is to convey information on something. A news hub that has no updates for months will be deemed suspicious by Google.

Malware and harmful webpages, out with you!

Any webpage that is harmful to users will receive the “Lowest Quality Rating,” and rightfully so: who would want to have their computer completely trashed by spyware? Websites like these are involved with scams to gain people’s social security numbers and such. Google also states that any website that has a bad reputation will also receive the medal of shame.

Out with the malware! Photo Credit: Easyonlinesecurity