Making the Grade: Google’s Quality Content Rating

What if we asked you to grade your website? Would you give it an A out of beaming pride, a B as an acknowledgement of a future business project, or maybe a C with a shrug and a smirk, silently saying to yourself, “who cares?” Well, none other than our friends over at Google care. Google employs “Search Quality Evaluators” to monitor individual websites in order to rank them in their search engine algorithm, and if your website doesn’t meet their criteria, any previous attempts you have made to boost your ranking could be made pointless. Google recently updated their evaluator guidelines, and it is vital for the continued online growth of your business that you have an understanding of these new rules.

For some, it may come as a shock just to realize that there are actual real life people ranking individual websites for Google. What about those fancy keyword algorithms and automated web crawlers it uses to decide search rank? (Actually it will likely be more comforting for some to know that real people are taking over for the robot spiders.) Google is well aware of SEO marketers attempting to “game” their algorithm and automated features, finding loopholes in the system through cheap Black Hat SEO practices. And while you may really feel that you are helping the broader population by boosting your website’s rank with standard SEO – making sure to prioritize popular search terms in your articles, and providing answers to commonly asked questions – Google has its own opinion on what meets their criteria. And that opinion can be boiled down to two words to remember: expert content.

By employing human readers to judge for expert content, Google is able to bring a silent sense of certification and rigor that is often lacking in the darker corners of the Internet. Site evaluators are tasked with following a simple acronym E-A-T to determine expert content: E for expertise, A for authoritativeness, and T for trustworthiness. In a sense, these are all self-explanatory, but it is essential for you to know that Google is grading you on these items. It’s worth taking another look at your web page (see, we are asking you to grade it after all) and check if you measure up to these standards. Would you say that a sense of expertise and authoritativeness shines through the text and images? What other sites does your website link to that show it can be called a trusted source of information? And most importantly, how would a complete stranger rate you in these areas? It’s this last question that you have to be able to answer satisfactorily in order to rest assured that you’re making Google’s grade.

As with most things involving the internet, this article doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the intricacies involved with meeting Google’s new content standards. That’s why reaching out to Sun Sign Designs will be a great help to your business. We’ll be able to provide you with all the information necessary to meet these new demands so your company can continue to grow. Contact us today!