You don’t want Google to ban your site…
Or you don’t want your site to banished among the million pages Google searchbot is searching everyday.
Do you?
Well, I think there will be more harm if you will not follow their guidelines. Don’t you think so?
Besides the Webmaster Guidelines that Google strongly encourage you to follow, Google recently released more guidelines based on the new “Panda” algorithm. This additional tweak to Google’s ranking algorithm had made a big impact for a large number of sites, and yes, including blogs.
So instead of explaining the new guidelines, Google on the other hand has released questionnaires to make it easier for site owner to find out if their web page content is good enough for Google’s new quality filters.
Below are the sets of questions that Google has published that can help you to judge the quality of your site:
On Trustworthiness:
- Would you trust the information presented in your article?
- Is the article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
- Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to the site?
- Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
- For a health related query, would you trust information from the site?
- Would you recognize the site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
- Is the website the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
- Would users complain when they see pages from the site?
Page uniqueness:
- Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
- Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
- Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
Over all quality of the pages:
- Does the article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
- How much quality control is done on content?
- Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
- Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
- Does the article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
- Would you expect to see the article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
- Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
Human interests and not for search engines:
- Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
Pages with enough real content:
- Does the article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
- Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
- Does the article describe both sides of a story?
- Does the article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
There you are dear readers, unless there’s a search engine that is bigger than Google, then we don’t have a choice for now but to follow the leader.
Does your blog follows these guidelines already or do you have to improve it?
source: More guidance on building high-quality sites
