SEO Blueprint

What Google Says About Content

Google Webmaster Quality Guidelines

Basic principles

Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.

Don’t deceive your users. (Clickbait)

Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you, or to a Google employee. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”

Think about what makes your website unique, valuable or engaging. Make your website stand out from others in your field.

Avoid the following techniques

Automatically generated content

Participating in link schemes

Creating pages with little or no original content

Cloaking

Cloaking is a search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the user's browser.

Sneaky redirects

Sneaky redirects. Redirecting is the act of sending a visitor to a different URL than the one they initially requested.

Hidden text or links

Doorway pages

Doorway pages are defined as low-quality pages (or groups of pages, or entire websites) optimized to rank well for specific keywords that act as a door between users and content. Characteristically, they offer little value to visitors and serve the sole purpose of boosting SEO value.

Scraped content

Scraping content is taking content from other places on the web and publishing it on your own site.

Participating in affiliate programs without adding sufficient value

Loading pages with irrelevant keywords

Creating pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans or other badware

Abusing rich snippets markup

Providing misleading or false rich snippet information can get you penalized by Google.

Sending automated queries to Google

WebPosition Gold

Google’s Webmaster Academy course

Useful and informative: If you’re launching a site for a restaurant, you can include the location, hours of operation, contact information, menu and a blog to share upcoming events.

More valuable and useful than other sites: If you write about how to train a dog, make sure your article provides more value or a different perspective than the numerous articles on the web on dog training.

Credible: Show your site’s credibility by using original research, citations, links, reviews and testimonials. An author biography or testimonials from real customers can help boost your site’s trustworthiness and reputation.

High-quality: Your site’s content should be unique, specific and high-quality. It should not be mass-produced or outsourced on a large number of other sites. Keep in mind that your content should be created primarily to give visitors a good user experience, not to rank well in search engines.

Engaging: Bring color and life to your site by adding images of your products, your team or yourself. Make sure visitors are not distracted by spelling, stylistic and factual errors. An excessive number of ads can also be distracting for visitors. Engage visitors by interacting with them through regular updates, comment boxes or social media widgets.

Google’s Search Quality Rating Guidelines

What makes a High-quality page? A High-quality page may have the following characteristics:

High level of Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (E-A-T)

A satisfying amount of high quality MC (Main Content)

Satisfying website information and/or information about who is responsible for the website, or satisfying customer service information if the page is primarily for shopping or includes financial transactions

Positive website reputation for a website that is responsible for the MC on the page