Search engines focus on helping people find quality content. Google and other search engines do not disclose exactly how they judge the quality of website content in order to rank websites in their search results. Google does however have guidelines which, if followed correctly, will help your site have a high ranking.

Here is a summary of Google’s main recommendations:

Trusted experts

Google is looking for information that can be trusted and this means it should be written by an expert or trustworthy enthusiast on the topic.

A high ranking web site needs to be regarded as a reliable source of information with original unique content not found elsewhere.

Give both sides

If a subject is controversial then acknowledge that there can be two sides to a story, and give both views to enable readers to reach their own conclusions about the topic.

Relevant

All content should be relevant to the subject matter of the site. Off topic articles and articles that are too similar should not be included on the site.

Websites should be aware of the interests of their readers and this will inform relevant content.

Grammar and spelling

As well as articles being free of factual errors, there needs to be no spelling, grammar and stylistic errors.

Too many ads

Whilst advertisement can be a good revenue stream for a web site, too many advertisements surrounding an article distract readers and will be penalized.

Not too short

Articles should not be too short, unsubstantial or lacking specifics.

Remove low quality content

One page of low quality content can negatively affect the ranking of the whole site, so it is worth while removing this content.

John Murray

John is every inch the wordsmith and loves a game of Scrabble above all else. With experience writing for newspapers, John’s time at university was spent studying Creative Writing – something which comes across in his love of the pun.