Navigating Google’s “Quality Update”
As we noted in this space last week, Google has recently confirmed that there was indeed an update to its core ranking algorithm, which is related to how the search engine processes quality signals.
Google is constantly making adjustments to algorithm, often several times a day. For the most part, webmasters don’t tend to notice this unless they notice a sudden negative trend in the traffic to their site. One way to get a snapshot of what webmasters are talking about and how volatile search rankings are currently—meaning how often rankings are moving and by how much—is to visit the site Algoroo, which tends to provide insight into whether Google is making major changes to its algorithm.
So what does Google mean when they talk about quality signals? While there is no cut-and-dry answer to this question, looking at both Google’s history and its Panda update, we get a better idea of the best practices in creating online content.
In analyzing a site’s content and determining what can be classified as “high quality” content rests on a number of analytical and qualitative features. Firstly, in looking at user behavior in Google Analytics, when we breakdown a site by pages, be sure to highlight which content pages of yours people are spending the longest on and that have the lowest bounce rate (the number of people leaving your site after visiting that particular page).
Pages that generally have what can be qualified as “high quality” content tends to have longer on-page time spent and lower bounce rates. Simply put, people are spending the time it takes to read or watch the content and then find it interesting enough to explore other parts of your website.
In addition, and in lines with our discussion of social signals last week, the number of Facebook “likes,” Retweets, Google +1’s, and other positive social signals are also widely believed to be a factor in how Google assesses quality. While no one is sure just how much positive social signals weigh in Google’s search algorithm, in qualifying your own site’s content, it’s safe to assume that content that has a large amount of social interaction can be classified as “high quality” while those pages with little to no social signals are likely of lesser quality (or at least your audience feels so).
With this new update, it’s a great time for sites to conduct a self-assessment and identify both the existing high quality content on one’s site and the not-so-great content. You might consider going into articles that you might have not spent a lot of time on and users are generally bouncing off of and beef up the quality.
Finally, always keep Google’s Panda update in mind. This update was introduced in 2011 as a way for Google to crack down on spammy content across the web. Some basic but essential rules to keep in mind when Panda-proofing your site is to never re-use content from another site or to not have any duplicate content on your site.
At the end of the day, by focusing on creating a well-written and better-built site that is designed for users and quality, you can protect your site against any losses in your site’s search rankings while also attracting new users through the sheer quality of your site’s content.
