The quality raters guidelines offer insights into what improvements can be made to a web page to enhance its ranking potential. While it is not a step-by-step guide, Google’s Danny Sullivan has encouraged publishers to read it for ideas on how to create a better user experience, which can ultimately improve rankings.
Danny Sullivan noted that sites that experienced a drop in rankings after the August Broad Core Update cannot simply fix themselves to regain lost positions. He clarified that there is nothing to fix for sites that lost rankings but also encouraged site publishers to read the Google Quality Raters Guidelines to better understand how to rank better in Google’s algorithm. This can seem contradictory, as the first statement discourages hope while the second suggests a path to improved rankings.
After every update, including so-called Phantom updates, the SEO industry often focuses on identifying “quality” issues to resolve, such as thin content, excessive advertising, site speed, and poor inbound links. However, it is naive to assume that every update targets removing sites for these “quality” issues.
Search engineers aim to satisfy users, and delivering better results doesn’t solely involve removing sites with “quality” problems. Improved results come from understanding what users want when they search. This is the essence of RankBrain, which was initially introduced to comprehend the meaning behind search queries, particularly the 15% of queries Google hasn’t encountered before. Eventually, Google’s algorithm expanded RankBrain’s use to more queries.
When Sullivan said there was nothing to fix, it may indicate that the broad core update was not about penalizing sites for “quality” issues but about providing more relevant search results. Relevance, in this context, is measured by user satisfaction, which is where Google’s quality raters come into play.
Machine learning algorithms rely on a baseline from which to learn, and human judgment provides that baseline. For example, a research paper on query reformulation highlights how human quality raters judge result relevance, which is then used to score the algorithm.
Google employs quality raters to evaluate search results and provide feedback on the algorithm. The quality raters guidelines instruct human raters on how to classify web pages as useful, among other traits.
The guidelines tell us which kinds of web pages Google wants to rank and give clues about the content that a website should have. The guidelines identify five key factors for rating a high-quality web page: the purpose of the page, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness, main content quality and amount, website information, and website reputation.
Following these guidelines can help address any issues that may have caused a drop in rankings. The guidelines suggest focusing on both author factors and content factors to improve ranking signals.
Different types of sites may require stricter ranking criteria. For example, anything related to finances is held to a stricter standard. However, only focus on the ranking signals appropriate for your niche.
Certain pages, termed “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) pages, need extra effort for ranking due to their potential impact on users’ happiness, health, financial stability, or safety. These include shopping or financial transaction pages, financial, medical, and legal information pages, news articles, and others that fall into this category.
For ranking improvement, compare your site to better-ranking pages to understand why Google may have favored them. Always approach this analysis from a user’s perspective, as the quality raters guide advises raters to represent the user’s experience.
In search marketing, it’s about following the user. The word “User” appears frequently in the guidelines, emphasizing its importance.
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