What if you had advanced knowledge of the special content search engines look for. The kind of content in quality webpages. With this valuable information, you could create content that gets more clicks to your site.
And what if you knew how the world’s most popular search engine views the algorithms it uses to improve your search experience. Well, Google says about its searchers, “You want the answer, not trillions of webages. Algorithms are computer programs that look for clues to give you back exactly what you want.”
Google is constantly experimenting to come up with search algorithms that get you “exactly what you want.” An element of that experimentation is the feedback of human evaluators. Google describes their work, “These evaluators base their ratings on guidelines Google gives them. The guidelines reflect what Google thinks search users want.”
As it turns out, Google has just updated these guidelines and you can get them here. So if you’re a marketer or business owner responsible for a website, you should read this guide. Thing is, it’s 160 pages long and would take you some time to get through.
I have a better idea…Let me help you by picking out information that will get you on track to improving your website content for higher rankings in search. I’ll let you in on these secrets with frequent posts based on the Google Evaluator’s Guide.
So let’s start with a section that will help you understand why some of your webpages might not be ranking as high as you’d like. It’s early on in the guide and it’s called:
“Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) Pages” for Quality Webpages
Google focuses its work on the billions of regular users who search every day. It emphasizes the importance of quality webpages that “…potentially impact the future happiness, health, or wealth of users.” Google actually calls these pages the YMYL pages!
Google uses very high standards to rate these pages because low quality YMYL pages could harm users. Your takeaway: don’t BS your website visitors with subpar content on the following types of YMYL pages:
- Shopping or financial transaction pages: webpages which allow users to make purchases, transfer money, pay bills, etc. online (such as online stores and online banking pages).
- Financial information pages: webpages which provide advice or information about investments, taxes, retirement planning, home purchase, paying for college, buying insurance, etc.
- Medical information pages: webpages which provide advice or information about health, drugs, specific diseases or conditions, mental health, nutrition, etc.
- Legal information pages: webpages which provide legal advice or information on topics such as divorce, child custody, creating a will, becoming a citizen, etc.
- Other: there are many other topics which you may consider YMYL, such as child adoption, car safety information, etc. Please use your judgment.
That’s directly from the guide (my bold) and notice that it’s addressed to the human evaluator who will be offering her opinion on each of the pages listed.
I have written these exact webpages for packaging distributors, beauty salons, CPAs, healthcare, and lawyers. Also architects, public adjustors, and insurance companies. These pages are so important that Google places higher standards on them when rating them for their algorithms.
Now this could be intimidating for you…or you can look at it as a golden opportunity. That’s because it’s most likely your competition isn’t living up to these high standards, much less even know they exist.
But you do. And all it takes is to install in your content the characteristics of what Google calls High Quality Webpages. What are those characteristics?
Stay tuned.
Until next time,
Nick
PS Have people gotten the impression that Al Gore invented the internet because the search engines use Al Gore Rhythms to rate online content? (Sorry, couldn't resist!)
Nick Burns is an SEO web writer specializing in persuasive copywriting and content marketing. He provides clients a winning content strategy plus the special web writing to make it work. You can contact Nick here.
