A Friday sharing session from Digirank Ltd - a specialist digital marketing agency in Bristol. Here we look at Google's Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines and in particular page quality. The Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines are Google's guidelines to manual evaluators on what makes a site worthy of ranking. It's a really great insight into Google's algorithms and how pages are appraised and therefore ranked. In this slideshow we look in depth at Page Quality.

1. Search Quality Evaluator
Guidelines
Part 1 - Page Quality

2. Search Quality Rater Guidelines
• 164 pages insight into Google’s algorithms
• Guide for ‘search quality evaluators’ to assess a page. They are the humans who check that Google’s
algorithms are doing a good job
Overview
What’s in it for Larry & Serg? Evaluate
search engine quality
What’s in it for Digirank?
Window into Google’s algorithms.

3. Split into 3 areas:
Overview
PAGE
QUALITY
MOBILE USER
NEEDS
NEEDS MET

4. Split into 3 areas:
Overview
PAGE
QUALITY
MOBILE USER
NEEDS
NEEDS MET
HOW WELL DOES A PAGE ACHIEVE IT’S PURPOSE?

5. Page Quality (PQ) is one of the metrics Google uses to determine whether to rank a page.
Factors that impact page quality:
• Purpose of the page
• E-A-T
• Main Content Quality and Amount
• Website Information/information about who is responsible for the MC
• Website Reputation/reputation about who is responsible for the MC
PAGE QUALITY
FURTHER THINKING: with every page on a website, consider the purpose of it? What is the benefit to the
user? How is it helpful?

6. Your money or your life pages
Impact health, wealth or happiness.
(transaction pages, financial information, legal, medical,
official notices etc).
Page quality rating standards are higher for these pages.
BUT FIRST…YMYL

7. 1st step is to understand the purpose of
the page.
3 typical page purposes. Is the page
created to:
• To help users?
• To make ££?
• To harm users?
PAGE PURPOSE
“Websites and pages should be created to help users. Websites
and pages that are created with intent to harm users, deceive
users, or make money with no attempt to help users, should
receive the Lowest PQ rating.”
“As long as the page is created to help users, we will not consider
any particular page purpose or type to be higher quality than
another. For example, encyclopedia pages are not necessarily
higher quality than humour pages.”

8. Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness
Who is writing the main content? Are they expert? Do they have
authority? Can you trust them?
“There are high E-A-T pages and websites of all types, even gossip
websites, fashion websites, humor websites, forum and Q&A pages,
In fact, some types of information are found almost exclusively on
forums and discussions, where a community of experts can provide
valuable perspectives on specific topics.”
Formal & informal expertise –
- Formal – eg qualifications, professional training
- Informal – eg life experience (everyday expertise)
E-A-T
FURTHER THINKING: How does the information on clients sites come across to a user? What signals are there
that tell a user to trust the information?

9. Google classifies content into 3 areas :
• Main content (text, images, videos, features, TITLE (fight against clickbait). Anything that directly helps the
page achieve it’s purpose. Main content is the reason the page exists
• Supplementary content (eg navigation, internal links, related content, sharing icons)
• Ads/Monetisaztion (display ads. Presence of ads isn’t enough to give a high or low quality rating)
PAGE CONTENT
FURTHER THINKING: What is the main content on a page? How does it help your page to achieve a purpose?

10. Google wants to rank content
by authors with a great
reputation.
Jennifer Slegg:
“The most noticeable for content creators is that
Google wants their raters to not only look at the
reputation of the website itself, but also the content
creators themselves.”
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR MAIN CONTENT?

11. “Every page belongs to a website, and it should be clear:
• Who (what individual, company, business, foundation, etc.) is responsible for the website.
• Who (what individual, company, business, foundation, etc.) created the content on the page you are
evaluating”
Now emphasis is not just on the business reputation but also on the individual.
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR MAIN CONTENT?
FURTHER THINKING: Who is writing content? Are we ghost writing it? Who would the user trust? What signals
are we giving users that the writer is an expert/credible source?

12. “Use reputation research to find out what real users, as well as experts, think about a website. Look for reviews,
references, recommendations by experts, news articles, and other credible information created/written by
individuals about the website”
User reviews for stores
“We consider a large number of positive user reviews as evidence of positive reputation”
User reviews for news sites
“Many other kinds of websites have reputations as well. For example, you might find that a newspaper website
has won journalistic awards. Prestigious awards, such as the Pulitzer Prize award, are strong evidence of positive
reputation.”
WHAT IS REPUTATION OF WEBSITE?
FURTHER THINKING: Imagine our client doesn’t have a website. If someone were to search for the brand, what
would they see? What opinion would they form? How can we influence the information that is available?

13. NEXT…
PAGE
QUALITY
MOBILE USER
NEEDS
NEEDS MET

14. Questions?
Karen@digirank.co.uk / 0117 923 2021
www.digirank.co.uk/about-us/