Logic, strategy and Estate Agent websites

 

With Google’s latest Algorithm change the phrase ‘High Quality Website’ has been thrown around a lot. You may have a site that looks good and does exactly what you want it to be but it doesn’t mean Google thinks the same.

High Quality websites go further than just visual appearance... so what does it actually mean and what are Google expecting of your website.

• 1. Is your website trusted?
  
  A good quality website will be a ‘trusted’ website, meaning not being spamming with reliable information. For example - would you trust a website that has lots of pop-up’s about Viagra or as soon as you go on it gives you a virus?
  
  Many factors help Google determine whether or not your website can be trusted. The key factors are through gaining links from other websites and the age of your website.
  
  If other trusted websites are linking to your website, Google will be able to see you are more trusted depending on how many websites are linking to you. Also if your website has been around for ten years and Google hasn’t yet seen anything bad produced from your website during this time, they will obviously trust it.
  
  Questions to ask yourself to figure out if your website is trusted are:
  • Would you be comfortable giving out your credit card details to the website?
  • Would you believe the content is reliable?
  • Is your website a better source of information then your competition?
• 2. Don’t stuff your website with poor content!
  
  Producing poor content through your blog or generally on your website has been a major part of Google Panda’s attack on low quality websites.
  
  The meaning of low quality writing:
  
  Poorly written – spelling mistakes/poor grammar 
  Uninformative – Lacking relevant information/not clear
  Unreliable – Outdated/inaccurate/made up information
  Duplicated – Copied directly from another website.
  Hurried – you can tell which articles have been researched and thought about compared to the ones that have been thrown out in 20 minutes.
  
  Content written like this won’t help the user at all.
  
  If the content is being written by an expert of the industry, writing about a topic that will help the user should be easy. Try to provide content that is a complete description of the topic.
• 3. Is your website a recognised authority on its topic?
  
  Being a recognised authority in your industry is very important for Google trusting you. If you aren’t clear on your purpose it will just confuse users which will lower your rankings.
  
  Writing content that isn’t relevant to the website won’t help with your rankings.
• 4. Would you want to bookmark, share or recommend your articles to a friend?
  
  If you don’t think its good enough for people to share or recommend it, why would your readers?
  
  You have to writing things that are so good people will want to share it. Especially with social media being as popular as it is, this could lead to lots more traffic as well as people in the future possibly coming back to your website.
• 5. Is your website unclear, complicated or lacking in direction?
  
  Confusing users is an easy way to lose traffic. You can over complicate your site very easily. For example – stuffing it full of content, putting too many buttons around the page, and over using Ad’s.
  
  All this will have a negative effect on your SEO as well as making your website look tacky and overcrowded.

So ask yourself this... if you were a user on your website would you think it was easy to use, clear, relevant and informative? If the answer isn’t yes, your content will need to be update or changed. If not you could be face with a drop in rankings as low-quality content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s rankings.

By Luke Stanley
SEO Consultant