GPWA Times Magazine - Issue30 - October 2014

for consideration. A lack of quality in these areas should result in a page or site being given a low quality rating by hu- man raters. So what do those words actually mean in this context? The guidelines stress to raters that ex- perts can come in many forms, depend- ing on niche. Everyday anecdotal exper- tise should not be discounted and can be highly relevant. But in areas such as finan- cial trading, for instance, real expertise is only going to come from an experienced trader. Someone who day-trades as a hob- by clearly cannot be considered an expert. User Generated Content (UGC), such as that found on forums, is questioned by the guidelines. In particular raters should consider its trustworthiness. As men- tioned above, though, first-person experi- ences do have value: “If it seems as if the person creating the con- tent has the type and amount of life experience to make him or her an ‘expert’ on the topic, we will value this ‘everyday expertise’ and not pe- nalize the person/page/website for not having ‘formal’ education or training in the field.” E-A-T should be considered on a page-by- page basis in instances where sites have multiple contributors. But where the en- tire site pivots on one person’s expertise (e.g., a personal blog), has very strong ed- itorial standards (e.g., a mainstream news site), or has an extremely positive reputa- tion for expertise in a particular field (e.g., a highly influential multi-author blog/ community), E-A-T should be considered on a site-wide basis. What can we take from this? So when you’re looking for contributors to your site or blog, it is of utmost impor- tance that they are real authorities in their field. And similarly when you’re looking for sites to gain links from, or to contribute to, you shouldmake the same assessment. This ties in closely with what Matt Cutts (Google’s webspam oracle) said earlier in 2014 in relation to guest post blogging as a link-building tactic. It is essentially a bankrupt tactic if you accept posts on any theme or topic with little regard for quality, or contribute to other sites in a similar way. It also seems the days of cheap UGC that would provide you with original, rank- ing content are gone. Bolting a forum onto your site will no longer have the same impact. Investment in good quality content and expertise has been encouraged by Google for some time, but this focus on expertise and authoritativeness pushes expected standards much further. And while the Panda updates have done much to eradi- cate bulk, duplicate or spun content, there is still a great deal of work to be done by many to ensure their on-site content not only passes muster with Google’s rat- ers, but future versions of its algorithm as well. Watch your ads Google has done quite a bit from an algo- rithmic perspective to punish pages and sites that heavily feature advertising, or mislead and distract visitors by the way advertising is displayed. The battle continues, and it appears that top-of-page advertising that requires us- ers to actually scroll down to read any content on the page, as well as advertis- ing that interrupts body content, is now in Google's sights. Google is particularly concerned with pages that appear to have no content on first loading, just ads. These pages should be considered low quality by raters, which gives an insight into how the page layout algorithm will develop. The same applies for advertising that looks like navigational links, which bi- zarrely would seem to include Google’s own product: AdSense. A site will also receive a low rating if it is felt that the design tries to manipulate users into clicking ads or downloading links, or if the site includes inline ads. As mentioned, the guidelines also specify that ads which break up and interrupt main content sections are undesirable. This is a tactic that is used by many major news sites, and one that Google thinks is very disruptive in terms of user experience. The importance of supplementary content Much like Google’s knowledge graphs within SERPs, Google now wants supple- mentary, or linked, content – which is anything that isn’t the main content or advertising – to come to life within a page. While previously it was acceptable to have a high-quality page with just naviga- tion for supporting content, Google now wants any page to be rated within the con- text of this content. For a page to gain a rating of High or High- est quality it needs to include excerpts and information regarding further relevant content. This could mean related relevant posts, video or other rich content. At its Google’s income is still hugely dependent on advertising. . . . It will do nearly anything to protect and grow this income channel. 41 Google is ready to E-A-T