How to make high quality websites

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) seems to move in a direction, where high quality websites is the key to get in the top of Search Engine Result Page (SERP). But what are a high quality website in Google’s eyes?

According to Google’s Webmaster guidelines, a high quality website is a website that meets the following criteria:

• The website is made primarily for users on the site, and not Google. 
• The website does not deceive the user of the website, e.g. if the website looks almost like a copy of another well-respected website, so the user thinks that your site is the other website.
• The website is not optimized with tricks that does not benefit the user of the website, but is only intended to get a higher ranking in Google.
• The website should have unique content – avoid duplicate content. Google is not interested in having two websites with the same content in their index.
• The content of the website is valuable, i.e. the user of the website gets the content what they where searching for.
• The website engage the user, i.e. if you have a community, discussion board, comment system, social sharing of content etc.
• The website does not have any false links, i.e. links that were made from link exchange programs, programs where you buy links or automatically created links.
• Loads fast – a fast loading website gives the best user experience to the end user. You should optimize your websites load speed.

We will now look closer on some of these things that Google points out.

Website made for users

Some websites is often not made for the users of the website, but only to get a high ranking in Google, so it tricks users of Google to go to the website, and e.g. click on ads. When you decide to make a new website, you should only make a website in areas that you have interests in – this will secure that you make the best website. You should for instance not make a website about garden trees if you don’t have any interests or experience on that area what so ever.

Websites that deceive users

There are many ways that you could deceive users of a website and if Google finds out, you will get penalized immediately. Here are some examples on how a website can deceive users:

• Hidden elements on website: You could have hidden text or links on your website. Users of the website cannot see these, but Google can. So if you had hidden elements, your website could be present in SERP for something that the users of the website cannot see.
• The website redirect you to another site, that has totally another content and shows something the user was not expected.
• Websites that contains malware – these websites will also get immediately penalized.
• Using Cloaking techniques, i.e. that you present two different contents to users and Google. If a Google Bot IP address is recognized one page is showed and indexed, but if another IP address is recognized another page is showed, so the user is not showed the same page as the search engine.
• Automatically created content, e.g. if you have autopost plugins installed   that creates content from e.g. Twitter updates and Wikipedia etc.
• Scraped or duplicate content – i.e. two copies of the same page, e.g. if you steel content from another site.

A lot of duplicate content

If your site has a lot of duplicate content, Google will not give it a high ranking. Duplicate content can either come from scraped content (content stolen from another site) or technically duplicate content, e.g. if you link to your website both from the WWW and the Non-WWW version of the URL. Therefore: Always link consistent with the same url-form and choose in Webmaster Tools that you want to use a certain url-form, or write it in a .HTACCESS file.

Unique and high-value content

Always write unique and high-value content, i.e. content that the user cannot find anywhere else and that gives the user answer for their questions.

Another good idea is to make something that engage your users, e.g. a social sharing service, a commenting system, discussion board etc. You should always have social sharing on all your sites, commenting systems on almost all sites and first startup a discussion board system, when your website has enough users to use it. An empty discussion board system has no value to the user.

Link sharing programs or buying links

You should never ever attend in a link sharing program, e.g. a program where I add a link to your website on my website, and in return you add a link to my website on your website. This should be win-win to both webmasters, but if Google finds out you use this technique too much,  your website will get penalized.

Also you should never buy links from other people. Links should always be true and only made by a user who really wants to share your content. Not just for giving you more links.

Fast loading websites

A faster loading website gives a better user experience to users. Google knows that if a user clicks on a link to your website in the SERP and the website has a too high loadtime, the user will move away from the website, even before it is loaded. It is therefore always important to look on the loadtime of the website. You can test the loadtime of your website and how to improve it on Google Pagespeed tool.

I hope these things gave you an idea of what Google means when they say that they want high quality websites. If you could use the article, please share it on your social networks.