We continue our analysis of the factors that influence a website’s rankings in search results. Today, we’re analyzing more on-page elements that impact your position, focusing more on the quality of the content your webpage provides.
On-page content related SEO factors
We were discussing content length in the previous post in this series, but there is a lot more to the way Google assesses the quality of content on your page.
Original content: search engines do not appreciate duplicate content and may even apply penalties to the websites that simply copy and paste content or adapt texts by making very few, insignificant changes. The rule is first of all applied to duplicating your own content, then to copying from others. Having very similar content on more than one page of your website may indicate to Google that you are trying to rank with more than one result in the SERP, for the same content. This practice is totally discouraged. Each page should have original content. If, for some reason, you must have duplicate pages, you can signal the preferred one for ranking, in the page code. This is called using the “canonical” tag, which shows that the page is a duplicate of the specified URL:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://example.com” />
Grammar and Spelling: once again, search engines are intelligent enough to asses the quality of content by also looking at the grammar and spelling, applying penalties to websites that have such errors in excess.
Novelty and updates: in the case of so called “time sensitive” searches (e.g. ones that may refer to a subject that is in the news), the recency of the content can be called into question. A page that is more recently published or edited significantly, will rank higher than others. Also, If the page has a high frequency of updates, it could suggest to Google that the information on it is still relevant and important, not just some piece of forgotten text that doesn’t apply anymore.
Outbound Links: we know from previous posts that it is vital to have many relevant, high authority inbound links to your domain, in order to rank better. What about outbound links on your page? They have a double role to play:
- One is that it shows search engines that your content is connected to other sources and quotes other providers of information. Therefore, it makes your content look more trustworthy. But beware of outbound links in excess. They will make your site look like the infamous “link farms”
- The other one is contextual, as Google may use the outbound links to better understand what your own content is about
Content hidden behind tabs or only active on hover: we have seen first hand that, unfortunately, choosing to display your content in this way will be detrimental to your website. Content hidden behind “see more” tabs or “show/hide” buttons and even content which is only visible on hover, will most likely not be indexed by Google.
Multimedia (and especially video): there is indication that pages which provide multimedia content, in addition to text, tend to rank better, due to them being seen as more informative and having a higher chance of keeping users on the page for longer.
Broken links: always check if your outbound and internal links are pointing to active content. If there are many broken links, it sends the message that the website is being neglected.
Helpful supplementary content: according to Backlinko, helpful supplementary content such as currency converters, related content boxes, interactive recipes or loan interest calculators, are an indicator of higher content quality for Google.
Confused about how to use all this SEO information? Leave it up to the experts at Akby Digital marketing to handle it.
