What Is a High-Quality Webpage?

If you know the basics of SEO, you know that high-quality web pages rank best on search engines. But what exactly is a high-quality webpage? We’ll talk through some of the features of a great webpage, both from the perspective of a search engine and your users.

Demonstrate Expertise, Authority, and Trust

Google has not always been especially forthcoming with information about how their search ranking algorithm works and has led much of what we know about SEO to be based on testing and educated guesses. However, Google has offered up its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines (SQEG) to the public, which Google uses to determine a page’s quality. 

In the SQEG, Google lists five factors that they look at in terms of page quality, with one of the ones repeatedly mentioned being “expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.” This phrase appears in the SQEG 130 times and is very important to consider when creating your content.

So how does one demonstrate trustworthiness, authority, and trust – or E-A-T – on their webpage? Google tells us that we should look at not just the creator of the content, but also the content and website as a whole.

For your web pages the SQEG recommends taking a look at the following:

E-A-T is not necessarily a part of the search rank algorithm, but the algorithm will search for signs that you are demonstrating E-A-T within your webpage to help you rank higher.

Professional Grade Content

With all of the misleading and straight-up false information out there on the internet, it is important that you ensure your content is accurate and that you are able to verify it via reliable sources. Always make sure you spend time fact-checking your article and identifying sources. These sources should also follow the E-A-T framework we laid out above.

Additionally, make sure your content is professional-grade by choosing a style guide. This will help improve the quality and consistency of your content and make it easier to read. It also helps other writers and editors know how to add links, citations, subheadings, and more since this is all laid out in the style guide.

On-Page and Technical SEO Optimization

In addition to accuracy and journalistic integrity, your content should be optimized for both on-page and technical SEO best practices. This will help the search engines know which queries to rank your content for and help make sure your webpage is performing at its best.

There are many tools to help you achieve good on-page SEO, whether it’s an extension for your content management system or a simple checklist of SEO must-haves. Find one that functions best for your workflow and make sure that you are optimizing each piece of content to make it easy for search engines to understand.

Technical SEO is often forgotten about when it comes to optimization but spending a bit of time on it can help search engines crawl and index your site more easily and accurately. The experience for your users will also be better as pages load more smoothly.

Two of the most impactful areas of focus for technical SEO optimization are:

• Site Speed: Google likes pages that load quickly because their research has shown that it makes people visit more pages and convert at a higher rate. Page speed has become an increasingly important ranking factor over the years, and it is worth investing some time and money to make sure your pages load quickly.
• Responsiveness: Not only should your site look good and be easy to read on screens and devices of all sizes, but it should also load quickly. Mobile-friendliness encompasses all of these factors and is one of Google’s main ranking factors as of their most recent update.

Need help building high-quality web pages that stick to the guidelines above? Our team has the experience you need. Contact Capstone Digital Marketing today to learn more about our services.