The Key to Ranking Well? Don’t Sell Anything.
Yes, this is a bit tongue-in-cheek but there is quite a bit of truth in this statement based on the contents of those secretly discovered Google Quality Guidelines that came to light in 2011…but I need to back up a bit here first.
Not too long ago a document was making the rounds of the Internet that appeared to be the newest official Google Quality Guidelines document. This document, most people hoped, would hold the secrets to ranking well within Google.
Now, you might wonder how this can happen. After all, Google is especially secretive about what it takes to rank well within their site so how could it possibly be that the document used by Google Raters made it’s way online? Was it a fake? A distraction? Something conjured up by a savvy online marketer to gain exposure? Sounds very conspiracy-theorist doesn’t it?
Well, it’s actually not as exciting as one might think. The fact is, Google hires folks from all around the world to do work for them and help them detect whether or not a particular web site should be ranked where it is based upon a variety of factors. These people that Google hires, receive a document that tells them what specifically to look for and how to determine the merits of a site. Due to the vast numbers of people who do this work, it’s not unheard of for one of these documents to make its way online.
The document (which has since been taken down online at the request of Google), contained an area that talked about spam; and how to determine what should be flagged as spam and what should not.
Whenever one of Quality Raters took a look at a website, it is their job to mark a site as:
- Spam
- Not Spam
- Maybe Spam
Pretty basic right?
The criteria for marking a web page as spam should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been in the industry for even as little as a few months. It’s really very basic knowledge, but just to clear up any confusion, here are the definite “no-no’s” when it comes to your own site (and which you can also read here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#3).
- Don’t use cloaking;
- Don’t use hidden text;
- Don’t use framed pages;
- Don’t keyword-stuff your URL’s;
- Don’t use JavaScript Redirects
- Etc.
Again, pretty common sense stuff.
But, what you don’t see here is that according to this document, Google Raters are to mark pages without any useful content and designed only to make money, as spam.
There’s no doubt that you’ve come across these pages yourself. These are the ones that have domains parked on them and where there is nothing more than a listing of ads; pages that are chock full of ads that have very little unique content on them, etc.
And yes, it should be noted that even if a site is attempting to generate income using AdSense ads (Google’s own product), that this will likely be marked as spam as well.
As a matter of fact, the blatant abuse of this has likely prompted Google to recently announce at PubCon that they (Google) will be taking a look at content that is immediately above the fold on a web page. The assumptions are that Google will begin to penalize those sites that show ad-related content above the fold; above the fold meaning the content you can see on a web page without needing to scroll down.
Which brings me back to the whole point of the title of this post. Does it make a difference in where you rank if you aren’t trying to sell anything?
Well, yes, and no. We don’t know how sites are going to be affected by this new rule of having ads above the fold, but it is unlikely that major retailers who say, show products at the top of their pages in response to a specific product query, will not be penalized.
On the other hand, if a site is nothing more than a few bits and pieces of content yet chock-full of ads, especially ads above the fold, then it can be assumed that you would be penalized. We’ll all just have to wait and see how it plays out but for now, if you’re one of the ones who has advertising listed above the useful content on your site, it would be advised to move those ads to a different location.