If you keep up with SEO lingo, you will likely have heard ‘content is king’ more times than you can count, but it’s true.

Content is a key factor that Google takes into account when defining the context of your pages and ultimately ranking them. Google has strict guidelines that webmasters and agencies like In Front Digital abide by to ensure that everything we do is best practice.

In recent weeks Google have updated its Quality Rater Guidelines which includes how they define low quality content and pages, which is what we are going to discuss in this article.

How Google Defines Low Quality Pages

Google defines low quality pages as content that does not match the purpose of the page.

This could be because the main content is minimal or the content does know show that the writer has adequate knowledge of the subject they are producing, i.e. resulting in thin content.

A quote from the guidelines states:

“Low quality pages may have been intended to serve a beneficial purpose. However, Low quality pages do not achieve their purpose well because they are lacking in an important dimension, such as having an unsatisfying amount of MC, or because the creator of the MC lacks expertise for the purpose of the page.”

Examples of Low Quality Content

Quality Raters will flag your content/page as low quality is it matches area of these criteria:

  • Lack of expertise, authoritativeness or trustworthiness
  • Content writing is poor
  • Not enough content
  • Click-bait title
  • Unnecessary anonymity of writer
  • Advertisements are distracting from the content
  • Context or purpose of content cannot be identified
  • Unmaintained website
  • Writer has a negative reputation
  • Content promotes hate against groups of people or encourages metal, physical or emotional harm to self or others
  • Contains spammy links that will cause damage
  • Detrimental inaccurate information
  • Cloaked links

Read the full guidelines here.