For this post I decided to dive a little bit into the way one of my professors as someone with no SEO experience uses the same quality signals that Google uses to assess websites. In my SCIC 201 class Dr. Wagner requires us to write several form posts much like this one, on various scientific topics in addition to summarizing the key points of the article any new advances or special instructions for the week or topic we have to discuss the sources credibility Since most of our sources are online we’re supposed to do this with website quality signals. Not all of her quality criteria are the ones that google would use to rank a page, but they are similar and related. Here are a few relevant ones
- “Are the author’s name and his/her credentials listed or linked? (more credible, particularly if credentials are in science and/or science journalism)” this ties to what we had talked about in class with authority of websites both the authority of authority of authorship and the authority of webpages.
- “Is the source affiliated with a scientific journal and/or scientific research institute? (more credible)” once again this ties to authority of domains and publishers.
- “Are there advertisements targeting your browsing history? (more caution needed – look for slant according to agenda of source)” Once again the standards of Dr. Wagner line up with how google ranks pages while ads are not a determining factor one way or the other low quality or invasive ads can diminish a site’s authority score and overall ranking.
Overall I thought it was really interesting how spontaneously the criteria a person would use to determine a website’s trustworthiness, even in the absence of knowing how Google does it come to roughly the same point showing how useful the Google algorithm is for determining the value of a website thus when we make our content we should strive to make quality authoritative content that helps users.
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