Google’s on a mission to catalog all the world’s information and present users with the most useful answers to their most burning questions. Google is rewarding websites that take content marketing seriously. What that means in 2019 looks a lot different from what it did just a few years ago. 

Today, outdated, old, or irrelevant content could be hurting your website’s ranking and overall performance. Is it time to remove old content? Should you simply no-index no-follow old content, or could you make it better? Making the right choice can give your website a boost. To arrive at that decision, you should start with an objective evaluation of all the content that is currently on your website.

Evaluate Your Content. Does it Meet E-A-T?

Google’s most recent standards for quality content should tip you off about which pages no longer make the cut. E-A-T is an acronym for qualities Google deems highly significant. Today, their algorithm relies on E-A-T to determine which pages are the most valuable to browsers. If your content excels in all the areas of E-A-T and is up-to-date, it should stay on your website. Any content that lacks these standards and/or is no longer accurate should be reworked or removed.

A Quick Overview of Google’s E-A-T Standards

E-A-T stands for “Expertise, Authority, and Trust” and originally stems from an important document called the Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. Google created these guidelines to help their content evaluation team — which conducts searches around-the-clock and rates the quality of the top results for these searches — work more efficiently. 

Content that establishes you as an expert and authority figure in your field will generate trust among readers and will naturally perform better than other pages that lack these traits. What does E-A-T look like on paper?

  • Content that is readable
  • Content that is shareable
  • Content that is entertaining and educational
  • Original content
  • Mobile-friendly content
  • Accurate content
  • Long-form content
  • Content with inbound and outbound links
  • Content that highlights the accomplishments of the people behind it, such as awards and memberships
  • Content with optimized meta titles and descriptions
  • SEO-friendly URLs

Information that is presented in a way that is visually appealing, such as the information has been formatted in a way that makes it easier to digest (think bullet points, headers, and styling choices like bold, italics, underlining, and even placing information in a table or graph) also promotes E-A-T. Content that includes photographs and/or infographics may also keep people on a page longer or keep them looking through your site, which reinforces your website as an expert, authority, and trustworthy source of information. 

Choosing Which Pages to Beef Up or Hide Away

Now that you have an inkling of the types of pages Google will rate highly, it’s time to evaluate your site’s content. Review your stats in Google Analytics. Any links with a low number of page views should be red flags. Be sure to keep a list of all URLs that can use improvement; then, go into each page individually to find out possible reasons why they’re not performing well.

Ask yourself the following questions when evaluating web pages for E-A-T:

  • Is the page optimized correctly? Do I have the strongest keyword phrase in the meta title? Is my page targeting an entire state when I only wish to target a particular city?
  • How long is the page? These days, it’s not uncommon for pages to reach 700 or more words. Pages with more quality information receive a higher page quality rank.
  • Does the page have keyword-rich headers that make it easy to understand the topics it will cover?
  • Are there any bits of information that could establish me as an authority in my industry? Think about any awards you have received or memberships or participation in clubs, associations, and societies that shape your industry.
  • Does the page or blog contain internal (inbound) and external (outbound) links? Find opportunities to link to other pages and blogs on your site to keep people browsing longer, or find external links to support the information you’re presenting. Ideally, your content will have a balance of both link types.

Still Not Sure of Which Pages to Remove or Improve?

Don’t worry. At Market My Market we have a proven method of auditing websites to determine exactly which pages need an update. Trust us to help you satisfy E-A-T and improve your website’s rankings. Find out what we can do for you with a free consultation.