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So, yesterday we were treated to the news that Google have made an algorithmic change that will take into account "the layout of a webpage and the amount of content you see on the page once you click on a result". Put simply, they want their users to see the content on your page before ads, cross promotions, newsletter sign-up forms and other distractions.
In one of their most sensible moves of late (amongst, in this writer's opinion, several changes for the worse), Google has effectively endorsed one of the oldest SEO techniques in the book - so long as it's done properly.
I can remember on my first day of my first SEO job, so many moons ago, being told to;
- Make sure target keywords were in the title, description, anchor text and content of each page on your clients site
- Make sure Google see content high up on the page.
Of course, back then, we tried every trick in the book to take advantage of what was a relatively primitive algorithm. Google and the other search engines of the time weren't so good at telling the difference between the layout of a page's markup and how it would eventually look. This made it possible to be rewarded for placing spammy, keyword heavy content high up in the markup while using CSS to ensure it was placed out of view for the visitor, either at the bottom of the page, in a small scrolling box to the side or, in some cases, hidden altogether.
Over time, Google has closed most of these loopholes. Hidden or obscured content is now more likely to harm your site than benefit it, so your content must be visible, and as such, readable. But content is still often relegated to the bottom of many web pages, with the other flotsam and jetsam that can clog up a website layout taking precedence. Take popular Q&A site eHow; as pointed out by eagle eyed commenter JohnRobertWilliam, on any given page on their site around 1/15th is given over to actual content, while the rest is dedicated to branding and ads.
Of course, Google would rather we didn't mention the fact that, for many popular queries, pages on their site suffer from the exact same problem! Remember back in the day, when you'd search for "credit cards", and Google would deliver a list of organic results about credit cards, perhaps with 4 or 5 paid listings alongside? Here's a screenshot of the same results page taken today... the natural search results are framed in red, everything else is sponsored, or a link to an internal Google service;
As the primary referrer of traffic to sites like eHow, Google would prefer that content was more visible to the visitor, improving their experience and reaffirming their trust in Google's results. Google has always wanted the pages in their results to focus on the content their users are looking for, and by encouraging webmasters to make that content prominent on the visible page (as opposed to the page's markup), they'll come much closer to achieving this.
Owners of ad-funded sites may well rue this day, as they'll have to get more creative than simply stuffing their pages with banners and links, but the rest of us should find Google sending us to less cluttered, more useful pages in future, which can only be a good thing. Let's just hope that Google eventually do something to deal with this same problem on their own bloated results pages!
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