Have you ever wondered where the data that Google use to account for the quality of search results in its ranking algorithms come from?

These data come from more than 10,000 live human beings worldwide with whom Google contracts to conduct evaluations of the quality of Web pages that appear at the top of results for real-life searches.

These Quality Evaluators - or "raters" - conduct their evaluations using a set of guidelines - currently 164 pages long - provided by Google.

Google updated these guidelines last week, with some changes - notably increased emphasis on "Who is responsible for the website and who created the content on the page" and specifically:

• Reputation of the website or creator of the main content
  • Expertise
  • Authoritativeness
  • Trustworthiness
• Sources of reputation information (persons, not machine-compiled)
• Customer reviews (not fake)

So unless you're a universally recognized authority on the subject of the content of your website, you need to show Google's raters that you know what you're talking about:

• Identify yourself as the owner of the website.
• Identify yourself as the author of content you produced.
• Explain why people should trust the content you produced.
• Provide a meaningful bio related to your content.
• Link to your signed online publications.
• Mention relevant memberships and awards.
• Include testimonials from happy clients.
• Post third-party reviews.

And if other people - employees, guest bloggers, etc. - have provided some of your content, identify those people also and provide some proof of their authoritativeness and trustworthiness.

Google's quality evaluators are only human. Help them understand why you and your pages justify high rankings in searches for what you're selling.

(FYI, for all the Google guidelines in excruciating detail, see the External Article linked below.)