Does Google play fair? Is 'relevant content' and 'usability' enough?

[couponguy]

It seems there are 2 opposing views, and as a newbie this is very confusing.

One view is that as long as your site pages have relevant content and are easy for the user, Google will rank you fairly.

The other view is that Google has 'rules' you must follow and even if the site is relevant and user-friendly if you don't play by the rules your site may never rank well.

Which is closer to the truth?  No one wants to have a great website that won't rank because Google wasn't sophisticated enough to see that they weren't being unfair.

Here's an example to illustrate one related concern I have:

I've read that Google doesn't like duplicated content.  But, here are 2 cases in which is it more 'relevant' and 'usable' to the user to have duplicate content:

Say a website helps you find restaurants in a city.  Restaurants may be listed by city region, and by type of restaurant.  The home page may have links to 30 city regions.  It may also have links for 20 types of restaurants.  The user has a choice.   Say the user chooses a region.  The resulting new page may still be relevant and usable by listing ALL 30 regions because the user may want to choose a different region.  Altenatively say the user chooses a restaurant type for the whole city.  The resulting page may still be relevant and usable by giving the user the ability to choose another type OR another city region.  IOW there may be a 'mega-menu' at the top of the page which duplicates on every page in the site, but is very helpful.  Instead of requiring the user to go back to the home page to click a new region or a new type the user can do it on any page.  That's duplicate content in the form of a mega menu, but is very relevant and usable.  YET, my sense is that Google MAY penalize the site even though arguably it is the most relevant and usable approach for someone that may or may not have a specific region or restaurant type in mind..

Thoughts?

[couponguy]

Hi David,

Sorry for such a delayed response but I keep wondering about your point on the meganav.  Its known that Google is able to figure out menus and wont count those toward duplicate content?  I just would like to be sure since my menus are fairly substantial when dropdowns are included.

[couponguy]

You are giving me SOME hope for a site I've been working on for about 5 years and am getting ready to launch.  Thanks very much.

[EGOL]

Your comment in #4 about time on page and bookmarking is something I think should be taken into account by Google for search page ranking, but I've never heard before that they do.  [...]  Are those significant factors used by Google?

In my opinion, google has every ability to measure visitor actions.  They own the Chrome browser and could measure the engagement of visitors with a page, they have access to what gets bookmarked in Chrome, they know when a visitor clicks in the SERPs and when that same visitor reappears in the SERPs, they don't have to have links because they can read when people mention your site in a forum, they know if people navigate to your site by typeing the name of your site into search...  I believe that all of these things are important for rankings but how important I can't say.

I have lots of really good content that when I published it the page ranked at #150 or deeper in the SERPs.  Then, I built zero links and did zero promotion and slowly that page rises in the SERPs and is now in the top three - over a year later.  I have hundreds of pages that have done that.  You gotta have a LOT of patience to do things that way but you spend zero effort on promotion and 100% effort producing assets for your website.  That is what I have done since about 2006.  Virtually zero linkbuilding.  My visitors are my linkbuilders.

[couponguy]

EGOL, Thanks very much.  I, being a one person biz, am very interested in the idea of ranking by popularity, as my goal is to have the best site out there but I have limited funds to promote it.  Your comment in #4 about time on page and bookmarking is something I think should be taken into account by Google for search page ranking, but I've never heard before that they do. After all, usage and return usage is what it is all about!   Are those significant factors used by Google?  If so maybe there is hope..:)

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Egol has this summed up perfectly!

-Andy

[EGOL]

One view is that as long as your site pages have relevant content and are easy for the user, Google will rank you fairly.

The other view is that Google has 'rules' you must follow and even if the site is relevant and user-friendly if you don't play by the rules your site may never rank well.

Which is closer to the truth?

They are both a small piece of the truth.   To rank on google your PAGE must be:

1. relevant to the search term and presented to google with proper title, crawability, and text visibility

2. have substantive content about the search term

3. be validated by other websites by being linked from them or mentioned by them (these are just a few validations)

4. be validated by visitors because they have queried it by name, stayed on it, bookmarked it, mentioned it by name in web readable content (these are just a few validations)

Any idiot can do #1.  A good author can do #2.  But, #3 and #4 are really difficult to accomplish by people who are not related to you or paid by you.

In low competion #1 and #2 can be enough to get your ranked.  The higher the competition for a query the more you need #3 and #4 to rank.  For some queries it can be almost impossible for a newcomer to rank on the first page of google without investing $xxx,xxx or more in website assets and promotion.... AND... having a plan in place to present the site in a way that google will be able to read it and interpret it in a way that will maximize the #3 and #4 assets.

[Kingof5]

A meganav is not considered duplicate content. Duplicate content means product description pages that are identical, having the same articles multiple places on your site, etc.

To the main parts of your question - Google does not want it to be easy for people in the SEO world. They give guidelines, but following them means nothing. What Google considers an ok tactic one years becomes an unacceptable tactic the next (see guest blogging). There are many ways to succeed in ranking. Some follow Google's rules and wait for rankings to come, others use tons of spammy tactics and rank instantly (though they always risk losing it overnight if Google catches on).

The idea that an easy to use site and relevant content will make Google rank you fairly is a joke. And though only 1 has said it publicly, there are many top minds in the SEO world who will tell you that in private.