Yandex reminded webmasters what low-quality content is and why it should be avoided.
The main criterion for the usefulness of a site is user satisfaction – it grows when the authors well understand the needs of the target audience and create content focusing on them. If users are satisfied with the site, then search algorithms will give there preference to it.
Among types of content that are considered low-quality or not helpful are:
- content copied from other sites without changes (even if we are talking about texts from forums or from comments to other articles),
- content that imitates the original source – for example, an article indicates an earlier publication date or contains a large piece copied from another source into an old article,
- content created from pieces copied from various sources. There is no benefit for readers here; the goal of such content is purely to get traffic from search.
The category of sites with low-quality or not helpful content also includes:
- pages automatically staffed with keywords,
- articles translated multiple times into different languages in order to obtain the required “percentage of uniqueness”,
- content that does not contain expertise on the topic and are written based on information from the Internet, and as a result, users do not find an answer to their request and are returned to the search results,
- rewritten reviews from competitors’ websites, etc.
Yandex also recommends not overloading the site with advertising, as this also affects user experience. Especially when it comes to aggressive advertising that overlaps the content. Although advertising rarely leads to sanctions for content that is of little use – in one case out of a hundred.
If a site receives a notification from Webmaster about low-use content, the owner needs to remove low-quality content and report it to Yandex by clicking on the “I fixed everything” button in Webmaster on the “Security and Violations” page. Typically, restrictions are lifted within a month after the problem is resolved.
