Do you look at your company’s website and think: “it’s probably fine, I doubt we have to make any changes?” Have you ever thought, even briefly, “web design doesn’t seem all that important”? With a modern business, there’s so much that has to be done right that may feel like it’s adjacent or even unrelated to your business. Social media, Google ads, blogs, videos, podcasts, and more – all of those can help your business to grow. Web design, however, is a bit different. Proper web design is incredibly important no matter what business you’re in. Even if you have all of the above “on point,” you will probably struggle without top-shelf web design. In my daily reading for our lawyer, plastic surgeon, and addiction treatment SEO company, I found an example that proves exactly that.  

How Google Figures In

  I’ve come to enjoy these Search Engine Journal articles where they write up chats with Google’s John Mueller. This most recent one really stood out to me. Someone asked a very valid question: “can you tell me if someone who is copying my content consistently and ranking better than us, what could be the factors which we should look into or what measures we should take?” I wonder if I would have been able to ask that same question that politely. It would’ve been very easy to write: “someone’s copying our content and ranking higher than us! How is Google letting that happen?” The word “copying” stands out to me here. It’s not “someone is rewriting my content,” nor is it “someone is writing something very similar to my content.” No, the word “copying” is used. Mr. Mueller’s response is fascinating. He says: “So that’s something where it’s like it can happen. And one of the situations where I have seen this happen consistently is if a website is of lower quality overall, where when (Google’s) systems look at it they’re like, ‘well, we can’t really trust this website.’ But, if a higher quality website were to take some of this content and publish it, (Google) would say, ‘well, we know more about this website and actually maybe we should show this content in the search results.” Finally, the kicker: “that’s one of the situations that you might be running into where maybe it’s worthwhile to also invest in improving the quality of your website overall.”  

What This Means

  Personally, I thought Mr. Mueller’s response would be something like: “that shouldn’t happen. Send me more info about this and I’ll look into it.” (Indeed, later in the chat, he “asked the person asking the question to submit the domain to him so he could bring it to the attention of others (at Google).” But, what he’s saying, as I understand it, is: “hey, there are some sites that are of such low quality that we’re going to rank them lower than sites that copy content.” Now, this isn’t to say that Google rewards plagiarism or anything of the sort. They don’t. They are penalized for it, often very heavily. There is never any excuse for plagiarism, copying, or anything of the sort. That said, there’s no excuse for having a low-quality website, either. Google wants to be able to offer the best results and experience to its users. Having a quality, properly functioning website is a key component of that. For more help with building your website and so much else related to digital marketing, you can reach us at (888) 477-9540.   About the author: Website Depot Inc, is a full-service digital marketing agency. Website Depot was founded and incorporated in May 2012 in the state of California, with a primary office in Van Nuys. After fast and rapid growth, we have settled in Silver Lake, Los Angeles and later on Expended into Atwater Village, Los Angels, next to Glendale. As well as open several satellite locations.