What is a quality website?

We have now a definition by Google of what is a quality site, this is the second part of this article.

In the first part, are given the criteria that define a quality site for visitors and for search engines. This become even more essential since efforts to filter these sites in search results, depending on their quality.
Although the quality of a site has always been an issue it took a particular importance in April 2011 with the Panda Update, the change of the Google algorithm to eliminate poor quality pages that even goes far in penalizing an entire site if a portion of its content is considered poor.

Criteria of quality for a website

Domain name	Having a true domain name and not a sub-directory on a shared hosting. The semantics of the name must be in connection with the contents of the site.
Contents	Contents must be complete, coherent, in good English and original. It will so attract backlinks and thus improve the score for search engines. To be original with respect to search engines, content must include text with keywords that does not appear in similar articles. The text should be organized with <h2>, <h3>, etc. tags and have a title in a <h1> tag. Do not use those tags as part of layout, CSS style sheets are there for that.
Image	Add at least one original image in each important page of the site. It should not be wider than 600 pixels for mobile phones.
Links	No broken links, do not link to pages without interest and not links towards pages whose contents are not in close connection with your page. Check for broken links from time to time. The title attribute of the <a> tag makes it possible to display a message when the mouse stay on the link but it is also essential for search engines. In the same way the alt attribute provides information on images.
Navigation	All pages in the site must be reached, directly or not, from the home page. Ideally the home page has at least a link to each topic in the site. It may be assisted by a site map.
Visitors	1) Must often return to the site: they will do it because they will find there useful references, unique contents, an attractive presentation. 2) Must remain a long time on the site: the pages are linked between them, the contents is interesting. One can use the techniques of the novelist, arouse interest, or even create a suspense.
Title	The title of each page must differ to that of other pages. In the results of the search engines, one must click on your page. For that one needs a title and a description which encourage to choose this page rather than one of the others, even and especially if they are placed before your link. The title is taken by engines either in the <title> tag in the <head> section of the HTML code of the page, or in an <h1> tag in the body of the page.
Description	The snippet in results, the description, is taken by search engine at the beginning of the page, or by concatenation of sentences, or in the description meta tag: <meta name="description" content="here the description of the page" >
Style sheets	The use of CSS makes the difference between sites of quality and sites from newbies.
CMS	Use a CMS when the site is mainly intended for textual content. This provide lot of tools that help the reader to find the information on the site. Choose a CMS.
Favicon	It is the image which is displayed in the bar of URL on the left of the name of your site. See the article about how to create the favicon of your site. It can be added in 5 minutes.
Speed	The speed of the site is now an important factor. It may be improved by reducing the number of images in a page.
Maslow criteria	The web design must respond to a hierarchy of needs, in descending order: Accessibility: The website can be easily found, and usable by all people. Stability: The website trustworthy and all page equal. Usability: It is user-friendly. Reliability: It always available without downtime. Functionality: It offers content, tools and services users value. Flexibility: It adapts to needs and wants of users.

Quality of a website or page for Google

A summary of the Google's list

The article is it written by an expert or an enthusiastic with good knowledge about the subject?
Is there duplicate content, content overlapping or redundant content on the same topic, with small variations of keywords?
The article does it contain spelling errors, or bad style or cons-truths?
The topics are they genuinely chosen or to be better positioned in search results?
The article gives it an original information, a new story, its own research, a personal analysis?
The page gives it an added value compared to other pages on the same topic?
The site is it recognized as an authority on the topic?
The article is it well written or is it apparently hastily produced?
The article gives it a complete and exhaustive description of the topic it deals to?
Articles are they short, without substance or without interest?
The pages are they produced with great attention to detail or without worrying about details?

Actually we would like the pages of Google's results contain only quality sites as the description it gives!

References

Understanding the Panda Update. Google penalizes poor quality websites.
Definition of a quality website by Google. The full list.
Why our newspaper is dying. Summary in image of bad practices.