Did you know that Google has compiled a list of characteristics and features of high-quality pages? There are a lot of great SEO strategies that website owners put in place to improve their ranking. However, even with the best SEO game plan in place, can you make any page rank well, even pages with hateful and harmful content? The answer is NO and EAT is the reason.
So what is EAT in SEO and why does it matter to you?
What is Google E-A-T?
Image Source: searchenginejournal.com
EAT is a guideline that Google has for every web page to ensure the content therein is of use to anyone consuming it. Added in 2014, the guidelines ensure that search results are not only helpful but authoritative and trustworthy. Hence, EAT is an acronym for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
Today, it is no longer E-A-T, but E-E-A-T. Google added the extra E for Experience.
What does Google mean when they say experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness?
Experience
Image Source: resume.io
There is a need for content created by someone who has real experience on the topic. Since the readers or consumers of content will be human, they can often tell if the author is being genuine or not. For instance, it would be hard to honestly review a product you have never used before or a restaurant you have never been to.
Experience matters a lot, especially in niche fields like gaming, medicine, hunting, performance, and more. Such fields have terminologies, cultures, inside jokes, lingo, and other things they share in common, that an outsider would not know. Niche topics have more nuanced conversations compared to general topics and the experience of the content creator matters.
Expertise
Image Source: bizjournals.com
Expertise may require you to be qualified in an area to talk about it. For instance, I can not talk about surgery when I have never done one in my life, and I am not an expert in that field. However, at Indexsy, we can talk about improving your website quality because we have proven so with other websites, and are experts in that field.
When readers go online, they tend to judge the person delivering the content more than the content itself. This is especially the case with platforms like YouTube where the presenter needs to establish their expertise in the topic.
Even if the presenter or a writer does not establish their expertise, the content consumer will subconsciously look for signs of expertise in whoever is doing the presentation in written, video, or audio form.
Authoritativeness
Image Source: theladders.com
An authoritative site has a good reputation for the topics they cover. Search engines have a system that rewards such web pages by letting them be on the first page. For instance, Google’s algorithm has learned how to identify such sites.
For instance, if you search for anything medical in nature, you can be sure to find WebMD in the search results. This is because of most medical sites, WebMD has more authority. If you dig deeper, you will find that the site gets its content from verified professionals.
One way that pages prove authoritativeness is by having a Wikipedia page about them. A Wikipedia page is almost like the old Twitter blue-check, especially for Google quality raters.
Trustworthiness
Image Source: achievers.com
There are ways to let the quality raters and Google search algorithm know you are trustworthy. You can include high-quality backlinks and hope to get linked to credible sites. On the flip side, you can cite credible sites in your content. This will not only help you create high-quality content but will show that you are getting your information from trustworthy sources.
If you are a site that provides services, positive reviews will prove you are trustworthy, and negative reviews will do the opposite. This applies to sites like online stores, call-service providers, restaurants, online schools, and more.
You can avoid fishy behaviors like using spam and annoying ads to lead to your information, as these are tactics used by people with malicious intent.
Your site has to be trustworthy especially if you handle YMYL content. This is the kind of content that could impact the reader directly. It could be content about emergencies, news, current events, safety, first aid, ongoing violence, forest fires, drug prescriptions, and so on. Such content requires 100% trustworthiness because life could depend on it if it is on Google search results.
So, how does Google determine E-E-A-T and what does the process entail?
How does Google determine E-E-A-T?
Image Source: blog.google
Google uses quality raters to determine if the page quality of a site is good enough to get a good E-A-T rating. These raters are always human, and the E-A-T is the search quality rater guidelines provided by Google that they use.
The quality raters’ guidelines are a document that the human quality raters follow when vetting pages for high-quality content. You can find this document online, and it is specific to Google as it contains Google’s search quality guidelines.
Do websites have an E-A-T score?
Image Source: onely.com
No, websites do not have an E-A-T score. However, the feedback from Google quality raters is important to improve the performance and credibility of sites. If your site is not credible according to Google’s quality raters guidelines, it may affect how people and other sites interact with you, and this may directly affect your ranking.
While E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor, it sure matters when ranking sites.
Do websites have an E-A-T score?
Image Source: upgrowth.in
The Google E-A-T is not a ranking factor. However, Google determines how well its algorithms are performing if they are consistent with E-A-T feedback from search quality raters. Furthermore, the Google algorithm is tuned to cater more to sites that comply with E-A-T than low-quality sites that do not.
Google seeks to be the best search engine in a competitive space with other search engines. This gives Google the incentive to look for the most credible search results.
Other than Google, people tend to resonate more with sites that comply with Google’s E-A-T as they are authoritative and trustworthy. This increases the search traffic, backlinks, and citations, which in turn helps with good ranking.
Why Google E-A-T is important for your SEO Strategy
Image Source: upgrowth.in
The primary reason why E-A-T exists is to lead to a high site quality that will give helpful information to users. Google uses its algorithm to rank pages and these algorithms look for certain trends within sites. In most cases, these trends are in line with E-A-T principles.
For instance, if you have an authoritative page, you will rank higher. If your page is linked to and cited by other pages, it will have a good ranking. These are some of the things that both the algorithm and the quality raters look for. The only difference is that the actions you take on your page are ranking factors to the Google algorithm and not the quality raters.
Ways to Improve Your E-A-T SEO
1. Build Links Strategically
Image Source: searchenginejournal.com
When creating content, you are getting the supporting information from somewhere. It is vital to use credible and authoritative sites in the content creation process. This improves your site’s reputation because you will be truthful in that sense.
Remember that when your site is linked to it, it comes off as trustworthy by other sites. Using internal links is one way to point the algorithms to your site and guide more traffic toward your site.
Link building is one of the major strategies used even by the largest sites on the internet.
2. Build the right backlinks with off-page SEO
Image Source: searchenginejournal.com
There are many off-page SOE strategies you can use to get backlinks to your page. These include using social media to market your page, getting listed on Google by setting up a Google business profile, attending forums and creating connections, doing press releases, using influencers, and more strategies.
3. Ensuring accurate, truthful, useful information
Image Source: thoughtco.com
If readers find the information on your page useful, they are bound to stay longer on your page, click on internal links and even cite them. These actions increase your SEO ranking and encourage customers to keep returning. Accuracy, truthfulness, and usefulness are some core principles of E-A-T.
Google considers pages that apply E-A-T rules for higher ranking than low-quality YMYL pages.
4. Get good reviews
Image Source: bu.edu
Bad reviews on one of your sites reduce the traffic to your other sites and reduce the credibility of your business. Remember, one of the E-A-T principles is trustworthiness. Bad reviews show other people that you can not be trusted to deliver the services you claim to deliver. The moment you demonstrate E-A-T on your sites, there is a higher chance you will get positive reviews.
5. Get mentions on authoritative sites
Image Source: sproutsocial.com
Getting mentioned on authoritative sites makes your sites authoritative on their own. Since authoritative sites have huge traffic, you will get traffic resulting from organic searches by users online.
Getting mentioned puts your sites on the Google algorithm’s radar during indexing, as the links will be taken note of by Google crawlers.
6. Keep content accurate and up to date
Image Source: flexjobs.com
If you are creating content, especially on YMYL topics, it is better to keep the content updated. Having updated content makes your page relevant to users, and it keeps the crawlers on your page since the new URL has to always be indexed.
Updated content makes you a trustworthy source. For instance, if you have products on your page that are no longer available in online stores, then you are of no use to buyers looking for such products.
7. Tell People How to Reach You
Show your contact details on the home page of your website. Furthermore, you can always place buttons on your social media handles on your other pages. This makes those who interact with your content know that there is a person behind the content, creating a level of trust in your sites.
Image Source: indiatoday.in
Most articles on websites have an About author section at the end to provide author info.
When telling people about you, flash your credentials to show your experience on the topics you are covering. Readers and people who consume your content subconsciously look for this kind of information.
8. Use or hire experts
Image Source: ceotodaymagazine.com
To make sure your content sounds authoritative, it is best to use expert opinions on them. For instance, a YouTube page called Wired talks about complex topics, and instead of doing so themselves, they invite experts in that field to do so. The reason why most people find Ted talks very informative is for this same reason getting professionals in specific fields. You too can do this with your page.
Since most pages can not always hire experts, they have the option of citing authoritative pages. Hiring or citing experts gives your page expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, which are core to the E-A-T guidelines.
9. Build a content marketing framework
Image Source: 99designs.com
The only way you will reach an existing or intended audience is when you have a plan. You only have to ensure the framework captures everything E-A-T guidelines suggest. Furthermore, you should use technical SEO to improve your marketing strategies.
10. Perform a content audit
Image Source: cio.com
You can check if your content is up to date, and complies with Google’s quality rater guidelines, the latest Google algorithm requirements, and updates. Furthermore, you can do an SEO audit to see if your page is competitive.
Final Thoughts
To get to the more productive pages on Google’s search results, there is a need to consider the E-A-T guidelines that quality raters look at. When you comply with these guidelines, there is a chance you will be employing a successful SEO strategy too. Ensure you publish original research without plagiarising because Google crawlers tend to avoid duplicate content. Google published its E-A-T documentonline and it is available for everyone to read to improve their sites.
Jacky Chou is an electrical engineer turned marketer. He is the founder of Indexsy, Far & Away, Laurel & Wolf, a couple FBA businesses , and about 40 affiliate sites. He is a proud native of Vancouver, BC, who has been featured on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes, Oberlo and GoDaddy.
