E-A-T – What is it? and Why is it important for SEO?
SEO Executive, Lily, shares her knowledge about E-A-T and explains how it can help to improve your on-page SEO resulting in higher rankings on Google.
What is E-A-T?
You may have heard people talking about E-A-T in relation to SEO over the last couple of years. It is a largely talked about concept and something that Google recommends doing to have a better performing website. Although Google is usually quite secretive when it comes to algorithm changes and updates, they are not so secretive about E-A-T and the standards that they expect for any website that aims to be a high-quality site.
E-A-T stands for expertise, authority and trustworthiness. It derives from Google\’s Search Quality Rating Guidelines and has been a hot topic since August 2018. This is not an algorithm but simply a concept.
Google uses it as a way to assess your site\’s legitimacy and ranking capabilities. This then helps to determine what web pages will show up higher in search engine results by the quality of each site. E-A-T also played a part in the previous Google algorithm update.
Understanding the meaning of E-A-T
Lets delve a bit deeper and find out what E-A-T actually means and how we can look at incorporating it into our websites.
Expertise
“Expert skill or knowledge in a particular field”
Expertise means having a good level of knowledge and understanding of a particular subject. Google looks for high-quality content on sites and will know if it is written by an expert or not. You not only need to communicate your expertise to Google but also to people who are visiting your site in order to engage with them.
Expertise can come in different forms. If someone is a highly qualified person in this area then Google will realise they are an expert. If someone has experienced something first hand then they are also considered an expert. For example, someone living with an illness who then writes blogs about it can also be classed as an expert.
This varies for Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) topics and non-Your Money or Your Life topics. For example, if someone was to write content on a financial subject and they are not an expert in this area this could not only be damaging to people reading this information but for the ranking position of the website. These sites are less likely to rank above a well-written piece of content by an actual expert.
What is YMYL?
YMYL stands for Your Money or Your Life. This refers to topics that could easily impact someone’s health, happiness, safety or financial stability. Expertise is very important when it comes to YMYL and there are many topics that could be affected.
These could include:
- Medical
- Legal advice
- Government sites
- Financial subjects
- Even some shopping sites
And many other pieces of information that could affect someone\’s life. This is where E-A-T comes in and Google uses it to scrutinise these types of content even more.
Authoritativeness
“Able to be trusted as being accurate or true; reliable.”
Google looks at authority and takes into account the author who has written it, the website and the content itself. It is also about reputation, when someone sees a particular website or author and goes to them for information that means you have a level of authority. For example, if you’re searching a medical query you will most likely go to the NHS website for advice as you know it is authoritative.
Why should a visitor trust you over a competitor? This is what you need to take into consideration when creating content. You want to position yourself as the expert in that particular subject so people will use your site as a source of information. If other experts or influencers in this particular sector are linking to your site as a source of information this will help to increase the number of people trusting you and therefore increase your authority.
There are other ways to increase your authority which I will talk about later on.
Trustworthiness
“The ability to be relied on as honest or truthful.”
Trust is about the credibility, accuracy and legitimacy of your website. Similar to before, trustworthiness refers to the creator, content and website. Being a trustworthy expert means people trust you to provide accurate and honest information. Trust is easy to lose and is even harder to regain so you want to ensure you are gaining people’s trust and keeping it.
There are some simple ways to improve your trustworthiness and prove you are an expert on a particular topic. Google states in their guidelines that too many bad reviews are a sign of low quality which will negatively affect your site. Getting positive reviews is a great way to prove your trustworthiness to Google and visitors. Make sure you’re showing them off too!
Why is E-A-T important for SEO?
Since the Google Panda update in February 2011, it is clear that Google looks for high quality websites. They published a blog the day after and mentioned “we’re very excited about this new ranking improvement because we believe it’s a big step in the right direction of helping people find ever higher quality in our results.” Having good E-A-T will definitely contribute to this.
E-A-T is also important for your SEO strategy because not only will it help you with any upcoming Google updates (in particular ones around user experience) but it also helps to determine website credibility. Google wants to show pages that have the most value for each search query. If Google finds your site and notices that the creators and the content are not of a high standard you are unlikely to perform very well in the results.
As mentioned above any YMYL will need to take extra care. People won’t come to your site if they notice that it lacks expertise, authority and trust they will simply look around for one that does.
How do you improve E-A-T to increase search rankings?
Taking into consideration that it is important for organic search I have suggested a couple of ways that you can improve your E-A-T SEO.
Build links for authority and a positive reputation
Getting well-known experts linking to your site will really help improve your authority. The more your name is visible in sources that are authoritative and trustworthy or you’re recommended by experts in your field the more Google will see you as an authoritative site. There are many ways to get mentions some of these include working alongside influencers, speaking at or hosting events, podcasts or guest posting. Make sure you’re prioritising your high-quality links over lower quality ones.
Up to date and accurate content
Ensuring your content is kept up to date is important as you don’t want to be providing content that is old and potentially now incorrect. A good way to ensure you’re providing up to date content is to always research what you are writing about and make sure your sources aren’t outdated. Especially when it comes to news articles, medical or other areas that if incorrect information is released it could be harmful.
Get rid of low E-A-T content and audit existing content
If the content is likely to be affecting your E-A-T then you should remove it. It could be lowering your Google rankings as well as taking up valuable space which you could use for well-written content. This will also refer to any previous content that is on your site that may not match the right levels of expertise. It is best to audit older content and ask yourself does it meet the needs of users? And does it have a high level of E-A-T?.
Make your information understandable and easy to find
When people are on your website and want to find out more about you or the company, they want to be able to find it quickly and easily. This could include author bios, company history, contact details etc. Remember to take pride in the fact that you are an expert!
This also includes reviews (and responding to them). These will help you to increase peoples trust towards you as they will see positive reviews about your products and services. Take the time to respond to them, even negative ones. This shows that you are committed to keeping your customers happy. Google recently released a product review update. This will allow in-depth and useful reviews to be more visible to people than thin unhelpful content.
Take a look at the Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines for further advice and ask yourself the following questions. This will give you some guidance when you are thinking about updating your website and content.
Summary
Getting E-A-T right and gaining expertise, authority and trust isn’t necessarily going to be straightforward and will take time. Ensuring every page has a purpose, shows a high level of expertise and all YMYL pages have the highest level of E-A-T will show Google that you are a reliable site. Taking the time to improve it will only benefit you in the long run and then you can sit back and watch your rankings start to increase!
