Expertise, Authority, and Trust, or E-A-T, is a new buzzword in the SEO world.
Google uses a set of standards called E-A-T (sometimes known as EAT) to make sure that webpages are factually accurate, useful, and sourced with confidence.
There are three main areas:
- Are you an authority in your area of expertise?
- Does Google recognise your credentials as having authority?
- Can they trust you to provide the goods?
Even though it is doubtful that these are particular ranking variables, E-A-T gives a commonsense approach to analysing both your website and your online presence to optimize your SEO.
We list 13 factors that might affect your E-A-T SEO in this post.
1. Ads
Advertisements and other items shouldn’t detract from or prevent consumers from accessing a page’s primary content.
- Have you seen any annoying pop-ups or interstitials (pages that appear before or after the content you were expecting) that you couldn’t easily close?
- Are commercials obtrusive? Do they have explicit or disturbing material?
- Can anyone access your content? (eliminate advertisements that scroll together with the website as well as interstitial information that sends users in a different direction without giving a method for them to return)
2. Attribution
Google and visitors to your site should be able to tell who is the site’s owner and who is responsible for the content. This includes supplying contact information as appropriate.
- Is the material on your website credited to an individual, business, or organisation?
- Do you provide contributors to your material with author pages?
- Is it obvious who the owner of your site is and who is responsible for maintaining it? Have you thought about adding an “About” or “Contact” page to your website?
- Do you have a blog just for providing information about your website or company?
- Do all of your website’s pages have your contact information?
3. Content
The quality of the content should be high and it should be obvious that a lot of effort, effort, time, and talent went into making the content. Every piece of information must be accurate, current, and of the right length. Avoid using headlines with clickbait. Google also has far higher requirements for large companies than for local small enterprises.
- How do the users of your material benefit from it?
- How well does your content work as it should?
- Do all of your website’s pages load correctly?
- Do any successful e-commerce pages exist? Can users browse and buy products?
- Is the writing quality high? Are there any grammatical or spelling errors?
- Is the written material coherent? Is reading it simple?
- Is there keyword stuffing, or jamming terms into text without considering how well it reads?
- Is all the information true?
- Regarding factual information, do you ever conduct any of your original research? You are giving Google users something more value by conducting original research.
- Do you include references to other works from which you’ve derived the material that you’ve used in your work? This pertains to the factual content as well. Google will be able to determine how reliable your information is this way.
- Is there any data in science or medicine that represents a “well-established consensus”?
- Is there a regular schedule for reviewing and updating the content?
- Is any content stolen or created automatically? If so, swap it out with fresh, unique material made by people.
- Are titles true representations of the stuff they refer to? Are any startling or exaggerated?
- Do you write on a specialised subject? (If not, you must give as much information as you can.)
4. False Information
Users being duped is strongly discouraged. Although it’s doubtful that your company’s website participates in any of these behaviours (so I won’t present them as questions), it’s important to note the actions Google views as bad.
- Stealing personal data or passwords.
- Impersonating another website or brand by using a similar URL or a stolen logo or branding.
- The practice of spreading false information that is based on erroneous facts to advance the interests of an individual, a company, or an organisation (monetarily, politically, or otherwise).
- Introducing hoaxes and conspiracies that aren’t humorous in any way while acting as though they’re true.
- Making a false promise to offer unbiased evaluations to influence people
- Making a false fame claim to influence users.
5. Guidelines
Google wants store policies to be readily available for customers to verify that they are authentic and not fraudulent.
- Do you make it easy for customers to find information about your rules regarding payments, exchanges, and returns on your online shopping sites?
6. Objective
A page has to have a clear goal and fulfil that function as flawlessly as it can to be valuable. Additionally, it should be simple to find and utilise the page’s core material.
- The intent behind each page on your website is clear at a glance?
- Exist any pages on the site that are counterproductive to the visitors’ goals? Purely commercial pages are not seen as beneficial.
- How effectively does your page accomplish its goals? Does it fulfil its purpose?
- Is it obvious what constitutes the primary content, adverts, and ancillary stuff (sidebars, headers, footers, etc.)?
- Are sponsored material and advertisements properly identified? It’s not acceptable to trick consumers into clicking on information they don’t want to.
7. Requirements
In E-A-T, the “E” stands for “expertise.” The information that appears at the top of Google’s search results page should be as accurate as possible, according to the company. A competent expert is required to deliver information on some issues (YMYL – see below), but for other areas, first-hand knowledge is frequently sufficient.
- Have you completed the author pages with details on the author’s background, credentials, honours, and any instances in which they were cited or discussed by pertinent professionals? (have you connected the dots for Google by linking to these?)
- Have you included a list of the professional organisations that your company belongs to on either the homepage or the About page of your website?
- Have you highlighted the honours your company has received or the credentials your team has attained?
- Have you provided or mentioned any information on the duration of time that your company has been in business?
8. Relevancy
Making it easy for Google to draw a relationship between your company and the places you serve will increase the likelihood that your website will rank well.
- Do you solely create pertinent information? If, for instance, your website focuses on auto maintenance, you shouldn’t include a page with a cupcake recipe on it.
- Have you accumulated citations and backlinks from authoritative sources (especially those with a high E-A-T score) like universities, newspapers, and magazines?
- Have you established and maintained a connection with pertinent subject matter specialists in your field?
9. Reputation(Off-Site)
Many factors affect your internet reputation, but Google primarily considers outside sources when deciding whether or not to trust you. It’s important to note that having a poor internet reputation doesn’t necessarily prevent you from ranking high (unless your site is deemed YMYL – see below), but it’s still a good idea to make every effort to improve it.
- Has your business received an online endorsement from a professional organisation or other authorities in the field?
- Is your firm a member of any professional societies, or does someone on your staff hold membership in one? If yes, where else than your website does this get mentioned?
- Has your company received any honours, and if so, where?
- Is there any good publicity about your business?
- Have any significant (and pertinent) individuals or groups mentioned your business or a member of your staff online (such as by citing you on their website)?
10. Reputation (On-Site)
Reputation enhancement efforts made on-site are likely to be less effective than those made outside, but they should still be considered.
- Everything that positions you as highly educated, informed, and reliable authorities are excellent and should certainly be highlighted on your website.
- Have you made it obvious to whom you belong to which professional organisations?
- Have you talked about any of the honours you’ve received in the past?
- Have you added gratifying reviews to your website?
- Do you interact with site visitors? Do readers comment on your blog entries, and if so, do you answer them?
- Have you stated any significant connections you have with professionals in the field? For instance, Marcus Miller from our company contributes to Search Engine Land.
11. Reviews
Reviews and reputation are related concepts, but in this case, we’re focusing primarily on what actual consumers think of your company.
- Do you solicit favourable evaluations from your delighted clients?
- Do you encourage dissatisfied clients to contact you to discuss their problems?
- Do you make an effort to respond to and rectify negative feedback?
- What do your negative reviews say? Do they refer to minor, isolated problems or a bigger concern (such as proof of financial wrongdoing)?
- What kind of reviews does your business have on third-party platforms like Yelp, Trustpilot, and the Better Business Bureau?
- How would you rate yourself on Google Shopping or Amazon, if applicable?
- Simply typing in your company’s name and seeing what comes up is a good test of your online presence. If Google boosts unfavourable evaluations of your business to the top of the page, it is a clear indication that they don’t trust you.
12. Site Security and Maintenance
Making ensuring that your website is safe can boost your E-A-T since people will be more likely to trust it.
- Have you gotten an SSL certificate to switch your website to HTTPS?
- Do you conduct routine site maintenance?
- Do you know whether any of the pages on your website have been hacked?
- Are there any user-generated comment areas or forums that are not filled with spam?
- Have you signed up for Google Search Console and configured it to send you an alert if your website is compromised in any way?
13. YMYL (Your Money or Your Life Sites)
Google refers to websites that could be detrimental to searchers using the abbreviation YMYL (if the information on it is false). This category includes both commercial websites, especially those that offer pricey or “big-ticket” things, as well as a broad range of subjects.
- Is your website for sale? Can others give you money through it to pay for goods or services?
- The criteria for evaluating sites dealing with personal matters such as finance and medicine are more stringent.
- If it’s a business website, how much are the goods or services you’re offering? Would you classify these as “high ticket items”?
- Does your website address subjects that, if the information provided is incorrect, may be harmful to the person seeing it? (For instance, essential news, legal, monetary, or medical advice.)
- Are you convinced that your website has no potential for harm? Even subjects like parenting or auto maintenance might be seen negatively.
- If Google determines that your website has the potential to harm its users, it will be penalised more severely; thus, we ask that you review the whole list that has been provided above and consider whether or not there is anything further you can do to enhance your E-A-T.
- What kind of internet reputation do you have? Google doesn’t want to display anything from unreliable sources that might be damaging. You cannot avoid having an online reputation, but a non-YMYL site might be able to.
- Are all the contributors recognised, subject-matter authorities? Is the data they give up to date and accurate to the fullest extent possible?
Enhance Your E-A-T
A good white hat SEO method is to try to increase your E-A-T. We are only providing the high-quality results that consumers and search engines need.
If you’re still unsure of how to raise your E-A-T (and thus, your rankings), or if you just don’t want to deal with the inconvenience of doing it yourself, contact us to see how we can assist.
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