Updated on April 13th, 2024 at 10:10 pm
E.E.A.T. is an acronym commonly used in SEO and organic search marketing that stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust.
Google first added the acronym to their search quality rater guidelines back in 2014 and since then have tweaked their algorithm to heavily weight E.A.T factors when ranking websites.
The latest change to the concept of E.E.A.T came on 15th December 2022 when Google added an additional “E” to their search quality rater guidelines, encouraging manual reviews to consider the “experience” of online content producers when assessing websites for overall quality.
By demonstrating E.E.A.T. elements and concepts on your website, you could help to improve the ranking position of your web pages in Google search platforms.
E.E.A.T has become one of the core concepts of website optimisation and can offer some holistic insights into how your digital business can be improve it’s organic search potential.
Here is how to improve E.E.A.T. on your website.
E.A.T. stands for Expertise Authority & Trust. This trio of categories are integral to how the search engine Google measures, assesses and ranks website pages for quality.
E.A.T. is especially important on websites that fall into Google’s Y.M.Y.L (Your Money, Your Life) categories.
These categories include sites in;
- Financial services websites, financial advisors or wealth managers
- Health and medical websites, including fitness and nutrition
- News and current events
- Governmental and civic websites
- Health and Safety websites
- Shopping and ecommerce
Here are the explanations behind the concepts and top tips for improving the E.A.T. on your business website.
Quick Summary: What is E.E.A.T. in SEO?
Here’s a one minute summary of what E.A.T. is for SEO and how to improve E.A.T. on your website. (This video is yet to be updated with a version that includes “experience”).
Experience
Experience is mentioned 108 times across the 176 pages of Google’s updated search quality rater guidelines and can be summarised as; to what extent the content creator has first hand experience or necessary life experience of the topic of the page.
For example, a plumbing website created solely by a web development expert may lack the first hand experience and therefore be unable to show a deeper understanding of complex and difficult plumbing topics because the creator doesn’t have professional experience working in that particular profession.
Especially important in Y.M.Y.L (your money, your life) subjects, without deep understanding of topics you cover, evident in the contextual content you produce, you can expect your website to struggle with organic rankings in Google SERPs (search engine results pages).
How to Show Experience
Work with the technical experts in your chosen areas. If you’re building products or talking about services in your blog content then speaking to relevant experts is now 100% a required step in the content creation and publication process.
If your website talks about topics, processes, services or ideas where first hand experience is beneficial, then you should work alongside experts to ensure that you are properly conveying this experience in your content.
It is not enough to say this guide is written by an expert, this experience and expertise needs to be shown in original ways within the content.
Ensuring written content displays experience can be challenging, but ensuring you consult with an expert and use correct terminology can help
In addition to accurate text content, experience could be improved by including detailed pictures, graphics and diagrams to help convey true understanding of the topics.
Popular in the health industry at the moment is using a “medically reviewed by:” field, where your content is medically reviewed by a specialist medical expert within the sphere of your topic.
Similar expert reviews could work well in other Y.M.Y.L niches.
Here’s a list of ways to show experience of you chosen topic;
- consult with recognised and qualified experts and reference the “expert” review step on content pages on your website
- explain in detail how you have approached similar problems in the past, explain in detail how you prepared, what tools you used and important metrics and elements to consider.
- take original photos and include them on your product review pages
- create content that offers an original view point on your topic
- cover all relevant important information and steps and topics (link to related content)
- use appropriate, industry recognised terminology where appropriate and define what this means
- keep content accurate and free from mistakes including spelling and grammatical errors.
Expertise
Your website and the content you offer there should show the expertise you have in your chosen field. Knowledge of your products or qualifications that prove you’re a reliable source of information for clients making big decisions or committing to a new project can help you convert visitors into customers but also offer opportunities to help your website rank better in search engines.
How to Show Expertise
Display credentials, accreditations and formal qualifications related to your field, business, products or areas of expertise on your website.
If you’re a chartered accountant or a qualified financial advisor, then displaying when, where and how you got your qualifications will help both users and search engines identify you and your website as an expert.
The same is true for contributors and content writers on your website. Displaying their expertise within authorship biographies can really help Google determine that your content has been produced by experts.
Show off your accreditations, your past experiences and case studies.
Reference your information sources. If you provide a lot of data or statistics, make sure you reference where you sourced the information from so your users can easily verify the accuracy and authenticity.
Displaying results that you’ve achieved for previous clients is a great way to show off your expertise and helps reassure potential clients of your talents, abilities and successes.
Other great ways to build expertise are by sharing your thoughts and insights at industry conferences, networking events or via social media. Record footage, produce slideshows or summarise you or your team’s contributions to the industry and publish this on your website.
Being a voice and share your tips and expertise via blogs and web content that helps visitors to your site learn essential information or something new about the field is a great way to prove you expertise.
Avoid mistakes or referencing statistics, facts or figures that are incorrect. This is especially harmful if they are easily verifiable facts.
Ultimately, your content should be uniquely valuable to users and not copied or redacted from other websites in similar fields to your site.
If you’re in a niche where accuracy is more important than many others, like the medical space, you will want consider getting your content signed off or peer reviewed by an expert medical practitioner like a qualified doctor and displaying that content has been peer reviewed on your pages.
Authority
Authority equates to; proving that your website and business is a reliable source for information on a particular topic or subject to search engines.
Authority, in Google’s eyes, cannot be bought but can only be earned.
The best way to earn authority for your website is to;
Provide useful, actionable advice on topics and subjects related to your core products and services.
The better the content you produce, the more likely you are to generate valuable organic search metrics for your website.
These metrics include;
- high quality referring links from websites related to your products or services
- content that ranks well in search engines – writing about topics you know well or breaking down complex topics into easy to understand language can help your pages and in turn your website, achieve higher rankings.
Authority matters to information retrieval services like Google because search engines prefer to reference authoritative sources when providing answers to user queries.
Gaining high quality links to websites is something we’ve done. Here’s how we can help you with a link acquisition strategy.
How to Show Authority
Be an authority in your sector by; earning links from websites relevant to your industry.
Try to acquire links from websites relevant to your sector, especially where you think their customers or website visitors could become potential customers of yours.
You can communicate authoritatively with the content that you produce for your website. An effective content strategy is crucial, here’s how we can help with content SEO.
Improve your website and make technical changes to enhance page speed, user experience and give actionable, useful tips through your website content.
Search engines like to rank websites that provide not just the correct answers but correct answers quickly to their users.
Ensure your website is accessible and useable for customers visiting on any device.
This is because around 63% of searches made on Google are completed on a mobile device.
Here’s how we can help you speed up your website with technical SEO improvements.
Trust
The best businesses and websites are trusted by customers and Google has made Trust the central concept behind their latest update to the search quality rater guidelines.
Google seemingly now considers, authoritativeness, experience and expertise as integral to gaining the trust of your website customers.
This isn’t only true of digital businesses but also of businesses with little or no online presence.
You are much more likely to trust a business after you have heard positive comments from someone else who has recently used them.
How to Show Trust
To ensure that your website is considered as trustworthy you should add features to your website like;
- collect user reviews of your products and services
- add customer testimonials to your site
- add customer product ratings & reviews
- respond to reviews both negative and positive, to show potential customers you are grateful for feedback
- use before and after photos of work you’ve completed to show the great work you do
- add details of awards to your website because this may help your users trust you more
- keep your pages free from adverts
- never deceive your user
- avoid bad UX and design that could “trick” your users into engaging with your site or products without intention.
- create an about us page, clearly explain who is responsible for your website. This is a good opportunity and tell your story and highlight your expertise to visitors.
- manage user generated content (UGC); ensure UGC added to your website is only related to your products and services. Remove UGC that is irrelevant to your website or comments that can be considered “spam”.
Doing so, will help users believe in the value of your products and services.
You can take this further by responding to positive reviews, encouraging your customers to share their experience on social media and friends and family.
You should respond to negative reviews too, to help show customers that you will help them to deal with issues if they arise, rather than ignoring the problem.
Entering industry awards can help to highlight to customers how great you and your business are at what you do.
Winning awards can help you; gain additional, industry relevant coverage, be recognised by peers in your industry and help you stand out to potential customers looking for products and services that you sell.
Published on: 14/03/2022
