What is E-A-T for a website?
For those of you unfamiliar with the term E-A-T, it stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.
It’s an acronym created by Google to help website owners understand the different concepts they should be focussing on in order to help make their website more appealing to both site visitors who are using the website, and search engines when they are assessing the website.
In very simple terms, if you focus on making your website appear more expert, authoritative and trustworthy on a particular topic, then the higher chance you will have of Google ranking your website higher for particular search queries (i.e. performing better in SEO), because it can rely on your website to provide the correct answers and experience a searcher wants.
Defining Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness
When trying to get your head around exactly what each of the three E-A-T concepts means in relation to websites, Google points you in the direction of their Quality Raters’ Guidelines (QRG).
These guidelines are for Google’s Search Quality Raters who are real people completing quality-related projects for Google, to help Google’s engineers and analysts understand if updates, experiments and improvements are doing what they set out to do.
In a nutshell, Search Quality Raters are focussing on determining if a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) returns a page that is considered High Quality, and the needs / intents of the search are met.
The QRG is a 170+ page document that has many different scenarios, concepts and definitions of quality (ranging from Lowest Quality pages to Highest Quality pages) as well as considerations for Content, Ads, Devices and YMYL pages.
What is a YMYL Page?
YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) pages are of especially high interest to Google, because they fall into a category that can have a potential impact on “a person’s future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety.“
On page 10 of the QRG Google outlines example of YMYL topics, and therefore pages of interest:
- News & Current Events
- Civics, Government & Law
- Finance
- Shopping
- Health & Safety
- Groups of People
- Other – including big life decisions, fitness, nutrition, housing, education, jobs etc.
I won’t delve into each of these categories, but you can find these in the QRG and it’s important to understand if your website, or pages on your website, may fall into one of these categories, because Google will hold these to a higher standard for ranking purposes.
Google’s definitions of Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness (on page 19 of the QRG) are not particularly thorough:
- The expertise of the creator of the main content
- The authoritativeness of the creator of the main content, the main content itself, and the website
- The trustworthiness of the creator of the main content, the main content itself, and the website
And there aren’t particularly and comprehensive recommendations on exactly what a website could do, or a Search Quality Rater should look out for, when considering what is a good or bad indicator of E-A-T, other than intuition and personal judgement.
It’s with this in mind that I have put together a range of methods to help your website highlight its E-A-T, which may hopefully have a knock-on effect on your SEO and keyword rankings.
Some things to think about before continuing and implementing
Firstly, it’s really important to understand that E-A-T is not about manipulating Google’s signals.
E-A-T is, apparently, an immeasurable and conceptual set of signals that Google uses as one part of its many thousands of ranking considerations and algorithms.
Therefore this is not a quick fix. And it isn’t easy. This is about proving to humans why your business and/or website is the one they should choose to visit, instead of the others out there that provide the same answers or service.
You could (should?) actually consider this as part of your marketing and business strategy for growth, it’s that important.
Secondly, really think about your “why“. Why, as a site owner or content producer should you be considered an expert on the things you write about? Do you have legitimate expertise or experience in this field?
If you just have an interest in whatever your website writes about or sells, that does not necessarily make you an expert. It more than likely makes you a hobbyist. A hobbyist can also be an expert, but oftentimes it’s harder to display why you’re an expert in a field that you don’t have any professional experience, qualifications or certifications.
For example, you have a website/blog around “healthy homemade recipes” because home cooking is a passion and is fun for you, but you’re not a chef or a dietician and you don’t have any formal nutrition or cooking qualifications. You’ll be competing with nutritionists who run their own websites. Who would be considered an expert here?
This is not to say that competing with these websites is impossible because of your lack of expertise, but it may make things more difficult and SEO results will likely take longer to come by.
Thirdly, many of the methods for showing or improving E-A-T in each category below can be considered to also be in another category (i.e. a method of showing you are an expert is also a method to display trust).
As mentioned, Google considers these “conceptual”, so they’re not necessarily direct signals (like keywords in title tags, internal link anchor text or other tactics to help your SEO), so they don’t need to be too tightly bound to E, A or T.
So let’s dive in!
3 Ways to show Expertise for your website to help SEO
- How long has the brand or website been active in the space it operates in? If you’ve been in business for 30 years, that’s an indicator that you know what you’re talking about and have followed the trends in your industry.
- Do other websites ask you to contribute an expert opinion about the main topic of your website? This is a good way to know that others consider you an expert. If you don’t get asked, seek out opportunities to contribute using trade press or services like HARO. If you do get asked, make sure to highlight this coverage on your own website.
- Can your expertise on a topic be displayed by creating an array of in-depth content on the topic (this means your website needs to be more than just product pages and a checkout journey). If you don’t know where to start with this, here’s a Keyword Research guide for small businesses that will help you find out what people are searching for, so you can start answering their questions and really highlight that you are an expert of the particulars and specifics.
4 Ways to show Authoritativeness for your website to help SEO
- Is your website and content a valued asset that other people and businesses can refer to as the best-in-market for information, products or services?
- Do you get coverage from other websites, particularly news outlets, about information that’s pertinent to your website’s output? This usually happens in the form of brand mentions, but hopefully you can also turn these mentions into links which drive traffic and SEO authority signals for your website.
- Do you have, perform, or create, your own thorough and comprehensive research into your niche that’s new and insightful? This is a great opportunity to do some PR and brand building for your website, and is made a lot easier if you have first party data which you can utilise. If you don’t have any data like that, run your own research by engaging your visitors, customers or general public with polls, surveys and panels to get insights which are relevant.
- Have you won any awards in the industry you work in? Similar to coverage on other websites, make sure you’re highlighting this as much as you can whenever possible.
8 Ways to show Trustworthiness for your website to help SEO
- Do your existing customers trust you to deliver a great service? You can know this by having your customers give you reviews. If they’re good reviews, that’s excellent (try to use a range of review platforms like Google and Trust Pilot, ProductReview or Feefo), but if they’re skewing more negative then you know what you need to focus on to improve and become more trustworthy to potentially help increase return custom too.
- Are website visitors’ details and information secure? Using an SSL certificate is a good start here, but also ensure that your site visitors know that their data is safe, won’t be sold or used in ways that are not agreed to.
- Do you make (and more importantly, can you keep) guarantees i.e. shipping / returns? It’s important to be as transparent as you possibly can with this information, as it helps build trust. In YMYL cases it’s even more important, and something that Google actively looks for when assessing websites that sell physical products.
- Is your product or service marketed accurately, and will customers get what they expect? Comprehensive product descriptions, details, dimensions etc. definitely help potential customers know what they’re getting from you, and in turn provide trust signals to Google that you are giving an accurate and thorough view of what customers can expect.
- Is your website available to access across different channels (i.e. social and GMB) and is your information correct on those channels? A presence across different channels that all display that same website, name, address, phone number, branding, opening hours etc. helps Google understand your brand’s ecosystem.
- Similarly, do you have a Wikipedia presence? This is a tricky one to do for many brands, but with the nature of Wikipedia’s human-edited and review process it sends out a strong signal that your website and brand is legit.
- What does your About Us or Author Bio page say, and does that instil trust? Are there ways in which you could provide more context or information on these pages to help build trust?
- Do you overload your site visitors with pop-ups and ads? Monetisation is an important part of many websites, but becoming too reliant on pop-ups, auto-play videos, display ads etc. can harm your page’s loading speed and frustrate users, leading to a lack of trust.
Final Word
And there you have it. E-A-T is an important concept for everyone trying to improve, not only their SEO, but their business growth as a whole by implementing basic strategies to increase and display Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness on their website.
It’s not easy, it’s often not quick, but the results of doing this work – coupled with a good SEO strategy and content improvements – can be amazing.
Hopefully some of the above 15 methods of increasing your E-A-T can be implemented on your website, and you can be well on your way to SEO growth.
If you’re struggling, or want some guidance, get in touch with me and we’ll discuss the best approach to increase your E-A-T for SEO growth.
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