What is E-A-T?
As mentioned above,
E-A-T is Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Let’s dig
into what each of these means, at least according to Google:
Expertise
Quite simply, is the
person writing your content an expert? In many cases, if you own a
business, you’re an expert in what you do, so you don’t have to worry
too much here. That said, if you have a business that deals in wellness
or health, you’ll need to tread carefully if you don’t have any medical
certifications or degrees. Consider hiring someone with credentials to
write or review your content.
Authoritativeness
You have expertise, but
do other
people recognize your expertise? If so, you have authority. Anyone can
call themselves an expert, but Google wants to know that others in your
industry recognize you as such.
Trustworthiness
This means exactly what
you think it does—can people trust that you’re providing them with
honest, accurate, and reliable information?
E-A-T and YMYL
In order to understand
E-A-T, you also need to understand YMYL, or Your Money or Your Life. It
sounds like a threat, but Your Money or Your Life refers to any website
where the stakes are a bit higher than, say, a compilation of cat
memes—you’re using the information presented on a page to make a
decision that could impact your finances or your life. These are the
websites where Google expects there to be a greater degree of
Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
Traditionally, YMYL
sites have been considered medical, legal, or financial, but if you run
a business—and you probably do if you’re concerned about your SEO—then
your site exists to persuade people to spend their money on your
products or services. You should consider your site YMYL and as such,
you should focus on establishing your E-A-T so you can prove your bona
fides to Google’s mysterious algorithms.
How Google
Determines Your E-A-T
Although Google likes
to be vague about their inner workings—at least as far as their search
algorithms are concerned—one place where they’re very transparent is
with their Quality Rater Guidelines. Quality Raters manually review
pages and this data is aggregated and used to improve search
algorithms. The guidelines these Quality Raters use for their work tell
us a lot about how Google determines E-A-T. Here are some factors they
look at:
Organic Links and
Mentions
Anyone can get links.
Google wants you to have good
links from authoritative sites. You may be surprised to learn that even
mentions
of your business, without a link, can boost your E-A-T in the eyes of
Google. (This doesn’t mean it’s not worth it to try to turn those
mentions into links, though—mentions boost E-A-T, but links are still
the currency of SEO.)
Solid Content
Every page on your site
should have a purpose—and no, that purpose should never be to shoehorn
a bunch of keywords onto a page. If it’s not helpful to the reader,
Google doesn’t want to index it. Before you publish anything on your
website, ask yourself if it’s useful.
Your Bio
Who are you? What makes
you an expert in your field? Google looks at your credentials to verify
whether your advice should be recommended to its users by ranking it
highly in the SERPs.
How to Bolster
Your E-A-T
We love E-A-T and you
should too—you’re probably an expert at what you do, right? So all you
have to do is prove this to Google. Fortunately, doing so is fairly
simple:
Create High Quality
Content
Poorly written content
that doesn’t serve a purpose to the reader hurts your E-A-T, so you
should make sure everything you publish is on-point, and go back to
edit anything that isn’t. If you’re not much of a writer (or editor),
hire someone to do it for you—we can do both at Main Street ROI.
As long as we’re on the
topic of writing, if you hire an SEO firm to create content for you,
make sure you know what you’re paying for. Many agencies outsource
their writing to the lowest bidder—and it shows. At Main Street ROI, we
have a team of in-house writers who take the time to research your
industry in order to deliver content that helps your E-A-T, rather than
hurting it.
Put Your Name on Your
Content
For health-related,
legal, and financial sites, each article on your blog should have a
byline by someone with authority on the topic at hand. Create a bio at
the end of your posts where you can discuss your credentials and
education. If you hire an outside writer, consider having them
ghostwrite under the name of someone on your team who has the authority
you need—this is perfectly acceptable as long as the ghostwritten
content is reviewed for accuracy.
Get Yourself Out There
Share your E-A-T with
the world! Seek earned media about your business, write guest posts for
authoritative websites, and become active in professional groups for
your industry. These links and mentions will bolster your
authoritativeness in the eyes of Google.
Ask for Reviews
Google’s Quality Rater
Guidelines instruct raters to look at online reviews in order to
research the reputation of a content creator. If you don’t have many
reviews on Yelp, Google, Facebook, BBB, or other rating websites
specific to your niche, reach out to clients and customers and ask them
to share their experience with your business. Bonus: these reviews will
give your local SEO efforts a boost, too.
Don’t Forget the Basics
Do you have an About
page? Google Quality Raters are told to go to a website’s About page as
a way of evaluating E-A-T. Looking at any page on your website, is it
clear who’s writing it and what your business does? If you’ve won
awards, earned professional achievements, or are a member of
organizations in your field, are these listed anywhere on your site? Is
your contact information available on your website and easy to find? Do
you have a privacy policy? These are all simple things you can do to
prove your business is legitimate and that the content you create can
be trusted.
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