E-A-T for good SEO rankings

E-A-T stands for expertise, authority and trustworthiness. Google uses these factors to assess how much trust can be placed in a page. Trust plays a particularly important role for websites in the health and finance sectors and for online shops.

What E-A-T means in practice

If you go to a restaurant and find that everything is dirty, the staff are unfriendly and the food doesn’t taste good, you would look for an alternative. You can think of E-A-T in a similar way: if a potential customer can’t find the product or the answer to their search query on your page, they will leave and keep searching on other sites. Google will then stop recommending the page as well. For some areas in particular, Google applies a higher quality standard to content and user experience. For these areas Google uses the acronym YMYL (Your Money or Your Life).

What are YMYL websites?

Google defines YMYL pages as follows:

• Shopping sites
• Pages where you can order and pay directly
• Finance websites
• Health websites
• Websites on legal topics
• Education websites

Incorrect or misleading information can have negative consequences here. That is why these pages in particular should include high-quality content written by experts. Google wants to protect users, so external signals that confirm the authority and reputation of the domain or author carry more weight here, such as backlinks, social media links or brand search volume.

Authors, blogs, websites and E-A-T

You should build trust between users and your authors, for example by adding a small info box with references (if you have any) or by considering whether an author page with a detailed biography and references makes sense. This lets users see whether the content was written by an author who only briefly read up on the topic or by someone with many years of professional experience. Google will rank texts by knowledgeable authors higher.

For additional assessment, Google also uses so-called quality raters: more than 10,000 employees worldwide who evaluate websites for quality and assign a quality score. The quality score feeds, at least indirectly, into your website’s ranking. You should therefore assess your own website against the E-A-T criteria, as this can help you rank better.

How do you improve your E-A-T?

• Create high-quality content: users and Google should be able to see how much work and expertise went into it. The main content, i.e. the home page, categories and “About us” content, plays an important role here
• Build high-quality backlinks for important pages
• User reviews: good reviews play an important role. If there are many bad reviews, you should look into them and respond
• Social media: who shares your content, knowledgeable accounts or ones with only a few followers?
• Link authors to their social media accounts, which builds trust in the author
• Actively engage with communities that deal with your products or services
• Optimise user-friendly additional content and user behaviour on the site
• Transparent information about the website operators, contact details etc.
• Page speed
• Metadata
• Certificates, awards

Helpful questions for assessing your content

You can use the following questions to check for yourself whether your website content meets the requirements of a trustworthy website or whether there is room for improvement in certain areas.

Content and quality questions

• Does the text provide original information, reporting, research or analysis?
• Does the content provide a substantial, complete and comprehensible description of the topic?
• Does the text offer interesting information or analysis that is not obvious?
• Have you avoided simply copying or rewriting content, and does the content offer enough added value and originality?
• Do the page title and heading provide a description or summary of the topic?
• Have you avoided exaggeration or shocking wording?
• Would you bookmark this page or share it with friends?
• Could the page be cited as a reference in a print magazine, encyclopaedia or book?

Expertise questions

• Does the page present information in a way that makes you want to trust it? Are there indications of the author’s experience and sources?
• Looking at the website as a whole, do you get the impression that it is trustworthy and has experience in the field?
• Was the content written by an expert or by someone who evidently knows the topic well?
• Is the content free of easily verifiable factual errors?
• Would you trust the page with your own money or life?

Presentation and production

• Are there stylistic or spelling mistakes?
• Is the content well integrated, or does it look as if it was produced in a hurry?
• Is the content mass-produced and spread across many pages?
• Does the page contain a lot of advertising that distracts from the main content?
• Does the mobile view look good?

Comparison questions

• Does the content stand out from other pages in the search results?
• Does the page serve the interests of potential visitors, or does it simply contain words that rank well in a search engine?

Evaluation of E-A-T criteria

In October 2019 a relatively small study was carried out on this topic. We have summarised the key points:

Winning websites…

• are more likely to have used experts when creating their content and texts
• are more likely to show their authors’ biographies
• link to external citations within their content
• list awards and achievements on their website
• have a higher trust score and higher customer satisfaction
• probably use formal language for their YMYL content

Losing websites…

• probably have little content, intrusive ads or use aggressive monetisation techniques
• use affiliate links in YMYL content
• use calls to action on pages with medical content
• allow comments and other user-generated content on YMYL pages to be indexed

Conclusion:

E-A-T is becoming increasingly important for websites; unprofessional pages are penalised and lose rankings. Check your page content against the points above and think about how you can build even more trust with users. If you have any further questions, feel free to get in touch. We are happy to help and work out further measures with you.

Sources:

https://www.seonative.de/seo-rankingfaktor-e-a-t/#rankingfaktoren

https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/08/core-updates.html

https://www.seo-suedwest.de/5294-studie-zeigt-moegliche-erfolgsfaktoren-fuer-eat-auf.html

https://www.seo-suedwest.de/5743-google-bestaetigt-das-beachten-von-eat-kann-sich-positiv-auf-ranking-signale-auswirken.html

(Image sources: images 1 and 2 from iStock by TarikVision)