Last Updated on December 3, 2022 by Arif Chowdhury
In SEO (Search Engine Optimization), E-A-T (Expertise – Authoritativeness – Trustworthiness) is a significant factor. Google first introduced it in 2014. However, more details come later in 2018 in their “Search Quality Guidelines.”
In this article, you will learn what E-A-T is in SEO, how to improve e-a-t SEO, its detailed information & why you should consider it a vital part of your SEO campaign.
Definition of E-A-T at a Glance.
Expertise: Anyone can write an article with some details from their personal experience. Or even write an article by a freelancer or ghostwriter. Writing and publishing a finance, legal, and medical-related blog post is easy.
However, what about the authenticity of the information presented in the content? A piece of inaccurate information can seriously harm the reader if it is an advice-related article.
As you can see, Google wants a verified & professionally experienced person to write that article; otherwise, it is not worth getting on top of the SERP (Search Engine Result Page).
Authoritativeness: It’s so obvious if I am not a doctor but giving you some advice on how to treat a significant breakdown, what would happen? Google wants to confirm that I am a real doctor by giving my professional credentials on the article webpage.
My education, certificate, and job experience are & of course, verified from the authoritative webpage. For example, my credentials must also be present on the Hospital webpage.
In this way, Google can confirm a verified & professional doctor wrote this article & it won’t harm the readers.
Trustworthiness: It’s all about the clearness of your data before readers. Presenting all details like contact information, official email, office address, etc. By providing a Google map of your office location, you can become even more evident to your audience.
Security is also a matter of trustworthiness. Provide SSL security of Privacy Policy for your reader; thus, you guarantee their information is secure.
You may visit this site for the E-A-T SEO checklist for more details. In addition, your site ranking factor is directly connected with E-A-T.
Definition of E-A-T in the form of SEO.
Why is E-A-T important in SEO? Because there are around 1.72 billion websites that exist nowadays. Every day more than 4.4 million blog posts are published. It’s a vast database & hard to define which one is useful & which one is not.
And for the sake of users, Google implemented this E-A-T to define the best high-quality & unique content that is useful for readers.
If you provide high-quality, helpful content to your users that fall in E-A-T rules & regulations, you will get better SEO performance, while poor quality content won’t even show up in SERP.
E-A-T google guidelines explicitly say that you must provide content with authority, trustworthiness, and high quality so your audience will benefit from your site.
Recommended Reading: SEO Mini Handbook: A Simple 5 Steps Guideline (Practical Guide)
Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines.
How to evaluate a website’s quality is laid out in detail in the Google Quality Rater Guidelines (also referred to as the Quality Evaluator Guidelines). These suggestions are meant to enhance Google’s search algorithm and provide a better overall experience for Google users.
Quick Note: Expert authoritativeness and trustworthiness are essential in E-A-T SEO. So, be wary about link-building, writing, and sharing on social media because Google’s algorithm evaluates your content’s quality, credibility, and competence.
Definition of Expertise in Broad.
It’s all about how professional you are in presenting a piece of information to your audience. You can copy other works or even show scrapped content that could harm the audience.
Google defined two types of expertise in its search guidelines.
Formal Expertise: That expertise requires an education & certificate of experience is called formal expertise—for example, doctors, engineers, architects, teachers, etc. When you publish content that falls under this formal expertise area, you require experience & a certificate of professionalism in a particular field.
Having a profile on the Hospital website can guarantee that what you have written in your blog post is not from a casual writer. The audience can take your advice & won’t regret it.
Everyday Expertise: What about a personal experience that does not require any formal education or certificate of professional job experience? For example, you are a mountain hiker. Do not have any related education in this field or any certification.
However, you have 15 years of real-life experience in this field & written blog posts about mountain hiking. What would Google do to your website?
Google said the type of expertise that does not require experience wouldn’t get any penalization from SEO. However, well-written, engaging & user-friendly content is necessary for this type of expertise.
Building Expertise: There is another form of expertise that exists. A company has its content marketing team and outsourcing talents, i.e., freelancers and ghostwriters. Providing high-quality, engaging content that is useful to the audience should be enough.
However, suppose the content falls under the “formal expertise” area. In that case, the company must write content by hiring professional experts, those with education & certificate in that related field.
Definition of Authoritativeness in Broad.
By displaying all the relevant information before the audience thus, readers can get an assurance of the quality of that information. So, how to do it properly?
Information that should display:
- Professional Title
- Education (full details)
- Certificates (full details)
- Experience (how it’s connected to the topic)
- Author bio
- Author photo
- Presence on the official website (connection to the professional field)
By presenting all the above information, you can assure your audience that the person who writes this content has authority in this related field. Thus, the audience can trust the data.
However, when it comes to “everyday expertise” content, the author does not have to present authority like this. Why? Simple, when you are a real-life mountain hiker and writing advice for those who go for a hike.
You are simply giving them advice, not a direct action that would otherwise harm them. But, when it comes to medical advice, someone may take your advice seriously and consume some medicine, which could severely damage their health.
Another example of authority. When you publish health-related content to your SEO-related blog, it may have high authority in SEO but zero authority in health. Therefore, Google marks this health-related content as having zero expertise & authority.
Recommended Reading: Beginner’s Guidebook of Content Marketing Strategy (Practical Guide)
Reputation-based on Audience Reviews.
Something you cannot control is the audience’s reaction to various sources. You may put positive reviews and comments on your website either by paying them or keeping only the positive ones. However, it’s not possible for an external source.
Thus, Google always looks for audience reviews about your site to measure the authority of your website content.
Definition of Trust in Broad.
In simple terms, you give security to your audience. Their information, privacy, and identity are all secure to you. When you can provide this guarantee, you become trustworthy.
How to become trustworthy:
- SSL secure website (HTTPS connection)
- Clear contact information displayed (publicly)
- Company/Personal information displayed in the about section
- Clearly defined photos of the person/team behind the website
- Terms & Conditions Page (clearly defined every detail)
- Privacy Policy page (clearly defined every detail)
- Reference to authority sites (cites to the sources)
- Having backlinks from authority & relevant sites
By getting all of these, you guarantee that you are a trustworthy website & the content you have is also reliable. In addition, a secure web connection confirms that no information will leak away to hackers (financial information, i.e., debit/credit card).
By clearly defining contact information & office address, you guarantee you are not fake. In addition, the terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy clearly illustrate that you will not sell users’ information to third parties or any other abuse.
Linking to other authorities & relevant sites to your content can increase trust. Having backlinks from other relevant & authoritative sites can confirm your expertise, authoritativeness & trust.
Conclusion.
Google is becoming more intelligent & authentic day by day. No more controlling SEO in your favor anymore. If you do not have quality, no matter what trick you implement doesn’t matter; it won’t work anymore. And this is how E-A-T explains everything.
It’s almost like a real-life business. If you can provide high-quality products, your business will grow, and more customers will purchase your products. The same goes for Google search engine SEO. If you have expertise, authority & trust, you will gain more organic traffic from Google.
Therefore, think about your audience, provide them with quality content, and be honest. That’s it; everything else will come to you naturally.