Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a pivotal part of digital marketing. The significance of this digital marketing tool can’t be overlooked as it helps to enhance the website’s visibility, draw higher traffic, scale up conversion rate, return on investment (ROI) and increase page ranking.
SEO also helps create brand awareness, build relationships with prospects, and position the business as an authoritative and trustworthy expert in the field.
Content creators and website owners focus on simple words or phrases referred to as ‘keywords’ to make the search queries of the searchers or online users more convenient.
Keywords on the page help online users to find the related content on the search page about the intended topics. However, gone are the days when keywords mattered the most as the only SEO technique!
Now E-A-T has emerged as the new strategy employed to craft a content, website, and brand experience that Google loves.
So what exactly is Google E-A-T in SEO?
The concept of Google E-A-T is not new. It has been around since 2014, but gradually it emerged as one of the most important elements of SEO. E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Google uses E-A-T as one of the factors to determine the overall quality of a website or page. The concept comes from Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines through which the quality raters evaluate the effectiveness of search results. Basically, Google E-A-T SEO tells the search engine at what level it can trust you and the website.
What is the meaning of Expertise-Authoritative-Trustworthy?
E-A-T is a core concept in Google’s search quality raters guide designed to establish what it takes to create a good quality website that would rank well. Overall, E-A-T (Expertise-Authoritative-Trustworthy) is the three pillars of SEO that increase the opportunities to attract more organic traffic.
Expertise: People reading content need to know if the article is written by an expert or not. It is also essential to know if the expertise of the writer can be trusted or not. The credibility of the article gets judged by the qualification and expertise of the writer. Expertise indicates if the writer is an expert in the said topic or not. In Google’s guidelines, they verify if the expertise can be demonstrated less formally or not.
Authoritativeness: Authority refers to the importance or weight given to the page relevant to the given search query. To determine the authority, Google takes the author, content, and website into account. Authoritativeness is all about proving that the website is an authority in a particular area. Google wants to bring the articles on those websites to the top that are most likely to satisfy the users with accurate and reliable answers.
Trustworthiness: How trustworthy is your website? Google takes the author, the content, and the website into account to determine its trustworthiness. For this, Google uses many signals. Trustworthiness can be demonstrated by having a secure domain. A secure domain ensures the protection of users’ personal information.
What’s E-A-T’s significance and importance?
E-A-T: Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, all these are interconnected. These parameters are used to evaluate how well a website performs. Websites and web pages with good E-A-T can appear in every sector and industry.
E-A-T as a ranking factor and its impact on rankings
Is E-A-T a ranking factor? The answer is no. Google clarified, its automated systems use a mix of different signals to rank content. Google also tried to mix and align what users would agree is great content as they would be able to assess the content according to E-A-T criteria. Assessing its own content in terms of E-A-T criteria may help the brand to align it with different signals that Google’s automated systems use to rank content.
However, working on E-A-T is good as it will improve the brand/writer’s expertise, authority, and trustworthiness in front of the users/readers.
Google will take the E-A-T of the website into account to prevent users from harm and ensure that users are provided good quality content with authentic information that will meet users’ needs. Undeniably, E-A-T is important for Google as it improves page quality. But, optimizing E-A-T won’t help if it is focused on boosting the rankings of a page.
How to demonstrate E-A-T in your writings
- Understanding what the audience is searching for and working on to meet their needs can help improve the website’s expertise. It can be achieved by conducting keyword research and developing a strong keyword strategy.
- Looking at the user’s requirements and catering accordingly is worth the time and effort. Once the targeted audience is established, brands/writers can create useful content to meet their needs. Publishing content related to the product/service or business can work in a great way.
- Improving the authority of a website is crucial and this can be done with link building and utilizing social media platforms. Though link building is invaluable in SEO, backlinks are active ranking signals. If other relevant websites link to your website, it notifies the search engines that other sites are recommending the brand, which is an indication that the business has the expertise. On the other hand, sharing content on different social media platforms establishes interactions with customers. This works magnificently for brand building and escalates the brand’s authority.
- Migrating to HTTPS from HTTP is a secure step as it also is used as a ranking signal. Encouraging customers or users to leave reviews about the service or product will help strengthen the brand’s trustworthiness as well as authoritativeness.
- Addressing negative reviews as soon as possible is the best practice. Websites with too many negative reviews are seen as untrustworthy and poor by Google.