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If you’re in digital marketing, you may have heard people talking about EAT regarding SEO and ranking factors. Simply put, Google SEO E-A-T tells Google how much they can trust you and your website. While there’s no black-and-white rulebook telling businesses exactly how to boost their E-A-T, there are strategies that you can employ to craft a brand, content, and website experience that Google will love. Below, we outline precisely what E-A-T is and what you need to do to ensure you have it – since it is the most crucial SEO ranking factor.
What is Website SEO E-A-T?
What is the Google E-A-T score, and was there a specific Google EAT update? E-A-T is code for Expertise, Authority, and Trust: three things you want to be known for and three things Google measures to determine your site’s legitimacy and ranking power may be the most crucial SEO ranking factor yet. Of course, each is individually important, but when a company can excel in all three areas, Google will rate you higher. At the same time, your customer base will hold you and your business in high regard.
Expertise
When people come to your site, they’re looking for a solution to their problem. They want a website that exhibits in-depth knowledge and competency in their field. If someone needs a doctor, they aren’t going to trust a provider with basic knowledge and a shaky understanding of the human body. Your website is evaluated in much the same way. Therefore, showing your visitors that you are the expert in your field and can provide more knowledgeable, experienced, and complete service than your competitors would be best.
Authority
Your website’s authority has a lot to do with you and your credentials (or your business’s credentials). Why, on paper, should someone trust you over your competition? Answering this question through written content and website design will give you the authority that Google and your site visitors want.
Trust
As you would imagine, for Google to put you in their rankings, they must trust and believe their users will also charge you. Customers are very good at sniffing out hype and clickbait. Including exaggerations or other questionable material on your site will cause you to lose the trust of your customers. And once it’s gone, it’s nearly impossible for you to regain it.
What Does It Mean to Have Good E-A-T?
Google has a prominent set of guidelines (which could even be seen as E-A-T guidelines) for site owners that describe what it means for a site to have a good E-A-T. But to get to the root of E-A-T and why it’s the most important Google ranking factor and score, you need to understand YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) websites.
YMYL sites could impact a person’s happiness, health, financial stability, or safety. Unsurprisingly, many sites fall into this category because the definition of a YMYL website is broad.
When you consider that Google is considering people’s well-being, you can understand why they are so serious about its E-A-T standards. In Google’s recent algorithm updates, the call to have good “content” was replaced in many instances with the call to have good “E-A-T.” But E-A-T doesn’t only apply to your website. Having good E-A-T means that your site itself, the content on your site, and the creator of the content have to exhibit the qualities that Google is looking for to provide users with the best possible experience. This newly added emphasis on content creators has thrown a wrench into many sites’ SEO. Nevertheless, Google continues to crack down to ensure destructive content doesn’t make it into their SERPs. And that means weeding out bad content creators.
How to Increase E-A-T Signals on Your Website
Is there a way to improve eat score? You know what E-A-T is, why it’s essential, and what it means when you’re on the right track with your E-A-T. Now—how do you make it better? By boosting your E-A-T signals, you should rank higher in Google’s search results and provide an exceptional experience to users coming to your site for information, products, or services.
Audit Your Brand
What are people saying about your brand? Do you have consistent branding? First, evaluate your branding to determine if it hits Google’s E-A-T points. A great starting place is to survey current customers to get a consumer perspective of your brand. Then, you can seek SEO professionals who know the ins and outs of good branding. They can help you determine if you seem like an expert if your imagery and design convey that you can be trusted and if your site shows consumers that you are an authority in your industry.
Audit Existing Content
Chances are, some of the older content on your site doesn’t match your current level of expertise. Go through everything you’ve published and ask if it reaches the standards you have set for yourself at this stage in the game. Does your content meet the needs of your users? Do you have authorial information and publishing dates on your content? The more information you can provide to Google to prove your E-A-T levels, the better off you’ll be on the SERPs.
Cut Low-E-A-T Content
If it’s not helping your E-A-T, take it out. It wastes time, takes visual space, and lowers your Google rankings. This type of strategy is called a ROT analysis – Redundant, Outdated, and Trivial content.
Hire Experts
This goes for everything you can’t do: site design, content creation, basic SEO, and even the above audits. There is a reason some sites perform better than others. Most of the time, it’s not because some businesses offer subpar services or products while others do not. It’s because those business owners try to maintain their online presence without the help of outside experts.
If your site needs good content, hire a writer who can write and is a respected voice regarding what you’re offering your customers. Then, seek our SEO design and marketing professionals with impressive portfolios and measured client success.
Include Links
Linking sites that Google already knows and respects is a fantastic way to boost your E-A-T. When you figuratively rub shoulders with high-E-A-T sites and businesses, it looks good on you; if you can get inbound links from those sites, even better.
Conclusion
Keep this in mind: there is no silver bullet for your E-A-T. Like in the real world, establishing expertise, authority, and trust takes time, hard work, and a lot of effort to prove yourself. So go into your SEO planning with the same mindset. But when you establish yourself as a high-E-A-T site and brand, your rankings improve, place traffic increases, and your visitors will have a great experience.