Google’s E-A-T concept is among the most talked-about topics in the world of SEO and it’s a very vast concept. For those who don’t know, E-A-T describes the Expertise, Authority, and Trust of any website. And, Google takes this new concept seriously and they also have a team of manual evaluators to rank websites according to these factors.
Many experts say that E-A-T is not a ranking factor and on the contrary side, some experts say that E-A-T does affect the search engine rankings. After in-depth research, it is found that yes, E-A-T rankings affect a site’s SEO and website owners need to focus on it.
E-A-T in SEO
For website owners and online business owners, it becomes important to know about what E-A-T means for their SEO and how to improve it. So in this article, we will have a look at the relation between these two concepts and also understand how to improve it. But, before we dive into the core concept, let’s have a look at the three parts of this concept which are expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
Table of Contents
Expertise
The expertise term checks your website’s expertise level over the products that you are selling or the content that you are creating. For example, if someone is running a pregnancy care blog then Google would check if the content and the authors that are creating the content have any expertise or not. To thrive in this section of E-A-T, you need to establish yourself as an authority who has in-depth expertise in products or services.
Authoritativeness
How well your brand or website stands apart from the competitors defines the authority in simple terms. Google experts take this metric also very seriously and they check the overall authority of your domain and the content that you are creating. If your brand is a well-known face in the digital era, then there are high chances that your content will rank on competitive keywords also.
Trust
Trust is such a crucial factor that is only gained over a period of time and you need to maintain this factor very carefully to excel online. In simple terms, it defines how credible your products, or content is for the readers. Trust is majorly calculated by the number of quality backlinks a website has. If a website is having 100 backlinks from 80 domains that have DA of above 70 or 80, then Google will consider that website as very trustworthy.
These were all three important aspects that define the overall visibility of a website when someone searches it using some queries. Now, another concept here to understand is how E-A-T means for your SEO and how to improve it.
How E-A-T affects your website’s SEO
We can say that E-A-T directly impacts any website’s SEO performance and the reason is quite simple. Google wants to showcase only accurate and quality search results to its visitors and E-A-T helps Google raters to decide which the quality websites are.
If a site lacks any of the three important factors, then the site will suffer a ranking and traffic loss on the Internet. There are several examples available online which state that business owners have lost substantial traffic after the E-A-T update as their websites failed to fulfill the guidelines.
When a website lacks good E-A-T, Google seeks other better alternatives (competitor websites) to rank on that website’s current position. It clearly defines that E-A-T does affect your site’s SEO and you need to make sure you are creating quality content that is accurate and relevant to what users are searching.
In the upcoming time, this concept will go even more mainstream as Google is constantly pushing this concept on automation through algorithms. Once this thing is done, this will work in the same way as the other algorithms are functioning.
For understanding the ranking factor with a better perspective, let’s understand this with a simple example. If someone runs a healthcare blog and has written an article on the dosage of certain medications during pregnancy. Then, in this case, Google will definitely make sure that the users will get the correct and the most accurate information.
For evaluating this, Google will check how accurate the content is, what is the authority of the writer who has written this content, how many good backlinks the content has, and so on. After all these evaluations, Google raters will rank the site accordingly.
If the rating is good then the article will rank in much better positions and even take the first spot in Google. That’s why it is very crucial to follow the guidelines and create content accordingly. If you don’t have an SEO team who knows inside-out about this concept, then it’s better to hire a professional SEO Reseller.
On the other hand, if a website falls in the YMYL category which means Your Money, Your Life, then the site owners need to focus even more while creating any content. Google believes that any content that can affect the reader’s life or finances, then it should be of the highest quality and accuracy.
Tips for improving E-A-T
First, you need to understand the fact that E-A-T optimization, not be done using any tool and it’s not a short process. It takes weeks, months, or every year to fully optimize a site depending upon the size of the website. There are some tips that you can follow and improve your site and optimize it for better E-A-T rankings:
Always aim that all the important articles are written by a single author on your site as it will improve the authority of the site. When a single user is creating all the content, then Google considers it as a good authority signal.
If your website is having numerous pages with thin content, you need to consolidate those pages or remove them. This is because thin content hardly delivers any value to the readers. and it can negatively affect the E-A-T rating.
Never buy backlinks from the online sellers as they all are of very poor quality and can negatively impact your site. This same thing goes with content creation— if you are outsourcing your content work, make sure you have hired an expert and not a beginner.
Your website should not have any kind of technical glitch or it should not be running on HTTP. This is because Google takes its visitors’ security on top priority and they always want to redirect users to a safer website. You can also hire a good SEO company the can run a complete analysis and fix all the glitches present.
E-A-T is not a random practice, it requires an in-depth analysis of multiple things. Right from content, to readers’ persona, and security of the platform, there are so many things to perform. However, once the website is fully optimized according to the E-A-T guidelines, your site can have significant advantages in rankings as compared to others.
As we are moving towards digitization, the E-A-T concept will become more mainstream and most businesses will follow this. Uplift your SEO game by optimizing your platform for E-A-T and you will surely get its sheer benefits over your competitors.
