You may have heard this E-E-A-T acronym flying around if you’ve been searching around SEO topics. It stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, and is framework that Google uses to determine the quality of a website’s content. Search engines have a lot of signals that they take into account, and whilst EEAT isn’t a direct ranking factor per se, it’s definitely a ranking signal and something we should pay close attention to.
So, let’s strap in, look at each letter of the Google EEAT acronym and breakdown what it really means for you and your business, and more importantly how you can demonstrate it through your content.
Google E-E-A-T: Experience
Google wants the content on your website to really come authentically from someone who has first-hand, practical experience in their field. This focus on experience aims to ensure search results are not only accurate but also practical and truly helpful to your audience.
Think of your content as showing your audience, not just telling. When you show your audience through examples, data, case studies, or storytelling, you let them experience the true value of what your products or services offer.
Here are some of the ways you can demonstrate experience on your website:
- Demonstrate ways that you have helped existing customers by including customer stories and case studies on your website.
- Give clear author citation so that your audience know who is writing the content and create a clear author bio that demonstrates your experience in your field.
- Provide accurate and up-to-date local listings, customer reviews. So many businesses neglect to keep these up-to-date and yet they provide valuable social proof of your products or services.
Google E-E-A-T: Expertise
Sometimes as business owners, we forget what we know.
We expect, or wrongly assume, that our audience know what we know… but they don’t!
When you create content on your website, make sure it really demonstrates your expertise in a way that offers real value and depth for your audience.
Here are some of the ways you can demonstrate expertise on your website:
- Ensure that every piece of content you create is comprehensive and thoroughly researched. Cover ground that other people haven’t before – no one wants to read the same old stuff. Be creative, be new, break new ground.
- Make content easy to read, easy to skim, highlight important points using bold, italic or bullet points, and utilise visual graphics where it better communicates your point.
- Ensure that all your content is written by a human. AI tools like ChatGPT are great for research and ideas, but please don’t let it write your content for you.
- Use video on your website to tell the story behind your brand. Try to incorporate the people who work for your company as customers are more likely to connect with you when they can see people.
Google E-E-A-T:Authoritativeness
Authoritativeness relates to the website’s credibility and reputation. Google is more likely to trust and favour websites that are recognised as a trustworthy source in their industry.
Authority can be achieved by getting relevant and high-quality websites and media publications to link to your website. Here are some ideas of how you can do that:
- Carry out a piece of research within your industry to generate interesting statistics. Journalists and publishers often need data in their articles, and this is your opportunity to be the website to provide that information.
- Find out what features industry publications are covering and volunteer useful content for their story.
- Content that is well-written, well-researched and in-depth is more likely to be regarded as authoritative.
- Reach out to your partners, suppliers, those you network with, or even customers with content that might be relevant to their audience too, so that you can start to build relevant links to your website.
Google E-E-A-T: Trustworthiness
Trust is about building a relationship with ‘strangers’ who come to your website and don’t know you. What can you do that makes your brand relatable and credible so your audience starts to trust you – and eventually buy from you?
We see so many websites that don’t have any information about their people, or the story behind their brand, or any social proof from other customers. No wonder they aren’t getting many enquiries from their website!
Here are some ways you can build trust:
- Make your brand relatable through a great ‘Meet the Team’ page. Look at fun ways to present this so your audience really get to know the people behind your brand.
- Obvious things such as having an SSL certificate (https), contact information, policy pages, and privacy statements also contribute to a website’s trustworthiness.
- Being active on social platforms can strengthen your content’s reach and support your authority in your field. Social interactions, while not a direct ranking factor, can contribute to expertise and and trust.
Now you know what EEAT stands for, what it means, have you noticed a common theme here?
Almost everything that we’ve covered is more about your users than it is about search engines. Google simply wants a good experience for its users, and this benefits everyone.
Danny Sullivan, former analyst and journalist who works for Google, says:
“Doing things generally for people is what our automated systems seek to reward.”
Google wants the best results for a query. It’s all just common sense – well it is to us, at least. But if you’re finding it hard to do this well, book a consultation with us here.