E-A-T stands for:
Expertise
Authoritativeness
Trustworthiness
The acronym is created by Google, and presents the three most desirable attributes of a website, according to their preferences. And, we are all acutely aware of how important their estimations of quality are to businesses who want to rank. Luckily, or subsequently, it also happens to be exactly what your customers want.
Google uses E-A-T to measure how trustworthy your website or brand is in relation to how they answer to search engine inquiries. Each factor of E-A-T represents a measurement of how a business is viewed as a leader in their industry.
I have stated before in other blogs that Google continues to strive to provide the most seamless and correct SERP results and E-A-T helps Google decide how much trust they have in your website, and how much it should be promoted to your users.
Is E-A-T just another short-lived algorithm?
E-A-T is not an algorithm in itself. Instead, it’s more akin to a group of signals that indicate whether your website has good or bad E-A-T.
Though it doesn’t have a direct effect on SERP rankings, E-A-T creates signals of credibility and trust that help drive improvement in rankings. To put this into perspective, if another website has better signals of expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, Google will send traffic their way instead of yours.
Why do I need to know about
E-A-T?
E-A-T is an important aspect of your business’s SEO strategy. Understanding how to provide expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness attributes on your website will help you craft an effective online marketing presence.
Breaking this down into the individual elements:
Expertise
Regardless of your product or service, you should be able to demonstrate to your customers your expertise. More importantly, demonstrating that you’re more of an expert than your competition.
Here are some things for you to consider:
Why should a customer choose me over my competitor?
What skills do I have that can help them solve their challenges?
How do I show that I have the most in-depth knowledge and refined skills for the service/product in the marketplace?
Establishing your expertise will help your website stand out from the competition.
Authoritativeness
Your website’s reputation for reliable, credible and accurate content is what authority is all about.
While similar to expertise, authority has slight differences. Expertise measures knowledge and skill, whereas authority is measured by how well your content stands out from others.
Users are looking for expertise, however they also want to be certain that the people they deal with are the best to work with. Google is not only considering whether your content demonstrates expertise, but that it is an authoritative piece of information.
Trustworthiness
Search engines want to ensure they’re ranking websites that don’t just create content, but create high quality content that searchers can rely on.
Additionally, trust is a measurement of how much credence your website and content has.
Google considers backlinks as an indicator of trustworthiness for a website. If a domain linking to your website has a high trust consideration, the greater this reflects on the trustworthiness of your website.
Also, consider displaying trust symbols such as security symbols, testimonials, free trials etc. to help build user confidence and trust to help convert sales and leads.
Does E-A-T have influence across all searches?
Yes. However, the influence is greater in some industries, such as health, finance and personal safety. Google plays an important role in delivering this information to users to make sure the highest expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness rank high accordingly.
Other benefits of working on E-A-T?
Treating SEO as part of your marketing mix and not an isolated activity is a must do these days. By focusing on E-A-T for your website, you are not only supporting your SEO efforts you are also establishing strong marketing messages on your site which will ultimately increase site engagement and improve conversions.
E-A-T is a bit of a difficult topic to get your head around and takes time and effort to improve on your website. Despite the difficulties at hand, E-A-T is an integral aspect of your website and worth taking the time to understand and craft your SEO strategy with these factors at the forefront of your mind.
If you want to rank higher on Google or want help with your website's E-A-T, feel free to reach out to one of our digital marketing specialists.
Image: Tim Mossholder via Unsplash
