Does your website exude E-A-T?

When it comes to SEO, there are no secret magic tricks. Contrary to what many want you to believe. In fact, over the last several years, Google themselves has proactively provided more and more details on what it takes to perform well online. One of those ways is through their Search Quality Rater Guidelines.

These guidelines provide Google’s human raters instructions on how to evaluate search engine quality, website quality, & page quality.

One of the more important takeaways from the 160 page document is the acronym E-A-T. That is the question today, Does your website exude E-A-T? If not, it’s time to rethink your website altogether and make improvements if you want to see success in SEO.

What is E-A-T?

The acronym stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. In short, websites that exude more EAT are considered to be of higher quality than those that don’t.

In fact, the guidelines themselves state that EAT is one of the most important factors when determining an overall Page Quality rating.

How is E-A-T determined?

When trying to determine whether your website exudes EAT, look at the following characteristics and be honest with yourself:

1. Does your website/page have high quality main content?

This doesn’t mean that the pages that have more content on them are better it simply means that the pages that do the best job at answering the user’s query in the most complete manner is likely to see higher quality ratings than not.

You should be an expert in your field. Provide the credentials to show that off and make sure your content speaks to your expertise. If you’re website is medical, financial, or legal in nature this is even more important vs that of a humor website.

When the raters evaluate the quality of the main content they spend time examining it before determining a conclusion. Is the content is factually accurate? If your page features calculators, videos, or pictures, do they all work and show? If your page is a shopping page, does it have products and if you add to the shopping cart, does it work?

All of these little things are taken into consideration when determining the quality. A great way to see if your website’s main content meets the user’s needs is to look at the websites that are ranking well and see what they are doing that you aren’t. Also, look at the People also ask section for a SERP and see if your content includes answers to those common questions.

2. Does your website make it clearly known who is responsible for the website and how to contact you?

Yes, it is important for users that visit a webpage to clearly see information about who you are & how to get in contact with you. Do you show your address? Phone number? Email addresses? Explanations about your business or website? Having this information helps build user trust which is part of the examination when a human rater determines quality.

3. Does your website have a positive reputation?

When you Google your business or website name and look at the results in the SERPS, do you have articles talking bad about you? Are your reviews mostly negative in nature? If so, those will likely affect the rating you receive. While have a negative review is common in nature, it’s more about the quantity and if the majority of the coverage about your brand is negative. If you have 10 reviews and 2 are negative then it’s likely not going to have any impact.

E-A-T Good Feel Good

Your website will only be as good as what you put into it. If the time, effort, expertise, and talent/skill that has gone into your pages is lacking, then it’s time to update and improve. It’s not me that is saying this, it’s Google so take it to heart and make the necessary changes so  you can start seeing success in SEO.

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