What’s EEAT & Why Is It Important for SEO?

EEAT is a Google guideline that stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

Google uses it to evaluate the quality of your website content and decide if it’s worth displaying it high in the search results. Previously, this factor was known as EAT. In December 2022, Google added an additional E – for experience. In this way, attention was drawn to the crucial importance of practical knowledge.

This likely occurred in response to the growing popularity of text-generating tools based on large language models (LLM), colloquially referred to as AI, such as ChatGPT. They enable the mass creation of high-quality content. By expanding EAT with an additional E, Google wanted to signal that it would reward content written by authentic experts more than that generated by proficient prompt engineers.

As stated by Google:

For all types of webpages, creating high-quality Main Content takes a significant amount of at least one of the following: time, effort, expertise, and talent/skill. For all other pages that have a beneficial purpose, the amount of experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) is very important. 

This indicates that Google appreciates expert pages that bring value to users. So, if you want to rank high, you should focus on creating comprehensive content.

As it’s been already mentioned, EEAT stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

So, what does each of these features mean? Let’s refer to the official Google’s guidelines:

• Experience – the content creator has the necessary first-hand or life experience for the topic.
• Expertise – the knowledge and expertise of the content creator and website,
• Authoritativeness – the authority of the content creator and website,
• Trustworthiness – the trust the content author and website inspire in users.

The EEAT guidelines aren’t an official ranking factor, but they’re definitely taken into account by Google when evaluating your website (especially now with the Helpful Content Update).

So, although EEAT isn’t an official ranking factor, it’s still a very important element that you should take into account to make your website more authoritative in Google’s eyes.

In 2022, Google EEAT became a very important element of well-thought-out SEO strategies. How to increase the experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness levels of your website?

Focus on the following elements:

Get More Backlinks

Backlinks are a strong signal to the search engine that a website is so popular and trustworthy among users and other pages that they decide to cite it.

The pattern is simple. According to Google, a website that has many backlinks is a reputable and quality source of information that deserves to be ranked higher in the SERPs.

Backlinks also affect a website’s authority, which is a measure of how credible a page is. As you may guess, the better your parameters such as Domain Rating, Page Authority, or URL Rating, the greater the website visibility. This translates directly into more traffic and potential customers.

Keep Your Content Fresh

Another way to show Google that your website is a valuable source of information is to keep your content fresh and relevant. This means that you should regularly update your blog or website with new and useful information.

Thanks to it, you’ll not only improve the user experience on your page but also show Google that your website is active and that you care about providing users with high-quality information.

Besides, content repurposing is much more efficient and cost-effective than writing new, expert pieces from scratch.

Link Reputable Sources

SEO is like life. Just think about it. You certainly don’t want to be associated with suspicious people and you find it a waste of time to engage in worthless meetings with people who don’t inspire you and don’t have a good influence on you.

Well, the same applies to the online world! That’s why, when devising your link building strategy, you should avoid toxic links that have a negative impact on your website’s EAT.

So, think carefully about what sources you refer to in your content.

Stick to the Facts

The Google EEAT also applies to the factuality of the information you provide on your website. Remember that your goal is to show that you’re an expert in your field, which is why it’s crucial to provide accurate, reliable, and up-to-date data.

To achieve this, you can:

• use data from trustworthy sources
• cite your sources
• use simple, clear language
• don’t spread unverified information

Get More Reviews & Establish Your Online Reputation

Do you want to be treated as an expert? Show Google that you’re an expert.

Reviews are one of the many signals that Google looks at when determining which results to show for a given query. In general, the more user-generated content you have, the more trustworthy you’re for the search engine robots.

There are a number of ways to get more reviews. One is to simply ask your customers or clients to leave a comment after finalizing transactions. You can also offer them incentives such as discounts for rating your products or services.

Make sure that people can easily navigate your website, write comments, or review your products.

What’s next?

Don’t forget to respond to reviews, both positive and negative. This shows that you’re engaged with your customers and that you care about their experience.

Focus on Topic Clusters

Showing direct connections between topics is an aspect that shouldn’t be neglected when building your website’s authoritativeness and trustworthiness.

Topic clusters are about grouping content around a specific topic. Thanks to them, search engines are able to better understand the relationships between different topics and pieces of content on a website. Moreover, topic clusters help website visitors easily find the information they’re looking for.

The ability to build topic clusters is gaining increasing importance. It shows Google that you’re an expert in a given field and you know it like the back of your hand.

The more quality content revolving around a pillar topic, the greater your chances of being perceived as an authority in the industry.

As you can see, taking care of your content (meaning both texts, images, videos, or infographics) uniqueness, and quality is a must-have if you want to rank high and inspire trust in potential customers.

Prove You’re the Expert

What’s EEAT? It’s the ability to prove that you’re an expert in the area. This can be done by showing off your credentials and achievements. One of the ways to do this is to create author bios or “about us” pages.

On these pages, you can list your qualifications, experience, awards, and other information that would show Google you’re trustworthy.

Such pieces of content will help you build confidence in potential customers. Also, they give you extra space to saturate your website with relevant keywords you want to rank for, which can help with your SEO efforts.

Include Your Contact Information

Make sure your website includes your contact information, such as an email address, opening hours, or phone number. If you run a local company, set up a Google My Business profile and think about adding a small map showing your location.

This is a strong signal for Google that you’re a real business or person and not some kind of spam or scam.

Apart from supporting your SEO efforts, providing such data will make it easier for users to reach out to you. Remember that sometimes people may need to resolve their doubts. If they have any questions regarding your offer, they’ll probably want to contact you either via chat, phone call, contact form, or email.

Make the task easier for them. Otherwise, they’ll leave your page and choose your market rivals.

Become a Quality Source and Work with Experts to Create the Best Content

The latest Google Helpful Content update shows that useful and insightful articles are incredibly valuable and favored over pieces created primarily for search engines.

To make sure that your articles actually bring value to users you should:

• work with experts to create content (such as guest posts)
• focus on creating comprehensive, well-researched, and well-written articles
• use credible sources

If you manage to engage potential customers and answer all their questions in your content, they’ll stay on your website for longer and won’t feel the need to look for other sources.

This will have a positive impact on your web session time, bounce rate, user-generated content, Google EEAT, and many other elements that will quickly translate into improved page traffic and visibility.

Also, you shouldn’t forget about building your expertise outside your website. How to do it? Get your comments and opinions featured on authoritative, industry-related pages. Thanks to it, you can:

• build quality relationships with other industry experts and start valuable cooperations,
• acquire good backlinks to your website (the sites featuring your statements or comments should link to your page),
• expand your reach and win new potential customers who may not have heard about your company and offer before but will decide to visit your website if you attract their attention,
• Position yourself as a reputable expert in the field whose opinions matter and are willingly cited.

Sounds appealing, doesn’t it? As you can see, the juice is worth the squeeze, so get down to the job!

What’s EEAT? The EEAT guidelines are a very important element of SEO that you should take into account to make your website more authoritative in Google’s eyes.

By focusing on the elements such as backlinks, fresh content, and reputable sources, you’ll be able to improve the expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness of your website. This, in turn, will help you increase your page’s visibility in the search results.

Need help with adapting your website and content to Google guidelines? Contact us, we’ll be more than happy to devise a tailor-made SEO and content strategy to meet your needs.