E-A-T SEO - It’s Not Who You Know, It’s What You Know

“Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

E-A-T SEO stands for “Expertise”, “Authoritativeness”, “Trustworthiness” and it's a test that Google runs against content to judge its ranking.

Keeping in view Google’s Mission, the Googlers came up with a new improvement for their search engine that is pretty interesting. And it is called, E-A-T!

No, it’s not food or anything like that. But the acronyms stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It may sound simple but it’s not. No worries, we are going to explain this concept to you!

In this article, We’ll talk about:

Why Google released the E-A-T update;
How it affects the content on the sites;
Does this impact the ranking of a site;
What exactly E-A-T’s role is;
Why SEOs have to care about E-A-T;
And finally, how can you use E-A-T to improve your content?

Let’s E-A-T the topic and digest it bit-by-bit to grasp the concept of it.

Why All Of A Sudden Google Went For E-A-T Core Update?

When Google released the Search Quality Rating Guidelines in which they explained how they assess the content for its search engine, some content optimizers actually tricked their way through Google algorithms and landed on the first page of search results for the user's queries - even if their content was not up to the quality and less relevant to the user’s search query!

They focused on the loopholes and used them to their advantage to rank their content for Page-1 of the Google search results. It not only harmed the user experience but also lowered the search result's quality. And eventually, Google took notice of this practice and they came up with an encounter plan, that is, E-A-T!

So in 2018, Google confirmed the core update under the name, E-A-T, for rating the content of the sites to improve its search result quality using HUMANS. Yes! You read it right.

This core update was based on how actual humans would find the information valuable and useful for the relevant query that a user would enter in the search engine. For this specific search engine update, they hired thousands of people and provided them with E-A-T guidelines to rate the content accordingly.

The After Effects Of The Core Update E-A-T Release...

When this update was released, many sites related to YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) saw massive drops leading the SEOs to panic! Now, why do you think this happened?

No, Google was not punishing them but it was their way to serve its purpose by providing useful, credible and valuable information for the queries of their users. Plus, these sites were rated by other humans based on the information or advice they posted related to medical, current events, financial, business, repairs, remedies, parenting, and similarly other YMYL topics on their site.

So, it was a pain for SEOs but a safe bet for Google to bring back the quality search results while giving its user an excellent experience.

E-A-T Nicknamed As The Medic Update!

After a while, the people started to call the E-A-T as the Medic update. Because it mostly affected the traffic and ranking for the medical sites. Because such sites contain highly informational content, in fact, some even related to life and death!

But, not all of the information is understandable to layman users - until they are professionals in the field to comprehend the terminologies used in the content. Leading it to narrow down the readers of the content. Plus, the information they provide might not be as useful for average humans even if their content follows the guidelines of Google algorithms.

Google emphasized that the content should be user-focused and not just information-based. The more understandable content you create, the better E-A-T you’ll get on your site. Perhaps, this update is all about how a normal human with average knowledge would interpret the information.

Is E-A-T A Ranking Factor?

Not exactly, it just signals Google about the quality of content based on the actual human perceptions and interpretations. As they say it in the blog:

“Since we originally wrote this post, we have been occasionally asked if E-A-T is a ranking factor. Our automated systems use a mix of many different signals to rank great content. We've tried to make this mix align what human beings would agree is great content as they would assess it according to E-A-T criteria. Given this, assessing your own content in terms of E-A-T criteria may help align it conceptually with the different signals that our automated systems use to rank content.”

So, Google looks into the content of a site and measures it based on the following:

How long do people spend reading a particular page on a website?
How many people go to a page and don't leave it immediately, the bounce rate?
Do people read an article all the way through?
And, will people go on to read other parts of the site?

Just as Neil Patel says it:

“You need to write valuable content of the highest quality, but it should also pass the Google E-A-T criterion.”

Writing excellent content that people not only read but share it with others and keep coming back to it, is a signal for Google that the content is of high quality, useful to their users, and people should take note of it's worth.

To make things more clear, Google Developers Community themselves stated that:

“It's important to understand that search raters have no control over how pages rank. Rater data is not used directly in our ranking algorithms. Rather, we use them as a restaurant that might get feedback cards from diners. The feedback helps us know if our systems seem to be working.”

So, it’s not a ranking factor but criteria for any content that is posted on any online platform. And improving E-A-T improves your content for your readers while not guaranteeing the Page-1 ranking for Google’s search engine!

So What Exactly Is E-A-T Is And Do?

Again, E-A-T is the abbreviation of Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. It measures your site based on the following:

Expertise — Is the author an expert on the topic, field, or domain? Is the person knowledgeable enough to speak about it? Do they have the requisite experience on the subject?

Authoritativeness — Does the creator of the content have authority over it? Do they have relevant credentials, reviews, testimonials, etc? Do they provide content that is truthful, valid and useful for their readers?

Trustworthiness — Does the site of the content have reliable evidence? Does the site have things like inbound link profile, overall site quality, reviews, security, etc?

In simple words, your content must not only be optimized but valuable, useful, and believable for web searchers. You have to focus on the algorithms and also on the quality you provide through your content.

Why is E-A-T important for SEO?

“In the SEO world, you see sites in the health space or financial space having more issues with Google algorithm updates because their information may be inaccurate and Google is looking for sites to prove their expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.” - Neil Patel

Now, the competition for Page1 ranking on Google’s search engine is not only intense but super challenging! Why?

With the E-A-T update, Google brought an even tougher way to make your site reach it to the Page-1 of the search engine. Because it’s not only about algorithms. Google let humans assess and quantify a page’s value.

And now, SEOs have to provide the kind of content that follows the Google algorithms as well as provides high-quality content to their users. Adding value, credibility, and believable information to them.

We can surely say that E-A-T acts as a metric for evaluating your content for SERP. As Google has long said that:

”A great user experience is important for good rankings. E-A-T is one of the largest components of that.”

How An SEO Can Use E-A-T To Improve The Content?

As already said, that E-A-T doesn’t guarantee Page-1 ranking of the content on the search engine of Google but it's a way to evaluate it. It involves the assessment of humans to rate the quality of the content.

However, it does improve the content to the point where the chances of the content increase to reach the first page of the search results of the search engine if it follows the Google algorithms.

So, you being an SEO, should consider the following points to improve the E-A-T of your content:

Content Quality - Does it add value? Is it well-organized and well written? Is the content proofread and doesn’t have broken links? Is the content consistent with the main goal of the site? Are the topics clustered properly?

Content Authority - Is the content created by an expert in the field? How much are they knowledgeable and experienced in the topic they are discussing? If the creator is not experienced enough then did they cite a valid and credible source? Are they providing accurate information? Have they done fact-checking?

Content Resources - Does it link to other reliable sites? Is the information transparent? Does it use relevant images and video, where needed? Are all the transcripts accessible?

Content Engagement - Is the content engaging? Would they share it with others? Does it let its reader interact using chats, comments, or any other section on the site?

Content Readability - Is the content optimized? Does it load on all devices quickly? Is the content user-friendly? Is the content simple and easy to understand by almost all readers?

Content Security - Is the content secure? Does it have an SSL certificate? Is it marked secure while browsing the content?

For a more comprehensive guide, you can look into this site.

To Sum Up…

The search results of Google are not all about its algorithm but also involves real human’s assessment for the content of the site in order to deliver an excellent user experience for the search results through its engine for their users.

It's worth noting that E‑A-T is an important component for improving the optimization of your content. However, even if you have high E-A-T for your content, that doesn’t mean that it’ll rank on the first page of the search results. There are other factors there that are affecting your content’s ranking in the search index of Google's search engine.

For SEOs, it’s something that you must work on - especially if you're dealing with YMYL topics. Why? It’s because one thing that Google has assured us is that if the content ranks on Page-1 of the search results then it must have high E-A-T along with the algorithms being followed by the content creator. So, it’s essential for SEOs to follow and increase the best possibility to optimize the content for the first page results of the search engine

Like other services of Google, E-A-T is in the process of constant evolution. So, there is a lot of exciting stuff that Google might uncover from time to time!

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