In 2022, Google updated E-A-T by adding an extra ‘e’, making it E-E-A-T. Sadly, my previous food puns have been rendered useless. Still, and more importantly, the added ‘e’ is kinda nice for your potential clients (wot are looking for you on the interwebs). So, if tantalised, read on.
First, what is E-E-A-T?
According to MOZ, it’s a component of Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines (SQEG). It isn’t strictly a ranking factor but rather a guide for quality assessment.
What does E-E-A-T stand for?
- Experience
- Expertise
- Authoritativeness
- Trustworthiness
When you create content, ask yourself a few questions:
- Can I give examples of firsthand experience?
- Can I provide insights that demonstrate knowledge?
- Am I effectively presenting my experience and expertise?
SIDE NOTE: In the context of E-E-A-T, Google and your clients are interchangeable. When I say ‘Google wants’, I also mean ‘your website visitor wants’ because Google is ultimately concerned with providing the best user experience (so they can maintain their monopoly and make loads more cash).
Experience.
The first ‘e’, and relatively new ‘e’ in E-E-A-T, is for experience. Let’s suppose someone is fed up with their bastard of a husband, and they’re googling/quizzing Gemini about the legalities of divorce. That person requires advice from a family law solicitor. That falls under the expertise banner, but if an individual contemplating a decree absolute wants to understand how divorce impacts family life, they might talk to folks with lived experience.
Your professional experience is sought after in a similar way. If you’ve been running a business for some time, that knowledge is precious to those finding their feet. A wealth of business knowledge is invaluable to potential clients. They are hungry for insights. They’re actively assessing how experienced you are for the job.
Expertise.
People get weird about calling themselves experts. The fact is, if you’re qualified, formally or otherwise, to perform a task, you’re an expert. If you’re not an expert, what are you? An imposter? A con artist? A welder of mediocre talent? If you have expertise in a particular field, you are, by definition, an expert. The more content you create around your mastery, the more your website becomes a place to visit. You show up online when you’re the person who [INSERT RELEVANT DESCRIPTION HERE].
SIDE NOTE: You can have professional accreditation AND years of firsthand experience. In that sense, experience and expertise are intertwined.
Authoritativeness.
The ‘a’ in E-E-A-T is for authoritativeness (which I cannot pronounce). Topical authority is crucial on any given website. An updated, regularly added-to blog on your chosen subject is how you build topical authority. When you consistently share experience and expertise-packed content, your topical authority snowballs. You become an authority in your field, and that makes peers and potential clients alike view you as one of the go tos or THE go-to.
There’s also a little thing called domain authority (DA). It’s a scoring system out of 100, cooked up by Moz. DA is the rank strength you gain over time. Larger, more established sites have a greater rank strength because they’ve been around longer/have the greater market share. The main driver behind the DA score is a website’s backlink profile. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the bigger the score. DA isn’t a Google ranking factor. If you have a measly DA score, you can, depending on how well you’ve optimised your site, rank well in search.
Trustworthiness.
All this experience, expertise and authority is building TRUST. No one works with businesses they don’t trust. Even criminal organisations value trustworthiness (watch the documentary, The Sopranos, for proof). The E-E-A in E-E-A-T is saying, look here, Google, I know what I’m talking about and I have the experience and expertise to prove it. And Google’s content assessors respond, yes, ok, we agree. Unless they don’t because you’re lying/using AI to make shit up.
Which brings me to Your Money or Your Life (YMYL)—not a popular 1970s game show, but something Google and their eagle-eyed quality content raters use to assess what kind of expertise your website offers. See, Google not only expects your content to be relevant, it expects it to be factually correct. It does that, in part, by reviewing how your content might impact a user’s life.
Jesus.
Quite.
Lawyers, doctors and government officials require academic qualifications and licensing. They’re the YMYL crowd and must provide official proof of expertise. However, any claims you make should be credible. If you’re selling products promoting wealth, health and happiness, you can’t just stick a disclaimer on the footer and hope for the best. Well, you can, but long-term, it won’t go well for you. I very much hope causing harm to your clients is not on your agenda. Google certainly hopes so (insofar as search engines can hope).
Quick wins to build trust:
- Comply with GDPR
- Update your SSL certificate
- Include author boxes on blogs
- Add and update content regularly
- Keep the footer copyright date current
- Cite/link to sources
In summary.
Be honest. Be upfront. Be transparent. Proudly demonstrate your skills and knowledge and provide evidence that supports your qualifications and claims, in the unique way you know how.
Article first published, 14th June 2024.
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