E-A-T And Why Website Owners Should Care

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E-A-T has nothing to do with food. It’s all about how Google determines the level of quality of your website. The better your E-A-T, the more appetizing your website will be in the eyes’ of Google.

In this article, we’ll explain what E-A-T means and why it matters if you’re a website owner.

 

What is E-A-T?

The E-A-T acronym stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. These three factors are used by Google to determine the level of quality of your page.

Google’s algorithm is getting more and more complex. It doesn’t just look at the content of your page to determine where you rank. It doesn’t even just look at the backlinks pointing to it. E-A-T is just one more method that Google uses to get an idea of how good your website really is.

Now let’s look at what each of these factors are in turn.

 

1. E for Expertise

Google wants to serve up experts in the field above everyone else. So the first thing it looks for is the level of expertise you have.

Let’s look at the health niche as an example. If a website that offers health advice wants to have a high level of expertise, their content should be written by a medical professional and well referenced.

Of course, what counts as high expertise content will vary depend on the niche you are operating in. Levels of expertise will vary between niches, so you don’t always have to have professional writers to have a high level of expertise.

 

2. A for Authoritativeness

As well as having expertise, you also want to be seen as an authority in your niche. Google uses several factors to measure the authority of your website:

  • Customer reviews and ratings
  • Backlinks (the kinds of websites linking back to you)
  • Mentions and citations by other authors
  • Sites where you appear in (such as in guest posting)

To put it simply, you want your content to be recognized by everyone in your niche as some of the best around.

 

3. T for Trustworthiness

Google also only wants to display trustworthy websites in their rankings. Or at least to rank trustworthy websites above untrustworthy sites.

Part of this is writing high quality content, but there’s also a technical aspect to it as well. Your website should be secured with https using an SSL certificate. If you are an ecommerce store owner you’ll also need to make sure you take further precautionary steps to protect customer security.

 

Why E-A-T Should Matter to You

Google has said that they have officially recognized E-A-T as part of their Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. That means it has a direct impact on how your site ranks. Google wants to provide the best and most relevant results and E-A-T helps it do this.

If you want help understanding your E-A-T score or want help improving it, our team of SEO experts can help. Get in touch today for a free consultation.