In 2014, Google published its new Search Quality Guidelines that included that mnemonic “E.A.T." These guidelines suggested that all websites must focus on Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness for better performance on Google’s search quality evaluations, and to increase rankings.
It wasn’t until 2020 that Google brought it back up, this time, with a vengeance. Google has now given its evaluators more of a say in determining the rankings of your website.
Google has evaluators numbering in thousands who manually review websites listed on the search engine, based on these guidelines. Although they can’t improve or reduce your rankings directly, they will submit feedback to Google and ‘recommend’ actions the search engine should take.
The website will then be reviewed again and if rankings need to be altered, Google will do so. So one can say that Google is now taking these recommendations rather seriously.
Google suggests that:
“For all other pages that have a beneficial purpose, the amount of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) is very important.”
Evaluators consider:
- Whether E-A-T guidelines are followed
- The website structure/design
- Information and value provided by the website
And that’s where your blog posts or websites come into play.
Increasing Google SERP Rankings
E Is for Expertise
What’s the best way to tell the world that you have expertise in your field and know what you’re talking about? Write an eBook or long-form content on it. If you post it on your website, Google will read it. And not just Google bots, but evaluators as well as bots from other search engines.
If you’re offering the right value to the right people, you will get good feedback from evaluators in terms of ‘expertise’. You simply need to offer valuable insights into your area of expertise and give the reader a chance to learn something new.
Your bio or about us page plays a small role here as well in letting people know you’re an authority figure and have the relevant expertise. Which brings us to our next point…
A Stands for Authority
It’s one thing to write the right content, it’s entirely another to have other authors link to you. Backlinks play an important role in determining your website’s authority which you can either do by guest posting, or by simply allowing or encouraging people to use parts of your articles or blogs free of charge - so long as they link it back to you.
T Means Trustworthiness
Again, your about us page or an author’s bio plays a major role in helping readers and visitors understand that you’re a trustworthy source of information – whether it’s your website’s About Us page, article, or perhaps an eBook. The idea here is to let users know that the information they’re getting is from an expert who’s worked in the field. You can take the whole ‘about the author’ section to explain your expertise.
Use your expertise to provide value to readers, and as you continue to do so, people come back, again and again, to read more and make decisions based on the information you’ve provided. This effectively increases your trustworthiness.
Writing Content & Designing Website for All Three
The more trustworthy you are, the more traffic you generate. The more traffic you generate, the better you rank. The better you rank, the more people will link to your site, thus increasing authority. Authority is further reinforced as you incorporate a bio at the end of your article page or simply tell more about yourself in the about us page.
And thus, the trifecta of Google’s E.A.T requirement is completed – all thanks to well-written and well-placed content. While all this might not have had much of an effect about a year ago, the 2020 update means that fulfilling these requirements is a surefire way to improve your domain expertise.
You might have noticed that we’ve mentioned that you’re going to have to provide value to your readers throughout the website, which might require experience as a writer as well as a marketer. There is a fine line between under and overdoing digital marketing. And that is where you need to be in order to increase your rankings on SERP.
For help getting your business out there and generating more traffic to your website, we recommend you get in touch with us today and schedule a free consultation. We’ll go through your website and give you a rough idea of what you can do to improve your rankings on all search engines – not just Google!
If you have anything you’d like to add or have any questions, let us know down in the comments and we’ll gladly address them!