What is E-E-A-T in SEO?

You’d be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed by the number of acronyms and SEO terms in the digital marketing sphere, but trust us when we say E-E-A-T is one of the most important acronyms to learn and remember! After all, following E-E-A-T principles in SEO is vital if you want your website to have any visibility on Google.

In this guide, we’ll define E-E-A-T, explain why it’s important to Google and give you an idea of how it’s assessed.

Let’s go!

E-E-A-T is a key part of Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines and stands for:

• Experience
• Expertise
• Authority
• Trustworthiness

The Guidelines are used by Google’s Quality Raters (real people, not robots) to assess the quality and credibility of Google search listings. Although E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor, feedback from the Quality Raters does inform algorithmic updates and is important for both SEO and user experience.

To put it simply, Google doesn’t want to serve up untrustworthy, uncredible, and low-quality content to its audience and E-E-A-T guidelines keep them on the right track.

You may have heard some marketers use the acronym E-A-T instead of E-E-A-T. This is because Google only recently introduced the additional E! In December 2022, the new E was officially added to Google’s guidelines.

With the addition of Experience, Google also updated its guidelines to put a greater spotlight on Trust. In fact, Google says that “Trust is the most important member of the E-E-A-T family because untrustworthy pages have low E-E-A-T no matter how Experienced, Expert or Authoritative they may seem.”

So, what does E-E-A-T mean in practice?

Experience is all about your level of first-hand experience with the product or topic you’re creating content about.

Google says: “There are some situations where really what you value most is content produced by someone who has first-hand, life experience on the topic at hand.”

For example, a one-week Copenhagen travel guide and itinerary written by a travel blogger who spent a week visiting Copenhagen is going to have more weight than a guide written by someone who’s never set foot in Denmark.

Expertise refers to the qualifications, credentials and knowledge you have on the chosen topic. This is particularly important for Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) topics i.e. anything that could directly impact someone’s finances, health, happiness or safety.

Examples include:

• an article about the legal divorce process written by a specialist divorce or family law solicitor.
• an article about how to invest in a Stocks and Shares ISA written by a qualified and registered financial advisor.
• an article about how to have a gut-friendly diet written by a nutritionist or medical professional.

This is why it’s important to showcase your team on your website – who are they and why are they qualified to provide this information?

Authority refers to how reputable your business and content is. For example, if relevant, credible websites source your website via an external link, this will help to demonstrate your authority.

Domain authority is one way to gauge the authority of your site. It’s a numerical score that was developed by Moz, a popular piece of SEO software – the higher your domain authority, the better. For example, a site like BBC News has a domain authority of 95, whereas a newly launched, eCommerce site with thin pages and no backlink profile will likely have a domain authority score of 10 or less.

In a similar vein, your content needs to be authoritative in its own right. You can do this by pointing to reputable sources to back up what you’re saying. For example, if you’re making the point that video content is growing in importance for brands’ social media strategies, find a study or statistic to back this up and cite this in your content.

Another way to demonstrate authority is through topical authority. You can do this by developing high-quality content to show that you’re an expert in your topic area - (a pillar content strategy could help you do this). For example, if you sell running shoes, you could create content around:

• the most popular running routes in central London
• pros and cons of running on a treadmill vs outdoors
• how to train for a 5km run as a beginner

Trust refers to how reliable, safe and secure your content is. Should the user trust and believe what you’re saying?

For example, an eCommerce site needs to have secure payment systems, authentic customer reviews and reliable customer service. These are three key indicators that Google, and therefore site users, can trust you and your site.

When it comes down to trusting you and your content, expertise, experience and authority all filter into trust. You’re more likely to trust content that was written by somebody who has first-hand experience, a wealth of expertise and a demonstration of authority in that topic! This is why trust is the most important, central part of E-E-A-T.

E-E-A-T in SEO is all about making sure Google serves up the best and most trustworthy content to its users, to improve the user experience of its own platform. Although E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor, implementing E-E-A-T best practices across your entire site will only help you to improve your online presence, credibility, reputation and user experience. All of these indicators will build trust which is significant when it comes to conversions – would you buy from a business you didn’t trust?

To step up your E-E-A-T game, get in touch with our content marketing and SEO specialists. We can give you an indication of how your site is performing from a search marketing perspective, and suggest ideas for how to improve E-E-A-T and SEO in both the short- and long-run.