Digital marketing experts spend a lot of time trying to figure out the ‘magic formula’ behind SEO and, in particular, Google’s organic ranking methodology. There are over 200 factors at play when Google ranks its SERPs, and while hardly any of them have been officially confirmed by Google, what we do know is that page quality is a significant contributing factor when it comes to boosting your organic rankings. In this blog, we explore what Google’s E-A-T is.
E Expertise
Contrary to the NATO phonetic alphabet, E in Google’s eyes stands for Expertise. When evaluating the MC (main content) of each page, they first look at the website’s expertise.
Expertise is important because it shows whether or not your website or article has the expertise (and history of expertise) to be a credible source of information. This is usually ascertained by looking at award-winning contributors or external recognition and reputation, contributing to the expertise of the website overall.
A week after publishing its latest E-A-T guidelines in July 2018, Google also added that they would be reviewing not only the reputation and expertise of the website, but also of the individual content creators. The example Google provides here is a doctor with a degree (or multiple degrees) publishing a piece about medicine. A great way to demonstrate individual contributor expertise is by using author boxes with external links to their social media and profiles on other websites.
A Authority
A is for Authority! If you’ve done any sort of SEO to date, you will have probably heard of DA (domain authority) and backlinks. While expertise is the first piece of the puzzle, the next piece is demonstrating authority which can be a lot trickier!
In order to show how authoritative you are, it’s important to generate the following:
- Backlinks from other authoritative websites. This means other established websites linking to you as a source of information, making you the authority on the topic(s)
- Mentions in news articles or on other authoritative websites
- Shares of your content, websites and articles across social media (again, demonstrating authority on a particular topic/subject)
T Trustworthiness
Last of all, T is for Trustworthiness. Sounding like an expert or even an authority on a particular topic is great, but building trust around your insights and opinions is the final piece of the puzzle.
A great indicator of trustworthiness that Google relies on is reviews. Not only on Google My Business, but on other places such as Trustpilot, Facebook and even TripAdvisor or other relevant industry review aggregators.
Another key thing to mention when it comes to trustworthiness is having a secure website. So ensuring that your domain is secure (using HTTPS) and that you have an active SSL certificate as well as terms and conditions and privacy policies. These are all straightforward and effective ways to demonstrate trustworthiness and transparency in your business.
Ready to review your website’s E-A-T? Here at Verkeer, we’re experts in SEO and knowing what makes Google tick. Give us a call today to get started.