What Is E-A-T and How Do I Boost My SEO With It?

What better way to get free traffic than earning it through Google and search engine optimization (SEO). You can achieve great results through SEO with a highly-defined focus on a particular niche, and employing the basic principles of E-A-T. Here is how you can take advantage of Google’s favor for trusted and authoritative experts.

What is Google’s E-A-T?

E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trust. These three are factors defined by Google on how much trust it would place in a brand or website. In order to give searchers the best experience possible, Google has defined for webmasters what they look for in a web page.

How is E-A-T measured?

Each of the factors have their unique criteria for evaluation.

Expertise

Expertise touches on the high level of knowledge or skill in a particular field. It is evaluated at the content-level, meaning Google rewards those who create content as a subject matter expert.

Though you don’t necessarily require formal qualifications to become the content creator, “everyday expertise” (Google’s words) can also be acceptable for earning traffic from the search engine.

Authoritativeness

Authority pertains to reputation, specifically how well or often you are mentioned by other experts and influencers in your space. The more others speak of you, the better Google views your authoritativeness.

Ratings, reviews, references, recommendations, and mentions from credible sources (other websites and individuals) can boaster your authoritativeness.

Trustworthiness

Trust deals with the legitimacy and accuracy of a website and its content. Google can determine a consensus on information across the website, supported by experts and known trusted websites.

Similar to authoritativeness, building a profile on websites such as BBB, TrustPilot, Homestar, RateMDS, or whatever major and popular business listing websites can be a starting point to build trust. Receiving backlinks and mentions from credible sources, with an overall sentiment of positive discussions can improve trustworthiness.

How to Boost Your SEO With Strong E-A-T

Knowing about E-A-T is not enough. Here are the 3 key ways to improve it, and boost your SEO.

1) Work to earn backlinks and mentions from other websites, especially from trusted sources.

Get published from news publication websites. Local, niche-specific, or from major outlets. This can help you begin building E-A-T for your website.

There are several strategies you can employ here. The best is to reach out to website authors, news publication reporters, and influencers in your space to begin a discussion.

Write valuable content that shed insights to what it is you do, what you specialize in, what problems you solve, or interesting facts about the work you do. That way, others can do their due diligence and can trust they can work with someone who knows their work.

2) Get good reviews, and get good at asking for reviews.

What people say or mention about your business matters. It ties to your reputation. Although the use of third-party rating sites wouldn’t directly account towards the SEO of your website, numerous negative reviews can be seen as negative reputation clues.

The reason we say it would be as clues because fake complaints exist, and Google understands this can manipulate rankings. Still, reputation management is important and you should work towards ensuring that your business can always be viewed positively online. The best way to do so is by asking for a review on Google and other websites.

Keep in mind Google does clearly state that business owners shouldn’t offer incentives to customers in exchange for reviews. However, it doesn’t mean you can’t remind customers to do so and respond to reviews so that customers may leave more reviews in the future.

3) Recognize that you as an author matters

Google isn’t just looking at your business brand or website mentions. They look towards individuals and how they are over the web. People also trust individuals as well, so it’s up to us to build reputations for ourselves and boost our authorship.

You can accomplish this by writing more, shooting more videos, responding to reviews, participating in relevant discussions elsewhere (forum threads, comments section of web pages, and social media). Doing what you can to showcase not only yourself, but also participating in your niche.

And when writing for yourself, focusing on content for your ideal readers can only benefit you from both Google’s eyes and your potential customers. Write with a purpose, showcase your expertise on the subject matter, and always work to provide valuable insights others can benefit from.

Concluding Thoughts

E-A-T guidelines make it clear what is important for not only Google, but for businesses. Customers love those who demonstrate their expertise, authoritativeness, and have trust to both their name and their business. Understanding how Google views E-A-T empowers us to focus on the right things that make a difference to your SEO.

The next steps now is to implement the right marketing strategies that employ E-A-T. You can do it yourself or start a discussion with an search marketing agency like us on what you can do to earn more traffic from Google today.