Over the years, the internet has been under constant development to adapt to the current needs of the technological industry. One of the most important entities on the internet is the existence of search engines. Among the plenty of factors to rank on Page 1 in search engines, we find now E-A-T. Are you familiar with this concept, and why is E-A-T important for you?  Let’s find out below the Importance of E-A-T.

As you most probably know, it has gradually developed starting from 1993’s Archie search engine up to today’s dominance of Google.

The long history of search engines also comes with how search engine optimization (SEO) has evolved in these years. Today, Google is the major player in the search engine department, changing the game of optimization and introducing new SEO guidelines.

What is E-A-T?

Google introduced E-A-T (which stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) as the three major factors in Google search’s algorithm. These principles are what Google uses to evaluate each piece of content that it crawls.

The three E-A-T factors are all similar concepts, but individually, they assess content.

Expertise

Expertise is evaluated from the content itself and not primarily at the website level, which means having a high level of knowledge or skill in a corresponding field is essential to crawl up to the first few pages of the Google search engine. Google is seeking content produced by subject matter experts.

Authority

Authority refers to the credentials of the content author. The reputation of the author is what makes it more reliable in the Google search engine pages and thus crawls up SEO rankings.

This can further be assessed not only with author credentials but also with the credibility derived from reviews and engagements.

Trustworthiness

The content should make the readers or searchers feel that they are consuming the right information on a website. Trustworthiness goes with showing Google the reliability of your content by showing users that they can have confidence in your content.

Trustworthy reference sources and a strong backlink profile are good indicators of a website’s Google trust.

Why is E-A-T Important?

The importance of E-A-T depends on the keywords being searched. The nature of the information that comes along with the search results matters in more crucial searches.

If the topic is about pictures of animals, E-A-T wouldn’t really matter that much but will still require reliability factors for Google to make it appear to search results.

If someone decides to search for a more comprehensive matter, say a piece of medical information or legal advice, E-A-T plays a big and critical role. Then, the importance of E-A-T becomes more evident: The search results should show reliable content backed by trusted sources.

Google decides what to bring up the search rankings with regards to the contents’ E-A-T factors.

The impacts of content released by Google search results can be potentially important or critical from a searcher’s point of view, so the way E-A-T works in SEO is complex and can take time to master.

What Gives a Website Good E-A-T?

Improving E-A-T is a process that is done carefully to make sure you are being trusted by Google to keep among its rankings.

Having a good and important E-A-T is evaluated not only on the quality of the content produced but also on the website it is crawled from. A good website reputation starts with the proper author or organization profile.

Here are some ways to help in improving your E-A-T factor:

1. Review content and keep them up-to-date

Whenever you produce content that you know will be relevant for a long time, never forget to review its resources and update information as needed. The world is ever-changing, and the information in the content can just abruptly change as well.

Keep your content up to date as more important information comes available. A simple review of the backlinks and references is enough to make sure your content is citing a reliable and working source.

2. Optimize the website profile tabs

More than the quality of your content, the other important tabs on your website are your ‘About’ and ‘Contact Us’ tabs. These are crucial in introducing the credibility of the information you are showing to users.

Optimizing the author’s pages also helps Google in understanding your authority and expertise over the subject matter in your content. Flashing your authors’ credentials is a good way in building up trust for the users to consume your content.

3. Build high-quality links

One of the best ways to increase traffic on your website and content is through backlinks. E-A-T is largely based on building up your reputation around links and mentions from more credible and authoritative sites.

Google is good at understanding which links count in searching factors, so it is better to consider prioritizing high-quality links to build up your link profile.

4. Develop an effective content strategy

Build up a working content strategy that you can maintain. Strategizing comes first before putting your content to work.

The essential parts of content strategy are defining your goals, identifying your audiences, and reviewing your metrics. For starters, it is a trial-and-error job and may take time to see the results if the strategy is effective.

Once you have defined your own personalized content strategy that works for your website, you only have to rinse and repeat the whole process in producing more content.

5. Make sure you are checking facts

One factual mistake in your content can have a grave effect on your website’s information. You have to keep checking if you are stating the right information through reliable sources.

Fact-checking is a must for content that provides crucial information to users. This would depend on the subject matter, but this mostly needs to be done for every content.

Wrapping Up

Simply put, the importance E-A-T remains on the principles in the SEO field. They are all about the reliability of the content produced by a website. Developing a good content strategy and building up a good website profile will strengthen your site’s reputation and will help you rank up Google’s algorithm.

Start building up a good reputation if you want your website to rank up. Keeping your credibility up is a thorough process that needs a whole lot of patience, but it needs to be!

Being a go-to content for user consumption is quite a big deal. But getting it to that point is a bigger challenge that requires work. Highlight the importance of E-A-T and make it better for you.