So what does E.A.T. mean and why is it important for SEO in 2020?
E.A.T. is an acronym (if you haven’t already guessed) for:
E = Expertise
A = Authoritativeness
T = Trustworthiness
Keep reading to discover some useful SEO tips and strategies that you can apply to improve your search rankings.
Let’s examine what each of these elements mean and why they’re important for SEO.
EXPERTISE
To be favoured in the SERPS (search engine ranking positions) your website content must meet these 3 major ranking criteria.
Starting with web content, since Google does not understand content the way human beings do it instead, looks for signals that it can gather about your content to understand how it correlates with how humans assess relevance.
SEO PRO TIP 1: How pages link to each other is one of the well-known signals that Google uses.
It is imperative therefore, that your content resonates well with your target audience by:
a). Acknowledging & addressing their search query, including a descriptive or helpful title in the first instance.
b). Providing as in-depth an answer or solution as might be feasibly relevant to the search query thereby demonstrating your particular expertise.
c). Backing-up statements by providing fact-based evidence such as linking to seminal works or citing other reputable sites on the subject.
AUTHORITATIVENESS
Looking through Google’s algorithmic eyes websites or pages that have no beneficial purpose, ones that make no attempt to help users, or pages that potentially spread hate, cause harm, or misinform or deceive users, will receive their lowest rating.
Creating high quality web pages takes a significant amount of time and effort, expertise and skill too.
When pages are created that are factually accurate for the topic and backed-up by solid expert published opinion, then those pages are most likely to be deemed as being authoritative.
Clear examples of authority sites include:
Bruce Clay – The Father of SEO
Seth Godin – The Ultimate Entrepreneur
SEO PRO TIP 2: Your reputation as an author will affect how your content is viewed. Make sure that what you put out is of the highest quality and contribute to leading publications in your industry.
TRUSTWORTHINESS
Google favours high quality original content. Therefore, it is pointless to adopt a poor short term strategy that will only lead to low ranking penalties and ultimately site oblivion.
Let’s be clear – by poor strategy we mean:
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER…
The key to E. A. T. is to adopt a strategy right from the very outset that places your target audience at the very heart of every bit of content that you publish.
In doing so, you not only benefit by adhering to Google’s content ranking guidelines but also by improving user engagement, lowering bounce rates and ultimately being seen as a primary resource within your industry.
SEO PRO TIP 3: Align your content creation efforts closely with E.A.T. criteria to send a strong signal to Googlebot that your content is worth ranking well.
TIME TO WRAP UP…
There are no doubt many other ranking signals used to determine the top spots.
But Googlebot’s automated web crawler is programmed to use a mix of many different signals to rank good content.
It is understood that the ranking signals use a mix of what, we as humans would agree is great content based upon the E-A-T criteria.
Therefore, from an SEO tips standpoint assessing your own content based on E-A-T criteria will most probably send a strong signal that your content is worthy of ranking well.
