Google’s EAT for SEO: How It Impacts You

By jack123 | SEO | 0 Comments

Google’s EAT for SEO

Google’s EAT is not a new thing at its core but it only started gaining attention after 2018. Its origin is Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines, published in 2013 to give people more insights into how the algorithm ranks pages. In this 168-page whitepaper, the idea of expertise, authority, and trust makes a solid appearance.

Google’s EAT is more important for some niches’ SEO than others. It will influence informative queries, where people look for valuable content considerably more than acquisition ones.

If you are a blog owner, you need to pay massive attention to EAT. If your blog falls under what Google calls Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) niches, then you really need to prove your EAT. These are websites that cover subjects that can massively impact someone’s life so Google is very cautious when ranking them.

What Does Eat Mean for SEO

EAT deals with the expertise, authority, and trust generated by a website. They sound very similar but in terms of SEO, they are different concepts.

E – Expertise

Expertise deals directly with your content and has nothing to do with your website, optimization, and any other SEO metrics. Having expertise means having lots of knowledge in one particular field. This is important as Google only wants articles with valid advice, especially for YMYL niches.

Demonstrating expertise often means having some sort of formal experience or educational background in a field, for YMYL topics. This is important as you wouldn’t want to make your medical decisions based on advice got from someone without any formal experience.

But, for other niches, the formal experience is not needed, and something as simple as “everyday expertise” is enough. For non-YMYL topics, it’s about demonstrating relevant life experience and “everyday expertise.” It’s enough to be passionate about a hobby and have a large database of knowledge backing up your claims of being an expert. But, your articles need to translate that expertise more than anything else.

A – Authoritativeness

The second criteria for proving EAT is demonstrating that you’re an authority in your space. This means positioning yourself at the same level as other experts from your field. External information about the website’s reputation is quite important for proving authority.

Reviews and constant mentions on other authority websites can move the needle in the right direction when it comes to your website’s authority. But, this authority transfer also needs to be relevant.

Whilst here at Web Push we’re experts in terms of SEO, we know nothing about building cars. We’re an authority in SEO but that same reputation does not transfer to the automotive industry.

T – Trustworthiness

To be ranked at the top, Google needs to trust your website. The algorithm will certainly not give the first position to a medical query to a shady website.

YMYL websites need to prove a higher degree of trust and provide valid information about who’s in charge of the site and the go-to contact methods. Whilst non-YMYL topics might be able to get away without providing such info, YMYL ones will certainly not.

In terms of content, those websites can also prove their trustworthiness by providing information backed by other experts and citing other authority sources in the field.

A Ranking Factor?

EAT is not a ranking factor perse since it’s not something that can be measured and used to directly influence the SERPs. Expertise, authority, and trust are all rather relative concepts that can’t be grasped by computers.

However, all three EAT signals are very important and can influence the rankings. Simply put, it’s better to meet these criteria than to not. Also, Google engineers make constant tweaks to the algorithm that are aligned with these concepts of a valuable site.

How to Improve

To improve your website’s EAT you first and foremost need to have some. YMYL websites without any EAT experienced huge drops in traffic back in August 2018 when Google launched a new update.

You want to avoid being part of that category. You should improve your EAT as much as possible, and if you have none, you need to build some as soon as possible.

Update Your Content

Updating your content is essential, regardless of the topics you cover on your site. If you want to demonstrate EAT, you need to update your articles at the same pace as things change in the world. If you’re an accountant or a financial adviser and you don’t update your articles when the legislation changes, you will experience negative results.

This doesn’t have the same importance for non YMYL niches but it’s still an essential thing, as we’ve noticed after the May 2020 update.

Link Building

Although Google doesn’t necessarily admit the influence of links openly, it is widely known that they are an essential authority signal. There’s no way you won’t gain more EAT if you’re regularly mentioned in authoritative publications from your niche.

But, as we mentioned many times before, not all links are equal. You need to understand the importance of quality over quantity in terms of link building. The algorithm knows how to weigh links when making up the SERPs. If you get a bunch of low-quality links, they won’t have much of a positive impact.

If you do get a lot of links from trusted websites, you will be able to demonstrate EAT. Niche relevancy is also important when thinking about link building. Getting links from any top site like WSJ or NYT will obviously help you. But, when we’re talking about smaller sites, relevancy is the most important thing.

Link building goes well with content creation. If you have valuable articles on your site, the chances are that you’ll start gaining links naturally, without having to do any link building.

Look More Trustworthy

This is a rather general bit of advice but the more elements you have on your site that communicate trust, the better. If you’re a business or part of the YMYL sphere, provide as many contact details as possible. Your name, email address, contact number, and office address are a good start. If you also link to social media and a team page with info about your employees, even better.

To have great success with EAT, don’t hesitate to “brag” a little about yourself and showcase all of your credentials. Any information regarding your formal education, former employment, businesses you built, and even conferences or articles that featured you are welcome here. If you can, don’t hesitate to put up a Wikipedia page for your business.

Conclusion

EAT might not be a ranking factor on its own but it’s very important to understand the way Google ranks pages, and how you can use it to your advantage. Simply put, just try to be as authentic as possible and that will improve your EAT in the end.