What is E-A-T and how can you do it?

Since Google’s Search Quality Elevator Guidelines were released, SEO's and content writers have been able to get a better understanding of what makes content great. One of the phrases that appear is E-A-T.

What is E-A-T?

E-A-T stands for “Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness.” These are three distinct factors to keep in mind when creating content for a website.

So what does each factor actually mean?

Expertise

With everyone on the internet claiming to be an ‘expert’, how can you actually show off your expertise?

If you’re writing for a blog on your website, make sure you have an author section on the page, and have a bio that is filled out.

You can even take it a step further and expand your expertise by writing guest posts for influential websites. When doing this, just make sure the website is reputable, or else you risk damaging your reputation by being associated with an untrustworthy website. Make sure you research the websites before asking to write for them. While it will be more competitive and difficult to get an article published on a website with a high domain authority, it will help to boost your expertise.

Authoritativeness

Authority is all about your reputation.

If your content writers are considered to be an expert in their field, this will help to increase your authority. Therefore, it’s important that your website frequently updates their blog with high quality, fresh content to maintain your level of authority. This will then help you to get your content shared on social media and have other websites link to your content, further increasing your level of authority.

Trustworthiness

Users need to know they can trust your website.

Everyone has gone on a website or received an email and known they shouldn’t reply to it, or open a certain page or attachment. If your website doesn’t look trustworthy, people aren’t going to navigate through it. This is a particular problem if you’re running an e-commerce website. People aren’t going to trust you with their credit card details if your website comes across as untrustworthy.

You need to ensure your website not only looks professional but makes the customer feel safe in order to gain their trust. There are numerous ways you can make your website appear more trustworthy, including:

Hiring a designer

Using social proof by including links to social media pages

Have a fast, responsive page

Proofread your website copy

Use an SSL certificate

Why should I care about E-A-T?

Now you know what E-A-T is, the next question is why should you even care? What importance does E-A-T have to your business and website?

E-A-T is a crucial factor in determining the value of your website. It is a factor that is kept in mind when the quality of your website and the content within it is being assessed. If you are able to convey to the general public that you have expertise, authoritativeness and are trustworthy, they are going to be more likely to pick your website over the competitions.

It doesn’t just impact who does or does not visit your website. If you are unable to convey these three factors, you may end up with a low search engine ranking.

Next time you’re considering what type of content you need to include on your website, make sure to keep the E-A-T principles in mind.