How to Measure Google’s E-A-T Criteria and Improve Your Organic Results

High-quality content is one of the most important factors when it comes to search engine rankings. Google very carefully checks the content that it promotes to the top. To create quality content, more and more people tend to use EAT. What is EAT and how will it help in improving content and search engine rankings?

Below you will find not only information about what E-A-T Google is but also a guide with which you can improve your content in 2021. This, in turn, will allow you to get off the ground in the ranking and get the desired position in the search result.

To put it simply, EAT is Google’s criteria by which it analyzes the quality and reliability of not only the content but also its author. This assessment was implemented in order to prevent and mitigate the spread of misinformation, as well as malicious and inaccurate content.

EAT stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. In fact, these are similar concepts, but they are not the same and they are assessed separately according to each criterion.

Let’s dwell on them in more detail.

Expertise

This means that the author has a high level of knowledge, experience, or skill in a particular area. This is usually measured at the content level, not a site or company. If we talk about YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics, then the expertise, qualifications, and even education of the content author are important here. For example, a lawyer will be more competent in divorce proceedings than an author who read a couple of articles before writing content.

If we talk about topics that do not belong to YMYL, then it is necessary to demonstrate the author’s everyday expertise in a particular topic. Not all topics require such a need for expertise, it is enough for the author to have experience in the topic related to content.

There is also information that such expertise may be sufficient for some YMYL topics. For instance, when writing an article about how a person with a disease feels, then a patient with such a disease can answer this answer more accurately than a doctor with many years of experience.

What is YMYL and What Is Its Essence?

This abbreviation YMYL stands for Your Money or Your Life. These are the sites that publish content that can, directly and indirectly, affect human life, health, happiness, safety, and financial well-being. This term first appeared in 2013 as a kind of guide for assessors. These categories of sites include:

• Government websites.
• Sites that offer legal services and share legal advice.
• Sites from the field of financing, as well as sites that provide services in this area.
• Sites that relate to health care, the treatment of any diseases, and diets.
• Online shops due to the possibility of payment transactions.
• Information and news portals that publish various content in areas such as economics, politics, as well as social topics that create people’s opinions.

These sites are subjected to special attention because the provision of false information can lead to a variety of negative consequences, for example, a threat to life or health, financial loss, or deception.

Accordingly, the main purpose of EAT is to monitor the quality of content to provide users with extremely valuable sources that create safe and useful content. Therefore, non-compliance with such criteria will lead to a low ranking in search results.

Authoritativeness

What is authoritativeness? Authoritativeness refers to reputation among other experts and industry influencers. If users consider a person or resource as a source of information in the context of a topic, then they can be considered authoritative. To assess this parameter, assessors search the Internet for information regarding the reputation of both the site and the person. Independent sources are used for this search. That is, those that were not created by a website or a company.

Trustworthiness

If we talk about trustworthiness, then this includes truthfulness, transparency, and also the accuracy of the content that is on the site. There are several points to evaluate this parameter. For example, Google one more time checks who is responsible for the content that is published on the site. This is especially important in YMYL topics. Such sites must have a high level of trust and it is necessary to indicate information on the site regarding who is responsible for the content.

The accuracy of the content is also taken into account. For instance, the content should not contain any mistakes in the facts on the topic, it should be based on generally accepted provisions if such is created within the framework of the topic. For example, there should be a citation of reliable sources.

Today, this topic raises a lot of debate. In short, for something to be a ranking factor, it must be easily measurable. A simple example is how Google accounts for the presence of backlinks. To find them and measure their credibility, Google scans the entire Internet and evaluates the links according to the easily measurable parameters.

If we talk about such indicators as expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, then these are human factors with a lot of subjectivity.

For this reason, it is significant to understand that in order to improve organic search, it is vital to pay attention not only to EAT but also to all the well-known SEO practices because Google will continue to use its algorithms in tandem with assessors, which means that the work on improving the rating must also be complex. Work on EAT and SEO together. This would be a good way to finally solve your ranking and organic search problem.

The Samples of High EAT Level

• A website dwelling on divorce legislation. Such a resource should have content created by an experienced lawyer whose activities are based on divorce proceedings. The resource must be authoritative and dedicated exclusively to legal advice.
• Page about the sale of women’s clothing. On this site, you can discover the characteristics of the product, read reviews from real users and add the product to the cart.
• The news resource. The news article must be published by an author with journalistic experience. The site should be with a high reputation in its niche.
• Animal feed website. The site should contain information from experts on choosing the right feed, as well as tips for caring for your pet. The site must have a good reputation.

What Can Decrease The Quality Of A Website According to EAT?

There are a number of principles that EAT concepts oblige the content creators to follow. Based on them, we can specify the most common you should avoid if your goal is to create EAT-compliant and SEO-friendly content:

• Copying content from other sites as well as non-unique fragments in the content.
• Publishing content that is of poor quality and does not provide any value to users.
• Creating content by non-professionals and experts in the field.
• The presence of a large number of advertisements.
• The presence of website technical flaws that directly affect SEO.

Below you will find tips to help you create content that will allow you to gain Google approval and improve your ranking in search results.

Take Content Creation Seriously

Make sure you have enough time to come up with top-notch materials since devoting some time equalizes the final quality. Word count and article length are not the only criteria related to content quality. It is important to consider the niche, keywords, and the solution to the user’s problem here. Therefore, if earlier you spent little time creating content and at the same time had problems with the rating, then it’s time to follow a more thorough approach to content creation.

Invest Your Efforts

What is meant by effort when creating content? Believe it or not, there is an effort that can be defined using the following points:

• What tools did you use to improve the text?
• What research and statistics have you used to back up your thoughts/arguments with facts?
• Have you analyzed the content of your competitors?
• Have you researched keywords that will be relevant to your topic?
• Have you created unique graphics and embedded related videos?

These points can be viewed as indicators of content creation effort.

Turn Your Creative Skills On

The creative skills you need to use when creating your content relate to page design, text creation, and presentability. All of this affects the overall picture of the quality of the page content. Therefore, we can say that the quality of content is not the work of only one person.

So, if you create content yourself, then you should think about the services of a writer, designer, and SEO expert. If this is not possible, then you should not limit yourself to single writing of content, but also remember about design, graphics, and promotion.

Show Off the Expertise

One of the key success factors is the author’s expertise when we talk about EAT. Google experts will analyze your content taking into account what experts say in this niche and in this topic. For example, any recommendations from professional communities, influencers, specialists will be a wake-up call that the site has expertise in the field. This means that the site should get a higher place in the rating. Also, comments on your article and the number of reposts will be taken into account.

To wrap up this topic and figure out how to create quality content, you will find 5 steps that will help you in this issue. Such content will be EAT-compliant, plus will please not only Google but also your audience.

1. Experts Must Create Content

The business owners who struggle with content creation on their own may not like it but the author must be an expert. As the way out, you can attend specialized writing courses or hire third-party writers who know everything about the niche and can help you create quality content. It is recommended to add information about the author and provide links to the site or social profiles.

2. Follow High Standards

After the content is ready, you should make sure that it is better than that of your competitors. Make the text even better than the competitors and also make sure that you do not omit important points that are key in your topic. Make it a rule to constantly improve your content. It is also worth adding relevant and unique images or videos.

3. Make Sure There Are No UX Flaws

The loading speed of both the entire site and each page should be high. Also, analyze how your site is displayed on different devices. Here it is important to only to check it with different smartphones (iOS or Android) but also tablets. It is also worth remembering that the content should respond to key user queries and not interrupt the receipt of information by pop-ups and constant ads.

P.S. The presence of advertising does not lower your page rankings. But advertising that worsens the behavioral factor will negatively affect the rating.

4. Strengthen Your Article with Backlinks Authoritative Resources to Link to

As you know, Google loves the content with a lot of backlinks too. What’s more, it considers this process to be organic. High-quality content with unique statistics and research can independently receive links. But it will take a lot of time, so you are better to work on gathering backlinks to your materials on your own. For example, you can consider guest posting, backlinks exchange, and ready-made link-building strategies with the help of dedicated software.

5. Measure Performance and Update Content

Develop a strong habit of monitoring the effectiveness of your web resource and always pay attention to such indicators as:

• bounce rate;
• dwelling time;
• user comments and reviews;
• organic traffic;
• likes, shares, and reposts.

You should also be engaged in updating your content. Did you know that old content might not be of any use? But if you add a little relevant data, then this content will be better ranked by search engines. For instance, if you have an article “SEO promotion tips in 2017”, then keep updating the article and adding the current year accordingly.

Use these tips to create high-quality content for your site, your audience, and Google. And take it seriously since for most businesses keeping high search positions is key to success. After getting started with the tips above, you will receive visible results soon, which will significantly affect your positions in the search results.

Ignoring EAT is not the best idea, regardless of the topic of your content. Now is the era of high-quality and useful content, so if you do not monitor the quality of the content, other SEO efforts may be not so effective. Useless information without signs of trust and authority is a wake-up call to Google that something is wrong with your site.

Therefore, creating content with an emphasis on EAT can be a great strategy to improve the quality of your materials and get higher rankings. But it is also important not to forget that in addition to EAT, you need to focus on SEO too. Such a winning combo will bring the desired results in the organic search and rating.