What is EEAT?

EEAT is Experience, Expertise, Authority & Trustworthiness

What does EEAT mean and why is it important?

As we've discussed, EEAT is the lens that Google Quality Raters look at a website with when deciding if it is high-quality. But not only does it help you get your website ranked as high as possible, it also helps convert visitors to your website. So how exactly do they each work?

Experience

This is how much experience the person or business has in delivering the service or product, or explaining the topic the website is about. Would you want to take advice or use someone that didn't have any experience on the topic or service you were after? If you were after a plumber, needed someone to do SEO for your business or just to explain how to fix a broken machine, you'd want to know they have experience in it. Sure, they may know the fundamentals of it or have done a course etc, but until they've had some experience they are unproven.

Expertise

Closely related to experience, but more aimed at qualifications or skills. Are they qualified to deliver the product or service, or to explain the topic. When we use someone, we want to know they have expertise. You wouldn't go to a doctor or use an engineer that wasn't qualified. With some topics or industries there may not be a specific qualification, so in this case you would lean more heavily on their experience. Similarly, you may be happy to overlook a lack of qualification if the person or business has a wealth of experience; the old "University of Hard Knocks".

Authority

Are you recognised as an authority on the product, service or topic? Are you cited elsewhere or is your website seen as an authority on the topic? Authority is a harder thing to measure than experience and expertise; it isn't just a case of how many years or do they or don't they have a qualification. This is more to do with how they present themselves, how many places they are published and whether they sound like they know what they are talking about. Experience and expertise can definitely influence this as well.

Trustworthiness

Can you be trusted? Is their evidence that you know what you're talking about or can deliver the products or services to a high quality? For us to buy something or listen to someone we need to trust them. We need to trust that they know what they are talking about or will deliver the service or product that we expect. Rarely will we use someone if we don't trust them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is EEAT? Google’s Key to Higher Rankings Explained

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0:04 What is EAT? EAT is an acronym you may have come across. It's definitely an acronym that that we use quite a lot in probably web marketing. It's actually a Google acronym. So it stands for experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. And it's how Google looks at a page, looks at a website to decide whether or not that website should be ranking well or not.

0:25 So it's not actually it would be built into the algorithm, but it's also what they have their search rate. So they have people that go in and have a look at what's ranking and they go and look at those websites and they see to make sure that the algorithm is doing what it should be doing. So it's a very good indicator of what Google's looking for when it decides to rank.

0:40 What does it all mean? Experience. They want to see that that the person writing that website has experience in the topic they're talking about. They're not an inexperienced person talking about a topic they know nothing about. It's looking for expertise. So do they have expertise in that?

0:53 Obviously, if it's a plumbing website, are they a plumber? Have they got qualifications? If obviously it's a medical website, are they a doctor? So, you know, they're looking for expertise in that. They're looking for authority. Does that person have authority?

1:05 You know, is it a one-off content or is it someone who's written and they're known on the internet? Um, the name is, you know, they're on other areas, they've written other stuff. So, they've got an authority inbuilt into the internet. And the last one is trustworthiness.

1:19 You know, are they coming across as trusty? Are they someone that you can trust and they're not trying to sell you something that they shouldn't be selling you? That's obviously a harder one to look at, but things like social reviews and that sort of stuff is a good one for whether you're someone that can be trusted or what not. So, now you know what EA is and the importance it is in digital marketing.

How do you integrate EEAT into your website?

We now know what EEAT is and the importance of them, but how do we integrate this into our website and content?

Experience

The most common way to show your experience on a website is to state how long you have been delivering the service etc. This could be how long the business has been trading or how long the individual team members have been delivering the service. Another good way is to show the work you have already completed. On a SmartyrWebsite, we use the following modules to achieve this:

• Projects
• About Us Page (years in business)
• Team Member Profiles (individual years experience)

Expertise

The best way to show your expertise is to show your licences and qualifications. Combine this with covering all areas that you have expertise in, so if you are specialists in commercial solar, make sure you mention this on your site. On SmartyrWebsites we use the following modules:

• About Us Page (business licences and qualifications)
• Team Member Profiles (individual licences and qualifications)
• Service Pages (show the services you have expertise in)
• Offers (include offers around expertise)

Authority

You can show authority both on your website (onsite) and offsite. To show it offsite, you need to publish articles on other websites, get recognition or awards and have a consistent profile shared on multiple directory websites etc. To show it onsite, you need to have plenty of quality content and show any awards or recognition you may have gotten. On a SmartyrWebsite we use:

• Information pages (show your knowledge)
• Videos (show your knowledge)
• Blogs (show your knowledge)
• Award Banners
• About Us Page (show awards and recognition)
• Team Member Profiles (show awards and recognition)

Trustworthiness

Last we have trust. The obvious way to build trust is to show what others have said about you. You can also show exactly who they will be dealing with and not just use stock photos etc. Show the quality brands you use and any guarantees you may have to protect them. On a SmartyrWebsite we use:

• Reviews Module
• Videos (show who you are)
• Brand Banners (quality products you use)
• Offers (any guarantees etc you may have.

So there you have it. What is EEAT, why it's important and how we go about showing it on our websites.