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The SEO world is fast-paced and ever-evolving. With so many strategies and techniques popping up daily, it is hard to remain in touch with them, especially if you are new to the industry. You may have heard about EEAT, but might not know what it is or want to know more about it. You may also want to know if you need to use your search rank tracker to keep an eye on it. So, let’s take a closer look at what is EEAT and why it is important for SEO.
Breaking Down EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust)
Experience
Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust are four major considerations Google tends to value for page quality. Although all of them are important, Trust happens to be the most important. Moreover, Google also states that the type and amount of trust varies by website.
For instance, online businesses need to have secure sites and payment processing systems to secure private and important information. Considering the ever-increasing cyber threats, it is very easy for scammers and hackers to get access to information and use it for illegal purposes.
This is why sites need to keep up their defenses and security systems to prevent breaches and improve trust amongst their customers. Once you have successfully developed trust, it is time to consider experience, which is the second most important factor.
This involves determining whether the content creator has experienced using a product or service in real life. For example, if someone is writing a review, have they experienced it or are simply following what others have to say? Even though experience is a relatively lower bar to cross than expertise or authority but still holds enough value for SEO.
Expertise
Expertise helps Google and the readers determine if the content creator has relevant training, skills, or degree related to the content that is being uploaded. It is often that users and visitors are curious to find out more about the content creator in terms of having won any awards or accolades than the content itself. This shows how relevant is the content and the source itself.
For example, if you are going through medical advice from a mom, it is going to be of no value when compared to an actual doctor. Similarly, if someone belonging to the music industry is writing an article on mortgages, you will most probably jump to some other source.
Considering the expertise and the level of the content itself, Google can easily signal whether the authors are experienced or irrelevant people.
Authoritativeness
Authoritativeness is a level above expertise. You might have relevant experience and formal training but the question is if you are the first choice people want to consult on a specific topic. For this, you need to develop an excellent reputation. Perhaps the best way of doing that is by sharing your information and experience with other experts in the industry.
Sharing information with regular people is one thing but joining hands with the experts takes you to the next level. This is how people will know that if the experts are following you, they should consider you the first source to consult if they have certain questions in mind.
Trust
In the end, it comes down to trust. As mentioned earlier, nothing impresses Google more than the trust factor. This is the highest level of EEAT in SEO. Google measures the trust metric by checking the authority and expertise of each page of your site.
That said, if you wish to utilize the EEAT strategy for SEO, you need to keep in mind that no other factor helps rank your content and site better than trust. But it is not as easy as it seems. Trust is something that builds gradually and you will have to think of steps that will help do that within your customers in a short period.
Plus, it is not a one-time strategy as well. You will need to work on it continuously to ensure that your visitors or traffic can also feel the same as your existing traffic does. Plus, check website ranking on Google to see how well you’re performing.
What Is YMYL?
While we discuss EEAT and its importance in SEO, it is also important for you to be familiar with YMYL. It stands for “Your Money or Your Life”. This acronym is used by Google as a rule a rule for classifying sites or pages that impact your safety, finance, and happiness.
YMYL and EEAT are directly related as they help users make important decisions. That said, YMYL pages are held to the highest EEAT standards as they directly impact the everyday lives of regular people. This means the information presented on such sites should always be accurate, authentic, relevant, and updated.
If the information presented misguides the users, Google will neither rank the sites nor consider them worthy. YMYL websites like news and current events, shopping, finance, health, safety, etc., help people make informed decisions. There are also other types and topics but it all comes down to the context and how the information is presented.
The Importance Of EEAT For SEO
Nowadays, people tend to search the internet before making their final decision and Google understands as well. Someone out there might make a life-altering decision having gone through a piece of content. Therefore, if the source is misguiding, it could have terrible consequences for the reader.
This means if your web pages or content falls into any of these categories, you must be very careful about the information presented. The greater your ability to follow the EEAT standards the more the chances of your site ranking better and receiving organic traffic.
Is Google EEAT A Ranking Factor?
Technically, when it comes to ranking content or sites, EEAT does not directly influences it, but it’s still an important ranking factor. This is because Google uses other signals to determine expertise, trust, and authority which are ranking factors. Keep in mind that there is no single metric to measure Google’s EEAT score.
Google simply keeps an eye on factors indicating a high level of trust, expertise, and authority. Factors such as backlinks tell a lot about a site’s authority. If everything is original and authentic from top to bottom, the EEAT factors will automatically be at higher levels.
If you find the process complicated, you should consider taking a look at your competitors and try to understand and determine the strategies they are using to rank better. You do not have to copy them but simply understand the concept of how EEAT standards could be used to improve your content or site.
Conclusion
Even though EEAT is not directly a ranking factor, it’s an important thing to consider if you want your site to be ranked higher on search results. You can track the exact EEAT score for your website, but you can track individual thins like authority of your website using a white label rank checker. Keep in mind that Google will continue classifying and ranking websites based on the various factors. This means you should not only follow the EEAT standards but also keep up with Google’s algorithms to make changes in time so you can be a step ahead of your competitors.
