How to Optimize for Google’s E-A-T Algorithm

Google Search used to be all about links but not anymore. Today, the way to domain authority is by making sure that your site can provide a great search experience for users.

That is, it should provide diverse, helpful and high-quality information. For that reason, Google launched its E-A-T algorithm, which stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.

What is E-A-T in SEO?

Search engines must present the user with a diverse set of search results that are informative, high-quality and presented in the order they are most helpful. 

Results should be trustworthy, offer authoritative information and not mislead users.  For this reason, Google uses page quality rating to evaluate the quality of the information in the online world and understand the purpose of the page.

When selecting a page’s overall PQ rating, several factors must be considered. These include the purpose of the page, the amount and quality of content, the information about the website and its creator, the reputation of the website and its creator and lastly, E-A-T itself.

Truthfully, a page’s Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness have been part of Google’s guidelines for many years. However, since the recent update (just last year) and now more people are aware of what E-A-T is and how important search rankings are.

In recent years, Google is focusing more and more on this idea. So much so that the term has been used 186 times in the quality rater guidelines.

The E-A-T algorithm serves as a key indicator to determine if your webpage is useful, accurate, created by an expert, written with quality and if it caters to diverse readers.

The higher the amount of E-A-T that your website has, the closer to the top of the page you will find it in Google search results. The key is to think about the reason behind the page and what kind of expertise is required to serve that purpose.

Google Algorithm Updates and E-A-T

A company website that’s moved up a spot in Google search results can receive around 30 percent more customers. It’s a significant percentage that certainly makes it crucial to ensure your web page is within Google’s algorithm.

On that note, Google’s algorithm update and specifically E-A-T brought a significant push for websites to have better content. Creating high-quality content is now even more competitive especially with the recent update in March.

Be an Expert/Invest in Personal Branding

Now you see how important the E-A-T algorithm is. On that note, hiring just anybody to write content for your website is a no-good strategy. You see, Google wants you to feature content from experts. The author of the content must be experts in their fields although these standards depend on the type of content and the purpose of the page.

Here’s what you need to keep in mind – websites and pages with high E-A-Ts come in all types. They can be news sites, medical sites, fashion sites, gossip sites and the like. For these websites to end up at the top of search results, their authors must be people with authority in their field. So either you hire an expert, or you become the expert by investing in personal branding.

Get Cited, Meaning Get People to Talk About You

If you’ve yet to realize, most of your E-A-T evaluation comes from off-site sources. You can say you are an expert and maybe you are, but do people know who you are? That’s the question. If you want to have a high page quality rating by E-A-T standards, you need to get other websites to agree that you are an expert.

As stated in Google’s search quality guidelines, “When the website says one thing about itself, but reputable external sources disagree with what the website says, trust the external sources.” In that case, part of your strategy should be gaining more off-site mentions from reputable websites associated with your field.

Focus on Backlink Quality vs Quantity

Not all backlinks are created equal. They don’t all have the same level of power and that’s why Google now assigns a domain ranking score to every website. Your website’s score depends on the number of links pointed to it. However, you should not only focus on the quantity but the quantity as well.

That is, you need to consider how authoritative each of those links is. If you want to rank high in search results and fall under the E-A-T standards, your backlinks must be from authoritative or high domain ranking sites in your field. By focusing more on the quality of links, you can increase your authority while also boosting your relevancy to Google.

Create High-Quality Content

The most important way for you to optimize your page for Google’s E-A-T algorithm is by creating quality content. Not just text, but more importantly, visual content. Quality content means pages with information that benefit readers. Besides that, however, the page must be easy on the eyes.

First, you need to deliver well-researched written content about topics your audience will find interesting. Users don’t want to waste their time on convoluted texts, so it’s crucial your content is to the point, detailed and informative. It is how you establish yourself and your website to be an authority.

Video content marketing is one of the techniques that make your content better digestible for online users. Images are now an important part of Google’s search results with the company’s image algorithm having been overhauled to rank pages with great content and great images high. Thus, it is vital that you optimize your page for visual search. How? By image SEO. It means you don’t only put pictures or videos alongside the usual text content but you also apply SEO tactics, similar to how you use keywords in your web copy. Your first step is to write alt text for each image and create descriptive file names for the images.

Here’s the takeaway — you can rank higher in Google search results and gain advantages to help your business succeed if you, your website and your content are authoritative, trustworthy and expert.