WHAT DOES E-E-A-T STAND FOR?
E-A-T, acronyms for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness have been a key feature of Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines for a long time. Just recently, Google added a new “E” to the combination – Experience.
Experience
This refers to the amount of first-hand experience an author has which is essential for a given topic.
Expertise
This showcases the creator’s level of knowledge or skillset based on the given topic.
Authoritativeness
This factor takes into account the extent to which the website is identified as a go-to source and is well-established in the field.
Trustworthiness
This evaluates the level of accuracy, honesty, credibility and reliability of a website.
UNDERSTANDING E-E-A-T AND HOW IT AFFECTS SEO
Understanding and optimizing your website by implementing the E-E-A-T strategy is strongly associated with good SEO.
This is because Google now emphasizes that first-hand experience is crucial for know-how and credibility for a myriad of topics.
This is something that all content creators should take note of. This aims to improve the reputation, reliability and website’s authority.
However, while E-E-A-T is a trending and essential practice to take advantage of, it is not a direct ranking factor in Google’s search algorithm. It proves to be beneficial for a website owner or author as topics that are humane, or helpful content are more clicked on by users that are searching for similar topics.
Google does take into account the data from these assessments to improve its algorithms. So, E-E-A-T indirectly enhances a website’s search performance over time.
WHY E-E-A-T IS IMPORTANT IN TODAY’S ERA
With the speedy advancement of AI in the digital world, rapid content is being generated which is not something that is written by someone with first-hand experience or expertise. Here E-E-A-T factors play an essential role as they distinguish low-value AI content from genuine content that is useful and reliable for users searching for information on the internet.